Is the Arminian God a cosmic terrorist?

I’m going to comment on this post:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/04/where-was-god-when-the-fertilizer-plant-exploded/

If what many Christians believe about God is true, then the West, Texas disaster (like every disaster) was actually good–”designed, ordained and governed by God” necessarily means “good” in a Christian worldview.

According to predestination, the explosion was “designed, ordained, and governed by God.” To say it’s good, without further ado, is simplistic.

Something God designs, ordains and governs (the key is ‘designs’) has to be good in the larger scheme of things.

That qualification is more accurate than the first statement. However, it’s still misleading.

It’s not the explosion that’s good. Rather, the explosion contributes to something else that’s good. A good that wouldn’t eventuate apart from the explosion.

This isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. Olson prides himself on being a deep thinker, but he’s really quite shallow.

Suppose I plan to marry my high school sweetheart. We’ve been going steady since junior high.

Suppose she’d killed in a traffic accident during our senior year of high school. I’m devastated. She will always hold a special place in my heart.

Still, I don’t wish to be a childless bachelor for the rest of my life, so I marry another classmate. We have a good marriage. Our kids turn out well.

Does that make the death of my high school sweetheart good? No. Rather, it makes possible an alternate good. It’s not her death that’s good, but the resultant alternative. The alternate good is contingent on the tragedy of her premature demise. My marriage is good. My kids are good. None of that would have happened had I married her.

So we’re dealing with incompossible goods. One set of goods excludes the other set of goods.

Other Christians mean that God is eternally, immutably good in himself and his good character governs what he does. He can’t lie, for example. It’s not that he just chooses not to; he literally can’t because he is truth itself. Whatever God does is good because he is good; he cannot do wrong. However, some who hold this view (“realist” with regard to God’s nature) believe that things we perceive as disasters and evils are designed, ordained and governed by God. To them, the West fertilizer plant explosion (which devastated a nursing home and killed several first responders and injured children and wiped out a large portion of a town) was from God in the sense that it was designed, ordained and governed by God. God didn’t just know it was going to happen and didn’t just permit it; God planned it and wanted it to happen (even if he regretted its necessity) and directly or indirectly caused it.

i) I don’t think God regrets his plan.

ii) Predestination renders the outcome conditionally necessary. Given predestination, the outcome is necessary. But the given is not a necessity. Nothing necessitated God.

iii) How does Olson’s permissive approach exonerate God? Did God permit the explosion because that’s good in the larger scheme of things? Or did God permit the explosion even though there is nothing to mitigate that evil in the larger scheme of things?If the explosion has no redeeming value, then what was God’s justification for allowing it happen? Why does Olson think permission let’s God off the hook?

iv) Apropos (iii), I don’t see that Olson can invoke the freewill defense.

a) I haven’t studied the details of the accident, but presumably the factory exploded because fertilizer is combustible (due to methane gas/ammonium nitrate). Well, it’s not as if God would violate the fertilizer’s freewill by preventing that accident.

b) Suppose human error was a factor. Maybe factory workers were careless about safety protocols. Even if that’s the case, God wouldn’t violate their freewill by preventing the accident. After all, they didn’t intend the accident. It’s not like they sabotaged the plant. Indeed, if they could have foreseen the outcome, they would have taken precautionary measures to avoid the accident. So divine intervention would honor their implicit intentions.

At best, Olson could only invoke the freewill defense if a factory worker deliberately tampered with the equipment. Of course that seems like a rather perverse impediment on divine restraint–where it’s only permissible for God to intervene if the agent did not intend to do harm.

c) Maybe Olson would invoke a natural law theodicy, which he links to the freewill defense. Perhaps he’d say a stable environment with predictable consequences is necessary for making morally responsible choices.

But even if we accept that argument in principle, that has to be balanced against the collateral damage which Olson himself is quick to accentuate: “devastated a nursing home and killed several first responders and injured children and wiped out a large portion of a town.”

Once again, why does Olson think divine permission ipso facto excuses God for letting that happen? Isn’t the very question at issue whether God had good reason to let that happen? To cite divine permission as the justification is circular when it’s divine permission that demands justification. 

Many would say God didn’t cause it because they appeal to secondary causes, but if one asks about it’s ultimate cause they will explain that God is the ultimate cause of whatever happens.

If that’s a problem for Calvinists, then Olson is sitting in the same leaky boat. Isn’t the Arminian God the ultimate cause of that accident? The factory is not a personal agent that willed its self-destruction.

Or take catastrophic accidents due to metal fatigue. Isn’t the Arminian God the ultimate cause? Even if we grant the existence of libertarian freewill, that doesn’t extend to inanimate objects.

Now, to my point about the West, Texas explosion (and all things like it): IF meticulous providence is true (viz., that God designs, ordains and governs whatever happens), then God was orchestrating it and rendering it certain (necessary) for a good purpose.

Agreed. I accept that implication.

What I have found in my (now becoming rather) long life is that many people who say they believe that falter in that belief when they mature and experience really bad things in their own lives–especially happening to loved ones. 

I’ve experienced “really bad things” happen to three of my loved ones. My faith in predestination and providence hasn’t faltered. To the contrary, that’s what makes it bearable: knowing that this is part of God’s wise and benevolent plan. No matter how bleak things seem, that gives you something to hope for.

It’s easier to believe that when it’s not your town, or your race, or your family it happens to.

Olson is such an arrogant, conceited little twit.

But I’ve also noticed that few, if any, of those who believe that actually follow through with that belief.

Unlike Olson, I follow through on my beliefs.

Instead of celebrating what happened because God designed it, ordained it and governed it they express grief and sorrow and regret over it (especially when it happens to someone they know and love or their own town or family or whatever).

That piggybacks on the simplistic way he framed the issue at the outset, which I already corrected.

If I were a believer in meticulous providence, divine determinism (and still a Christian) I would feel duty-bound to thank God for whatever happens.

I do.

I might feel great grief and sorrow, but I would follow through the logic of what I believe and say, publicly, that “This is from God and therefore good and I thank and praise him for it.”

i) We should always thank God for whatever happens.

ii) Of course, people can be overwhelmed by emotion. Does Olson think Arminians are magically exempt from that psychological response?

iii) There’s a difference between praising God and praising an event. The factory is just a thing. The explosion is just a thing. Praise and blame attaches to the personal agents. Events are only praiseworthy or blameworthy by extension. A personification.

I suspect, however, that IF more consistent Calvinists and others who believe in meticulous providence/divine determinism actually did that, many people moving toward that view would turn away. Is that why they don’t? I can only suspect that’s a reason why they don’t. (Some do and I give them credit for it.)

Keep in mind that Olson is an intellectual coward. He picks on the laity. He doesn’t seek out the most sophisticated proponents of Calvinism.

Another reason many don’t is because they know some people would ask them “So what good purpose can you imagine for such a disaster from God?” Of course, they can always appeal to mystery and just say they don’t know. That’s respectable. Still, “inquiring minds want to know” what are some possible reasons why God would design, ordain and govern (render certain, cause, make necessary) something like what happened in West, Texas two days ago. I suspect that deep in the recesses of their minds some believers in meticulous providence who live within a 100 miles radius of West, Texas are thinking it might have something to do with the annual “Czechfest” which is like an “Octoberfest” held in the Czech-settled town. Lots of drinking goes on there. Or they might know something else about the town that they think justifies such an act of God.

The problem with such explanations (and a reason people who think them often draw back from saying them) is that so often, as in West, the brunt of the disaster affects the weak and those trying to help the weak (e.g., nursing home patients and first responders trying to put out the fire). Frankly, to put it bluntly, if meticulous providence is true, God would seem to have bad aim (e.g., the hurricane and flood that devastated much of New Orleans left Bourbon Street in the French Quarter almost untouched!).

He imputes to Calvinists the notion that the only good reason for this accident would be divine judgment, then proceeds to burn the straw man he erected.

Again, though, it’s easy to imagine how disasters have good consequences as well as bad consequences. We’re dealing with alternate futures. Alternate histories.

History is complex. Most events have ripple effects. Change one or more variables, and that will make some things better while making other things worse. This is a popular theme in SF movies, viz. Frequency, Looper, Mr. Nobody, The Butterfly Effect.

So where does a believer in relational sovereignty think God was when the fertilizer plant exploded? Many will simply say “We can’t know–unless God gives a revelation explaining his ‘place’ in it EXCEPT that God was and is there among the suffering offering grace, comfort, strength, pardon, hope.”

It’s a tribute to Olson’s hidebound insularity that he considers that a plausible theodicy.

At best, that’s like a mechanic who knows the factory is going to explode in a few hours, keeps a safe distance, waiting for that to happen, without preventing the accident or even warning anyone, then comforting the survivors after the fact. At worst, that’s like a terrorist who sabotages the factory, then comforts the survivors.