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Friday, January 27, 2017

Is the lottery sincere?

In Calvinism, doesn't the butcher first determine that you won't like liver, and then offer you liver? That doesn't come across as a sincere offer.

That's a comment on my analogy in this post:


I'd like to respond to it separately, because it has several permutations. 

i) God doesn't directly and individually address the Gospel offer to anyone. It's not like Gabriel appears to every human being. No one's name is on the Gospel offer. It's not a question of God making an offer to people face to face and one by one. Indeed, tens of millions of people never hear the Gospel offer.

So it's not as though God is personally encouraging the reprobate to take him up on the offer. Rather, it's an all-purpose promise that's filtered through second-parties. Preachers and evangelists who don't know who's elect and who's reprobate.

ii) Let's take a comparison. Suppose you buy a lotto ticket. There's an implied promise that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours.

But the machine has no idea who you are. The ticket machine isn't making you an offer. 

iii) Moreover, does every ticket-holder have a chance to win the lotto? Depends on what you mean. The promise is that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours. But every ticket-holder can't have the winning number. In that respect,99.9999% of ticket-holders have no chance of winning, since the vast majority of ticket-holders are bound to have a losing number. By design, the intention of the lottery is to limit the offer or promise to a single winner, to the exclusion of everyone else. Most customers go into the process doomed to lose. Their ticket number predetermines the outcome. Yet we wouldn't say that makes the lotto a scam.  

My point is not that that's a direct parallel to the Gospel offer, but it illustrates the complexities and unspoken assumptions about what makes an offer or a promise a bona fide offer or true promise. 

iv) Let's take a different comparison. Suppose two uncover cops infiltrate the mob. In fact, the two cops are partners.

Suppose the Don discovers that one of the agents is an undercover cop, while he's suspicious of the other agent, but unsure.

So he proposes to test the ultimate loyalties of the suspected agent. He names the agent he knows to be an infiltrator. He then tells the suspected agent to shoot him dead.

He does that to smoke out which side the suspected agent is on. He doesn't expect the suspected agent will kill his partner to maintain his cover. 

v) By the same token, Scripture depicts the atonement as having a twofold purpose. It's designed to save some, but drive others away or expose their ultimately loyalties. Intended to inculpate or aggravate their guilt. For instance:

But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart (Ezk 3:7).

Why does Yahweh send Ezekiel on a mission when he predicts the prophet's failure to win over his audience? Is the futility of the task "insincere"? But it demonstrates how hardhearted they are.

Likewise,

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed” (Lk 2:34).

So the atonement is divisive of by design. Intended to stir up opposition. 

By the same token:

20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (Jn 3:20-21).

39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (Jn 9:39).

37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
40 “He has blinded their eyes
    and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
    and understand with their heart, and turn,
    and I would heal them.” (Jn 12:37-40).

14 comments:

  1. Even if God did address everyone, that wouldn't imply he's encouraging anyone. The offer is a statement of fact. It doesn't imply desire.

    I'm not an expert lottery tickets but I'm not sure even randomly generated tickets can't be duplicated by other randomly generated tickets. Maybe not though, but if that weren't the case, then the tickets wouldn't be strictly random. And I'm pretty sure people can choose their lucky numbers. I don't think the system is designed for only one winner. Theoretically, the more winners the more players, therefore, the more revenue. The house gets its fixed split and the winners split the rest is what I thought.

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  2. If the lottery first determines that you will never win (0%) and then offers you a ticket, I think you would call it a scam.

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    1. Doesn't this ignore Steve's first point: "it's not as though God is personally encouraging the reprobate to take him up on the offer." And he stipulates in the analogy that the machine giving out lotto tickets does not represent God handing out offers.

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    2. Distant Cousin

      "If the lottery first determines that you will never win (0%) and then offers you a ticket, I think you would call it a scam."

      That's simplistic. The lottery determines that only one ticket-holder will win. Maybe you're the lucky ticket-holder. But by the same token, the lottery determines that every other ticket-holder will lose.

      I'm just stating the obvious. Do you deny that that's how lotteries work?

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    3. In the lottery, every ticket has a probability (regardless of how small) of winning before the winning numbers are drawn. The drawing determines winners and losers. To my understanding, in Calvinism the winning numbers have been drawn before the tickets are offered. If the State secretly drew the winning numbers and then, after the fact, only offered you a losing ticket, I think you would call the lottery a scam. I don’t think you would say the State made you a sincere offer of you winning the lottery when the outcome of your losing was already predetermined. Thanks for your time. Appreciate your blog.

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    4. Once more, according to a lottery, only one ticket-holder can win. That's predetermined before the tickets are drawn.

      "To my understanding, in Calvinism the winning numbers have been drawn before the tickets are offered."

      Unconditional election is not equivalent to the Gospel offer. Moreover, as I already said, I wasn't using the lottery example as a direct illustration of the Gospel offer, but to probe the principle of what it means for something to be a true promise or bona fide offer. That can be complicated. Therefore, you've now redirected the analogy to illustrate something I explicitly said was not the intended analogy.

      "If the State secretly drew the winning numbers and then, after the fact, only offered you a losing ticket, I think you would call the lottery a scam."

      That's because you've modified the analogy. You can't legitimately impute the implications of your different analogy to my original analogy.

      "I don’t think you would say the State made you a sincere offer of you winning the lottery when the outcome of your losing was already predetermined."

      That's because you just did a bait-n-switch, where you swapped out my analogy, swapped in a different analogy, then act as though they're equivalent. Nice sleight-of-hand, but irrelevant.

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    5. What about this...the lottery determines that EVERY ticket holder will win, but some ticket holders can't see the value of the ticket, or don't believe that every one is a winner, and so they throw theirs away.

      Others, however, are shown both the value of the tickets, and how they are all guaranteed to win, by the creator of the lottery himself, and so they keep theirs.

      Like all analogies, it's gonna fail at some points, but that matches both my experience and what I see in the bible.

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  3. Distant Cousin,

    It would be a scam if you were not allowed to pick your number according to your own volition. Or if the ticket numbers were randomly generated, it would be a scam if the system used different algorithms to generate your ticket than it did winning tickets. At the very least, you could even offer to buy at a premium any other potential winning ticket from winners prior to the drawing. In a word, it would only be a scam if you were *prevented* from doing what you wanted and the system behaved mathematically differently toward you. Those sorts of things would make it a rigged game.

    At any rate, you don't seem interested in putting forth serious objections. You just seem to enjoy making what you think to be clever remarks. At any rate, you still have this with which to contend.
    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/01/chopped-liver.html?showComment=1485549643594&m=1#c8969247397811794717

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  4. Hmm..."God doesn't directly and individually address the gospel to anyone"...so, that thing God did in Jesus who came, personally, and dealt with individuals with the gospel, that wasn't God?

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    1. Is that your attempt to be cute? To begin with, Jesus generally preaches to large crowds, so it's not individualized. And while Jesus sometimes deals with individuals, that often in situations that have nothing to do with the Gospel offer, per se. It may be performing a miracle or exorcism. Or responding to a question. Of course, Jesus would be in position to know who will respond and who won't. So that's hardly analogous to mass evangelism.

      Which brings us to the larger point that in 2000 years of church history, God doesn't directly evangelize people. Rather, it's preachers and missionaries who do that.

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  5. Is that your attempt at being disparaging because you neglected to consider this?

    Look Steve, it is written with a literary prefix and suffix to help communicate the astonishment of your claim in light of the earthly and quite personal ministry of Christ.

    This distinction you are making is not only theologically dubious but assumes further, exhaustive knowledge of all Christ did and said when we know John said that Jesus did many other things and the whole world would not have room for books were they written about them.

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    1. I notice that you conveniently blew past by counterevidence.

      And are you saying that Jesus personally appears to every human being?

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  6. Yes, I actually prefer to take positions for which we have evidence, rather than taking positions for the evidence is nonexistent. Sure, Jesus did things we don't know about. That's the point.

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