Arminians insist that there’s a crucial moral difference between “causing” or
“determining” evil on the one hand, and permitting evil, on the other hand.
Here’s a
famous case:
He was just an innocent bystander, he says. A bystander who peered over the top of a toilet stall and discovered–in the women’s rest room of a casino on the California-Nevada border–his best friend Jeremy Strohmeyer, 18, struggling with a seven-year-old girl. He tapped his friend’s head, he says, knocking off his hat, but couldn’t get him to stop. So David Cash Jr. decided to take a walk.The scene in front of him could not have been any clearer: a nearly 6-ft.-tall teenager and a little girl who didn’t yet weigh 50 lbs. locked in the stall of the Primadonna Resort casino at 3:47 in the morning. And yet Cash goes for a walk. He says nothing to the security guards. Less than half an hour later, Strohmeyer emerges and tells Cash he has molested and murdered the child.
David Cash was branded a “bad
Samaritan” for his failure to intervene. By the same token, isn’t the Arminian
God a bad Samarian? From an Arminian standpoint, why is David Cash’s
noninterference blameworthy while God’s noninterference praiseworthy?
I am not an Arminian, but I am a serious Lutheran. As you know, we reject both Calvinism and Arminianism.
ReplyDeleteI am puzzled by the post here. Why would the Arminian God be a bad Samaritan? Did he not, in this case, provide David Cash to do the right thing (and David rejected it). Do you think God's noninterference is blameworthy from the Arminian perspective because God doesn't make the first move? But don't Arminians say that he does - i.e. he provides "prevenient grace" - but that they simply don't accept that grace? We Lutherans would simply stick with the language of those persons rejecting God's work in them, analogous to David Cash's rejection of God's work in his life (whether or not he believed).
It seems to me that the Cavinist God can be accused of being a "noninterferer". Even we Lutherans might think this way. For example, in a past post, I said:
"Lutherans believe that God’s Word is “efficacious“, meaning He creates faith in the hearts of people when and where He pleases. But, one may ask, if He really desires *all* people to be saved, why did God allow Judas, whom He chose, to damn himself? Why did He not turn him again (presuming Judas at some point believed), as He did, for example, King David? After all, one may argue, if I have no intention of acting to prevent a murderer from utterly deceiving, maiming and destroying the one I say I love – or if I have no intention of acting to save the one I say I love after they have destroyed themselves – when I am the only one who has the power to do so – what kind of lover would I be? (see I Cor. 13 here)"
See the whole post here:
http://infanttheology.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/millstones-judas-iscariot-and-the-little-ones/
infanttheology
Delete"I am puzzled by the post here. Why would the Arminian God be a bad Samaritan? Did he not, in this case, provide David Cash to do the right thing (and David rejected it). Do you think God's noninterference is blameworthy from the Arminian perspective because God doesn't make the first move? But don't Arminians say that he does - i.e. he provides "prevenient grace" - but that they simply don't accept that grace?"
I'm not using this case as a metaphor for Arminian soteriology. Rather, I'm using it literally as a real life case of evil. Cash was castigated for being a bystander who saw what was happening, but refused to get involved. He saw it happening and he allowed it to happen. The fact that he let his friend do it rather than doing it himself doesn't let him off the hook. He's blameworthy precisely because he allowed it to happen.
By analogy, the Arminian God is the bystander. Indeed, in this very situation, the Arminian God was "in the men's room" (figuratively speaking) alongside Cash. The Arminian God was in effect standing right there, observing Strohmeyer molest and murder the little girl.
Why should Cash violate Strohmeyer's freewill by stopping a crime in progress, but the Arminian God should respect Strohmeyer's freewill?
Arminians constantly act as if merely allowing evil to happen is ipso facto exculpatory. But I'm sure they don't think that excuse exonerates Cash for complicity in the crime.
"It seems to me that the Cavinist God can be accused of being a 'noninterferer.'"
i) Trying to deflect the objection to Calvinism does nothing to salvage Arminianism.
ii) It's not analogous to Calvinism inasmuch as Calvinism doesn't make the distinction between doing (or decreeding) something and allowing it crucial to its theodicy, unlike Arminianism.
iii) Calvinists will also have to address the problem of evil. And I've done that on many occasions.
Was that a true story of rape and murder of the seven year old girl?
ReplyDeleteI am amazed that we as fallen humans try to work these things out especially having received some sense from the Holy Spirit when reading a verse like this one?
Pro 26:2 Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.
When you begin boiling down the reality of that truth uncovered in that verse one could easily conclude Our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a moral monster.
Another things that tends to trip up the hasty is this verse especially when you are wont to see justice done speedily?
Ecc_8:11 Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.
Infanttheology asked:
ReplyDelete---
Did he not, in this case, provide David Cash to do the right thing (and David rejected it).
---
Didn't David Cash provide Jeremy Strohmeyer the option to do the right thing (and Jeremy rejected it by continuing his evil)?
This is pretty straightforward, but I think it's even worse for the Arminian than Steve has indicated in his analogy. After all, David Cash has no connection to the seven-year-old victim so it's more understandable (though not by much) that he would have walked away without doing something. But Arminian theology stipulates the primacy of the love of God for everyone universally, and thus it would be more like Cash watching this happen to his own daughter and doing nothing.
Of course, Arminians can give Cash a reason: "I couldn't step in because that would have violated the natural outcome of Jeremy's choices thus rendering his free will invalid and making it impossible for me to genuinely love him." I'm sure the seven-year-old girl appreciates that kind of love. After all, Cash loved her with that same kind of love. Had SHE been trying to rape and kill someone, he would have stayed out of that too.
Agreed. Notice also that even if some Arminians/non-Calvinists were to actually come out and say, "Yes, it was more moral for Cash to allow Jeremy to carry out his horrific sin than to interfere," that would completely contradict their position that God must preserve free will. The idea is that by permitting evil, evil acts are still guaranteed to happen (given God's foreknowledge), but that's okay because God is preserving the free will of man. But by permitting his friend to carry out his sin, Cash declined to preserve the free will of one of the persons involved- the victim's. One way or the other, the Arminian is stuck. This scenario simply illustrates the fact that someone's free will is going to be lost, whether it's through divine determinism or divine permission.
DeleteAnd, for what it's worth, since children are molested and murdered every day, the Arminian would have to agree that their free will is being taken from them on a regular basis- in which case the free will being respected by God is the predators'. They're then left in the awkward position of realizing that since they already said God lets predators commit sin so that they can have free will, they just made the free will of a predator more important than the free will of a child. Arminians wax indignant at Calvinists when we affirm that such sinful acts are decreed by God for the sake of displaying His glory, but how is it better to say that such sinful acts are permitted because God is so in love with child molestors that he'll allow anything to happen so long as they get their free will?
Steve,
ReplyDeleteHaving a hard time using the comments here...
"I'm not using this case as a metaphor for Arminian soteriology.... Why should Cash violate Strohmeyer's freewill by stopping a crime in progress, but the Arminian God should respect Strohmeyer's freewill?
Hmmm... then isn't the answer that the Arminian God did not respect both Cash's and Strohmeyer's freewill - in that they knew what was right and wrong and that God was telling them both to stop it by whatever means necessary - but that that both rejected God's will?
I mean, that is what I would have to conclude as a serious Lutheran. God provides people as his masks to do the right thing, but these people fail. Otherwise, every time God does not send an angel or use force or something like this, that is not only a proof against the Arminian God, but the God of many of us who do not subscribe to Arminianism.
So how would the Calvinist go about addressing this sensitive question about where God was here?
+Nathan (same guy as first poster)
Nathan Rinne
Delete"Hmmm... then isn't the answer that the Arminian God did not respect both Cash's and Strohmeyer's freewill - in that they knew what was right and wrong and that God was telling them both to stop it by whatever means necessary - but that that both rejected God's will?"
i) To the contrary, Arminians would say that God *did* respect Strohmeyer's freewill by not protecting the victim.
ii) BTW, there's no particular reason to assume Strohmeyer had a conscience. He may be your garden-variety psycho/sociopath.
"Otherwise, every time God does not send an angel or use force or something like this, that is not only a proof against the Arminian God, but the God of many of us who do not subscribe to Arminianism."
Because, as I mentioned before, I'm targeting a specifically libertarian theodicy. A theodicy predicated on an allegedly exculpatory distinction between "causing" something and allowing it. Your attempt to draw a parallel problem for Calvinism (or Lutheranism), given God's nonintervention, is equivocal, for Calvinism doesn't rely on the same distinction. A Reformed theodicy must rely on different explanatory resources.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThanks for explaining your position more. The whole thought process called for here is a bit mind-bending.
"BTW, there's no particular reason to assume Strohmeyer had a conscience."
We can't not have this I think - although yes, it can be tremendously seared to be sure.
"Arminians would say that God *did* respect Strohmeyer's freewill by not protecting the victim."
Again - he sent Cash. If you want to make to talk about the Arminian God just standing by and not getting involved, wouldn't it be better to talk about the young girl who is raped and no other person is around who could stop it?
"Why should Cash violate Strohmeyer's freewill by stopping a crime in progress, but the Arminian God should respect Strohmeyer's freewill?"
Again, would not the Arminian God Himself tell Cash to violate Strohmeyer's freewill?
I'll let you have the last word here.
Nathan Rinne
ReplyDelete"If you want to make to talk about the Arminian God just standing by and not getting involved, wouldn't it be better to talk about the young girl who is raped and no other person is around who could stop it?"
No, it wouldn't, because I'm drawing an analogy between Cash and the Arminian God. Both function as bystanders. Cash is reviled for his failure to forcibly intervene. By parity of logic, why isn't the Arminian God just as culpable (or more so), given the all-important Arminian distinction between causing something to happen and allowing it to happen? Cash allowed it to happen. Logically, Arminians should either condemn Cash and God alike, or exonerate Cash and God alike. If permission is sufficient to exculpate the Arminian God, why is permission insufficient to exculpate Cash?
"Again, would not the Arminian God Himself tell Cash to violate Strohmeyer's freewill?"
If it's okay for Cash to violate Strohmeyer's freewill, then why is it not okay for God to violate his freewill–by taking direct action?