I’m going to comment on a recent post by Craig Blomberg:
http://www.koinoniablog.net/2009/07/why-i-am-a-calminian-by-craig-blomberg.html
Blomberg is a fine NT scholar. He’s written a number of useful books on the historical Christ and the historicity of the NT.
“If either pure five-point Calvinism or its consistent repudiation in pure Arminianism were completely faithful to Scripture, it is doubtful that so many Bible-believing, godly evangelical Christians would have wound up on each side.”
There are quite a few problems with this statement:
1.Consider the force of social conditioning. If the only thing you’ve been exposed to during your formative years is one theological tradition, then that can be quite prejudicial to the alternatives. And, yes, this cuts different ways.
2.Many anti-Calvinists are quite explicit about why they reject Calvinism. They find it repellent. They have a visceral reaction to Calvinism.
3.Blomberg teaches at a confessional seminary: “Each year trustees, administration and faculty are required to affirm and sign Denver Seminary's doctrinal statement without mental reservation.”
Let’s take three examples:
“This body expresses itself in local assemblies whose members have been immersed upon a credible confession of faith and have associated themselves for worship, instruction, evangelism, and service. The ordinances of the local church are believers' baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper.”
That’s standard Baptist theology. Yet surely Blomberg will grant that many godly, Bible-believing Christians have come down on different sides of this issue. So does he think this article of the doctrinal statement, which he signed, is not completely faithful to Scripture”?
Take another example: “We believe that each local church is self-governing in function and must be free from interference by any ecclesiastical or political authority. We also believe all men and women are directly responsible to God in matters of faith and life, and they should be free to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences.”
Once again, that’s standard Baptist theology. But isn’t this another issue over which godly, Bible-believing Christians have differed? So does he think this article of the doctrinal statement is not completely faithful to Scripture?
To take a final example, I believe that Craig is a historic premillenialist. Indeed, he recently edited a book defending that very position. Yet this is another issue over which godly, Bible-believing Christians differ. So does he think historic premillennialism is not completely faithful to Scripture?
4.Another reason that godly, Bible-believing Christians can disagree over the five-points of Calvinism is a lack of clear thinking. Indeed, Blomberg will be furnishing some examples.
“The former wants to preserve the Scriptural emphasis on divine sovereignty; the latter, on human freedom and responsibility. Both are right in what they want and correct to observe in Scripture the theme that they stress. Both also regularly create caricatures of what the other side believes. Straw men are always the easiest to knock down.”
Ironically, we could say that this is a caricature of Calvinism, as if Calvinism is only concerned with the sovereignty of God, to the detriment of human responsibility. So the way that Blomberg just framed the alternatives is itself a straw man.
“When one discovers a position that Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, two of the world’s leading evangelical philosophers, both endorse, even though the former is Calvinist and the latter is Arminian, it is worth taking a closer look. The position is often called middle knowledge.”
The fact that Plantinga subscribes to middle knowledge should already tip him off to the fact that Plantinga is not a Calvinist. Calvinism rejects Molinism. Moreover, Plantinga is the most philosophically astute proponent of the freewill defense. That’s a libertarian argument.
“Simply put, middle knowledge affirms, with classic Arminianism, that God’s predestining activity is based on his foreknowledge of what all humans would do in all possible situations that they could find themselves in.”
That wouldn’t be “foreknowledge.” Foreknowledge is knowledge of the future. Advance knowledge of what will happen–not what would happen.
“But it also observes that God’s omniscience is so great that it is not limited just to what all actually created being would do but to what all possibly created beings would do in all possible situations.”
Here Blomberg is confusing middle knowledge with counterfactual knowledge. They’re not interchangeable. While middle knowledge presupposes counterfactual knowledge, it’s not the case that counterfactual knowledge presupposes middle knowledge.
Calvinism has no problem affirming the fact that God has counterfactual knowledge. The Westminster Confession attributes counterfactual knowledge to God while, at the same time, rejecting middle knowledge (WFC 3:2).
In Reformed theism, God’s knowledge of hypotheticals is grounded in his knowledge of hypothetical decrees. God knows what human agents would do in all possible situations because he knows what would happen in case he decreed alternate scenarios.
“Because God creates only a finite number of persons between the beginning of the universe and Christ’s return, his sovereign choice is preserved, because he must choose to create some beings and not others. Thus, with classic Calvinism, his sovereign, elective freedom is preserved.”
In doesn’t preserve God’s sovereignty. Rather, it’s as God though must choose from a mail-order catalogue. In Molinism, God is confronted with a set of options. He can choose from these options, but the options are autonomous.
“There are countless passages throughout Scripture that, seemingly paradoxically, affirm at one and the same time God’s sovereignty and human freedom (with accountability).”
We need to draw a firm distinction between what the Bible teaches and the impression that makes on some readers. Does the Bible teach a paradoxical relation between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? Is the (alleged) paradoxicality of that relation part of the Biblical teaching itself? Does Scripture assert that this relationship is paradoxical?
Or does it simply strike some readers as paradoxical? The fact that some readers can’t harmonize the two doesn’t mean that Scripture itself is affirming a paradox. This is not a Scriptural claim.
“Philippians 2:12-13 commands us to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, but only because God is the one at work in us to do his good pleasure.”
How is that paradoxical? Doesn’t that present a cause and effect relation? God causes us to work out our salvation. Our activity is the result of God’s agency. A reaction to God’s action. What’s the least bit paradoxical about that?
“Isaiah 10:5-13 finds God using Assyria as an instrument to punishment faithless Israel but then promising to turn around and punish Assyria because of her evil motives in conquering God’s people.”
Blomberg finds that paradoxical, but does Isaiah find that paradoxical? Does Isaiah indicate that these two truths are in tension with each other? Does Isaiah say that we need to limit divine sovereignty to make room for human accountability?
Blomberg is a skilled, experienced exegete. As such, he surely recognizes the need to distinguish between the mind of the author and the mind of the reader. The fact that some reader may (or may not) find this paradoxical doesn’t mean Isaiah intended the reader to come away with that impression. Is that any part of what Isaiah is trying to convey in this passage? Did he mean this passage to be paradoxical? Or does it simply have that effect on certain readers, given their extraneous preconceptions?
For example, when a ufologist reads Ezk 1, he takes this to be a description of a flying saucer. He comes to the passage with those cultural categories and expectations. As a result, the ufologist is filtering the passage through an artificial grid.
“But perhaps the text that says it best of all is the first one in the canonical sequence, Genesis 50:20, quote above. Joseph has been reunited with his brothers, but now that their father is dead they fear that Joseph may at last exact vengeance on them. Joseph allays their fears by explaining that he understands that God had different, good purposes in mind with their action of selling him into slavery in Egypt, even though their purposes were evil. Two separate agents, two separate wills, at cross purposes with each other, neither described as logically or chronologically prior to the other. Neither is said to cause the other; they occur simultaneously.”
That interpretation cuts against the grain of the narrative arc. Gen 50:20 represents the long-range fulfillment of a prophet dream which took place at the onset of the cycle. Gen 50:20 completes the cycle.
Because his brothers resented the dream, they tried to thwart the prophetic outcome by selling their brother into slavery. The point of the intervening narrative is to underscore the providence of God. Their attempt to advert the outcome is, unwittingly, the very means by which the outcome is realized.
They intend one thing, God intends the opposite. Yet their actions are unintentionally instrumental in achieving the outcome which God intended all along.
As such, their will is subordinate to God’s will. Indeed, the very point of the narrative arc is to illustrate the sovereignty of God by showing he how fulfills the prophetic dream he gave to Joseph despite the subversive efforts of his siblings. Unbeknowst to them, that’s precisely the way in which God was going to fulfill his prophetic dream. And that’s the most dramatic way you could underscore the sovereignty of God. God declares the outcome in advance of the fact. God achieves his purpose in spite of human intransigence.
It’s like issuing a challenge. Announce the future. Implicitly dare an individual to prevent it from happening. Then bring it to pass by using his resistance as the unwitting means. His brothers bring it about by trying to hinder it.
Why does Blomberg think this is at odds with Calvinism?
That also highlights one of the ironies that if Joseph's brothers had behaved righteously toward him then the dream would have ended up a false prophecy. Hence, God's plan required human sin in order to come to fruition; something that Arminians have trouble with, even though an even clearer example is Christ's crucifixion.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking my blog seriously enough to give such a detailed response. I will try to respond in kind.
ReplyDeleteYour first four points and three examples are all well taken. That's why I qualified my remarks the way I did and ("doubtful that. . ."); had I been alotted more space, I could have qualified them further. There are multiple reasons why godly, Bible-believing Christians disagree: perhaps Scripture is not as clear on the given topic as on some; perhaps they are using different hermeneutical methods, etc. The sovereignty/responsibility tension (to switch to Don Carson's prefered way of labeling it), however, is so pervasive both throughout Scripture and historical theology and so central to Christian doctrine and assessed so differently by people who share all the other same hermeneutical commitments and other fundamentals of the faith that it is harder for me to see it being accounted for by one of these other explanations. I affirm believers' baptism by immerson, historic premillennialism, and the like, not because I think they are fundamentals of the faith or that Christians who disagree with me are necessarily wrong but because I understand the complexities of the debate and still find myself preferring the views I affirm (and sign a document to that effect annually) over the alternatives. In my ideal doctrinal statement they would not be included.
It's too bad the blog has to accuse me of "lack of clear thinking." That's precisely the kind of problem that afflicts these debates way too much and just sheds more heat than light. I could return the "favor" but that would get us nowhere. Can we agree to ban that kind of language in intramural debates of this kind?
The whole debate about whether the sovereignty/responsibility tension is or is not a paradox is one I have no interest even in entering. That's specifically why I qualified my language with "seemingly," because to the reader it does seem that way in many instances. I was not arguing that it was or wasn't paradoxical, merely using that language to refer to the phenomena in the text I wanted to discuss.
Rest of response in next post. . .
Most of the other concerns in the blog have to do with labels. Of course, you can define Calvinism so as to exclude middle knowledge, including of the compatibilist kind which is what I would adopt. Alvin Plantinga and Terry Tiessen would be surprised, though, to be defined out of the tradition that they affirm. And you can define Arminianism to exclude Bill Craig as too centrist as well, and he, too, would be surprised. The burden of my blog was not to argue that middle knowledge belonged to either camp (to me it obviously doesn't, but some obviously disagree), but rather that it was indeed a middle way. But the fact that people have tried to claim it for their own, on both sides, is precisely what I found an encouraging sign that maybe there is a mediating position that is even more faithful to Scripture than either of the classic, more polarized ones.
ReplyDeleteWhen I speak of a straw man, I mean something that no one or very, very few people have ever adopted or actually believed. In that sense, I've used no straw men, like many do. I did not assert anywhere in the blog that I was stating Calvin's or Arminius' beliefs, merely what a lot of people who have claimed the two traditions those men spawned have believed, rightly or wrongly.
I don't know if middle knowledge is the best solution to our debate or not. It's the best one I've come across at this point in my life after many years of study. Maybe I will yet learn something that makes me take a different position or accept one that I have currently rejected. I do know that it's helped a lot of people think more clearly (!) and Scripturally and encouraged them pastorally, so I think it's worth becoming better known than it currently is. Let's continue to discuss its strengths and weaknesses from a position of epistemic humility, rather than sounding like we know for sure it's right or wrong. If it's not the view we've held, let's not see it as a threat against which we must defend oursleves but an option worth exploring calmly and civilly and then deciding if it has any merit.
The problem I see with the Middle Knowledge hypothesis is that it's a false middle ground in the first place. What I mean is that, sure it SOUNDS like a mediating ground between "sovereignty" and "libertarianism", but that's not actually where the lines are drawn on this issue.
ReplyDeleteThe question is whether salvation is monergistic or synergistic.
And in that regard, if one side is saying "All" is done by God and another side is saying "Part" is done by God, saying, "It's a different kind of Part" doesn't make it "All."
Furthermore, if I am convinced by Scripture (and I am) that salvation is monergistic, then I can't see any meaningful way in which I could view an opposing position as "an option worth exploring" regardless of whether it's done politely. I don't see any synergistic system as worth exploring, because I am convinced monergism is correct. (I daresay that Arminians agree the converse of this. But one cannot simply paper over these starting foundations and pretend that a Christian who believes Scripture teachs X can in any meaningful sense find ~X "worth exploring.")
In other words, I see nothing wrong with Arminians and Calvinists both equally standing firm without willing to compromise on this issue, and I personally believe that that is more intellectually honest then trying to mediate the positions between them. After all, not all mediations are beneficial (to take a simple example: if someone believes murder is okay and someone believes it is wrong, a mediating position that says you can murder every other day is not a position worth exploring).
BTW: one consequence of the monergism/synergism debate is that ANY "mediating" position must, by definition, be synergistic. It will never be monergistic. So in that sense, the Calvinist will always lose in accepting any "mediating" position.
How exactly is it that God would know what libertarian creatures would do in certain circumstances? All things being the same, in order for them to be free, they've got at least two options. How does he know which one?
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reason Scripture teaches both Divine sovereignty and human responsibility is because it denies the Arminian view of free-will, LFW.
ReplyDeleteSteven asked:
ReplyDelete---
How exactly is it that God would know what libertarian creatures would do in certain circumstances?
---
The assumption is that God knows all possibilities, and if it is a "genuine" "free" "choice" then all possibilities would obtain in SOME alternate/possible universe.
I personally see that as little different than the multi-verse notion, with the exception that Christian philosophers would typically say that God only selects ONE sequence to actually come about, whereas physicists would say that all the multi-verses exist somewhere, etc.
Of course, Steve and Paul have both addressed many of the problems with Christians who hold to God selecting such universes or possibilities or however you want to word it.
I would add, though, that the question you raised is still one exploited by Open Theists against Libertarians to great effect.
"Alvin Plantinga and Terry Tiessen would be surprised, though, to be defined out of the tradition that they affirm."
ReplyDeleteI know Tiessen's not surprised about this. Unhappy, perhaps, but not surprised. I'm not sure about Plantinga.
I remember hearing Alvin Plantinga say, in a recent lecture he had at the University of Tennessee with Richard Gale, that hell is not necessarily the sort of place that a person would have to stay in forever. He also said that some Calvinists believe that, and that he was himself a Calvinist.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he's a Calvinist, though.
Is Plantinga a Calvinist? Just checking around the web it doesn't exactly seem so. Just check out Jeremy's comments on meeting Plantinga, for example.
ReplyDeleteI've lost all respect for Bill Craig upon hearing his conflation of hyper-Calvinism with Calvinism. He might be a philosopher and not a theologian, but I'd expect a philosopher of his stature to be more careful. Also, his stating that Roman Catholicism isn't any different than the contrast between Baptists and Presbyterians.
And if Bill Craig is an actual Arminian then he should not continue being a Southern Baptist, IMO.
There is (atleast) one thing about Molinism that I can't figure out. If God's possibilities of which world He actualizes are essentially infinite, then why aren't all people saved?
Mark: perhaps some people have "transworld depravity" and no matter what possible world they are in, they refuse to believe in Christ. But aren't they acting necessarily if they do it in every possible world?
ReplyDeleteSteven,
ReplyDeleteThat's another one of my problems. What does God's grace actually do in one's life if transworld depravity exists in every possible world? This would also mean that some people are infinitely un-savable.
Professor Blomberg might also like to look at these 2 blog posts:
ReplyDelete(1) Blomberg at DC posted in Triablogue.
(2) Is Middle Knowledge Middle Ground posted at Green Baggins.
CRAIG BLOMBERG SAID:
ReplyDelete“The sovereignty/responsibility tension (to switch to Don Carson's preferred way of labeling it), however, is so pervasive both throughout Scripture and historical theology and so central to Christian doctrine and assessed so differently by people who share all the other same hermeneutical commitments and other fundamentals of the faith that it is harder for me to see it being accounted for by one of these other explanations.”
To some extent that’s because it conflicts with facile human intuitions. It is, however, important to distinguish an intuitive sense that sovereignty/responsibility are paradoxical from the claim that Scripture endorses that intuitive impression.
“I affirm believers' baptism by immersion, historic premillennialism, and the like, not because I think they are fundamentals of the faith or that Christians who disagree with me are necessarily wrong…”
But the question at issue, as you chose to frame the issue, is whether disagreement between godly, Bible-believing Christians is an indicator that neither one of two opposing positions is completely faithful to Scripture. But you yourself wouldn’t subscribe to credobaptism or historic premillennialism unless you thought those positions were completely faithful to Scripture.
“It's too bad the blog has to accuse me of ‘lack of clear thinking.’ That's precisely the kind of problem that afflicts these debates way too much and just sheds more heat than light. I could return the ‘favor’ but that would get us nowhere. Can we agree to ban that kind of language in intramural debates of this kind?”
You were the one who raised the issue of why godly, Bible-believing Christians take different positions on the relation between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. As a general matter, one reason people may disagree on an issue is a lack of clear thinking by one or more parties. Surely you’ve encountered that with your students in your teaching career. Are you saying that we should peremptorily ban a possible answer to the question you raised?
I’d add that it’s quite possible for the same individual to be very clear on some issues, but not on others. That can vary with aptitude, training, the amount of attention we give to different issues, &c.
“The whole debate about whether the sovereignty/responsibility tension is or is not a paradox is one I have no interest even in entering. That's specifically why I qualified my language with ‘seemingly,’ because to the reader it does seem that way in many instances. I was not arguing that it was or wasn't paradoxical, merely using that language to refer to the phenomena in the text I wanted to discuss.”
ReplyDeleteSorry, but that doesn’t make any sense to me. You were proposing Molinism as a mediating position to relieve the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility while preserving the best elements of Calvinism and Arminianism. If, however, you now distance yourself from that whole debate, then why propose this harmonization in the first place?
“Most of the other concerns in the blog have to do with labels.”
I discuss labels because you discuss labels. You framed your discussed in terms of two labeled positions. I’m merely answering you on your own terms.
“Of course, you can define Calvinism so as to exclude middle knowledge, including of the compatibilist kind which is what I would adopt.”
If you subscribe to compatibilism, then you don’t need Molinism. If you subscribe to compatibilism, then that already harmonizes divine sovereignty with human responsibility. Moreover, compatibilism is perfectly consistent with divine omniscience. So a mediating position is superfluous at that point.
“Alvin Plantinga and Terry Tiessen would be surprised, though, to be defined out of the tradition that they affirm.”
i) Tiessen has retracted his position.
ii) You set up a contrast between Calvinism and Arminianism. These represent two extremes along the theological spectrum. You then offered Molinism as a mediating position. If, however, you’re going to use a very elastic definition of “Calvinism,” then there’s nothing left to mediate. You’ve already softened the contrast by defining “Calvinism” so flexibly. Unless Calvinism and Arminianism are opposing positions, what is there to finesse?
iii) You yourself defined “Calvinism” as “pure five-point Calvinism.” Is Plantinga a pure five-point Calvinist? If not, then he doesn’t fit your own definition.
iv) Put another way, does Plantinga subscribe to the canons of Dordt?
v) Contemporary examples of prominent Calvinists would include Roger Nicole, John Frame, and Paul Helm.
“And you can define Arminianism to exclude Bill Craig as too centrist as well, and he, too, would be surprised.”
I didn’t comment on Craig. But since you bring it up, he seems to have an eclectic position. If you want to call him a “centrist,” that’s fine with me.
“…maybe there is a mediating position that is even more faithful to Scripture than either of the classic, more polarized ones.”
ReplyDeleteBut when you put it that way, then you do seem to be entering into the debate over the sovereignty/responsibility tension or paradox.
“When I speak of a straw man, I mean something that no one or very, very few people have ever adopted or actually believed.”
You implied that a Calvinist wants to preserve the Biblical emphasis on divine sovereignty rather than the Biblical emphasis on human responsibility. But no intelligent Calvinist would accept that characterization of his position.
“I don't know if middle knowledge is the best solution to our debate or not. It's the best one I've come across at this point in my life after many years of study. Maybe I will yet learn something that makes me take a different position or accept one that I have currently rejected.”
One of the problems with Molinism is that it fails to solve the problem it raises. It tries to harmonize divine sovereignty with human responsibility. But it simply relocates the (alleged) tension. For example, Jeremy Pierce explains one of the basic problems with Molinism:
http://www.qaya.org/blog/?p=1188#comment-309902
“Let's continue to discuss its strengths and weaknesses from a position of epistemic humility, rather than sounding like we know for sure it's right or wrong. If it's not the view we've held, let's not see it as a threat against which we must defend ourselves but an option worth exploring calmly and civilly and then deciding if it has any merit.”
There are two separate issues here:
i) One is to ascertain the teaching of Scripture.
ii) If, after we determine the teaching of Scripture, it seems to us that the teaching of Scripture is counterintuitive, then we might also explore philosophical resolutions which are consistent with the teaching of Scripture.
That’s a two-step process. And our level of certainty is not necessarily the same for each step.
Another point I've thought of today.
ReplyDeleteIs it not a valid response to Dr. Blomberg to say: “If a moderate position between five-point Calvinism and pure Arminianism were completely faithful to Scripture, it is doubtful that so many Bible-believing, godly evangelical Christians would have wound up in a non-moderate position”?
I mean, if we're going to play "Godly men fall on either side of this issue" then isn't it relevant to point out the paucity of Godly men who fall into the "moderate" position?
It seems to me that Blomberg's argument is very similar to the Pomo argument: "There are so many 'sincere' people who believe opposite things. Surely they all have a valid point to make, but they must all be wrong in their extremes. It's like this: there were these blind-folded men all touching an elephant..."
ReplyDeleteMr. Pike,
ReplyDeleteYou should check out my blog some time.
:-)
-TurretinFan
TF,
ReplyDeleteYeah, I probably should :-D
Blomberg's Calimian position raises it's head again.
ReplyDeletehttp://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_lumpkins/2011/09/calminian-good-biblicist-better-by-peter-lumpkins.html