Ponter’s latest gambit:
Let me try to refocus the problem Hays and co., have.
Don’t you just love how he puts that? Couldn’t be that he’s confused. No, we must be confused.
There’s a bit of advice that successful writers give to aspiring writers: If you have a hard time clearly saying what you mean, that’s probably because you don’t have a clear idea of what you mean to say.
Ponter’s constantly evolving definitions and formulations bring that muddle to mind.
We ask the question, “On the supposition that Judas was NDF, how can God’s offer to Judas be sincere?”
We ask that, because we want to know how God can sincerely offer (e.g., salvation, justification, forgiveness of sins, etc etc) to Judas what he does not have for Judas (given that Judas is NDF).
Hays’ answer is: “God’s offer to Judas is sincere, because on the supposition that had he believed, he would have obtained the thing offered.”
We actually do not dispute that.
But that is not an answer to our question. That answer works only on the counter-factual supposition that Judas “believed” (which entails further counter-factual suppositions that he was elected and died-for, after all).
We are asking the question on the factual suppositions that Judas did not believe and that he was not died-for, how can God, for his part, make a sincere offer to Judas?
And we could pose a parallel question: on the factual suppositions that Judas didn’t believe and that he wasn’t elect, regenerate, or redeemed, how can God, for his part, make a sincere offer to Judas?
"We are asking the question on the factual suppositions that Judas did not believe and that he was not died-for, how can God, for his part, make a sincere offer to Judas?"
ReplyDeleteI've answered this a dozen times for Ponter and he hasn't dealt with any of my responses (as far as I can tell).
Moreover, his evolving answers for what must be the case for God to be sincere have met with as-of-yet unanswered counterexamples. To take an easy example, Ponter sometimes says that the offerer must have the "provisions on hand." I've given counterexamples to this, thus showing it's not a necessary constraint. Another example is that the offerer has to be *able* to "give" what was offered, and I've provided counterexamples to this as well. I've done the same for all of his constantly evolving and ad hoc constraints.
So here's the upshot: Ponter can't offer necessary and sufficient conditions for what counts as a sincere offer. Therefore, he cannot properly demarcate an insincere offer from a sincere one. His examples *may* be *sufficient,* but none have been *necessary.* This is a simple point of refutation and Ponter has as of yet to properly respond.
Until he offers necessary conditions which rule out offers on special redemption premises, he logically *cannot* say that, necessarily, God isn't giving a sincere offer. Just because Ponter's provided a *sufficient* condition for a sincere offer doesn't mean he can therefore rule out other offers that don't meat his sufficient condition.
It's sufficient to communicate that I adequately speak english, but it's not necessary *and* it doesn't mean that I haven't communicated if I've spoken in Spanish.
Until Ponter meets this challenge, as well as the other one's we've provided, his posts are all totally unresponsive.