Thursday, August 20, 2009

Not a chance in hell

Arminians view Arminian theology has more loving than Reformed theology. According to Reformed theology, the damned never had a chance. But according to Arminian theology, so we’re told, everyone has a chance to go to heaven. Christ died for everyone, and the Holy Spirit confers sufficient grace on everyone–sufficient for everyone to either believe or disbelieve the gospel. That supposedly makes Arminianism fairer than Calvinism. Everyone has an equal shot, an equal opportunity.

However, that’s an illusion–even on Arminian grounds. In Arminian theology, God foreknows who will believe the gospel and who will disbelieve the gospel. And God creates everyone fully cognizant of that outcome.

Therefore, there is no chance in the slightest that either party will do otherwise. Those whom God has foreknown will believe the gospel have no chance of disbelieving the gospel, while those whom God has foreknown will disbelieve the gospel have no chance of believing the gospel.

Far from giving sinners a chance to avoid hell, when God has advance knowledge of the fact that by creating some individuals, they will reject the gospel, and he creates them anyway, God thereby renders it absolutely certain that they will spend eternity in hell. It’s not as if they have a 50/50 chance of avoiding hell. To the contrary, the outcome is a sure thing. God sealed their doom by creating them–in full light of the outcome. Their fate is a foregone conclusion. Before they were born, their fate was assured.

Now, Arminians, if they like, can still try to argue that this is fairer than Calvinism. But they can’t argue that on the basis of giving everyone a chance to either go to heaven or hell. By the time God made them, and by making them, that’s no longer in the cards.

23 comments:

  1. Doesn't the whole "chance" viewpoint turn the Gospel on it's head? Rather than being the good news that Christ saves sinners fully deserving wrath from God's judgment by taking the punishment due them upon Himself, the Arminian 'gospel' is that we're all neutral parties and God "offers" the 'gospel' and you have to be smart enough, or more spiritual (or something, maybe they can tell us) to grasp it, otherwise it's bad news... hence "conditional election."

    Why exactly do the Arminians who reply here think they're saved where others are not?

    If person A was "offered the Gospel" and believed it, but person B was likewise "offered the Gospel" but rejected it, what was it about person A that caused them to believe?

    What was the actual CONDITION that they met?

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  2. On the other hand, Lockheed, what is "good" news about a gospel which tells someone that Christ only died for a certain group of people, who he may or may not be a member of?

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  3. On the other hand, Dominic, what is "good" news about a gospel which tells someone that even though Christ died for him, he may still be damned?

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  4. You appreciate, I hope, that I'm merely playing the other side in the hope of pointing out that there is not much to be gained from these sorts of subjective questions. Whichever way you look at it, it's possible to find something which can be taken as negative in the presentation of the gospel.

    It's all very well to focus on the action of God in salvation, and have quibbles about the atonement and the extent of human ability, but it seems to me that in Scripture the particular emphasis in presenting the gospel is on the simple necessity to believe in order to be saved. It is good news precisely because all that's required to be saved is to accept the salvation with empty hands.

    Now, I agree that this is only really good news to those who will believe; namely the elect. The gospel is not good news to those in hell. If anything it's the opposite. I suspect this is an obvious truism which escapes many Christians.

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  5. "On the other hand, Lockheed, what is "good" news about a gospel which tells someone that Christ only died for a certain group of people, who he may or may not be a member of?"

    Who tells anyone that Christ died for a certain group who one may or may not be part of? Calvinists certainly don't, rarely does (or should) the extent of atonement come into a evangelistic discussion.

    Where in the Bible is the warrant to tell someone, specifically, "Jesus died for you" as if we're trying to emotionally hog-tie them into the kingdom. "Feel bad, brother, Jesus DIED for you... so you should do something for him."

    No, the Good News is just that, Jesus died for undeserving sinners and his death ACTUALLY SAVES them.

    His death doesn't make it possible for you to further damn yourself, rather, it actually saves. Thus the Calvinist's reason for assurance is in the fact that Christ actually secured the salvation of His people, those whom His Father "chose from the foundation of the world" and gave to him, of whom He will lose none.

    That's fantastic news.

    Whichever way you look at it, it's possible to find something which can be taken as negative in the presentation of the gospel.

    Baloney, just because you're able to cast a viewpoint in a negative light doesn't actually make the viewpoint negative. But the Arminian understanding of things (and this does differ from Arminian to Arminian) is that the reason people are hell bound is PRIMARILY because they rejected Christ.

    The gospel is not good news to those in hell.

    And yet the Arminian viewpoint has Christ dying for and apparently interceding for those same denizens of Hades.

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  6. His death doesn't make it possible for you to further damn yourself

    Huh? Surely you are not saying that failing to believe the gospel is not a sin? The gospel is a command to repent. When one receives a command from God, and fails to obey it, does one not further damn oneself?

    "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." (John 3:18)

    "The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thessalonians 9-12)

    Baloney, just because you're able to cast a viewpoint in a negative light doesn't actually make the viewpoint negative.

    Er, that was my point.

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  7. Knowing something is different than causing something. In Calvinist theology God chooses who will be saved/damned, and thus is the sufficient cause for the eternal destiny of any given person you choose.

    This is not so for the Arminian: even if God's choice to create the world is a necessary condition for someone's eventual eternal destiny, it is not a sufficient one. The creatures choices during their life are needed to fill out the ballot. Essentially, the responsibility in this case should properly be thought to be the creature's.

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  8. Steve said...

    Now, Arminians, if they like, can still try to argue that this is fairer than Calvinism. But they can’t argue that on the basis of giving everyone a chance to either go to heaven or hell. By the time God made them, and by making them, that’s no longer in the cards.


    The Arminian can argue that at least in her view, the reprobate chose their own fate using their libertarian free wills. That's why it's "fair", and why Calvinism is "unfair".

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  9. Phillip M,

    God's knowing that a person will do something is sufficient for that person to do it. You're begging the question by assuming the compatibility of libertarian freedom with foreknowledge. God knows that if he makes you then you will go to hell. Full stop. Once he makes you, your future is set by the conditional he knows. How you get there: luck, libertarian free will, pixie dust, etc., doesn't matter.

    You're also assuming that libertarian free will is some kind of a justification for God to create you knowing you would go to hell if he created you and didin't intervene enough in your life (apparently God knows that if certain things would have been done in a person's like they would have repented, e.g., Luke 10:13). Arminians have far too long got away with the assumption that libertarian free will is some kind of a justification for God's creating you fated (because of his knowledge) for hell. Seems to me if (assuming Arminian logic) God is really the loving Father Arminians make him out to be, then he would do anything, including violating free will, to get you to heaven. I would violate my child's free will and force them to go to an institution to get help if they were suicidal and I knew they would certainly kill themselves. After they are better, and "see the light," their precious libertarian free will could be returned to them. Respecting their free will just aint worth the price. But I guess you'd have to be a father to appreciate that.

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  11. "God's knowing that a person will do something is sufficient for that person to do it."

    Of course, that's not true. God knowing something is sufficient for the certainty that it will happen, but it's not sufficient for actual event, i.e. what God knows is contingent on other things, i.e. human choices.

    And it's an incredible thing to say that it doesn't matter if one winds up in hell because of libertarian free will. You literally think that if I end up condemned I shouldn't conclude, "This is because of what I did in life; this is what I wrought," but rather, "Screw you, God, for allowing me to be in the circumstances where I would choose the wrong thing." Contrarily, it matters immensely that I am an agent who at any given point in time is choosing, with certain background knowledge, how to conduct and order my life. The world is not a neutral place. I am responsible for making it a better place, having good intentions, etc., and that really matters.

    Of course free will is one prior good which factors into the reason why God is justified in creation, along with the many other goods contained in the story of creation. God can be justified also by the fact that an evil soul will allow the formation of a good soul by intervening to stop the actions of the bad soul. Certain situations which contain great intrinsic goods are impossible without moral evil. But this is of course undergirded by the fact that every agent is free to act the best they can in accordance with their circumstances and what they know.

    Which leads us to your point that God should intervene in our lives more, to convince us to choose heaven. However, like I said, I think every person will be judged according to perfect justice, which will be contingent on how they acted given their circumstances and what they knew. It is equally difficult for each person to be saved. It's a great responsibility to be a human, and given there is nothing intrinsically evil about the state of affairs of assuming this responsibility, God is allowed to actualize it and judge the actors according to what each has done. Of course, it means things are more serious and actual than in the case where God just puts everything aright, but there are different kinds of goods, and some involve significant amounts of evil to happen in order to be actualized.

    Basically, the fact that there is no divine causing of the results of people's lives in Arminism at least gets us out of the woods. Allocation of the responsibility becomes a tricky affair - but at least we know it's divided. The alternative is that God assumes total responsibility for the fate of the damned, which is God knowing and causing their condemnation. That's the problem we escape, and there's no theological benefit to offset this gain in the other direction.

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  12. Surely you are not saying that failing to believe the gospel is not a sin?

    Is failing to believe the Gospel a sin that Christ paid for on the cross? ;)

    ...whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
    BECAUSE they're sinners without payment for sin which believing in the Son of God provides. The greater context of Scripture provides since "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God".

    You seem insistent on doing exactly what I stated to begin with. You're turning the Gospel into that which damns.

    so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thessalonians 9-12)

    Looks like the NIV, which is terrible on this occasion. a better rendering of the passage by the NASB provides more adequate confirmation of the rest of Scripture:

    10and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.

    Here again, the Gospel is the solution to their wickedness.

    11For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
    Here is God sending these folks with supposed "free will" a deluding influence to cause them to believe falsehood. (How do you account for that?!) Here again, like in John 3, the reason they're judged is because they didn't believe the truth.

    "Ah ha" I hear you say, but again, remember, they're already condemned because of their sins, failing to believe the message of salvation isn't some greatest sin that Christ's death cannot cover.

    Especially given the fact that for the majority of the past 2000 years, few of all the Earth have actually heard the Gospel. Romans 1 tells us that general revelation is sufficient to condemn them because they've sinned none-the-less.

    Er, that was my point.
    No, your point was that both sides were doing this.

    If that's truly the case then you have to acknowledge that your claims against limited atonement are bogus. Is that what you're saying?

    Again, look at the issue.

    All have sinned and are thus condemned. (Rom 3:23)
    God sends Jesus as the solution to this problem. (John 3:16)
    God makes alive some who then come to believe in Christ by their hearing of the Gospel. (Eph 2:4-10, Romans 10:14-15)

    Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to be indicating this:
    People are innocent or at least neutral.
    God sends Jesus.
    The 'Gospel' is preached.
    Those who are smart enough, or more spiritual, understand it and are saved. Those who don't are damned BECAUSE they weren't smart enough to understand, or spiritual enough to grasp it.

    Can you please explain, clearly where I'm wrong in what I understand to be your view?

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  13. "This is because of what I did in life; this is what I wrought," but rather, "Screw you, God, for allowing me to be in the circumstances where I would choose the wrong thing."

    So basically: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"

    The alternative is that God assumes total responsibility for the fate of the damned, which is God knowing and causing their condemnation.

    Uh... no. The fall is completely missing from your understanding.

    I suggest you consider what Adam's curse was why it applies to everyone on earth.

    Where does the fall fit in to your view at all?

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  14. Phillip cannot show what I said was untrue. I even said how it happens isn't determined by God's knowledge of it. Then Philip comes along and repeats what I said and then says what I said isn't true. Odd. But besides that, Phillip's comment is sufficiently vagu as to demarcate it from Calvinism. He said that God's decree of a thing was sufficient for it to happen. I can respond, "but that's not true, the event's happening is contingent upon certain things, i.e, secondary causes." God is not the only cause, and absent secondary causes his decree would not come about.

    Then in response to my claim that free will is not a sufficient justification for one of God's children to suffer in hell forever, Phillip resorts to incredulity. Again, I don't think God gets off the hook for creating an agent that he knows this conditional about: If I create A, then A will freely reject me and end up in hell. God should have not created A then. Once he did, A had no alternative possibility. As you say, his end was certain. He simply played out the role God knew he would if he had created him and refrained from giving him the evidence he needed. Phillip needs to actually argue for this assumption, which for too long has been simply taken for granted among Christian thinkers. If my child was choosing to kill himself I would intervene and violate his free will. My child's life and happiness is more important that libertarian free will. I would not be consoled by the fact that my child is in the worst place imaginable by simply convincing myself that it was worth it to give him free wil. Again, perhaps Phillip needs to be a father to recognize this point.

    Then, Phillip shows that he needs deny solo Christo and repentence. Instead he appeals to the view that men only need to respond to the light they were give. This simply gives the Calvinist another reason for denying Arminianism.

    Lastly, God is "responsible" in Calvinism and Arminianism. This is obvious. However, the move Phillip needs to make is to show not that God is responsible but that he is culpable. Phillip seems to think that if he knew that his neighbor would kill his wife unless Phillip intervened, then Phillip would be responsible for the death of his neighbor's wife. Apparently Phillip thinks there is some greater good served by God's allowing what would be nothing short of evil and horrible and sinful for a human to allow. The Calvinist can make exactly the same move. He, however, doesn't feel constrained to rationalize it and throw up "free will" as a rather weak and entirely unconvincing justification for, say, allowing 1,000 children to burn alive in a hospital all because a mad man decided to light up the Children's Hospital. Sorry, Phillip, it seems totally obvious to me that the free will defense simply doesn't cut it. This is Victor's main argument against Calvinism turned loose on the Arminian. Call it the Argument from the Trump of the Intuition Pump (AITP). :-)

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  15. PHILIP M SAID:

    “Knowing something is different than causing something.”

    Since that was not a premise of my argument, your objection is irrelevant. I was arguing from Arminian assumptions. Try again.

    “This is not so for the Arminian: even if God's choice to create the world is a necessary condition for someone's eventual eternal destiny, it is not a sufficient one. The creatures choices during their life are needed to fill out the ballot. Essentially, the responsibility in this case should properly be thought to be the creature's.”

    Irrelevant to the point of my post. Reread it and interact with what I actually said.

    “God knowing something is sufficient for the certainty that it will happen.”

    So you’re conceding one of the key arguments I made in my post. Thanks for the confirmation.

    “But it's not sufficient for actual event.”

    I never said it was. In my post, I added that God creates the scenario which he foresees.

    “Which leads us to your point that God should intervene in our lives more, to convince us to choose heaven. However, like I said, I think every person will be judged according to perfect justice, which will be contingent on how they acted given their circumstances and what they knew. It is equally difficult for each person to be saved. It's a great responsibility to be a human, and given there is nothing intrinsically evil about the state of affairs of assuming this responsibility, God is allowed to actualize it and judge the actors according to what each has done.”

    Yet Arminianism prides itself on being more loving than Calvinism. So how is it loving to knowingly create a hellbound sinner? Why not spare him that awful fate by not creating him in the first place?

    “Basically, the fact that there is no divine causing of the results of people's lives in Arminism at least gets us out of the woods. Allocation of the responsibility becomes a tricky affair - but at least we know it's divided. The alternative is that God assumes total responsibility for the fate of the damned, which is God knowing and causing their condemnation.”

    In Arminianism, God both knows and causes their condemnation. He causes the outcome by creating the foreseen outcome–thereby rendering it a dead certainty.

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  16. Dear Steve,

    It's interesting to me that after all the amount that's been written on the issue of foreknowledge and freedom you claim victory on the issue without argumentation.

    Why do you think foreknowledge + creation = no chance?

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  17. GODISMYJUDGE SAID:

    "Why do you think foreknowledge + creation = no chance?"

    You could begin with the reasons I give in this post.

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  18. The Dude,

    All that is needed for a moral actor to be the agent responsible for their eternal fate is that it is contingent upon their free decisions. You don't deny that this is true.

    "Once he did, A had no alternative possibility. As you say, his end was certain."

    Of course, every agent has the possibility of going to heaven or going to hell, given that whether they respond to the normative propositions they are exposed to is contingent upon their decisions.

    And there is nothing wrong about being certain that someone will wind up in hell. There is only something wrong in damning someone when the condemnation is not based on the fact that a person had the possibility of responding rightly to serious normative truths, yet responded wrongly. So, mandating or causing (in a sufficient sense) someone to go to hell is what is morally egregious.

    So A always had the possibility of doing X or ~X, and so his end is only certain, but what it needs to be is determined, i.e. caused by someone other than the agent, for the agent to not be the one responsible for it. It doesn't matter if someone else is responsible for the agent being actual; the agent is the one responsible for responding to what normative propositions he is cognizant of.

    Of course, we recognize this even when a judge is a Christian and the defendant is a Christian. The defendant is guilty, and therefore deserves jail time. The defendant doesn't just say to the judge, "Oh, well it was God's fault that I am even alive. You know this. So I should be let of the hook, and you should just curse God."

    And here it's important to highlight the fact that the word "hell" can't be used to refer to some mental picture of an unfair state of affairs. God is perfectly just and therefore agents who viciously violate their moral duties are condemned to the extent of their wrongdoing. Hell just is a just sentencing. It's not like God just sends people off to some torture cell he bought on ebay, and therefore we can say, now what good father would do that? Rather, this is the exercise of total and complete justice on the entirety of our moral lives.

    The Calvinist can't make this move because he believes that God's decree is a sufficient condition for the actual actions in a person's life. His knowledge is not conditional on a creature's free decisions.

    Of course, saying that you don't find free will a convincing defense does nothing to the fact that we already recognize we are culpable based on our awareness of serious normative propositions. What is so wrong about adding to this the fact that perfect justice will be meted out to us? It simply makes no difference that my existence, in which I violate all of my moral duties consistently, is contingent on someone actualizing my life. That only means they are a necessary condition, and the blame still falls squarely on my shoulders.

    And there isn't any justification for why free will is evil if evil results from it. That's what you have to argue in order to say that God has an obligation to intervene in cases where someone is going to make a wrong decision.

    More evidence isn't what needed; the design of the world is based on the balance needed between evidence such that the serious normative propositions we have to respond to are the crux of our response, rather than mere assent to the fact of God's existence. That is to say, the reality of the moral world is contingent upon us being in a world where we are not coerced into choosing certain actions based on something other than their pure moral content.

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  19. (cont.)

    Anyways, the onus to show that God is culpable falls on your shoulders in the case that agents are given free will. Hand waving it away because you would prefer to violate someone's free will doesn't help me very much; that doesn't tell me why someone who allows the exercise of free decisions which harms the agents performing them is wrong, especially given that the true eventual harm will be completely commensurate with their action. This allows for real values of love and compassion in the world, and that makes free will a prima facie good until you can give an alternative account.

    P.S. It's just one l in Philip. :-)

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  20. Philip,

    Of course in Reformed theology that an agent A's is contingent on their decision to A. God brings about his decrees via secondary causes. So we've not got anywhere. You also simply repeat that free will is compatible with foreknowledge, I didn't see where that was argued. You also assume the faslity of compatibilsm without argument too. I'm also at a loss as to how free will solves anything in regard to the question of God creating an agent that he knows: if I create A, then A will go to hell. Why create A? Once he does so, then A will go to hell. A can do nothing about God's belief, and so does not have the power to do otherwise because A does not have the power to make God's beliefs turn out false. So, you think Reformed theology implies that God's decree that a sinner A is sufficient for the sinner to A, we have historically denied this. You think that PAP holds for some reason because that an agent did A over B was contingent on his decision to A (this is a non-sequitur, though). You assume without argument that no compatibilist account of moral responsibility can be given. And you still do nothing to over turn my intuition that if God knows the condition: S will go to hell if I create him, makes this God any "nicer" than the Calvinist God.

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  21. So what is Hell? A bunch of wicked people acting wickedly?

    What do you suppose is being endured by those in Hell?

    Why does the wrath of God being visited upon a sinner entail?

    You hate the "Hell as torture chamber" analogy. So tell us what it is.

    The more vivid and graphic the description, the better.

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  22. John asks:

    So what is Hell? A bunch of wicked people acting wickedly?

    Hell is a place of perfect justice.

    What do you suppose is being endured by those in Hell?

    Their just desserts.

    Why does the wrath of God being visited upon a sinner entail?

    Why does it entail? Well, cuz they're sinners who have lived sinful lives.

    You hate the "Hell as torture chamber" analogy. So tell us what it is.

    Who says any of us "hate" the analogy? Speaking for myself, I don't hate the analogy, per se. I think it's possible the analogy owes more to, say, Dante Alighieri and Hieronymus Bosch than to the Bible. But that's hardly the same thing as hating the analogy.

    Also, it's possible to take issue with something without at the same time needing to supply an alternative. For example, it's possible to disagree with the theory of evolution without at the same time supplying a counter-theory for a mechanism for the origin and proliferation of life. This is so even for otherwise established truths. For instance, it's possible to argue against the belief that babies come from storks without arguing for babies coming from human sexual reproduction. And so on.

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  23. The Dude,

    I don't have anything especially profound to say about compatibilism. It doesn't seem like a sensical position, but I would have to read more in favor of it for that to actually mean something.

    It does seem that the Arminian is left having to justify creation in some sort of utilitarian fashion. It doesn't make much sense to me, even. But I think it's true that it could possibly make sense, more than I can see the Calvinist account of creation making sense. That's why I consider the Arminian to be 'out of the woods'.

    Foreknowledge and free will - I think a creature's personal identit - the "content" of his soul, as it were - is explanatorily prior to God's ordering of the world. The distinction between knowledge of future events and the causing of them is all I need; that, and the possibility that a creature's individual soul could explain what God knows. There's no incoherence of that, so no reason to think it's not true in the case it seems we have free will and God knows the future.

    That's all I have to say. Thanks for challenging me on what needs to be challenged. :-)

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