The great Calvinist super geniuses over at Triablogue have posted what is possibly their most idiotic post to date. Their title is "Why Jesus is a sinner" and here is the content of their post:
i) "All have sinned and fall short of God's glory" (Rom 3:23).
ii) All means all.
iii) Ergo, Jesus sinned and fell short of God's glory.
The reason their argument fails is that when it is said "All have sinned and fall short of God's glory," God Himself (and God alone) is clearly exempted from the statement. Not to mention that God obviously can't fall short of His own glory. Hence, Jesus, being God, cannot be included in the statement "All have sinned and fall short of God's glory." This is nothing but a classic example of Calvinists denying that Jesus is God. The only way to use this verse as proof that all doesn't mean all is to deny the divinity of Christ! So there you have it: Triablogue is run by Arians.
Posted by beowulf2k8 at 8:06 PM
http://tothegloryofchristsgrace.blogspot.com/2009/01/prominent-calvinist-bloggers-deny-that.html
Three quick comments before I proceed to my primary observation:
i) I’m merely applying Arminian hermeneutics to a text of scripture. It’s very revealing how agitated they become when you consistently apply their hermeneutical principles to the Bible.
ii) I already have stated views on the deity and impeccability of Christ.
iii) I’ve already responded to beowulf.
iv) Now I’m going to make a larger point:
a) The suppressed premise of his argument is that if Jesus is divine, then Jesus can do no wrong.
However, that’s an invalid inference for freewill theism to draw. If God discarnate (the Father, the Holy Spirit) or God incarnate (the Son) is a free agent, in the libertarian sense, then it’s possible for God to do wrong.
b) Not only is that implicit in freewill theism, but open theism makes that implication explicit. Take the flood. According to open theism, God really did regret sending the flood. God makes many mistakes, of which this is one.
On this view, God was wrong to kill all the antediluvians. Indeed, by his very own admission, God was wrong to kill the antediluvians.
So libertarian theism makes God the author of evil in the most direct sense imaginable. God is the actual agent of wrongdoing.
Hence, Jesus could, indeed, be in the wrong. Jesus could, indeed, be a sinner.
There are two ways that Arminians can try to weasel out of this unwelcome result:
c) They might concede that while it’s possible for God/Christ to do wrong, this possibility is never realized. Scripture assures us that God can do no evil, that Jesus was sinless.
Of course, that answer fails to address the logical ramifications of their position.
What is more, the teaching of Scripture has never posed much of an obstacle to Arminian theology. This would hardly be the first time that Arminians repudiated the teaching of Scripture. Arminians reject a number of biblical doctrines. So why not reject the sinlessness of Jesus? Why not be consistently unscriptural?
d) Arminians like to deny that open theists are “true” Arminians on the grounds that open theism is at odds with the theology of Arminius. But that objection is obviously fallacious.
There’s such a thing as an Arminian tradition. It is subject to historical development. It evolves over time. A number of theologians have contributed to the Arminian tradition. It’s silly to accuse someone of misrepresenting Arminian theology unless he reproduces the theology of Arminius.
Once the Arminian admits that God cannot sin while still having LFW (i.e. a choice between alternative goods), he has given up his only defense to the problem of evil since God could have given man a LFW that could only choose between alternative goods instead of good and evil.
ReplyDeleteThe only logical inference to the fact that God did not give man such a LFW is that God decreed (providentially, not prescriptively) that man should fall into sin.
"This is nothing but a classic example of Calvinists denying that Jesus is God."
ReplyDeleteI'm a new to the Doctrines of Grace (former Arminian just 8 short months ago), but I have read a great deal and have yet to come across a Calvinist who denies Jesus is God. Could someone provide me with these "classic examples"? I may need to rethink this thing.... :)
There are no "classic examples" because it's a big ol' strawman argument, laden with emotional rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteSteve, would you mind walking me through how a passage such as Genesis 6:6 should be understood? Thanks:
ReplyDeleteGenesis 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. (NKJV)
You're not thinking logically. Look at it like this:
ReplyDelete#1. Jesus is God.
#2. The phrase causing all this hoopla is "all have fallen short of God's glory."
#3. I said God can't fall short of God's glory (hence Jesus cannot fall short of God's glory, because he is God.
Ok. It is perfectly logical. Even if you could prove Jesus to be a sinner, the logic of those 3 points will still follow. Because if Jesus was a sinner, then God is also a sinner since Jesus is God, and therefore God's glory is diminished but Jesus still has not fallen short of it because his glory and God's are the exact same because he is God.
So, no matter how you slice it, you Calvinists are just incapable of understanding a simple statement.
BEOWULF2K8 SAID:
ReplyDeleteYou're not thinking logically. Look at it like this:
#1. Jesus is God.
#2. The phrase causing all this hoopla is "all have fallen short of God's glory."
#3. I said God can't fall short of God's glory (hence Jesus cannot fall short of God's glory, because he is God.
Ok. It is perfectly logical. Even if you could prove Jesus to be a sinner, the logic of those 3 points will still follow. Because if Jesus was a sinner, then God is also a sinner since Jesus is God, and therefore God's glory is diminished but Jesus still has not fallen short of it because his glory and God's are the exact same because he is God.
So, no matter how you slice it, you Calvinists are just incapable of understanding a simple statement.
************************************************************
Several problems with your "logic":
1. I've already extracted from you the fatal concession that "all" doesn't mean "everyone."
Therefore, you can't use the universal quantifier to disprove limited atonement.
2. It's fallacious to contend that whatever is true of Jesus is true of God, and vice versa. That's because Jesus is a theanthropic person. Hence, some things are true of Jesus that are false of God qua God.
3. You're too lazy to define the key phrase. In Biblical usage, the "glory" of God (doxa, kabod) connotes divine dignity, honor, esteem, reputation, renown, prestige, fame, &c.
And since it's possible, according to freewill theism, for God to make many embarrassing mistakes, it's quite possible, according to freewill theism, for God to dishonor himself, act undignified, bring himself into ill-repute.
While it's not possible in Reformed theology for God to fall short of his own glory, that's quite possible in freewill theism. Indeed, according to open theism, which takes freewill theism to its logical conclusion, God has fallen short of his own glory on many occasions.
As when Paul speaks of the Father putting all things under Jesus feet and then snidely comments for the benefit of Calvinists who have no logic "obviously he who is doing the putting is exempted" so also in the phrase "all have fallen short of God's glory" God Himself is obviously exempted. Again, when the Cretian poet says "Cretians are always liars" he is clearly exempted himself, otherwise his own statement would be a lie, and then Paul would be proven to be wrong in saying "this witness is true.". So, yes, "all" means "all" and yet at the same time people who know how human language works can see the obvious exceptions to seemingly all encompassing statements when such exceptions exist. Calvinists however merely laugh at God, rigvhteousness, logic, and if there be anything else praiseworthy, they mock it too.
ReplyDeleteI didn't say his being divine meant he could do no wrong. I said that since he is God, his glory is always equal to God's glory beccause his glory is God's glory because he is God. Therefore, if he did do wrong it would not only subtract from his own glory but also from God's glory since he is God and therefore his glory is God's glory and God's glory is his. So, if he sins he does not fall short of God's glory, but rather he diminishes God's glory because he IS God. That's very simple, isn't it? What part do you not understand, the word "is"? You're not Bill Clinton are you?
ReplyDelete"So, yes, 'all' means 'all' and yet at the same time people who know how human language works can see the obvious exceptions to seemingly all encompassing statements when such exceptions exist."
ReplyDeleteIn other words, your claim reduces to: "all" means "all"...except when "all" means "some"...except when "all means "all"...except when "all" means "some"...
beowulf2k8 said...
ReplyDelete"That's very simple, isn't it?"
It's very simple if you disregard the actual meaning of divine "glory" in biblical usage.
All never means some. It always means all. But when a speaker says something about all not being equal to God, God is logically excluded. When a speaker says all look different from Beowulf, Beowulf is logically excluded. God gave us brains, not Calvinism.
ReplyDeleteBEOWULF2K8 SAID:
ReplyDelete"All never means some. It always means all."
So you're a universalist? All means all in Rom 5:18?
"But when a speaker says something about all not being equal to God, God is logically excluded."
That's irrelevant to the actual wording of Rom 3:23. And you continue to disregard the actual meaning of divine "glory." Your conclusion doesn't follow from the actual meaning of "glory" in Biblical usage.
"When a speaker says all look different from Beowulf, Beowulf is logically excluded."
Paul doesn't use that sort of construction in Rom 3:23.
What you're doing, repeatedly, is to substitute something Paul didn't say for something that he did.
"God gave us brains, not Calvinism."
God gave us brains, not beowulf.
Woof: "All never means some. It always means all."
ReplyDeleteJesus: "Behold, I make all things new."
Woof: "My boogers are things. Jesus will make them new."
"So you're a universalist? All means all in Rom 5:18?"
ReplyDeleteShould be translated "Therefore as the offence by one tends towards all men towards condemnation, even so the righteousness by one tends towards all men towards justification of life."
The word "eis" as occurs twice in the expression "eis pantas anqrwpous eis katakrima" not just once. Why then does the KJV only have one of its occurrences, the second one, mistranslating it as "upon" whereas it replaces the first occurrence with an alien phrase "judgment came." So again in the next clause they materialize the phrase "the free gift came" out of thin air. In each clause, the first "eis" takes on a verbal nature "tends towards" and the second means "towards." Otherwise the passage is nonsensical gibberish.
beowulf2k8 said:
ReplyDelete"Should be translated "Therefore as the offence by one tends towards all men towards condemnation, even so the righteousness by one tends towards all men towards justification of life.""
Me:
You have got to be kidding me! That's gibberish even in English!
beowulf2k8,
ReplyDeleteFeel free to cite any modern, scholarly reference work on NT Greek or the Greek text of Rom 5 which renders eis as "tends towards."
Its not my fault that you don't know that when there is no verb in a sentence eis can be used to mean "tends towards" and that this is clearly what is going on in Romans 5:18. If you need a commentary to tell you this, you clearly don't know Greek. Not only is it more grammatically sound than adding made up expressions into the text, but it makes more sense than the renderings that result from materializing alien phrases. Adam does not condemn us but only has provided us with the thing that tends to our condemnation, the knowledge of good and evil that he received from the forbidden fruit. Nevertheless that does not condemn us until we misuse it. (Ezek 18:20) So also, Christ's death does not automatically save anyone, but only saves such as come to believe in it and obey his gospel. Adam is a corrupting influence tending to our condemnation and Christ a cleansing influence tending to our salvation. But Adam cannot damn us apart from our misuse of the knowledge he passed on to us, nor can Christ save us apart from our obedience to his gospel.
ReplyDeleteYou're bluffing. I'm still waiting for you to document your claim from reputable Greek scholars. You're no authority on the subject.
ReplyDeleteWoof: "All never means some. It always means all."
ReplyDeleteJesus: "Behold, I make all things new."
Woof: "My boogers are things. Jesus will make them new."
I'm looking at what Beowolf is trying to assert and I don't see where he's getting that.
ReplyDeleteHe is correct that "Eis" is in both places in Romans 5:18, but in neither is it translated "tends toward" as in "might be, might be not, depends on some other factors"
Paul is making his argument, what is his point?
Also, this is what I dug up for the reference in 5:18:
E. The eis of Personal Relationship.
1. eis denotes relationship as such in a neutral sense, "with reference to," "relative to" (cf. 1 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 5:32). This is probably the meaning in Lk. 12:21 (rich in relation to God) and Rom. 5:18 (with effect upon all).
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1995, c1985). Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Translation of: Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament. (213). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.
Here are a few of the major translations and how they translate it:
English Standard Version
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
The New International Version
18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
The King James Version
18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
The NET Bible
18 Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update
18 So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.
I don't see "tends toward" here but I'm interested in what Beowolf is getting at. Are you saying that this is just a "potential outcome" based on other circumstances like "belief"?
There is nothing like that even hinted at here.
Additional info on the "eis in a sentence without a verb"
ReplyDeleteI take it, Beowolf, that you mean "in the same clause" instead of sentence right?
The exact same construction of:
"An adjunct containing eis with a specifier and modifying a noun" is found several other times just in Romans;
Romans 1:26
"For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones,"
Romans 1:28
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done."
Romans 9:17
For the scripture says to Pharaoh: “"For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may demonstrate my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth."
I'm not looking for a fight, but to learn something if possible.
This is the EXACT same contstruction as our verse in Romans 1:18 and none of them have the sense of "leading to as a possibility" as you've stated.
I realize that this isn't the point of this thread but I love God's word and if there is a chance to learn more about it...I'm all ears.