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Sunday, December 21, 2008

On Election & Fatalism (A Response to Persiflage)

I’ve been having a discussion with a commenter named Persiflage on Steve’s post entitled Soul-murder. As is typical of internet discussions, we’ve quickly strayed from the original point of Steve’s post. Since Persiflage has expressed interest in continuing the discussion along the lines we’ve gone, I’m creating this post to help with that, as well as to bring the issue to light for those who do not read comments since, in my opinion, this is an area of Reformed thought that should be investigated more often.

I encourage any who are interested to read through the entirety of the comments in the previous post. For some background, however, I’ll start by quoting one of my original comments:

Persiflage said:
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Precisely - most Calvinists are not fatalists in the sense that every single action on earth is predestined by God.
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Actually, that's not what I meant. Fatalism is actually closer akin to the typical Arminian view of God than the Calvinist view of God. This seems wrong to most people, but look at the logic of it and you'll see it's true:

Calvinists are not fatalists because we believe that God ordains the means as well as the ends. Furthermore, we hold that two moral agents can both will the same event for radically opposed reasons, such that for one moral agent the action is moral while for the other moral agent the action is immoral.

To give a Biblical example, when God used Assyria to punish Israel, it was God's sovereign decree that Assyria do such. Assyria willingly went along with this, because it was Assyrias desire to tear down nations and uplift themselves as pseudo-gods. The net result: God's will occured, and Assyria was later punished for it (cf. Isaiah 10).

So let me be clear. God predestines everything that occurs. Or as the Westminster Confession puts it: "God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established" (WCF III:1).

This is not fatalism because the will of the agents involved is not infringed. Another example are the Pharisees who killed Jesus. They did what God ordained they would do; yet they did so because they were wicked. They were not forced to do this, but rather it was what their wicked hearts desired to be done. God, however, willed it for good.

As I said above, the Arminian position is more closely related to fatalism. This is because the Arminian will typically say such things as "God ordains the ends but doesn't do the little details." The net result is that either God knows in advance what people will do (the foreknowledge argument Arminians use), which renders His ordaining of events as superfluous since they will happen regardless of His ordanation; or God does not know what people will do (a la Open Theism) and must work to fix things after the fact. Most Arminians reject Open Theism and state the first alternative, but really hold to something like Open Theism. Namely, God ordains the ends, and then knows what people will do and, because He is smarter then they are, can work what people do back to His own ends.

The problem with this idea is that that just is what fatalism is. Fatalism is the idea that no matter what you do, you cannot escape your fate. In the Arminian scheme, this cashes out as the fact that God's end will result no matter what you do; you cannot thwart Him because, like a superior chess player, He will always beat you.

Calvinists, on the other hand, do not hold to that position at all. It is not a case of "no matter what you do" but rather "this is why you do what you do." In other words, rather than having a fate you cannot avoid (Arminianism), God has an ending that is intended to include you as a means to that end.

In other words, under a fatalistic scheme, it would be like an engineer who builds an engine and takes a piece that doesn't fit but jams it in until the engine functions. No matter what the piece's shape is, it will be forced to do it's part. Calvinism teaches instead that God crafts the parts to the engine such that when a piston is needed for the engine to run, the piece is exactly what is needed. This isn't fatalism; rather it is a well-designed plan.
I shall now interact with Persiflage’s response to the above. Also, for the record, Persiflage has stated he intends to do a five point series on his website—when he does so, I encourage him to post a link to it, as he at least has shown himself to be a more reasonable opponent than certain other responders of late! (Yes, Mandalay, this means you.)

Persiflage said:
So a few major points -

- you quote from the Westminster Confession’s - “God ordains whatsoever comes to pass”, which then tries to qualify it with “but he’s not the author of sin” and “this doesn’t deny free will.” You say this is possible because “two moral agents can both will the same event for radically opposed reasons, such that for one moral agent the action is moral while for the other the action is immoral.” Assyria conquering Israel is an example. God put it into their heads to go down and conquer Israel in order to punish them for their disobedience.

So this argument is our biggest problem. I don’t see where in Scripture it says that “God ordains whatsoever comes to pass” or that everything is God’s will. The Confession then flat out contradicts itself by trying to make qualifications. Hey, either everything that happens is God’s will (including Adam and Eve eating of the tree in rebellion to God) or it’s not. The Bible is clear that God predestines the elect to salvation. It is not Biblically clear that God predestines the lost to hell, nor that God predestines “every single action on earth.”
Let’s start with the first part: “I don’t see where in Scripture it says that ‘God ordains whatsoever comes to pass’ or that everything is God’s will.” The WCF itself provides Scripture references for its claim. You can find these at http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/. Additionally, and in no particular order, from the ESV (unless otherwise noted):

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will… (Ephesians 1:11 – emphasis mine)

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD (Proverbs 16:33).

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father (Matthew 10:29). “Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” in NIV. “And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will” in NKJV.

Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps (Psalm 135:6).

… he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?" (Daniel 4:35b)

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45) Note: this shows God’s dominion over the natural realm; that is, God’s will extends even to the weather, etc.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place… (Acts 17:26, emphasis mine).

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." (James 4:13-15)

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? (Lamentations 3:37-38)

“‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.’” (Deuteronomy 32:39)
There are many more passages like this. But even with just the above, we can see that God is sovereign not only over election, but also over life and death; the minutia (sparrows that fall to the ground, and we are worth far more than sparrows, as the passage continues); the weather; the decision of lots (i.e. so called “random” events); nations and kings; good and evil. In short, God’s decrees cover every aspect of our lives on Earth, from our birth to our death.

Moving on to the second point, Persiflage states: “The Confession then flat out contradicts itself by trying to make qualifications.” The problem with this is that the qualifications are not contradictions at all, but rather clarifications. Indeed, the clarifications are necessary because simply saying “God foreordains whatsoever comes to pass” is not sufficient to distinguish between fatalism and the Calvinist’s compatiblistic view.

To give an analogy (albeit a rather contrived one) it would be like saying: “Football teams need to score to win, and by ‘football’ we mean European football rather than American football.” The clarification shows we are dealing with soccer, which everyone in the world other than the US calls “football”, and not the NFL; yet this clarification is not a contradiction of the original point, because both soccer and NFL have “football teams” that “need to score to win.”

Linking it back to the original point, it is true for both Calvinistic views and fatalistic views that “God ordains whatsoever comes to pass”, but it is only true of the Calvinist view that God’s ordaining does no violence to the will nor does it remove secondary causes (but rather establishes them).

Persiflage continues:
Forget about Adam and Eve’s free will for a moment. Sin is God’s will? How do we know God’s will? By his commands.
Actually, I disagree that it’s His commands that show what His will is (insofar as God's will = what God wants to actually happen). More on that later though. Persiflage finishes the above with:
Genesis 2:16 is a very clear command. From Genesis 2:16, couldn't you say that it was NOT God's will for them to eat of the tree? Could I believe that God commands his people to do one thing, while what he REALLY had ordained for them to do is the opposite? No - and nowhere do I see a God that tricky or underhanded in the Bible. Even if Adam and Eve remained free moral agents willing to disobey God for sinful reasons while at the same time God had ordained for them to disobey him - there was never any question whether they would sin simply because that was what God wanted them to do - that was His will.
Indeed, Genesis 2:16 is a very clear command. However, you also have the following command in Scripture:

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30).
Coupled with:

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false (2 Thessalonians 2:11).
So God has in actuality commanded “people to do one thing, while he REALLY [has] ordained for them to do…the opposite.” Indeed, we also have to contend with the following passages:

And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven’” (Mark 4:11-12).

As it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day." (Romans 11:8)

But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear (Deuteronomy 29:4).

And he [Eli] said to them [Eli’s sons], "Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the LORD spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?" But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death (1 Samuel 2:23-25).
Again, there are many more examples along these lines, but this is sufficient to start. It should be enough to show us that God’s commands are not equivalent with God’s ordaining of what comes to pass. If that were the case, there would be no sin ever. Instead, we see that often God does ordain that which is in direct opposition to His commands. The logic of this follows from the fact that God is a) sovereign over all aspects of our lives and b) God has stated that He does not will for certain things to occur even though they would be consistent with His commands.

What, then, are His commands for? They are first conditionals that, if satisfied, are true. In other words, it is the case that if you obey all the commands of God then you will, in fact, be a holy and righteous person. But the commands do not lead to righteousness. Instead, we see Paul say in Romans 7 that the law brings death; that is, the commands of God bring about sin.

“If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin” (verse 7) and “apart from the law, sin lies dead” (verse 8). “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment) that promised life proved to be death to me” (verses 9-10).

Yet despite this, the law itself is good: “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (verse 12).

How is it possible for a “holy and righteous and good” command to bring about death? “It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure” (verse 13).

God’s commands therefore do not illustrate His will; they illustrate what is holy, righteous, and good. Because they illustrate these things, their very existence condemns us for not being holy, righteous, and good. They exist so that we may know we are sinners. But this is a temporary thing:

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith (Galatians 3:24-26).
The commands of God expose our wickedness so that we turn to faith and are thereby saved. God’s commands, therefore, far from revealing the will of God (as it relates to what God ordains), are a tool by which God removes all the excuses of sinful men such that non-believers are condemned and believers turn to faith and are saved by Christ.

So to answer more specifically: was it God’s will for Adam and Eve to sin? Yes, for Christ was slain before the foundation of the Earth (Revelation 13:8), and we were chosen in Him before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:20). God’s plan preceded creation, and that plan included Adam and Eve’s sin (for how else could Christ be killed (another event foreordained by God (cf. Acts 2:23: “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men”))?).

Yet that doesn’t take away the truth of the conditional. If Adam and Eve had obeyed, they would have been blessed in Eden. Nor does it mean that Adam and Eve were righteous in their sinfulness for doing what God had ordained, for Adam and Eve did not intend what God intended. They sought evil; God sought good.

Continuing, Persiflage said:
If God ORDAINS everything that ever happens, then God ordained for sin, death, pain and suffering to enter the world because THAT was what would bring Him the most glory. I cannot believe that - and it’s one of the main reasons I’m not Reformed because of what that would mean about God’s character.
Unfortunately, what you state above is incomplete. It is not that God ordained sin because sin qua sin would bring Him the most glory; rather God ordained sin because “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The depths of God’s love could not be demonstrated unless Christ died for sinners. God’s mercy could not be displayed if there were no objects for His mercy; nor His justice if there were no objects for His justice.

God does not ordain sin for the sake of sin. If this world was it—if God did not have a redemptive plan and if God did not have a future judgment—then you would be correct in pointing out that God’s character would be evil. But this world is but a necessary step to something greater, and that is what His word tells us.

That said, I fully understand why it would be difficult for many people to accept this. We all tend to have a myopic view of the world. We live as if history began this morning, and the future is only what will happen tomorrow. We have a very focused and limited view—indeed, we have only our own perspective, for we do not experience today the way that, say, someone in Ethiopia or Indonesia does. Because of that, it’s hard for us to focus on a big picture; but God is all about the big picture. And the things that are unfair to us in the here and now are taken care of by God in His big picture.

So if I may also get more personal, while it is the case that you are not Reformed because of how you view God’s character, it is exactly because of how I view God’s character that I am Reformed. Ironically, we both probably agree to a great extent as to what God’s character is. (This is why I have no doubt that you, and many other non-Reformed believers, are Christians too.) Our differences are on the big picture, and that colors our application of God’s character to real world events.

But I personally cannot believe in a God who is not in control of all events, who is more concerned with some philosophical notion of “freedom” than He is with ensuring His promises are kept. I cannot believe in a God who is scrambling to form Plan B because Adam and Eve didn’t do what He wanted them to do. Especially since all that seems alien to Scripture too.

Scripture tells me that God is in control of all things. It tells me that nothing happens apart from His will. It tells me He is sovereign even over evil. And it tells me that He is a good God, a righteous God, a just God, and a merciful God. All these things I find true in Reformed theology, and that is why I am Reformed.

15 comments:

  1. whoa, thanks man - this is a lot of food for thought. And you're definately helping me think this through better. I'll have a full response with some more questions by tomorrow at the latest.

    I'll also try to make it so it's not too long. Let's shoot for going into this deeply and throughly, but still writing so that other readers aren't overwhelmed by 10 page theological treatises. (Uh oh ... maybe I shouldn't have said that before I wrote my respone, might have just screwed myself over).

    Here's a link for the readers to my Reformed theology series intro - it's not much, but it needed to be done if, for no other reason, than to affirm the basic attributes of God -

    http://persiflagethis.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-im-not-reformed-by-someone-who.html

    Response coming soon ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. One other quick experiment. I haven't quite figured out how to put quotes in italics inside the comments.

    Does doing this work?

    ReplyDelete
  3. To begin this jovial, thoroughly enjoyable discussion let me just say that I know that this week is going to start getting pretty busy for everyone, so this may be my only article on this subject for the week. And I’ll understand, Peter, if you don’t have the time to respond until next week too. That said, I’ve never thoroughly fleshed this topic out with a reasonable Reformed fellow Christian before. So I look forward to this and we really don’t have a time limit. I’ll go into this as long as it takes for us to at least reach a better understanding of God’s Word on both viewpoints. We could write a response a week, or even twice a month and accomplish a lot.

    One other side note: I have a deep respect for both the historical Reformers and for Reformed theology in general. I believe they get more things right than your average evangelical. At the same time, while I’m being convinced that Reformed theology gets some major Biblical doctrines wrong, I am NOT, and I repeat, I am not taking up the Arminian position. I disagree with Arminians about salvation, the atonement, predestination, and eternal security. I think I lot of Christians believe that they only have an either/or alternative - Calvinist or Arminian. I would suggest that there is a third moderate position that tries to stay simply within the confines of Scripture, without holding to whatever wrong ideas Calvin and Arminius taught.

    So let’s start the fun, shall we?

    1 - On whether “God ordains whatsoever comes to pass”

    I would suggest that nowhere in the Bible does it say this. Many Christians believe that God allows some things to happen for a reason, even though they are not His will - (the best examples being sin, death, evil, pain and suffering). God still uses all this ultimately for good, but God did not desire or ordain these things into existence. Calvinists like Peter, and the theologians who wrote the Westminster Confession, believe that everything (including sin and evil) is God’s Will. First let’s look at the Scripture they use, and then we’ll explain this further -

    Westminster Confession references -

    Eph. 1:11 refers to “him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” - Honestly, the fact that God works out everything (including sin) according to his will and counsel, does not mean that God decreed/ordained/caused/willed for everything (including sin) that happens to happen. However, we do know God does work all things together for good (Rom. 8:28).

    Rom. 11:33 - God’s knowledge, wisdom, ways & judgments are of a depth too infinite for us to fully understand. Agreed. But for each reference here, or even for all of these references put together, simply ask yourself “does this mean that everything that happens is God’s will?” or “can this rightly be used to teach that sin & evil is God’s will?” Well, not so far.

    Heb. 6:17 - Read this in context of the promise to Abraham; God absolutely guaranteed his promise by swearing on His own name. Absolutely - but what does this have to do with God ordaining everything that comes to pass?

    Rom. 9:15, 18 - God has mercy on whoever He wants to have mercy and he has compassion on whoever he wants to have compassion. (Expect to hear these verses frequently in this discussion for some reason, I’m not sure why.) And that’s it for the references given by the Westminster Confession for this particular claim. And none of them say that everything/sin is God’s will. They are all affirming God’s sovereignty though, which is a good thing.

    Peter’s further references - (first the 3 most interesting ones)

    Prov. 16:33 - the dice is cast, but every decision is from God. In other words, there is no such thing as chance. Everything happens for a reason. This is the best reference so far because “every decision is from the Lord” could be interpreted to mean that everything that happens is because God made it happen. But it could also easily be interpreted to mean that everything that happens, including the roll of the dice, is for a reason. There is no such thing as chance or luck. Everything in the universe is governed by God’s natural laws, including the laws of mathematical probability. So the question becomes, how do we decide which interpretation to believe?

    Matt: 10:29 - Another side note: I believe that using different translations does help us understand Scripture more clearly. However, we do need to be careful when making a theological argument, not to pick the translation that sounds best for your side (I need to guard against this myself too). The NIV and NKJV both include the word “will” here where most other translations, including the ESV, don’t. But reading the verse in context (Matt: 10:26-33), Jesus is teaching about God’s omniscience - “nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known” - not a sparrow falls to the ground “apart from your Father” - “even the hairs on your head are all numbered.” If God is all-knowing about the little sparrows and the number of hairs you have, then why shouldn’t he know everything about you as a person? It would be a little tricky to use this verse to argue that the death of every sparrow is what God originally meant to be in creation. Although, not that even that would mean God ordains everything that happens - it could simply mean that the death of animals in the present state of our fallen world is now God’s will.

    Lam. 3:37-38 - Wow. Just, wow. This passage is something. But let’s read just a bit larger section of it, starting with verse 31, shall we?

    “For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, thought he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.” - So God does not want or will to afflict or grieve people, even though some things that he does do cause grief? - “To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the earth, to deny a man justice in the presence of the Most High, to subvert a man in his lawsuit, the Lord does not approve.” - And again whoa, but it sounds like this passage just listed 3 things that are not God’s will, but that happen all the time in our sinful, lost world. And maybe, just maybe, God punishes evil people for going against His will. “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?” … So, when it says that “good and bad” both come from the mouth of God, could we interpret that that the “bad” means the existence of evil? Or perhaps is this passage talking more about punishment or compassion? Well, those are the words this passage is using.

    (and now for the easier ones)

    Psalm 135:6 - God does whatever he pleases to do.

    Dan. 4:35 - We can’t prevent God’s will from happening neither can we tell him what He does is wrong.

    Matt. 5:45 - Peter sums this up best - “this shows God’s dominion over the natural realm”

    Acts 17:26 - God ordains the historical time periods, geographical locations, and thus the rise and the fall of nations.

    James 4:13-15 - We ought to base our actions on God’s will, understanding that He can change or stop what we are trying to accomplish whenever he decides to.

    Deut. 32:39 - Another verse simply affirming that God can do whatever he wills do to (kill, make alive, wound, heal, you name it).

    Not a single one of these verses says that God ordains or causes everything that happens on the earth. Every single one of these verses affirms that God is sovereign, is in absolute control of the universe, has the power to do whatever he wants, and actually does specifically intervene and act in the lives of men on a regular basis. Some of these verses list specific things that God actually does ordain. Now I believe in God’s Sovereignty as proclaimed by all of the Scripture here and elsewhere. And yet, don’t understand who can honestly accept the proposition “God ordains whatever comes to pass” based on these verses alone, because that statement says more than Scripture says.

    Now God ordains & decrees a large number of things throughout history and creation. According to the statement in the Westminster Confession, God ordains & decrees EVERYTHING. And again, if the Bible didn’t teach otherwise, I wouldn’t have as big a problem with this statement. But why isn’t there a difference, when reading all this Scripture, between coming to the conclusion that (a) God is Sovereign, and (b) God ordains & wills everything that ever happens.

    2 - God’s Sovereignty

    Or maybe it’s even easier to look at it this way. God is sovereign and all-powerful. Let’s say God allowed some things to happen that were not what He wanted. (Of course, there would be a reason why He allowed this which we can go into later). Does this suddenly mean God isn’t sovereign anymore? No, not necessarily. At least not if God is powerful enough to give creatures the free will (including the ability to not do what He wants them to do). God could still be in absolute sovereign control of the universe. God could still stop them from doing some things if they went too far and he’d still be in control. Do you believe God is powerful enough to do that? I do. God does not cease being God when Adam and Eve disobey him in the Garden of Eden.

    Ok, don’t laugh at this. But I sort of think saying “God ordains everything that ever happens … but God is not the author of (does not ordain) sin” is on the level of saying “Football teams need to score points to win … but some football teams have won without scoring points.” It’s not a clarification to say that God does everything, but oh yeah, he doesn’t do this. Doesn’t it seem like elementary stuff to complain that the second statement “but God is not the author of sin” directly contradicts the first “God ordains everything that happens.”

    3 - How To Know God’s Will

    And here’s where it gets a little crazy. I have to admit to some surprise that Peter disagrees with the idea that you can know God’s will by what he tells you to do. We know God isn’t the author of confusion. So why on earth would God be deceitful like that? - Telling people to do what he’s decreed that they won’t do. I’m not even sure a just God could condemn Adam and Eve for disobeying him if he foreordained for them to disobey him in the first place. Peter, please explain this a little more for me - I’m too dense to understand how Acts 17:30 and 2 Thess. 2:11 means that God commands people to do the opposite of what he wants them to do. You mean God doesn’t want “all people everywhere to repent”? I thought he did, but maybe I was mistaken at taking him for his word.

    How do we know if God wanted Adam and Eve to eat of that tree or not? Gen. 2:16-17 - “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” But God really did want Adam and Eve to eat of it? Man, I just can’t interpret Scripture that way.

    Peter’s further references on God not saying what His will is -

    Mark 4:11-12 - Reading passages of Scripture like this scares me. Because they are written about our understanding of what God says. Because, if interpreted like Peter wants to interpret it, this passage could mean something that contradicts what other Scripture says. In these two verses, it looks like, at first glance that Jesus says he is using parables in order to prevent people from turning to Him and being forgiven by Him. Do you think that is why Jesus used parables? So that people wouldn’t repent and wouldn’t believe what he said? You the reader, and Peter, could believe this. But, with what I know of the whole Bible, I would rather not believe in God than believe in a god who purposely prevented people from doing what Jesus was asking them to do.

    So the only thing I can think of to do here (besides listing all the verses like Acts 17:30, and there’s a lot of them that we can look at if we make to discussing “limited atonement” later), is to look for where the Bible explains this in more depth. Jesus is quoting from the book of Isaiah here, where God is explaining what happens when his truth is presented to people. It reveals them for who they really are and reveals their sinful nature that does not want to see the truth.

    Look up the parallel passage in Matthew 13:10-16. I realize it sounds better to us than the one in Mark so it obviously helps what I’m saying. But it is also the passage that goes into this with a more depth, quoting more of Isaiah. Jesus says -

    “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: ‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’”

    With a fuller explanation of Jesus’s reading of Isaiah, it looks like the lost harden their hearts against God’s truth. They are the ones who have already blinded and deafened themselves in their sin nature so that they won’t hear and understand God’s truth. Lost in their sin, they don’t want their hearts to turn towards Jesus, because he would then heal them. Instead of saying that my interpretation is better than Peter’s if you look at Matthew, Mark and Isaiah all together, let’s for the sake of argument just say that both interpretations are at least possible as these passages of Scripture stand by themselves. You can believe one thing (that God hardens hearts on purpose so people won’t be saved), or you can believe the other (that people harden their own hearts in their sin, and thus, the truth reveals them as blind and not understanding in their own darkness).

    This is a difficult passage to understand. We might look at what Romans 9 and Exodus have to say about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart when Peter wants us to sometime later. For now, this passage should not be enough to convince you that you cannot know what God wants (or wills) by what he commands you to do.

    Rom. 11:8 - this is the same idea - except for the fact that, at some point in their lives, also God hardens peoples’ hearts - “the elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.” Duet. 29:4 and I Sam 2:23-25 are also both on the same exact idea. Sometimes God hardens peoples’ hearts. But again, there are questions that have to be answered here. Why does God harden hearts? And exactly when does He harden hearts? Is there any rhyme or reason with why? I believe there is and I’ll explain why in my next response after Peter first has a chance to address this - So granted - it’s Biblical to say that sometimes God hardens hearts. But how does that mean that we can’t know what God wants? And the fact that God commands something doesn’t mean that what he commands is what His will is? I understand God hardening Pharaoh’s heart for example, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Pharaoh still didn’t know that he was going against God’s will. I think everyone knows when they are violating God’s will. And it’s because they are breaking His commands.

    4 - On the Purpose of the Law & God’s Commands

    Peter says - “It should be enough to show us that God’s commands are not equivalent with God’s ordaining of what comes to pass. If that were the case, there would be no sin ever. Instead, we see that often God does ordain that which is in direct opposition to His commands. The logic of this follows from the fact that God is a) sovereign over all aspects of our lives and b) God has stated that He does not will for certain things to occur even though they would be consistent with His commands.”

    God’s commands are not equivalent with God’s ordaining of what comes to pass. Absolutely agreed here. If God ordains or decrees something, it will happen no matter what. A command is different in the sense that God is telling creatures to do something as if they can or can’t do it. Why else tell them? But I don’t see how you then conclude that from this we see God ordains things to happen that are contradictory to what he commands. In other words, that God ordains people to disobey his own commands. That isn’t the God of the Bible, that's the action of a divine tyrant. If that was true then I don’t see how there could be any sin ever. So (a) God is sovereign over everything. Agreed. (b) God has said that people obeying his own commands (that he gave them) is against His will. No. The farthest we’ve gotten is that God sometimes hardens some people’s hearts. But we haven’t established why or when yet. A far cry from it being his own will for people to disobey him.

    Sure, the commands of God do bring about sin. But that’s not the same as saying that God willed for sin to happen - or that sin and evil is part of God’s will. Looking at Romans 7, it would be impossible to sin (disobey God) if there were no commands to disobey. So God’s commands have resulted in sin in the same sense that God creating creatures with the ability to obey or disobey him has resulted in sin. Paul says “If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin” - exactly, but there is nothing forcing us to conclude from this that sin itself is God’s will. What is God’s will from this passage is us being able to understand that we are sinners who sin. The law, and God’s commands - even God’s will - help us understand this.

    And this brings us to the sort of statements that keep causing me to reject Reformed theology - Peter says “God’s commands therefore do not illustrate His will; they illustrate what is holy, righteous, and good.”

    On the contrary, God’s commands always illustrate His will. And God’s will is what is holy, righteous and good. Unlike Peter, I cannot distinguish between what is holy, righteous and good on one hand, and what is God’s will on the other. I’m making a different distinction here. God’s will is broader than what God chooses to ordain/decree. Of course, everything that God decrees or ordains is God’s will. But why can't God’s will also extend to some things that He decides not to ordain? And there’s where you get the idea of “free will.” If He ordained everything, then free will would be impossible. If Adam and Eve did have free will - the ability to choose between at least two options - then God didn’t ordain for them to choose an option, because that wouldn’t be choosing in the first place. And it would be meaningless to blame them for doing something that God fated/ordained them to do anyway.

    5 - On the Nature of God’s Omniscience

    Scripture does teach that God ordained for Christ to be crucified for the lost before the foundations of the world (Rev 13:8, Eph. 1:4, 1 Pet. 1:20, Acts 2:23) according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. But you cannot reason from this that sin was God’s will. Just because God knew what Adam and Eve were going to do doesn’t mean that he ordained for them to do it. Peter claims that God ordained sin, because without sin, God would never have been able to show us his love (by Christ’s death on the cross), his mercy (by saving us), or his justice (by punishing sinners). But may I suggest that there is a difference between saying that God uses sin to show us his love, and saying that God needed sin in order to show us His love. I’m perfectly confidant that God could have shown us his love, mercy, & justice in an infinite number of ways. He could also have ordained sin in order to do this. But this is not what the Bible says about the character of God.

    Peter says that this is a really hard idea for people (and I include myself here) to accept basically because of our preconceptions about fairness. But there is a better reason NOT to accept it. I believe in a God who did not need “sin” in order to demonstrate his love and mercy to us. That is limiting God. I do not believe in a God who just happened to ordain sin into existence in order to show us He loves us, because that is not what the Bible says he did. I believe in a God who uses sin, like everything else, to show us how much he loves us - that is where the Scripture is clear. And it’s possible, unlike Reformed theology argues, for God to have allowed sin without His ordaining it to happen.

    And I’ll end this (already too long) response by going back to the beginning of what Peter said about Calvinism and Fatalism days ago. Peter explained that Arminians usually say one of two things about God -

    1) God has foreknowledge and knows what people will do with their free will,
    or
    2) God does not have foreknowledge and does not know what people will do with their free will.

    (2) is “open theism” and is unscriptural. (1) is exactly what some of the passages of Scripture Peter brought up say about God (Acts 2:23, 1 Peter 1:2).

    Peter says that (1) “renders His ordaining of events as superfluous since they will happen regardless of His ordination” and - “The problem with this idea is that that just is what fatalism is. Fatalism is the idea that no matter what you do, you cannot escape your fate. In the Arminian scheme, this cashes out as the fact that God's end will result no matter what you do; you cannot thwart Him because, like a superior chess player, He will always beat you.”

    But it all depends on what exactly God is ordaining in the first place, doesn’t it? Either he ordains everything, or he chooses to withhold his power in some things and give his created creatures free will. Does the Bible ever say that God withholds his power or judgment? If the former is correct, then evil and sin are God’s will. If the latter is correct, then sin and evil are not God’s will. Fatalism is the idea that, no matter what you do, you cannot escape your fate. The Bible teaches against fatalism because our fate is divine punishment for our sins, but there is something we do have to escape our fate - belief in the Savior who died and rose again for us.

    In the Arminian scheme, God’s end is completely subject to man’s actions - because man can always use his free will to accept, then reject, then accept, then reject God - thwarting both justification and sanctification. In the Calvinist scheme, God’s end will result no matter what you do - in fact everything you do is decreed in the first place so you can’t even help but do it, and your fate was determined long ago, you are a cog in God’s well designed machine of a plan that cannot be changed. The Westminster Confession puts it simply as can be - “some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.”

    I respect the men who wrote the Westminster Confession, but I cannot affirm everything they wrote. Scripture doesn’t ever say that some people are foreordained to everlasting death, does it? Of course they are if "God ordains whatever comes to pass." But in the Biblical scheme of things, we are all lost in our sins - “fated” to go to hell so to speak. By ourselves, we can’t do anything to change this. But, with the Holy Spirit’s leading, we suddenly have a chance to believe in a Savior who will rescue us from the same sin and death that was absolutely against everything in God’s being to begin with. Has God predestined those who believe to be his children before time even began? Yes, the Scripture says so. And I’m very interested in going into that and what the Scripture does say a little more next time, since I’ve been trying to be so careful about what the Scripture does NOT say first.
    ______________________________________

    Alright bro, go ahead and respond with another one as long as you like, but I’ll then start taking things just one point at a time so we aren’t writing stuff this long. If no one else reads this but you and I, I’m still happy because it’s helping me understand Scripture better. But if we keep writing articles this long, we’ve guaranteed that no one else on the planet is going to read it. So after your next response, I'll start responding one numbered point at a time.

    thanks man, peace, and Merry Christmas too

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  4. Persiflage: "Scripture doesn’t ever say that some people are foreordained to everlasting death, does it?"

    Read this Double Predestination article by RC Sproul. I found it helpful.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for your response. I, too, shall try to keep these responses a little shorter for the time being (especially as this week will be understandingly hectic!). So I'll start off simple.

    You said:
    ---
    I am NOT, and I repeat, I am not taking up the Arminian position.
    ---

    It might be helpful if you were to say which position you believed in. Naturally, it might be that you have a unique one, or one that you just don't know the name for it. But it is helpful to have a label since it gives everyone a general idea where we all stand (although relying solely on labels is, of course, bad).

    BTW, I think the reason most divide the theology into two camps (Calvinism/Arminianism) is not because they think it's an either/or problem, but because they by far contain the most number of adherents. It's sort of like asking someone: "Are you Republican or Democrat?" We treat it as an either/or, when in fact there are many third parties that exist; however, their numbers are relatively few.

    Anyway, I shall respond more tomorrow as I get an opportunity to do so. Also, I haven't yet had a chance to read the link you provided; perhaps my above question is already answered there, and if so I apologize.

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  6. Again in an effort to keep things a bit short, I'm going to focus on only portions of Persiflage's above comments. I think a lot of confusion can be clarified by looking at this particular statement.

    Persiflage said:
    ---
    God’s will is broader than what God chooses to ordain/decree. Of course, everything that God decrees or ordains is God’s will. But why can't God’s will also extend to some things that He decides not to ordain?
    ---

    This, of course, gets us into a philosophical discussion. This is actually warrented. We need to know what "God's will" means.

    Persiflage seems to be taking a broader view of what constitutes the will than I am. For the record, not all Calvinists hold my view either. After all, there are many Calvinists who have divided God's will into God's decretive will (that which He decrees, or ordains) and His declarative will (that which God commands). And this position itself doesn't seem too far from what Persiflage would hold to (speaking of just the will, of course).

    That seems to be unsatisfactory to me, not because the concept itself is necessarily wrong but because it leads to unnecessary confusion. In other words, we would have God willing what He does not will. (This is not in a contradictory sense, since "will" means two different things in the above; but this ambiguity is unfortunate and seems to be contradictory and therefore requres lots of explanation to avoid problems.)

    On the other hand, if we were to say "God decrees what He does not command" or "God commands what He does not decree"--either one of these would be instantly clear and not ambiguous. Which is why I prefer that language.

    Now Persiflage has asked:
    ---
    So why on earth would God be deceitful like that? - Telling people to do what he’s decreed that they won’t do.
    ---

    However, we have examples of this very thing in Scripture. Nowhere is this more explicit than with Pharoah. Recall that God a) commanded Pharoah to let His people go, while b) decreeing that Pharoah would not listen. This is all summed up in the midst of one paragraph even:

    ---
    And the LORD said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, "Let my son go that he may serve me." If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son'" (Exodus 4:21-23).

    Here you have God's command to Pharoah: "Let my son go that he may serve me" while simultaneously we have "But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go."

    Now regardless of the reason for why God hardens Pharoah's heart, we still have God commanding that which He also actively ensures will not come to pass.

    If, therefore, it is somehow "wrong" of God to command that which He does not decree, then Persiflage would have to say that God is "wrong" to do what He did to Pharoah. I, on the other hand, will say that God is right and Persiflage's understanding is wrong. :-)

    Now I can anticipate Persiflage's response, that it was inevitable that Pharoah would not have let God's people go and that he first turned his back on God and refused to listen before God hardened his heart, etc. All that, however, is irrelevant to the fact that God's hardening was intended to make it so that Pharaoh would not release the Jews. It's the specific reason given. God doesn't harden Pharaoh's heart because Pharaoh was wicked and deserved it (although Pharaoh was wicked and deserved it); He hardened Pharoah's heart so that Pharaoh wouldn't release the Jews, and ultimately so that God would pour out His wrath on Egypt.

    And by the way, I should point out that I believe God's hardening is simply His removal of common grace. That is, the grace whereby God sends rain on the just and unjust alike, etc. It's not owed to non-believers, but it does restrain their evil. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with God removing this since it is not owed to non-believers and, without His grace, Pharaoh was simply living out his sin unrestrained--which is what he would have done his entire life if not for God in the first place. Nevertheless, the fact remains that God commanded that which He then ensured would be impossible for Pharaoh to do.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Truth Unites and Divides,

    thanks for the reference, I've read Sproul on this before actually. In his book 'Chosen by God', Sproul says -

    "If there is such a thing as predestination at all, and if that predestination does not include all people, then we must not shrink from the necessary inference taht there are two sides to predestination.", pg. 141

    Charles Spurgeon, himself a Calvinist, disbelieved in "Double Predestination" however. Spurgeon said -

    "I cannot imagine a more ready instrument in the hands of Satan for the ruin of souls than a minister who tells sinners it is not their duty to repent of their sins ... who has the arrogance to call himself a gospel minister, while he teaches that God hates some men infinitely and unchangeably for no reason whatever but simply becauses he chooses to do so. O my brethren. May the Lord save you from the charmer, and keep you ever deaf to the voice of error." - quoted in Iain H. Murray's 'Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism: A Battle for Gospel Preaching'

    ReplyDelete
  8. Peter,

    First of all, it's true, I don't have a label for my position on this. I reject Reformed theology because I honestly can't hold to their major doctrines. I reject Arminianism because I honestly can't hold to their major doctrines. From talking to other Christian friends, I don't think this is a minority view. So I just call myself a "Christian" for now. If there was a book of major doctrines that I could say I could hold to it would be C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

    Second, regarding Pharaoh -

    I absolutely agree with you that trying to make a distinction between God's decretive will and God's delarative will is worse than useless. But, on the other hand saying "God decrees what He does not command" or "God commands what He does not decree" results in the same problem except trying to distinguish between a "decree" and "command" - and thus seemingly resulting in contradicting yourself. The best way I can think of to look at it is that God had an "original intent" so to speak. God created a perfect & good creation which was what God originally intended to exist. Because He allowed evil to come into being, this perfect world that God wanted was changed. And it is very different to say that God wanted evil to exist and change it, and to say that God allowed this to happen. So the clearest distinction I can make is that sometimes God decrees what will happen, and because he is all-powerful, that is exactly what will happen. Then sometimes God withholds his power and allows things to happen that he doesn't necessarily want to happen - the existence of evil for example - and the only explanation of this is that there is a reason God chooses to allow some things to happen even though he could stop them. God could have created a world where the existence of evil was impossible, but he wanted a world where some creatures had free will instead. So, I think it can be confidently said by any Bible believing Christian (to any athiest or nonchristian who asks) that evil was not God's will. Evil was not what God wanted, but he still allowed it for a reason.

    You brought up Exodus 4:21-23 saying "nowhere is this more explicit" where God fortells to Moses that He will harden Pharoah's heart. I don't know if you've looked at this idea through the whole story, but something very interesting happens.

    Exodus 7:13-14 - Still Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh's heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go ..."

    Which brings us to the after the first plague where - Exodus 7:22-23 -
    ... so Pharaoh's heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house, and he did not take even this to heart.

    bringing us to after the 2nd plague -
    Exodus 8:15 -
    But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.

    after the 3rd plague -
    Exodus 8:19 -
    ...But Pharaoh's heart was hardened...

    after the 4th plague -
    Exodus 8:32 -
    But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.

    after the 5th plague -
    Exodus 9:7 -
    ... But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened ...

    after the 6th plague -
    Exodus 9:12 -
    But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.

    after the 7th plague -
    Exodus 9:35 -
    So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened ...

    after the 8th plague -
    Exodus 10:20 -
    But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart ...

    after the 9th plague -
    Exodus 10:27 -
    But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart ...

    after the 10th plague -
    Exodus 12:31 -
    Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, "Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said."

    So here's my question - is it just nothing more than a coincidence that, out of 10 plagues, it isn't until the 6th plague that Scripture says that God actually hardened Pharaoh's heart? That it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart numerous times before it says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart? I don't think so, but that's because I don't think specific use of language is ever just a coincidence in Scripture. God foretold that he would do this, but he doesn't actually do it until after Pharaoh is already repeatedly doing it to himself. In other words, God clearly planned on using Pharaoh's evil (a man who has repeatedly rejected the things of God in his life) for good. This is something a little different than saying that God decreed that Pharaoh would reject God and thus predestined/fated Pharaoh to hell.

    Peter says "regardless of the reason why ... we still have God commanding that which He also actively ensures will not come to pass." But why has everything to do with who God is. God could have hardened Pharaoh's heart in order to prevent Pharaoh from repenting and turning his heart to God. Or God could have hardened Pharaoh's heart because there is a point in a sinner's life where God can give you up to your own sinful desires (Romans 1:24) and use the resulting destruction to show truth to others.

    This should scare all of us, and should particularly scare the lost, to think that if you reject God enough there's a point of no return where he'll just start using your own damnation to accomplish good for others. Now specifically, could Pharaoh have let Israel go sooner than later if God hadn't hardened his heart after the last plagues. Yes, it's possible. God could have used Pharaoh's stubbornness, and even strengthened his stubbornness later, in order to accomplish his plan for Israel. But what I'm trying make clear is that that is a very different thing than it being God's will for Pharaoh to reject God in the first place. Pharaoh's rejection of God was his own choice. It was not his fate predestined by God (because that would bring God the maximum allocation of glory to himself). God's going to be gloried no matter what. So good job, btw, anticipating my response here.

    Peter brings this whole story to the conclusion that "the fact remains that God commanded that which He then ensured would be impossible for Pharaoh to do." Specifically sure, God commanded "let my people go" and then hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he wouldn't do this after Pharaoh had already made the choice not to. Did God already know Pharaoh would make this choice? Yes. Did he use this for good and even strengthen Pharaoh's resolve in this choice? Yes. Is using this story as a good example of how (1) God commands people to do one thing, and then (2) uses his power to prevent them from doing what he commanded them to, and then (3) punishes them for not doing what He made them unable to do in the first place - helpful for setting up a doctrine to understand how God treats all of mankind? Absolutely not.

    Particularly, this instance of God hardening a wicked man's heart should NOT be used to explain how God predestines man's eternal fate. The apostle Paul uses this story as an example of God's sovereignty (Romans 9:17), not as an example of how God predestines people to hell or how God tells us one thing when he really wants another.

    and oh yeah, Merry Christmas!

    ReplyDelete
  9. and I forgot, but here's the link to Part I of that series of articles I promised. This is on the doctrine of Total Depravity. And yes, it's from a nonReformed nonArminian point of view -

    http://persiflagethis.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-i-am-not-reformed-part-one-total.html

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  10. Hi Persiflage,

    Thanks for at least trying to summarize where you come from :-) I'm familiar with Mere Christianity so it gives me a little knowledge of some of where you're coming from. (Of course, we'll still clarify as we discuss these things too so as to ensure we're all on the same page.)

    Before I comment on Pharaoh (which we can delve into later, if you still wish), my comments this time will stick with your paragraph beginning:

    ---
    I absolutely agree with you that trying to make a distinction between God's decretive will and God's delarative will is worse than useless.
    ---

    I think most of our disagreement will be found in examining this paragraph. In that paragraph, you said:

    ---
    But, on the other hand saying "God decrees what He does not command" or "God commands what He does not decree" results in the same problem except trying to distinguish between a "decree" and "command" - and thus seemingly resulting in contradicting yourself.
    ---

    Not if you view commands and decrees the way that I view them. I've already explained my view of what commands are, so I won't spend much time on them at this point. Instead, we have to know what "decrees" are.

    In its simplest form, a decree is that which God says will happen. If God decrees X, then X will happen. It is impossible for non-X. God's decrees must always come to pass.

    Given just this, you can see that even your view of commands is not equivalent to a decree, for it is obviously the case that God's commands are not followed very much at all. Thus, even if God's commands are what He wants to happen, they are not what He decrees to happen because they don't actually happen.

    This, to me, makes it clear that God's decrees and God's commands are two different things, regardless of whether you agree with my concept of what a command is.

    Continuing, you said:
    ---
    The best way I can think of to look at it is that God had an "original intent" so to speak. God created a perfect & good creation which was what God originally intended to exist. Because He allowed evil to come into being, this perfect world that God wanted was changed.
    ---

    Except that if God allowed evil to come into the world, then that must have also been part of His intent. Again, even from your position this should be the case. To see this, please note that I am not saying God wanted evil qua evil (that is, evil for the sake of evil). Instead, as I understand your position, God wanted to create a world where evil was possible. Then, if we pile on the fact of God's omniscience and foreknowledge, then not only did God know it was possible, but when He created the world He knew it most defintely would fall.

    God still chose to make this world. He did so because He wanted to do so. Again, this logically follows even if I grant you the entirety of your position (at least as I understand your view).

    You said:
    ---
    And it is very different to say that God wanted evil to exist and change it, and to say that God allowed this to happen.
    ---

    Not really. God has infinite power. The evil that came into the world could only come because God wanted it to come.

    Again, where you seem to get hung up is that you think that saying "God wanted evil to come into the world" is equivelant to saying "God wanted evil to come into the world for the sake of evil" which is not the case. Instead, God wanted evil to come into the world for a specific reason: Christ.

    To use an analogy, if you have a child who is reaching for a hot cup of coffee, you tell him "Don't touch." If he doesn't listen to you and sticks his hand into the coffee, he will be pained. Now it is quite possible that you can keep him from reaching the cup every single time, but you also know that if he experiences a little pain now he will never reach for the hot cup again. You won't have to intervene each time, so you let him do it once. He is hurt, but he learns his lesson.

    Now here's the thing. Did you want him to touch the cup? Yes, because you could have stopped him and you did not do so and you further had a reason to allow it. Did you want him to be hurt? Again, yes for the same reasons as above. But did you do this for the sake of the pain your child would receive? Not at all!!! You did it so that your child would learn and grown and not make the same mistake later on.

    In this case, you allowed a painful act to occur, but it was for a sufficiently moral reason. If you wanted your child to be hurt just so he would be hurt, then you would be evil; but that is not the reason you did such a thing.

    In the same way as that analogy, God wanted Adam and Eve to sin. Again, not because God wanted sin as an end to itself, but because God could not save sinners unless there were sinners to be saved. God didn't merely allow it to happen; He wanted it to happen.

    The only question we have left is: Does God have a morally justifiable reason to have wanted Adam and Eve to sin? For He had the power to keep Adam and Eve from sinning--indeed, He did not have to create the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place!

    I maintain that He does have a morally justifiable reason to want this, and that reason is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

    Continuing, you said:
    ---
    So the clearest distinction I can make is that sometimes God decrees what will happen, and because he is all-powerful, that is exactly what will happen. Then sometimes God withholds his power and allows things to happen that he doesn't necessarily want to happen - the existence of evil for example - and the only explanation of this is that there is a reason God chooses to allow some things to happen even though he could stop them.
    ---

    Indeed, there is a reason for God to "allow some things" as you say; but again, this allowance cannot be divorced from God's desires. God wants this to happen for a sufficient reason. He is omnipotent. He cannot ever cease to be omnipotent, for then He would cease to be God. As a result, God could stop every sin from ever happening. That He doesn't is proof that He wants them to happen.

    Again, I must repeat myself to ensure we are clear on this: God doesn't want evil for the sake of evil, but rather for His morally sufficient reasons.

    You said:
    ---
    God could have created a world where the existence of evil was impossible, but he wanted a world where some creatures had free will instead.
    ---

    You do not actually believe the above sentence. (I realize you do not yet know that you do not believe it, but I'll show you why!)

    Your above idea runs into problems when you think about heaven. Do we have free will in heaven?

    Because if we do have free will in heaven, then that would mean that we could sin in heaven and lose our salvation after dying and going to heaven in the first place. Now it's possible you believe this, but given that no orthodox Christian does believe this, and given your general agreement with C.S. Lewis for example, I think I'm safe in assuming you do not believe we can sin in heaven.

    But if we cannot sin in heaven, then that means that we do not have free will in heaven. If we don't have free will after death, then why is it important for us to have free will now? More importantly, why is it morally significant to have free will now but not after death?

    In any case, would you not agree that heaven is the perfect place? And if it is the perfect place, and if we cannot sin in heaven, then would you not agree that God most certainly could have created the actual Earth that we currently occupy as a perfect place where no one could sin, and also while free will isn't an issue? Again: if these things are true in the afterlife, then why are they different now?

    You said:
    ---
    So, I think it can be confidently said by any Bible believing Christian (to any athiest or nonchristian who asks) that evil was not God's will. Evil was not what God wanted, but he still allowed it for a reason.
    ---

    But evil was God's will, because He allowed it for a reason. Again (and I'm only repetitive because most people are entrenched in traditions and automatically mis-read a sentence like the one I just wrote), God doesn't want evil for the sake of evil. He has a morally justifiable reason to want evil to occur.

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  11. I just came back from vacation and found this dialogue.

    First, I'd like to say that it's refreshing to have a non-Calvinist that doesn't get extremely emotional like the Campbellite Pelagians that come around here and do drive-by comments spewing their ignorance.

    Anyway, I too intend to respond to Persiflage's posts and comments on my own blog. In the meantime, I'll post a link to G.K. Beale's analysis of the hardening of Pharoah's Heart in Exodus and Romans 9 which should address Persiflage's counter-arguments:

    http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/02-Exodus/Text/Articles/Beale-Hardening-TJ.pdf

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  12. “a decree is that which God says will happen. If God decrees X, then X will happen … God’s decrees must always come to pass.” - agreed

    “if God’s commands are what He wants to happen, they are not what He decrees to happen because they don’t actually happen” - agreed

    So “Gods decrees and God’s commands are two different things.” - agreed

    “God has infinite power. The evil that came into the world could only come because God wanted it to come.”

    But of course it doesn’t necessarily follow that because (a) God’s power is infinite, and (b) evil entered the world, that (c) God wanted/willed evil to enter the world. Why? Because it would still be possible for an infinitely powerful God to allow something to happen that He didn’t want to happen. Part of being infinitely powerful includes the ability to withhold your power.

    Luke 13:34 -
    O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!

    Jesus had the power to forcibly draw everyone in Jerusalem to Himself, using “irresistible grace” to save every single one of them. And yet He didn’t. And the fact that God withheld his power here does not mean that Jerusalem’s lost, fallen, murderous state was what Jesus wanted. Just because Jerusalem killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to it doesn’t mean their doing so was God’s will. Here God is saying that He wanted to save the children of Jerusalem but they would not.
    ----
    “Again, where you seem to get hung up is that you think that saying ‘God wanted evil to come into the world’ is equivalent to saying ‘God wanted evil to come into the world for the sake of evil’ which is not the case. Instead, God wanted evil to come into the world for a specific reason: Christ.”

    Ok, granted. There is a difference between saying - “God wanted evil to come into the world for the sake of evil” and saying “God wanted evil to come into the world in order to use evil to accomplish good.”

    But both of those statements are different than saying “God wanted a world where his creatures could freely choose to love and serve Him.”

    Regarding your analogy with the child who really wants to burn himself with hot coffee … I realize that no analogy is perfect, but I understand what you’re getting at with the idea of “sufficiently moral reason.” The kid needed to learn a lesson so you want him to burn himself once, and not just because like seeing him in pain. You need him to burn himself in order for him to learn. So you apply this to Adam and Eve saying that therefore “God wanted Adam and Eve to sin … because God could not save sinners unless there were sinners to be saved … God wanted it [the Fall] to happen.”

    But here’s what really bothers me about this. According to your argument, since God could not save sinners unless there was sin and evil first, and God really wants to be able to save sinners, then God needs sin and evil. God needs and wants the existence of evil in order to accomplish his will. But this idea limits God. Yes, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and had foreknowledge of the Fall. But Orthodox Christianity does not equate “foreknowledge” with God’s decrees. And for now, I’ll buy your distinction of God’s Will into decrees and commands. I refuse to believe that the existence of evil is God’s will. But if it is God’s will, then it would have had to been a decree, wouldn’t it? You are effectively saying that God decreed for Adam and Eve to disobey his own command. Not that the Bible says that this happened anywhere, but God did it with Pharaoh right, so why not Adam and Eve?

    I’m not buying it.

    There is too much Scripture about the Goodness and Righteousness of God for me to believe that God needed OR wanted the existence of evil, because that would help him do more good.
    ----
    “there is a reason for God to ‘allow some things’ as you say; but again, this allowance cannot be divorced from God's desires. God wants this to happen for a sufficient reason. He is omnipotent. He cannot ever cease to be omnipotent, for then He would cease to be God. As a result, God could stop every sin from ever happening. That He doesn't is proof that He wants them to happen. Again, I must repeat myself to ensure we are clear on this: God doesn't want evil for the sake of evil, but rather for His morally sufficient reasons.”

    I’m trying, honestly I am, to figure out the logic here. But there’s something that is blocking me for being able to follow it. I still reject this idea on the basis that it isn’t found in Scripture. But I reject it on logical grounds as well (and not because I don’t understand the idea of a “morally sufficient reason” - that does make sense).

    So let’s see here, as I understand it, your argument goes like this - (1) God is all-powerful (omnipotent), (2) God could stop every sin from happening, (3) He doesn’t, so (4) this proof that He wants people to sin. You keep losing me on number (4). How does the fact that God doesn’t stop sin from happening mean that God wants sin to happen??? Doesn’t Scripture say that there are things God wants that don’t happen, and things that happen that God doesn’t want? Again see Luke 13:34. And, I don’t want to make this too long, but here’s just a few examples -

    Ezekiel 33:11
    “Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?”

    God wants the wicked to turn from evil. Just because all or most of the wicked don’t turn from evil doesn’t mean that that is now suddenly what God wants too.

    If God’s will always happens, why bother to pray for it? - Matthew 6:10, Romans 1:10

    Just because thieves steal, doesn’t mean that it’s God’s will for them to steal - Ephesians 4:28

    I’d also find it very hard to believe that what the Devil does is God’s will - 1 John 3:8, John 8:44, John 10:10

    So logically, God’s omnipotence plus the fact that something happens does NOT necessarily equal that God wanted or willed for it to happen.
    ----
    And sorry man, but for now at least I still have to agree to the proposition - “God could have created a world where the existence of evil was impossible, but he wanted a world where some creatures had free will instead.”

    Do we have free will in heaven?

    My problem is with your very first assumptions - “Because if we do have free will in heaven, then that would mean that we could sin in heaven and lose our salvation after dying and going to heaven in the first place.”

    You are correct that I cannot believe this - there is no chance of sin or rebellion against God in heaven. However, this doesn’t mean everyone there doesn’t have free will. Only an Arminian insists on free will being defined as the ability to constantly change your mind one way and then another. To be able to will your way into salvation, and then out of salvation, and then back into salvation, and even back out again. Absolutely nonsense. Why?

    Because there are some things you decide with a free will that are permanent decisions. Like look at the angels for example. God created the angels with free will and the devil rebelled of his own will (Isaiah 14:12-15). So there was a point in time where all the angels freely made a permanent decision - to follow God or to rebel against God. Although I don’t have a specific verse to back this up, I can confidently assume that there are not going to be any more good angels rebelling in the future. Does this mean that God took away their free will? No - it means they made a choice, and even if you actively are making a choice (like the choice to believe in Jesus) - there are some huge choices you make that are permanent.

    Another way of looking at it is that some choices result in irreversible change. For example, again when you choose to believe in Christ, an irreversible change has taken place in your nature (Ephesians 4:20-32, 2 Corinthians 5:17). So at salvation we are given a new nature (2 Peter 1:4, Romans 7:22). Part of this new nature of being like Christ is that you won’t sin, at least once you’ve died and get complete rid of your earthly sinful nature (Romans 6:7). Our new nature will be like Christ’s (Romans 6:5, I John 3:2). It was Christ’s nature not to sin, and yet He still had free will. He even says he has free will in John 10:17-18. And He was tempted (Matthew 4) like we are tempted now (Hebrews 4:15). So Christ had free will, but it was part of his nature not to sin.

    So just because you make a permanent decision with your free will does not mean you don’t have free will. One last way of looking at it is Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve didn’t sin against each other - wouldn’t steal, murder, lie, etc. - because God had given them the ability not to (an ability we do not have with our sin natures today). To Adam and Eve, sinning against each other just simply didn’t make any sense (even though technically Adam could murder Eve, he had free will). It was in their relation to God that they still had to make a choice about. In Heaven, we all will have already made that choice (just like the angels who didn’t rebel already have) - sinning against each other or sinning against God will simply make no sense, it won’t happen, and it will be part of our permanent natures not to sin. All this does not mean we don’t have free will in heaven, it simply means we are using (or have used) our free will to make a choice.

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  13. Peter,

    If we keep this up, go ahead and occasionally respond to whatever progress we've made in a new post, instead of the comments section. That way, this won't just keep getting more and more deeply buried in your website.

    Saint and Sinner,

    I’ll be happy to look at your comments on this too. Just post a link and let me know when you’ve written something on this on your website.

    So I read the Beale article (whew! is that guy an intellectual). In the future, I think I’d ask that you’d try and sum up his arguments instead of only posting someone else’s article (I can’t promise to read every article on the subject that is just posted here.) On the other hand, I read fast, think fast, and type fast (so I apologize for any typos throughout these posts), you’re forced to do that in law school when you’re reading 100 page case decisions.

    Just a few comments -

    1 - This guy is obviously smarter than I am. I don’t mean to disrespect his learning. He’s clearly an academic scholar that knows more about “exegesis methodology” than I do. That said. I can’t simply just accept his logic because he’s smarter than me.

    2 - In the whole article, I could not find his answer to my “is it just a coincidence” question. I want to know why God put that chronology there because it’s got to mean something. Instead, Beale just dismisses it and concludes that because God had predicted that Pharaoh’s heart would be hardened (Exodus 4:21, 7:14), this means that God was the “ultimate cause of the hardening.”

    Look God is the ultimate cause of everything, ok. God is the ultimate cause of the devil. He is the ultimate cause of evil. And not to be simplistic here, but I cannot for the life of me see how God’s foreknowledge or his prediction of something means that He’s necessarily causing it to happen. I think for me to have a more productive discussion with Beale, we would need to talk about some of our basic assumptions first before we got too deep into Pharaoh (or the nations of Jacob and Esau).

    3 - So, I think we should go into some of the more basic stuff first too. So I won’t go into Beale point and counter point just yet - so here’s just a few of his thoughts that stood out to me -

    Beale - “so that at no time was Pharaoh’s volition independent of Yahweh’s influence when he hardened his heart … it is never stated in Exod. 4-14 that Yahweh hardens Pharaoh in judgment because of any prior reason or condition residing in him. Rather, as stated in the exegetical conclusion, the only purpose or reason given for the hardening is that it would glorify Yahweh. Therefore, the divine hardening of Pharaoh was unconditional.” (149-150)

    I gotta hand it to you Calvinists, you make absolutely beautiful broad sweeping conclusions sometimes with really big “THEREFORE”s. I kinda admire the ballsy approach you guys have. I want to be like that too, but I’ve also always got logic nagging me at the same time. What I need to do is to figure out is how to combine the two.

    Beale - “Hence, Paul is arguing in Rom 9:17 that God's justice/righteousness (sedeq) is shown and consists in his acting for his name's sake or glory, i.e., acting unconditionally according to his intrinsic nature. Thus, for Paul, God's actions would be unjust if they were responses conditioned by the creature, whether they be actions of judgment or mercy. While Paul's readership may not have been completely satisfied with his explanation of this theodicy, Paul himself is constrained to conclude, ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways!’ (Rom 11:33).”

    So I guess the only way you make arguments like this is if you have other assumptions about God and Scripture first. There are a lot Christians, today and throughout history, who do NOT think Paul is equating God’s justice & righteousness with God acting unconditionally in Romans 9 or anywhere else. Psalm 62:12 comes to mind. Beale isn‘t coy - “And then, Paul is saying that God’s actions would be unjust if they were responses conditioned by the creature.” So once again, I guess you have to first go into what “conditional” and “unconditional” actually mean. I should come out with an article on “Unconditional Election” at my website by Monday, so I’ll go into some definitions a little.

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  14. http://contra-gentes.blogspot.com/2008/12/eternal-decree-of-god.html

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  15. Cool, Saint & Sinner, I just responded to your latest over on your website.

    And Peter, I've also just posted Part Two on Unconditional Election here -

    http://persiflagethis.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-i-am-not-reformed-part-two.html

    We can still continue to go into more of the basics first though, since that's what it sounds like you want to do.

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