The imaginary maze

Victor Reppert said...

Quite the contrary, I am trying to get some sense of how Calvinists respond. I am quite sure that all the people who now populate Debunking Christianity introspectively felt sure that the truly believed, and did not expect to leave the fold.

I also indicated that this may not be a problem for Calvinism. It was an inquiry. You are the only one making it an attack.

But I think people who sin grievously, or experience severe doubts, or suffer spiritual failure of various sorts can, if they are Calvinists, come to doubt their own election.

The entire Debunking Christianity site is maintained by people who were Christians and left the fold.

In other words, I take it to be Calvinist doctrine that it is not introspectively obvious whether one has saving faith or not. Loftus, Babinski, and the rest of them over there claim to have had felt as if they truly believed, even though they left the fold later. Anyone could end up "pulling a Loftus" at some future point.

What follows is that no Calvinist can be sure, with respect to any of the promises of God, whether or not they are addressed to them or not. They may or may not be depending on whether God has elected them or not.

This doesn’t follow from the argument that Reppert has given. Perhaps it would follow from a different argument, but not from this one.

The only thing that follows from his argument is that if I have a delusive experience, then I may be self-deluded about my current state of confidence.

But that conclusion would only apply to everyone concerned if everyone had a delusive experience.

As it stands, Reppert’s argument is akin to saying that if anyone has a delusive experience, then no one can have a veridical experience. But that’s obviously fallacious.

Reppert’s argument would only work on the assumption that both the elect and the reprobate have the same psychological experience. Absent that subsidiary argument, his inference is fallacious.

What Reppert, in his muddled way, may be trying to get at, is a different argument, along the lines of:

Some men delusively believe they had a veridical experience. Therefore, even if I had a veridical experience, how can I be sure which group I’m in: the group with a veridical experience, or the group with a delusive experience?

As I’ve often said, this is like saying to yourself, I think I’m sane, but lunatics also think they’re sane, so how can I tell whether or not I’m really sane, and not a lunatic who thinks he’s sane?

We can toy with these ersatz dilemmas, but we’re losing ourselves in a maze of imaginary doubts.