Jason Pratt said: "But being love, God will keep persisting--including in chastisement and discipline, toward accomplishing re-tribution, re-mediation, re-probation in and with the sinner.”
I take it that this expresses a popular Arminian understanding of God's attitude toward those in hell.
Now add to this classical omniscience, and you either have a means-end irrational God or Universalism or Open Theism. I'm trying to figure out how this isn't so...
(Of course, the Classical Arminian can resort to a retributive view of hell I guess, but then he needs to answer the Universalist's question: How is this God omni-loving? In other words, the Classical Arminian gets hoisted by his own petard here.)
We lay it down, as an axiom, first off, that the hatred of God is not an evil passion, as it is with men, but is rather an attribute of the almighty that nobody can deny exists, and is talked about in the Scriptures, whereby he has a fixed determination to punish the impenitent wicked forever, in a place called hell.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have to tell you, my friends, that it goes way past hate if you credit the Bible with full authority. It goes to abhor, and it goes to despise. Worse forms of the attitudinal approach of almighty God to a certain class of people.
He that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein. Don’t tell me that the Bible doesn’t teach that there are some people that God hates, and goes way past hate, and goes to abhor. And I’ll tell you that this debate was had, in 1520. Martin Luther debating Erasmus of Rotterdam. And it raged and went on with a flourish for almost a year.
Does God love those people who he says are tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb, all the while he’s tormenting them exquisitely? Fire and brimstone? Does he love those people? He’s got a very peculiar way of showing it, wouldn’t you say?
That there’s such a thing as the wrath of God, that there’s such a thing as a hatred of God, that there’s such a thing as hell. And those who insist on living depraved, degenerate lives in this world, who die in their sins, split hell wide open, I say to you. And it’s mere folly and sophistry, and what the old preachers called sophism. Playing on words. Creating new doctrines called doctrines of devils. Doctrines of devils, that God loves the sinner. What are you talking about, that God loves the sinner and only hates his sin? What do you mean that God doesn’t hate these creatures, and how would you describe that attribute of the almighty? The almighty God comes and says to the sons of men, I have loved the righteous, I have hated the wicked. I have prepared a place for those who live soberly and righteously and godly in this present time. And who are penitent, and who have abandoned. That the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation and teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust we should live soberly, and righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and glories appearing.
This idea that the Lord will continue trying to bring people to repentance even after sending them to hell (does that mean some people would spend only a finite time there before going to heaven?) is not one I'd consider a standard "Arminian" one. (Calvinists seem to use the term "Arminian" to mean "any Christian who is not a Calvinist")
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, its the Roman Catholics who pray for the dead. Protestants tend to believe that you have only this life in which to make your choices, and after that "the tree lies where it falls".
In "Arminian" terms: God has given you free will to respond to the Gospel or not - but if you die still unbelieving, that's it, you've lost the chance.
In response to the assertion that a loving God would give people more oppertunity than that, CS Lewis had this to say:
"I believe that if a million chances were likely to do any good, they would be given. But a master often knows, when boys and parents do not, that it really is useless to send a boy in for a certain examination again. Finality must come at some time, and it does not require a very robust faith to believe that omniscience knows when."
JSC,
ReplyDeleteThat's the view presented by Repert and C.S. Lewis, and defended in the recent _C.S. Lewis and Philosophy_ book. Reppert claims to be reprsenting Arminianism over against Calvinism. An Lewis is something of an Arminian hero. The point is, "hell is locked from the inside." They *could* come out, therefore. Thus, it's not retributive. At any rate, if you want to hold to a God who actively retributively punishes a man for eternity, for committing finite sins (especally when many, most?, never even heard of Jesus (and general revelation is not salvific), then I guess you need to deal with all those who claim that this proves that your tradition is lax on "love" and not the most "loving" position. Either way, many of the arguments you give to Calvinism seem to work at cross purposes and can be used against you. You, of course, deny universalism, open theism, &c., and in doing so you know how easy it is for us to brush off your accusations that our view of God is "unloving."
Paul Manata, you seem to think you know a lot about my opinions on the subject, just from my comments on Arminianism.
ReplyDeleteActually I don't really "buy into" either system. There are too many things in the Bible that Calvinsts have to just ignore or explain away, and the Arminians have their own problems.
Rather than speculate about which theory makes God out as more "loving", I try to stay with what the Bible says.
What Martin Luther said to Erasmus in 1520 is now reprinted in our mother tongue. Sharp, ringing, clarion, Anglo-Saxon English.
ReplyDeleteOf course God hates people, and not just their sins! And that is a diabolical doctrine of devils, it had no traffic at all 15 to 20 years ago, this nonsense that God loves the sinner and only hates the sin. And in no other area of life would that silliness be tolerated for a minute. Who does a judge send to the penitentiary? The criminal or the crime? Who does God send to hell? The sinner or just his sins? I tell you, it’s a metaphysical impossibility to separate the sin from the sinner.
And the Lord Jesus on an occasion said, I will forewarn you, my friends, whom you should fear. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear. Fear him who, after he has killed the body, hath power to cast both soul and body into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear him.
In every high school literature book in Kansas, and probably in Wyoming, and in most states, they’ve got a little section. It’s an exemplar of how all the preachers, or virtually all the preachers in this country, preached on this subject in the 1700s and 1800s, and certainly in the 1600s. I’ve got their sermons, hundreds of them. You can get this sermon off the web, JonathanEdwards.com. Punch in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I say, it’s set forth in all the high school literature books as an example of Early American Literature and how all the preachers used to preach it in those days. Don’t tell me God only hates the sin and not the sinner! There’s not one iota of scripture for that.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire abhors you! Abhors you! And as dreadfully provoked, his wrath toward you burns like fire, he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. And he has purer eyes than to behold your iniquity with any kind of tolerance.
Pluck that down off the web and read that: anyone's argument is with God almighty, not me, if they insist that God doesn’t hate people.
JSC,
ReplyDeleteNotice the use of the conditional *IF* before I mentioned your beliefs. Please read more carefully and criticaly in my comboxes next time.
As for your second paragraph, I've learned to ignore naked assertions, not being bothered in the least by them. But thanks for sharing your opinion on the matter.