Neodeism

It’s revealing to study the progression in Arminian apologetics. When they think they can argue from Scripture, they argue from Scripture. That’s the first move.

But then you have Arminians like Jerry Walls, Victor Reppert, and Roger Olson who have a backup plan in case the exegetical arguments fail. If the Bible taught Calvinism, then they’d chuck the Bible. If the Bible taught Calvinism, they’d recant the Christian faith.

Then you have Arminians like Randal Rauser who go them one better: for him, chucking the Bible if it teaches Calvinism isn’t merely a hypothetical escape maneuver. Rather, he’s been putting that contingency plan into effect. He’s been chucking whatever parts of Scripture support Calvinism.

It’s like the old adage of the crooked lawyer: when you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you don’t have either one, attack the witness.

But the strategy is self-defeating. If you don’t think the Bible is a reliable witness to God’s character and intentions, the logical alternative is not to say, “I reject the Bible because I know what God is really like!”

For, absent revelation, you don’t know what God is really like. You’re in no position to say that God is loving, therefore I’ll accept or reject the Bible depending on whether the God of Scripture is loving (as you define it). For you have no independent reason to think that God is loving.

Appealing to natural revelation is counterproductive at that juncture. For the world seems to be quite random in the distribution of weal and woe. The world is full of inscrutable suffering. Arresting disparities. Oftentimes there doesn’t appear to be any discernible pattern or correlation.

We don’t enjoy direct access to the mind of God. Only he can disclose his intentions for the living and the dead.

It’s revealing to see these days what Arminians feel free to attack Calvinists for believing. Rauser doesn’t just attack Calvinists for espousing reprobation. He attacks them for espousing eternal punishment, original sin, the imprecatory psalms, God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, as well as God’s command to execute the Canaanites.

Same thing with Adam Omelianchuk:

Let me grant your claim that Scripture claims that “God has commanded that children be killed and God is good.” IF that is the case, THEN I don’t believe what Scripture teaches…As far as I can tell, this argument is valid. But I do not know any of the premises MORE THAN I know that bludgeoning babies is wrong. Even if I wanted to, I could not change this belief. It is as entrenched in my mind as the belief that I have two hands. You could say I am a moral particularist on this issue. That is, my knowledge judgments concerning how we ought to treat infants, no matter what people group they belong to, overrides any methodological principles that purport to yield moral truth to the contrary. That includes Sola Scriptura.

Does this mean I have jettisoned the Bible altogether? Not necessarily…If I reject [2], at most I reject inerrancy. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is trying to worship a God I believe to be unworthy of worship. I cannot allow my mind to be “transformed” into something that denies the obvious.

http://randalrauser.com/2011/12/singing-the-praises-of-the-imprecatory-psalms/

BTW, I have to remark on Adam’s glib appeal to intuition. Indiscriminate slaughter is common place in human history. Many cultures have done that. So you can’t invoke some universal moral intuition to the contrary.

Rather, what’s typical in human history is a double standard: one standard for the in-group, another standard for the out-group. Historically, kinship dictates social mores.

Increasingly, contemporary Arminians apologists represent a throwback to the 18C Deism:

Deducing the full consequences of Locke’s theory, John Toland (d. 1722), in his Christianity not Mysterious (1696), maintained that the content of revelation must neither contradict nor transcend the dictates of reason. Revelation is not the basis of truth, but only a ” means of information ” by which man may arrive at knowledge, the sanction for which must be found in reason. Primitive Christianity knew nothing of mystery, whose sources are Judaic and Greek, and the original Christian use of the word mysterium conveyed no idea of that which transcended reason. The basis is thus laid for the critical study of early Christianity. Further problems of Biblical criticism and the distinction between the diverse parties in primitive Christianity are advanced in Toland’s Amyntor (1699) and Nazarenus ; or Jewish, Gentile and illahometan Christianity (1718). In like manner, Anthony Collins (d. 1729), in his Discourse of Freethinking (1713), developed the consequences of Locke’s propositions. Revelation depends for its sanction upon its agreement with reason, and what is contrary to reason is not revelation. Practical morality is independent of dogma, which, on the contrary, has been the cause of much evil in the history of the world.

 

Matthew Tindal (d. 1733), in his dialogue Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730), produced the standard text-book of Deism. Proceeding from Locke’s proposition of the identity of the truths of revelation with those of reason, he adduces a new array of arguments in support of that position. The goodness of God, the vast extent of the earth, the long duration of human life on earth render it improbable that only to Jews and Christians was vouchsafed the favor of perceiving truth. We now have brought in the classic example of the three hundred million Chinese who surely could not all be excluded from the truth, and Confucianism begins to be extolled against much that is repugnant and harsh in the Mosaic law. Christianity, to be the truth, must find the substance in all religions; it must be as old as creation. The doctrines of the fall and of original sin can not stand, since it is irrational to believe in the exclusion from the truth of the vast majority of humanity.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/deismeng/

Take another example:

drwayman says:

Dr Rauser – For me, this practice of singing the imprecatory psalms can be quite problematic. There was someone earlier in this thread, or the other thread about this, I can’t find it now, where someone alluded to killing their son like Abraham and hoped that they had the courage to do so if God commanded them.

 

I also remember another conversation I had with a Christian gentleman who said a similar thing, “If God asked me to chop off my daughter’s head, I would do so!”

 

So, when a psalm singing church sings some of the imprecatory psalms, do they insure that children and those who are mentally impaired are absent or otherwise occupied? Do members take the time to explain to these individuals that this is simply language to meditate upon not act upon?

 

I could see a young person with a mental illness, especially one towards a propensity of God talking to him/her, that could leave the service and smash a baby’s skull. When stopped by the police, s/he would say, “I just left my church service where we were singing about smashing baby’s skulls, breaking off people’s teeth and dancing in their blood.”

 

One may that that is pretty far fetched. However, just last week, I put a young man in the hospital for walking around naked. When I asked him why he did so, he said, “God told me to. My name is Isaiah. I am a prophet.” I asked him if he was going to do this for three years, he said, “probably not because it’s gonna get cold.”

 

How do you make such determination? Does your pastor, who has a doctorate in psychoanalysis, interview each person that comes thru the door? Does he do a mental status exam of each person every time? Peoples’ mental states change. Does one have to complete an MMPI or a Hare Psychopathy Scale to attend your church?

http://randalrauser.com/2011/12/singing-the-praises-of-the-imprecatory-psalms/

i) This raises some valid questions concerning religious epistemology, especially for Pentecostalism, but before we get  to the contemporary application, what about the Biblical counterparts?

Imagine Wayman having Isaiah or Abraham involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. Would he do a mental status exam on Abraham? Make him complete an MMPI or a Hare Psychopathy Scale?

ii) What made God’s command to Abraham a test is the fact that it was counterintuitive. It seemed to be unreasonable. It generates a prima facie tension between God’s promise and God’s command. On the one hand is God’s promise–involving a covenant between God and Abraham’s posterity, via Isaac. On the other hand is God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, which apparently revokes the promise.

Some Arminians are taking the position that God never should or never would issue a counterintuitive command. Never give an order that seems to be unreasonable.

Yet that’s what makes the command a test of faith. If the command made sense, that’s why you’d follow the command, and not because you put your trust in God. But because the command is counterintuitive, it requires sheer trust in God to motivate obedience. You just take God’s word for it. 

iii) Wayman’s objection is also nonsensical. It’s futile to tell a madman to stop acting crazy. If you’re sane, you don’t act crazy–and if you’re crazy, you don’t act sanely.

Somebody in his right mind doesn’t need Wayman’s admonition, while somebody out of his mind won’t heed Wayman’s admonition.

Yes, some folks are deluded. They think God speaks to them when he doesn’t. But in the nature of the case, you can’t reason with them. Telling a deluded individual that he’s deluded won’t make him see the light.

Who is Wayman warning? The criminally insane? Good luck with that.

And there’s no point warning individuals who aren’t deluded. They aren’t the problem. So, practically speaking, Wayman’s advice is otiose.

iv) There’s also the question of verification. If the God of Abraham exists, then he can presumably make himself known to Abraham. He made him. He controls his environment. He has direct access to his mind. Such a God is more real to Abraham than Abraham’s memories or sensory perceptions, for Abraham’s memories and sensory perceptions are ultimately the result of God’s creative and providential agency. He can know that God spoke to him better than he can know that there really is an oak tree which corresponds to that sense datum in his field of vision. If the Creator of his mind is deceptive, then there’s no reason to assume his sensory perceptions map onto extramental objects. It would be like those science fiction stories in which telepathic aliens capture human beings and then subject them to convincing hallucinations.

v) That doesn’t mean every ostensible vision or audition from God is veridical. Just that if God exists, there’s no antecedent objection to the possibility of veridical encounters with God.

vi) Abraham occupies a pretty exclusive and unrepeatable position in redemptive history. God made a covenant with Abraham. God has only done that with a half dozen individuals: Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, Christ.

So there’s no presumption that God is going to repeat that exercise with someone else. Just the opposite. God isn’t making any more covenants.

vii) Unbelievers sometimes ask, tauntingly, if you or I would do the same thing in Abraham’s situation. But this counterfactual invites a counter-counterfactual: if we wouldn’t do the same thing, then God wouldn’t command us to do it in the first place. We wouldn’t find ourselves in that situation. God wouldn’t choose us to play that particular role.

viii) The command that God gave to Isaiah had a specific rationale (Isa 20:3-4). It’s not repeatable.