Blood pact

rogereolson says:

What is your answer to the dilemma about rooster and Peter’s denial (and David’s census as either inspired by God or Satan)?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/10/what-do-i-mean-when-i-say-the-bible-is-trustworthy/comment-page-1/#comment-34135

i) Before I get to that, I’d like to make a general observation about the dog that didn’t bark. Why aren’t Arminian bloggers defending the Bible against Olson’s repeated aspersions? Why don’t they circulate a petition to have him booted off the SEA? Why so quiescent? Why so acquiescent? In post after post, Olson tears down the Bible. Tries to rationalize his impious attack on God’s word. Yet Arminian bloggers continue to push the snooze button. Sleeping dogs that loll around as the burglar ransacks the house.

Is it because the defining motivation for Arminians isn’t devotion to Scripture, but hatred of Calvinism?

It’s as if many Arminians entered into a devil’s pact with Roger Olson. As long as he’s attacking Calvinism, they give him a pass for attacking Scripture. Even if they don’t like it when he attacks the Bible (although I haven’t seen much evidence to that effect), bashing the Bible is the price they pay to have him bash Calvinism. Openly opposing him on the inerrancy of Scripture would violate the terms of their Faustian bargain. Roger keeps the originals, signed in blood, on file. If they renege on the deal, he’ll swing by to collect their indentured souls. Dispatch the hellhounds.

ii) I already addressed his challenge regarding Peter’s denial in another post. What about David’s census?

iii) Why does Olson think the variant accounts of David’s census pose a “dilemma”? On the face of it, there’s a pretty straightforward way of harmonizing the two accounts: we simply distinguish between primary and secondary causes. In Samuel, God is the ulterior cause–while in Chronicles, Satan is the instrumental cause.

Indeed, there are numerous biblical passages in which we see that alternation. God is the ultimate source of whatever happens, but God typically works through intermediate agents or agencies, viz., men, angels, demons, and natural forces.

iv) And this isn’t just an extraneous harmonization which the dreaded “inerrantist” is imposing on the text. The Chronicler himself is glossing the text in Samuel. This is an intertextual commentary on the earlier account.

v) Incidentally, this may also be the way to harmonize Jas 1:13 with various Biblical examples in which God incites people to evil. James may be saying God never “tempts” anyone directly. Rather, he uses intermediaries.

vi) But an Arminian might say that doesn’t solve the problem. For in that event, God would still be morally complicit.

Indeed, there’s a striking parallel between Arminian objections to predestination and 2 Sam 24. Just as Arminians say, how can God condemn what he ordains?–we might just as well ask, how can God condemn David and punish Israel when God himself incited David to conduct the census?

The text itself doesn’t answer that question. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be inconsistent for God to do that. For the cycle of temptation and punishment advances the narrative to the next stage. God is moving the action forward, to his appointed end.

vii) Of course, that doesn’t resolve the moral question of how God can justly condemn something which he himself incited–whether directly or indirectly. And that, in turn, is parallel to what Arminians find so abhorrent about Calvinism. Yet the Biblical narrator doesn’t share their concern.

We can explore philosophical models of freedom, determinism, and responsibility, but that’s after the fact.