Pinning Walls to the wall

I'm going to comment on some statements Arminian philosopher Jerry Walls recently made on his Facebook page:

Jerry Walls Maul, I added the word severely the very first time to preclude the sort of counterexample you give about gum. I'm also inclined to think that scenarios like the one you construct have no plausibility for God, who is not beset with the sort of limitations faced by the father in your scenario.

That's an odd comment. As an Arminian (with strong open theist sympathies to boot), Walls most definite thinks God is beset with severe limitations regarding what he can cajole humans into doing. So isn't he creating a dilemma for himself? If he downplays divine limitations vis-a-vis human free agents, then it's harder for him to draw an invidious contrast between Reformed theism and freewill theism. If, on the other hand, he stresses divine limitations, then he plays into Maul's counterexample. 

Jerry Walls Okay, this could go on all day. Time will indeed tell. I agree that Calvinists have had few philosophically sophisticated adherents. And after they have made their case, I may have write another book down the road. And as for exegesis, well, Calvinism is overwhelmingly a minority position in the church at large. That hardly settles the matter but it is question begging to say you have the edge, (even hands down) in view of that fact. Not to mention that many of the best of today (NT Wright, Witherington, Joel Green, Craig Keener) do not support Calvinism.

It's funny what people say, including smart people like Walls, when their back is pinned to the wall.

Walls is a Wesleyan-Arminian with one foot in open theism. That's a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset. 

Arminianism didn't even exist until the 17C. Wesleyan Arminianism didn't exist until the 18C. And open theism didn't exist until the late 20C. 

Most professing Christians are either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Within Protestantism, you have Lutheran opponents of Arminianism as well as Calvinist. 

By historical indices, isn't Jerry's Wesleyan-Arminianism-cum-open theism overwhelmingly a minority position in the church-at-large?

Also, many of the best Protestant Bible scholars reject Calvinism because they agree with Wesley's starting-point: whatever the Bible means, it can't mean that!

Their moral intuition is choo-choo pulling the caboose of Scripture. 

Moreover, Arminians in academia (unlike Internet apologists) increasingly disregard whatever they find offensive in Scripture. 

Jerry Walls Maul: to be clear, my internal critique is twofold: 1) Calvinists, particularly popular writers, often trade on libertarian freedom by saying things that do not make sense on compatibilist assumptions. So one critique is to push for more consistency on that score. 2) Calvinists often say things about God's love for all people that are inconsistent with their theology. Again, my point is to push for more consistency and encourage Calvinists to admit that on their view God does not love all people, or certainly not in the sense of doing all he can to promote their true flourishing, ie save them.

i) Of course, we'd expect popular writers to be philosophically unsophisticated. Is Austin Fischer philosophically astute?

ii) On the second point, this is part of Jerry's schtick. He acts as if these Calvinists are deliberately mendacious. Lowballing Calvinism to dupe the unsuspecting and sell the product.

It doesn't even seem to occur to him that for Calvinists like Piper, this is a case of theological paradox. On the one hand, they think Scripture teaches reprobation. On the other hand, they think there's a sense in which God loves the reprobate. They sincerely believe Scripture teaches both propositions.

They're perfectly aware of the apparent tension between these two claims, but out of fidelity to their understanding of Scripture, they accept the paradox. 

It's not unusual for Christians, including philosophers and theologians, to accept paradoxical doctrines. For instance, some Arminians admit the metaphysical tension between God's foreknowledge and man's libertarian freedom. They defer to mystery at that point. 

iii) In addition, if we take the position that God can only instantiate one possible world, then it's not hard to see how God might love the reprobate even though he damns them. Yes, he could save them, but each possible world has tradeoffs. 

I'm not saying that's the correct explanation. I incline to a different position. But many Christian philosophers and theologians assume that God can only instantiate one possible world. If that's the case, then, in fact, God could regret the fate of the reprobate. But that's the price of certain otherwise unobtainable goods. 

Ironically, freewill theists like W. L. Craig make similar arguments. 

Can Jerry prove that God is able to instantiate multiple alternate possibilities? 

Jerry Walls And there's really nothing complicated about the universalism question as it relates to Calvinism. Sophisticated Calvinists are moving in that direction because otherwise Calvinism is morally indefensible. But universalism is NOT historic Calvinism and to embrace it is to give up historic Calvinism. 

This is going to be fun:

And there's really nothing complicated about the annihilationism question as it relates to Arminianism. Sophisticated Arminians (e.g. Clark Pinnock, Randal Rauser, I. H. Marshall, Scot McKnight) are moving in that direction because otherwise Arminianism is morally indefensible. But annihilationism is NOT historic Arminianism and to embrace it is to give up historic Arminianism. 

And there's really nothing complicated about the postmortem salvation question as it relates to Arminians. Sophisticated Arminians (e.g. Jerry Walls) are moving in that direction because otherwise Arminianism is morally indefensible. But postmortem salvation is NOT historic Arminianism and to embrace it is to give up historic Arminianism.

And there's really nothing complicated about the open theism question as it relates to Arminianism. Sophisticated Arminians (e.g. Clark Pinnock, Roger Olson, Jerry Walls) are moving in that direction because otherwise Arminianism is morally indefensible. But open theism is NOT historic Arminianism and to embrace it is to give up historic Arminianism.

And there's really nothing complicated about the fallibility of Scripture question as it relates to Arminianism. Sophisticated Arminians (e.g. Randal Rauser, Roger Olson, Bill Arnold) are moving in that direction because otherwise Arminianism is morally indefensible. But the fallibility of Scripture is NOT historic Arminianism and to embrace it is to give up historic Arminianism.

And there's really nothing complicated about the New Perspective on Paul question as it relates to Arminianism. Sophisticated Arminians (e.g. Brian Abasciano) are moving in that direction because otherwise Arminianism is morally indefensible. But the New Perspective on Paul is NOT historic Arminianism and to embrace it is to give up historic Arminianism.

Jerry Walls Well, if you want something authoritative and detailed, see Brian Abasciano's commentary on Romans 9. Or NT Wright or Ben Witherington's commentaries on Romans.

In the past I've interacted with Abasciano and Witherington. But for now, what about Jerry's facile appeal to Wright? 

To my knowledge, Wright views Calvinists, Arminians, and Lutherans as different sides of the same flawed paradigm. The NPP rejects the soteriological, going-to-heaven-when-you-die conception of the Gospel.

Assuming (ex hypothesi) that Wright's interpretation of Rom 9 is correct, that doesn't just falsify Calvinism–it falsifies traditional Arminianism. The NPP rejects the way in which traditional Protestant theology frames the issue. It's giving the wrong answer because it's asking the wrong question. 

Jerry Walls Necessarily if S loves S*, S would not determine S* to do wrong action A and then punish him,let alone severely, for doing A. Any punishment remotely like damnation would be severe. Basic intuitions can hardly be proven most of the time.

Walls is such a sloppy philosopher. Admittedly, this is only Facebook, but where does he ever do better?

His opening sentence contains several distinct propositions that need to be disambiguated and evaluated separately:

i) Is it wrong for S to determine S* to do a wrong action?

ii) Is it wrong for S to punish S* for doing a wrong action that S determined S* to do?

iii) Is it wrong for S to severely punish S* for doing a wrong action that S determined S* to do? 

What's the relationship between (i) and (ii)? Does the (alleged) wrongness of (ii) presuppose the (alleged) wrongness of (i)? Does the (alleged) wrongness of (ii) compound the (alleged) wrongness of (i)?