arminian1

I'm going to repost some comments here which I originally posted over at James Anderson's fine blog:

stephennhays

I’d like to make a point about theological method. This got started when an Arminian commenter over at JT’s blog raised some intellectual objections to Piper’s theology of prayer.

If an Arminian is going to raise intellectual objections to the Reformed theology of prayer, then it won’t to for the Arminian to deflect intellectual objections to his own alternative by appealing to God’s immanence, transcendence, or whatever. Intellectual objections cut both ways.

Put another way, if this were a purely exegetical question, then it would be sufficient to do our exegesis and bracket the how-to questions.

However, this debate is not limited to exegetical theology. It spills over into philosophical theology. It involves initial assumptions regarding the nature of time, eternity, agency, causality, possibility, actuality, counterfactuality, retrocausation, truthmakers, &c. These are largely philosophical issues.

For that matter, even terms like divine “transcendence” and “immanence” are linguistic placeholders. When it comes to actually defining divine transcendence, immanence, and their interrelation (e.g. God’s relation to time), we have to compare and contrast specific philosophical models.

Therefore, an appeal to divine omnipotence or whatever to deflect the how-to question won’t do at this juncture. To the extent that this is a philosophical debate, with competing philosophical models, then these models have to stand on their own two feet. They must be plausible and coherent in their own right.

An argument from authority is out of place here, for we’re not dealing with a datum of pure revelation. Rather, many of the key details are underdetermined by revelation.

stephennhays
J.C. Thibodaux

“Answers to prayer are rather the results of God willingly perceiving our prayers within time”

i) In what sense does God “perceive” our prayers? Is “perception” being used in a metaphorical sense? What does this claim literally mean?

ii) In what sense does God “willingly” perceive our prayers? Does this mean that God, through an act of self-limitation, could make himself ignorant of our prayers–but chooses not to?

iii) If answers to prayer are the “result” of “God perceiving” them “within time,” then the divine perception of our prayers is temporally subsequent to our prayers. Likewise, the decision to answer our prayers is subsequent to our prayers–since the decision is contingent on his perception–according to this temporal/perceptual framework.

stephennhays

I’ll venture some comments on Arminian1’s response.

“This is fine, except that James’s examples do not serve as good examples of the sphere of relations we are talking about most specifically, i.e., interpersonal relations. In the case of one person making a request of another, the request can only be a geniune cause if it actually influences the granter of the request to grant the request.”

Of course, that’s a key contention of open theism. Is Arminian1 an open theist? If not, then he needs to explain how he can make a key concession to open theism without capitulating to open theism in toto.

“Or we could use Piper’s definitions.”

Actually, we shouldn’t. That was the starting point for Justin Taylor. But the debate has moved beyond that.

Piper is a preacher and Bible scholar. His definition is a popular definition, not a technical definition. If Arminian1 is going to critique the logical and/or metaphysical coherence of the Reformed doctrine of prayer, then we need to recast the issue in more philosophically stringent terms.

“If God transcends time, that is not to say that he “therefore does not exist in a series of moments”, but that he is not bound by any series of moments. That is, he can exist partially in a series of moments, yet he goes beyond them, is not limited by them, and can also be outside of them. He . . . transcends them.”

That’s an assertion. Arminian1 needs to show how it’s coherent to claim that God can “exist partially in a series of moments, yet also be outside of them.”

“While not necessarily committed to divine temporality, physicist Hugh Ross has shown how God could use extra dimensions (there are at least 11 dimensions that we know of scientifically, and there could be many more) in such a way (see his book Beyond the Cosmos).”

No, science has not shown that there are 11 dimensions to space. That’s merely a postulate of string theory. And string theory is quite controversial. It’s not a well-established theory, like Relativity or quantum mechanics.

“How else are we to speak of God’s decision? Is it not an event? If not, then it never happens, which is to say God never decides, which renders talk of God’s decisions absurd.”

It’s easy to say how else we’re to speak of it. There was never a time when God was undecided.

“It is unwise to base an objection to God’s ability to base his decisions to some extent on the actions of human beings performed in time on one’s view of God’s relationship to time when our understanding is so limited, God is so immense, and there are various models that can conceivably account for this.”

One problem with this statement is that it’s an appeal to mystery. But that cuts both ways. On the one hand, Arminian1 is raising an intellectual objection to the coherence of Reformed theology vis-à-vis prayer. On the other hand, he retreats into mystery to shield the Arminian alternative from rational scrutiny. That’s special pleading. Either both sides can appeal to mystery or else both sides are subject to rational scrutiny.

“I don’t see the problem [i.e. retrocausation]. This is grounded in God’s omnipotence and eternity. God is so great that he can encompass time and eternity and make something like this happen if he so chooses.

Yet he just told us that “it’s unwise to base an objection to God’s ability to base his decisions to some extent on the actions of human beings performed in time on one’s view of God’s relationship to time.”

But if he doesn’t think we know enough about the nature of time, or God’s relationship to time, then, by his own admission, he’s in no position to say that retrocausation is not a problem for his position. He can’t evaluate retrocausation unless he has a working theory on the nature of time.


stephennhays

Arminian1 said “While not necessarily committed to divine temporality, physicist Hugh Ross has shown how God could use extra dimensions (there are at least 11 dimensions that we know of scientifically, and there could be many more) in such a way (see his book Beyond the Cosmos).”

I’ve already commented on one problem with this statement. Now I’ll note two others:

i) Adding extra dimensions to space is irrelevant to the point at issue since the issue concerns the temporal coordinate (God’s relation to time, our relation to time), not the spatial coordinate(s).

ii) To the extent that you spatialize time, you wind up with a block view of time–which results in a closed future rather than an open future. And that, in turn, is antithetical to libertarian freewill.

stephennhays

According to Arminian1, “But all things (that are logically possible) are possible with God, and such [retro]causation appears to be logically possible with him given his ability to transcend time.”

Does Arminian1 think omnipotence can magically resolve the grandfather paradox?

stephennhays

According to Arminian1, “We come yet again to the critical difference between certainty and necessity, a distinction which James acknowledged as valid but thought irrelevant. But just as before, it again turns out to be quite relevant. On this, see see e.g., Robert E. Picirilli, ‘Foreknowledge, Freedom, and the Future’. The logic on this distinction is definitive, which is probably why James accepts it as valid.”

But from my reading, Picirilli’s “definitive” explanation is subject to the same intractable problem as the grounding objection to Molinism.