Some Clean Up

Since I rendered Dan the Arminian's argument from the dictionary dead, all that's left is to mop up the mess left by the twitching corpse of an argument. The post Dan is responding to (not my latest, it's this one) commits him to so many radical and ridiculous positions that, even though I have defeated his argument, these moves he's forced to make to answer me are so wild that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to point them out. Here's four points Dan tries to make, along with some responses:

1. Dan's first point is to say that he's appealing to the perspicuity of Scripture. He then intimates that I have some problem with this doctrine, which I don't. However, putting aside the side issues he brings up, here's one ridiculous inference of his argument:

Dan claims that perspicuity applies to the essentials of saving faith. Okay, granted at some level---though it's expressed poorly and vaguely, I understand the general point Dan is struggling to make. But here's a problem: Why are there so many Calvinists and Arminians (or, universalists, &c)!? Though they all agree, at a general level, that we are saved by Christ alone, through faith alone, how this is worked out is very different among the various traditions.

But there's an even bigger problem, Dan says that, "The bible message, especially the essentials of the faith, is understandable by common men using their normal means of understanding terms." Okay, let's say I grant this, how does this translate to the idea that "all common men" will understand the term "choose", in the phrase "choose life", in a libertarian sense? Is Dan imposing a work on salvation? I can't be saved unless I believe that "choose" is to be meant libertarianly, just like I must believe that "Jesus" is to be meant as "the God-man who resurrected for our justification?" Or can I believe in the Mormon Jesus? If I must believe that "choose" commits me to libertarianism, then Dan implies that no Calvinists are saved! If Dan admits that Calvinists can be saved with a different understanding of "choose" than Dan has, but not a different understanding of Jesus, then he fails to make his point.

2. Dan finally tells us what he means by "common man." He writes: "For my purpose, 'common man' is in terms of a whole assembly. The bible was frequently addressed to all of Israel, all of the church.... and that for over a thousand years."

Besides the fact that using an Arminian understanding of "all", Dan thinks the infants in the OT assembly were libertarians(!), this now makes his argument even more ridiculous (miracles are possible!). There are, and have been, thousands of compatibilist "common men" on this understanding. Therefore, Dan's argument can't go through since some "common men" understand "choose" in non-libertarian terms. This is all the empirical evidence Dan needs to debunk his claim that "all common men" are libertarians! Dan knows that there are men in the church (i.e., the collection of common men) who are compatibilits, therefore Dan knows that not all common men are libertarians! So, now we have Dan's implicit admission that he's made empirically false claims, as well as my last post where I show that many respected dictionaries define "choose" in ways congenial to Calvinism. Dan is beating his own argument, I hardly have to do anything.

But it gets worse. Previously Dan wrote, "The Bible was written by and to the common man, not the semi-comnpatibilist." Okay, let's follow Dan's reasoning out: If the Bible was written to common men, and common men are just the members of the church, and common men are all libertarians, then no non-libertarian is a member of the church! Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Edwards, Helm, Hays, Manata, John Smith at the local OPC, are all outside of the church!

3. Dan offers a lengthy quote by Justin Martyr in which he thinks it refutes "fatalism." Three problems:

(i) If true, so what? Martyr isn't God.

(ii) Martyr doesn't talk about the relevant "fatalism" that is appealed to in the literature, i.e., accidental necessity, so his point is totally irrelevant.

(iii) It's not even clear how Martyr "refutes" fatalism and how it applies to Calvinism since I don't see anything of Calvinism being attacked by Martyr (and again, even if Martyr could be cleaned up and made more rigorous and precise by Dan, then see (i)).

4. Dan makes some throw-away comment about Stoics and determinism (ignoring the larger point which is that I argued that some "common men" have understood things deterministically, which undercuts his argument, he chose(!) not to respond to this point), I'd suggest he familiarize himself with the relevant literature, he can start here (and I never made a claim about "all", and I don't defend stoic determinism either, that's not the point).

It just keeps getting more and more weird and sad and embarrassing for Dan.