Mighty Mouse Returns

“Steve Hays attempts to respond to my pointing out a rather obvious fallacy in his reasoning; namely, he tries to make the case that God is being cruel if He lets a believer fall away.”

No, that wasn’t my argument. Thibo can’t follow the argument. This was my argument: given the nature of Arminian attacks on Reformed theism (viz. the Calvinist God is “cruel,” “monstrous,” “bloodthirsty,” &c.), the Arminian charge rebounds on Arminian theism.

And I didn’t merely argue that God “lets” a believer fall away. What I argued, rather, is that when the Arminian deity saves a would-be apostate, he knows in advance that by saving him, the would-be apostate will be worse off in the long run that if he never saved him in the first place.

“For anyone who bothers to read, notice that I first show how charges of cruelty don’t fit the Arminian view in that God isn’t making anyone fall.”

This is Thibo’s decoy, to distract the reader’s attention away from the actual argument.

My argument doesn’t depend on God “making” a believer fall. Thibo tries to substitute that contention in lieu of the actual argument because he is impotent to counter the actual argument. My argument takes Arminian freewill for granted.

“This is of course a red herring. I never claimed to be able to reveal God’s purposes behind everything He does or allows; but the issue is whether God is cruel, not why He would create certain people.”

Well, that’s pretty obtuse inasmuch as the two issues are interrelated. God knows that by creating certain people, he will doom them to hell. How is that a loving thing to do? Doesn’t Jesus tell us that it would be preferable for them had they never been born?

“To claim it was a set-up‘ when speaking in terms of those who hate God doesn’t constitute much of an objection.”

Of course, this is a bare denial, not a counterargument. I presented an argument for why that constitutes a set-up.

Thibo also acts as if God has to play the hand he’s been dealt. As if there’s some higher God, over and above the Arminian deity, who deals the hand which the Arminian deity must play.

But it’s hardly adequate to confine our analysis to how God deals with the apostate after the fact. For the Arminian God foreknew the outcome. The apostate could only lose his salvation because the Arminian deity saved him in the first place. So it’s not as if the Arminian deity is confronted with a fait accompli. Rather, the Arminian deity had a hand in this chain of events.

I said: “If God knew they would fall, He intended the outcome of destroying them.”

Thibo responds: “God does intend to destroy anyone who turns from Him, that doesn’t change the fact that who specifically turns from Him hinges upon the free agents themselves, not God’s decree. Such an execution of justice therefore neither implies necessitation of their damnation by God’s decree, nor gives God pleasure in destroying them, and wouldn’t constitute cruelty for letting them have the results of their own choices.”

We’re back to Thibo’s decoy. Notice how his reply is unresponsive to my statement.

The question at issue is not whether God intends to punish the apostate. Rather, the question at issue is whether God, given his foreknowledge of the consequences of his own actions (viz. in saving the would-be apostate), intended that outcome (viz. the believer’s subsequent apostasy and aggravated guilt).

If God foresaw the outcome, and God’s own action (in saving the would-be apostate) was a necessary condition of the outcome, then God intended the outcome. So, by the logic of Arminian theism, God always intended to do the would-be apostate maximal harm. An actual apostate can only be a prospective apostate in case God saves him in the first place, fully cognizant of the dire consequences to the prospective apostate.

“Of course God doesn’t act in the best interests of those who turn against Him.”

Thibo keeps acting as if the Arminian God is a shortsighted deity, like the Greek gods, who can only deal with each situation as it arises. But the question is not how the Arminian deity deals with the apostate, given his apostasy, but how the Arminian God contributed to that situation. If the Arminian deity foresaw the dire consequences of saving the would-be apostate, but went ahead and saved him anyhow, then the Arminian deity was never acting in the best interests of the apostate. It’s not simply that such a God ceases to act in the best interests of that individual once he fell away. Rather, the Arminian God knowingly elevated that individual to a position from which he could (and would) subsequently fall, and suffer the dire consequences.

“God is more than loving and fair in giving one genuine opportunity to be saved at all, He can’t be rightly called cruel for expelling those who despise Him.”

How does that follow from Arminian premises? In his previous response to me, Thibo admitted that those who fall away from the faith are worse off than if they never came to the faith. Therefore, by saving them, God deliberately exposes them to a greater liability. And unlike the God of open theism, this outcome was never in doubt.

“Not if the one who allows it isn’t under obligation to prevent it… which God isn’t….”

That’s a bare denial, not a refutation.

“If Steve is arguing from my assumptions then how is it ‘diversionary’ to cite the assumptions he’s supposedly arguing from?”

It’s diversionary for Thibo to cite Arminian assumptions as if my argument was at odds with Arminian assumptions, when, it fact, Arminian assumptions were granted for the sake of argument.

“If by ‘toying’ Hays is implying that God shows goodness and mercy to those who love Him, but will show wrath to those who later turn from Him.”

“Who later turn from him.” Once again, Thibo acts as though the Arminian deity can’t think ahead and foresee the consequences of his own actions. He can only deal with situations on the fly. But the question at issue is not merely that God shows his wrath to those who later defect from the faith. Rather, the question at issue is the fact that, on Arminian assumptions, God knowingly and deliberately put them in a position to suffer aggravated guilt and aggravated condemnation by saving them at the outset.

“Then all the term amounts to is a subjectively rhetorical smear against God’s mercy and justice as revealed in the Bible.”

When Arminians are pinned to the wall by their own logic, they resort to quoting Scripture. But that’s another diversion. The question at issue is not the nature of Biblical justice and mercy, but the nature of Arminian justice and mercy. Arminians have no right to quote Scripture in defense of their theology if their theology is implicitly opposed to Scripture.

Arminians have leveled charges against Reformed theism which boomerang against Arminian theism. Thibo’s repeated attempts to deflect attention away from an argument he cannot rebut merely underscores the cogency of the argument against his Arminian position.

“If one reads the ‘morally analogous situation’ Hays came up with, he’ll find that Steve excludes the idea of apostasy itself so he can paint the Almighty as ‘cruel’ for letting the traitor perish. Morally analogous indeed, except of course for the whole moral reason for destroying the apostate to begin with.”

i) I responded to that objection in my previous reply. It’s irrelevant to the question at issue for, Calvinism can (and does) make the same move. Yes, the apostate deserves to be punished. However, that’s a question of justice, not mercy.

So this is another one of Thibo’s decoys. The question I’ve been debating is not whether the Arminian deity is just (which is a separate issue), but whether he is merciful. Is it merciful for the Arminian deity to save those who will lose their salvation, when the Arminian deity knows that by so doing, they will be worse off than if he left them in their unsaved state?

Arminians constantly attack Calvinism because the Calvinist God lacks the attribute of omnibenevolence. By contrast, Arminians assure us that their God loves everybody. But is that logically tenable give the logical implications of Arminian theism?

“Hays conveniently ignores the apostate actually turning from God…”

Thibo conveniently ignores the fact that the apostate actually turning from God was a foreseen consequence of God saving him in the first place.

“I didn’t say ‘saved from hell.’ From the context, it’s quite clear to anyone who grasps the basics of reading comprehension that I was speaking of their being physically saved from Pharaoh, which is analogous to our salvation in Christ.”

To be saved from death is analogous to being saved from damnation? Notice how Thibo trivializes the notion of Christian salvation.

Someone who is saved from death may still face damnation. Converse, someone who dies may go to heaven.

“The same twisted logic he employs that would condemn God as cruel for redeeming a sinner and later cutting him off for rebellion would necessarily have to condemn God as cruel for saving many of the Israelites and later cutting them off for rebellion.”

It would by cruel, by Arminian standards, if by saving the Exodus generation, they were ultimately worse off in the long run.

This isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. Something can be good it its own right, but be harmful over the long haul.

That’s a commonplace of SF movies, where a character travels back into the past to improve the future. The character changes the past. His change is a discrete improvement. But it results in a worse net-effect.

Suppose I see a friend walking home in the rain. I offer him a ride home. If I hadn’t let him hitch a ride home, he would catch pneumonia.

Was that an act of kindness? Was I doing him a favor? Well, offering him a ride home, and thus sparing him a bout of pneumonia, is a good thing in its own right, considered in isolation.

But suppose I foresaw that if he didn’t catch pneumonia, which took him out of play for a week or so, he’d killed the next day in a traffic accident. How does my apparent act of kindness now appear in light of that larger and darker outcome? Is that an act of benevolence or malevolence?

As long as he was laid up in the hospital bed, he wouldn’t die in a traffic accident. He’d recover, and have a normal lifespan.

But by saving him from pneumonia, I actually condemn him to premature death. By my prescient actions I deliberately consign him to a worse fate than if I didn’t give him a ride home.