Back to Pratt:
“No, but (at least as a fellow Christian) the onus is on you to include my explicitly stated affirmation of those doctrines--especially when my affirmation comes in the very next sentence (as emphasized above)--and not to pretend that by ignoring what I said you can paint me as disagreeing with what I explictly agreed about.”
http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=420&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=20
In the context of this thread, you cited original sin as if that were an objection to Calvinism. If you don’t think it’s an objection to Calvinism, then your citation is deceptive and irrelevant.
“No, but (at least as a fellow Christian) the onus is on you to include my explicitly stated affirmation of those doctrines--especially when my affirmation comes in the very next sentence (as emphasized above)--and not to pretend that by ignoring what I said you can paint me as disagreeing with what I explictly agreed about.”
No, the only onus on me is to note the function of original sin in your argument. You deployed original sin in objection to Calvinism.
“Really, Steve. How else should I understand your omission of this? That you were you not competent enough to understand that short single simple sentence?”
Really, Jason. How else should I (or anyone else) understand your interjection of original sin at this juncture of your attack on Calvinism? That you were not competent enough to understand your own strategy?
“What part of ‘I agree with those concepts, too’ did you not understand?”
I understand the role of throwaway disclaimers.
“Or did you think my affirmation of the material preceding it was irrelevant to the material preceding it?--after which you made a guess that I must be denying the material preceding my (irrelevant) affirmation of the material?”
I think your throwaway disclaimer is a way to play both sides of the fence. It’s a rhetorical ploy which allows you to then unleash your objection to Calvinism.
“Maybe it was the latter, considering what comes next. But still, you could have bothered to quote my affirmation of the material which you go on to insist that I must be denying.”
I’m not the only conduit of information for your stated position. Every reader is free to follow the URL.
“This is after omitting my explicit short and entirely clear agreement, of course. (For those who haven't understood yet: that big emphasized parenthetical sentence above was omitted by Steve, in order to make it seem like I disagreed against what I was affirming.)”
No, this is a general indictment of universalists. That’s why I cast it in general terms. It’s not specific to Pratt. And it’s not specific to one particular argument which he deployed.
“And when was the last time a militant atheist like Hitchens or Dawkins or Ingersoll even claimed (much less extensively so) to be grouding his position on his acceptance of and belief in orthodox trinitarian theism in itse details?”
That would be the “thin veneer of pious verbiage.”
You drape your infidel position in the lingo of “orthodox trinitarian theism” to lend it a stolen respectability, of which universalism, all by itself, is utterly bereft.
Maybe your fellow infidels are taken in by this transparent ruse. I am not.
“Admittedly, you didn’t quote me much on that, up to this place I just mentioned--usually selectively quoting around it--but then I suppose I wouldn’t have looked so indistinguishable from them.”
This is hardly the first time that you and I have crossed swords. And you are hardly the only universalist I’ve dealt with. The documentation is abundant. Check the archives at Tblog under “universalism.”
Or is there a natural link between universalism and egocentrism, such that when I make a general statement about universalists, you co-opt the reference to your own precious little self?
That, in turn, raises the question of whether you’re egocentric because you’re a universalist, or a universalist because you’re egocentric.
“(Relatedly, when was the last time Hitch, Ingersoll in his writings, or the Dawk, ever emphasized the importance of the salvation of sinners from sin by God's grace?--ever avowed the reality and the importance of the Incarnation?--ever called God's judgment against himself in order to protect his own opponents?!)”
Deep down, you and they share the same paternity. They demonize a God who would consign anyone to everlasting punishment, and so do you. And when I say you “demonize” such a God, I’m not speaking hyperbolically or figuratively. That’s your explicit, stated position.
In fact, you’re actually to the left of Hitchens and Dawkins and Ingersoll in this respect. They don’t believe in the devil. So when they demonize God, that’s figurative on their part. When, however, you say any God who would consign a sinner to everlasting punishment (without hope of reprieve) is diabolical or Satanic, you mean that quite literally. You are literally imputing a diabolical character to God. That makes your comparison even more sacrilegious than anything they could say.
“After reading this, your previously established habit of insisting I believe one thing (that God does not allow and respect, as far as He can, our free choice to sin or not to sin); only admitting I believe something else (that ‘I do think, and have always said, that God gives us the ability to keep rebelling against Him for as indeterminately long as we choose to do so’) when you think you can critique that, too; and then going back to insisting I believe the other thing instead--at best accusing me of flipflopping back and forth on this position when only one of us is painting me that way--looks overly convenient.”
What’s overly convenient is the way you try to play both sides of the libertarian/determinist fence–depending on your opponent. When debating an Arminian or open theist, you draw attention to the inadequacies of libertarian freewill. But when you debate a Calvinist, you level libertarian objections to Calvinism. You have the strike of a two-headed snake.
“As does your attempt at trying to tell your readers that a weakness of my methodology is not to address your arguments, instantly before you start replying to my extensive addressing of your argument. (Whether I addressed it competently may be debateable. The fact that I did address it, and at length, is not.)”
You didn’t address my arguments. Rather, you dodged them. Which you continue to do in this very post.
“As does your attempt at trying to paint me as though I was trying to claim you were attempting to defend libertarian freedom; by quoting me (selectively) from a couple of paragraphs where I was clarifying what I believed. (In answer to a previous insistence on your part about what I must believe.)”
No, you were trying to redirect, and thereby deflect, my argument.
“As does your attempt to paint my belief as though it involves God coercing those He saves, when there is practically no distinction between my belief and yours on this topic (where you deny that, in regard to God’s persistence in salvation and God’s irresistible grace, Calvinism involves God coercing salvation. The only relevant distinction between us on that topic is the scope of who God persistently acts to save from sin.)”
There’s a very salient distinction which you admit in another setting:
“I’m pretty sure Calvinists would say ‘no’. God doesn’t hope to save the elect, He just does it. God doesn’t hope to save the non-elect, He just bars them from the outset from salvation.”
Yet, as I recall, you classify yourself as “hopeful” universalist. You don’t assert dogmatically that God will save everyone. Rather, you imagine that God never gives up on the sinner. He always holds out hope for the sinner’s eventual salvation.
Continuing:
“As does your attempt to distract readers from the salient point of my criticism--God’s responsibility in choosing to ensure that the non-elect shall always be unrighteous, by authoritatively and solely choosing never to give them even the possibility of ever being righteous--by complaining about my use of the word ‘prevention’. As though it must necessarily mean the hinderance of a process that would have occurred without the interference, instead of only can mean that.”
There’s no “distraction” involved when I answer you on your own terms. You chose to cast your objection to Calvinism in terms of divine “prevention.”
For me to expose your abuse of the term (and underlying concept) is hardly a “distraction” when you were the one who chose to frame your objection in just such terms.
“And as though, when I explain that I never intended this meaning (and therefore my “traction” as you put it was never reliant on this meaning), I am supposed to be the one switching terms around and changing the subject.”
You were trying, in your demagogical fashion, to trade on the invidious connotations of “prevention.” Redefining the term while you retain the invidious connotations.
“As does your attempt at getting around this responsibility by using analogies where the agent involved (the state) has and can have no responsibility (or power either), in order to represent God’s relationship to the non-elect.”
The analogy is perfectly adequate to illustrate what does or does not constitute “prevention.”
And you also resorted to finite analogies whenever it suited your own purpose.
“As does your attempt to get around this responsibility…”
There’s no responsibility to get around in the first place. That’s a tendentious assertion on your part. It takes a key assumption of universalism for granted.
I don’t have to get around your self-serving stipulations. Stipulations have no argumentative force–unless both sides agree to the stipulation.
“…by treating the non-elect as though they simply “lack” the power to do good. (They lack it because God chooses for them to lack it. They don’t just simply lack it; and God is not just letting them go along according to their own devices.”
Which is irrelevant to what I actually said.
“He institutes the situation of their existence, and institutes their capabilities, and chooses for them which capabilities they shall and shall not have, directly resulting in whatever ‘devices’ they can and cannot go along according to, and continually acts to keep them in whatever existence they happen to be in. If persons have freedom to choose between good and evil, it’s because God gives it to them. If they don’t have that freedom, it’s because He chooses not to give it to them. If God is authoritatively responsible, by His choice, for an unrighteous entity never even having the possibility of being anything other than unrighteous, then God also has final authoritative responsibility for the permanent unrighteousness of that entity.)”
I see that you can’t deal with my actual argument. Instead, you have a pat objection to Calvinism. When a Reformed opponent like me says something that doesn’t play into your pat objection, you substitute your pat objection for what I actually said–as if that’s the least bit responsive to what I said.
Did I appeal what a possible person would do if left to his own devices? No. Just the opposite. I said there’s nothing in particular which a possible person was going to do. It’s not as if he was going to do one thing rather than another until God preventing him from doing that. A possible person has no default setting.
What God “institutes” is one possible course of action. In so doing, God didn’t prevent the agent from doing something else, as if there was something else the agent intended to do–absent divine interference.
“Let ‘prevention’ be considered too weak a term, and substitute something else.”
Of course, to call it “too weak and term” and then demand a verbal substitution is just another demagogical stunt on your part. It stipulates a question-begging premise (“too weak a term”), then, on the basis of that question-begging premise, demands a verbal substitution. Readers need to keep a close eye on Jason’s sleight-of-hand.
“Correct the term ‘prevention’ if you insist; but keep the authoritative responsibility of God in the status of the sinner.”
I have never denied that God is responsible for whatever happens in his world. To the contrary, I’ve often said that God is responsible. He’s not solely responsible, and he’s not blameworthy, but he’s responsible for everything that transpires.
The question at issue is not whether God is (partly) responsible for the sinner–but whether God is responsible to the sinner.
“Not surprisingly, during your extensive attempts at trying to show that my usage of ‘prevention’ is self-incriminating with respect to my own position, you didn’t bother to include the salient point of my criticism: that, per Calvinism (of the sort you’re apparently trying to defend anyway), it is God’s responsibility that these things happen and by His own choice shall never be rectified.”
i) You act as if I have some damaging trade secret which I’m trying to keep under wraps. That’s a failed tactic on your part, for I’ve often blogged on this subject.
ii) ”Rectify” is another prejudicial and pejorative term in this setting. God is responsible for the consequences of his decree. It is not God’s responsibility to “rectify” the consequences of his decree, as if his decree were defective.
“Not surprisingly, you omit this salient point again when trying to portray Arminianism, “open theism” (a type of Arminianism usually), and universalism as having the same critical problem that I’m complaining about in Calvinism. Of course: you can hardly claim that universalism features God choosing to ensuring from the outset that unrighteousness shall permanently exist and never be rectified.”
i) What you’re pleased to call the “salient” point is just a decoy. You equated commands with predictions. I answered you on your own grounds.
Whether some unrighteousness will persist (in hell) is irrelevant to whether you can infer God’s intent from his commands. That’s just an exercise in misdirection on your part, to deflect attention away from your failed argument.
ii) Not only is your diversionary tactic irrelevant to the issue at hand, but there’s more than one just way of dealing with sin.
“At least annihilationists teach that God shall ensure that unrighteousness does not permanently exist…”
“At least?”
If unrighteousness is unacceptable in eternity, then it’s unacceptable in time. The fact that God allows (or decrees) the existence of sin at all goes to show there’s nothing inherently intolerable about the mere existence of sin, whether here-and-now or hereafter.
“Not surprisingly again, when you write (in defense of an argument of yours from a previous comment) ‘Therefore, since the command to believe the Gospel is a special case of divine commands in general, there’s no presumption that when God commands men to believe the Gospel, he issues that command with the intention that all men will obey it’--you once again omit the salient point: God chooses (per Calvinism) to ensure that at least some men will never even have the real desire, much less any actual ability, to obey the command (be that command decretive, prescriptive or whatever) to believe the Gospel, repent of their sins, and be faithful.”
Since that is not a salient point, I omitted no salient point. That’s totally irrelevant to whether you can infer God’s intentions from his imperatives.
You keep trying to shift attention away from your original argument because it fell flat. Introducing this “salient point” will do nothing to reinflate your failed argument.
You keep harping on this “salient point” in hopes of changing the subject and thereby causing readers to forget your bungled argument.
“If you are not trying to avoid this point, it is difficult to see why you keep writing around it when trying to defend against my critiques, considering that this is what I am and always have been critiquing.”
Jason Pratt is a standard issue demagogue. One of the tactics of a demagogue is transference. When a demagogue like Pratt gets caught saying something he can’t defend, he tries to put his opponent on the defensive by acting as if his opponent is avoiding the issue. Pratt’s way of avoiding the issue is to pretend that I’m avoiding the issue.
Pratt tried to turn the command to believe the Gospel into a prediction. I pointed out that for this inference to be valid, he would have to apply the same reasoning to every divine command.
Jason is trying to avoid the implications of my counterargument because it’s irrefutable. So he changes the subject by introducing a red herring which he, like a good propagandist, labels the “salient point”–then affects the pose that I’m avoiding the “salient point.”
See how it works? Pratt resorts to these sophistries when he backs himself into a corner.
“You could have been including it every time. Instead, you seem to leave it out, not indeed at every opportunity, but when it looks problematic to include it (such as when ostensibly comparing Calvinism with Arm and Kath positions, to show that if Calvinism has a problem with violation of God’s commands the other two have the same ‘problem’. Uh, no, the other two do not have that doctrine; even the Arms don’t believe God chooses to always withhold the possibility of doing any good, including repenting and being saved from sin, from sinners.)”
i) Of course, I don’t think it is a problem. It’s a pseudoproblem.
ii) But, to answer Pratt on his own grounds, if we’re going to treat the nonfullfillment of divine commands as a problem for Calvinism, then that’s a problem for the rival positions as well.
iii) In response, Pratt engages in his customary, bait-and-switch tactic.
He points out that there’s a difference between Calvinism and the opposing positions. Gee, what a surprise.
He then acts as if this difference is relevant to the question at hand. It isn’t.
The issue, as he himself chose to frame the issue, is whether we can infer God’s intentions from his commands. Put another way, are commands equivalent to predictions.
The question of whether “God chooses to always withhold the possibility of doing any good, including repenting and being saved from sin, from sinners,” has absolutely no bearing on the actual question at hand.
The real question is a logical one: can you validly infer divine intentions from divine imperatives? You only need a single infraction to invalidate that inference.
Case in point: God forbids murder, yet murder occurs. Men and women murder one another.
Therefore, you can’t infer a divine intent to ensure compliance with that prohibition, from the prohibition itself.
Even if the murderer later repents and becomes a lifelong do-gooder, or everlasting do-gooder, this doesn’t change the fact that God’s prohibition against murder has no predictive value.
It’s not as if God said: “Don’t commit murder, but if you do commit murder, you fulfilled the terms of the prohibition anyway because, at some future date, you’ll repent. So whether you obey the law or break the law, you fulfill the terms of the law!”
There is only one way to ensure the specific fulfillment of that prohibition–and that’s to prevent its infraction. There are different ways of preventing its infraction, but compliance is the only way to ensure the terms of its fulfillment.
“Some of this I could overlook as incaution perhaps; or maybe that you started writing something, got distracted for a substantial period of time, and then forgot to check on what you were even writing about when you got back. (Not that this would be flattering, but it does sometimes happen.)”
This is Jason’s way of covering his tracks as he stages a retreat.
“But when I get to you omitting a simple, short, clear sentence; the omission of which (and only the omission of which) ostensibly allows you to paint me as meaning the absolute opposite of what I had previously written; so that you can compare me not only with rabid atheists but with Satan himself…”
Did I compare Jason to Satan? No. Can he quote me on that? No. I compared him to some other individuals–but not to Satan.
What I pointed out, rather, is that Jason compares God to Satan. He’s gone on record as saying it would be Satanic for God to damn anyone without hope of some reprieve down the pike.
And I brought that up because Jason said he wanted me to refine or redefine the way I classified him. Therefore, I simply took him up on his offer.
“At that point, I have to conclude that you are simply unable, for one or another of reasons, to have any real discussion on the topic.”
I’ll tell you what makes it impossible to have a “real” discussion on the topic. That’s when Jason uses a fallacious argument, the fallaciousness of which is duly exposed, but he lacks the intellectual decency to withdraw his fallacious argument.
“Otherwise, you win: I’ll stop trying to talk with you.”
I guess that’s my cue to break down in tears.
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