I’m going to pick up on a point made by one of Rauser’s respondents. Rauser stipulates that God must be “maximally” loving.
Among other issues, this raises the question of how, if at all, Rauser can tell the difference between a God who’s maximally loving and a God who’s not. What empirical evidence would ever count against Rauser’s stipulation that God is (indeed, that God must be) maximally loving?
On the face of it, we inhabit a world that doesn’t appear to be product of a maximally loving God. A world that’s often brutally harsh.
Oh, sure, Rauser can reach into his grab-bag of theodicean strategies. But the plausibility of those strategies must be measured against the initial plausibility of his purely intuitive supposition that God is maximally loving.
So what type of evidence does he allow to count against his intuition? Or is his intuition unfalsifiable?
But if nothing would ever count as evidence against his intuitive claim that God is maximally loving, then what’s the supporting evidence for his claim? If whatever happens is consistent with his claim that God is maximally loving, then what reason is there to believe that God is maximally loving? If God wasn't maximally loving, how would things be any different? How bad do they have to get?
If no matter how bad things get, Rauser sticks to his claim that God is maximally loving, then a maximally loving God becomes evidentially indistinguishable from a maximally unloving God.
Again, keep in mind that Rauser isn’t using an argument from authority. He’s not appealing to divine revelation.
No, this all boils down to Rauser’s personal intuition. Indeed, he deploys that as a check on revelation.
Indeed. Rauser can't have it both ways.
ReplyDeleteEither the same sorts of tests can be applied to his theology as he uses to show that God is not maximally loving under Calvinism...or he has no way of telling if God is less loving under Calvinism than under whatever attenuated leftist universalist Arminianism he holds to.
Steve, it's posts like these that make up the vast majority of reasons I love reading Triablogue. You cut right through the fat and help others of us to see clearly. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteSteve: I posted this on Radal's first post to speak of "maximal love" and never got a response. I have just posted it again on the next post- "Could God be other than maximally loving? Yet another response to Jerry"
ReplyDeleteRandal said: “If God is omnibenevolent (meaning that he desires all creatures to achieve shalom) then it follows necessarily that he would desire that all achieve shalom and thus he would elect all in Christ such that none would be reprobate. Insofar as you deny that this is the case and continue to affirm that some are reprobate you thereby reject the divine omnibenevolence. The question is why?”
The strength of Randal’s argument lies in the apparent obligation of God to save all based on God’s omnibenevolent nature. Randal says: “it follows necessarily” that he would desire that all achieve shalom and thus he would elect all in Christ”. In other words because he is omnibenevolent by nature then he cannot but act according to that nature.
G.K Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy said: “Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature.” I agree.
I will try to be more formal with the proposition.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand” therefore in a perfect nature one facet of that nature cannot militate against another. His omnibenevolence is in harmony with his omnipotence.
This is how it is for the Arminian:
God is omnibenevolent by nature.
The laws of his own nature preclude God from choosing anything that would violate that nature.
Therefore “he would elect all in Christ such that none would be reprobate.”
Now let’s see how it is for the Calvinist:
God is omnipotent by nature.
The laws of his own nature preclude God from choosing anything that would violate that nature.
Therefore he would elect to create a being that could not violate his nature. Libertarian freewill does not exist.
If we concede a limitation in the nature of God with respect to power (so that men are able to refuse God) then it legitimately follows that:
we may concede a limitation in the nature of God with respect to love (so that God is able to refuse men)
If there are good grounds (like sin) to refuse men then God need not save all.
Care to comment?
The notion of God's "omnibenevolence" is a theological innovation:
ReplyDeletehttp://branemrys.blogspot.com/2011/07/omnibenevolence.html
Also, Paul Helm regards the attribute as incoherent:
Nothing greater, nothing better: theological essays on the love of God
2001 - 217 pages
CHAPTER 8 Can God Love the World? PAUL HELM All Christians give great attention to such claims as that God is love, that God loves everyone, and that God ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=080284902