Determined to Come Most Freely

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/determined-to-come-most-freely/

A Quick Argument Against Libertarian Calvinism

http://www.proginosko.com/2017/09/a-quick-argument-against-libertarian-calvinism/

When are we justified?

This is a follow-up to my previous post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/05/eternal-justification.html

I was reading Oliver Crisp's sympathetic exposition and analysis of eternal justification in Deviant Calvinism, chap. 2. Although I think eternal justification has an element of truth, the way proponents formulate the position is fundamentally flawed, and Crisp is no improvement. 

1. If God is timeless, and justification is a divine act, then there's a straightforward sense in which justification is eternal. That, however, is misleading without further qualification.

2. God doesn't justify the elect in isolation. Rather, justification is contingent on other factors like faith in Christ and the redemptive death of Christ. Although God has eternally decreed to justify the elect, he has decreed that justification is contingent on other decrees. Within God's plan, there's a teleological relationship between different decrees. Some decreed events are a means by which other decreed events are realized. Although God has decreed to justify the elect, God has also decreed justifying faith, as well as the death of Christ–which provides the moral warrant for justification. He decrees justification in conjunction with other decrees. Justification is not independent act or event, which occurs apart from all other considerations. To the contrary, God has decreed that certain conditions must be met for justification to obtain. Faith in Christ, as well as Christ's sacrificial death, are necessary conditions. 

3. God's eternal decrees include his decree to eventuate the world, the Exodus, the Incarnation, and the Crucifixion. But, of course, that doesn't mean creation, Exodus, Incarnation, and Crucifixion are eternal events. They didn't take place in eternity. Strictly speaking, nothing even happens in eternity: that's a timeless state. Jesus was crucified in time, not eternity.

4. Although God eternally decrees every event, he decrees them to happen in time. He decrees some events to happen before or after other events, in a cause/effect relationship. He timelessly decrees a temporal sequence. You might say it's a delayed effect of the decree. 

5. To say God eternally decreed justification, or that justification, as a divine act, is eternal, doesn't mean the elect are justified before they are born; doesn't mean the elect are justified before they exist. Time and eternal don't range along a common continuum. God's timeless acts or timeless decrees aren't earlier events on a timeline. They aren't events at all.

A divine "act" is a mental act. In this case, a plan or resolve to bring something about. It can't be synchronized or coordinated with the historical process. There's no direct linkage. 

6. Crisp says:

Possession of faith makes no material difference to one's elect status, because it is an effect, not a cause of justification. The act of justification must logically precede the act of faith, whether in time or eternity, for a person must be just in the sight of God before they can be given the gift of faith in God (48).

I don't know if that simply represents Crisp's exposition of the position, or his agreement. The claim itself is puzzling:

i) The syntax in the first sentence is ambiguous. Presumably, he doesn't mean election is the effect of justification; rather, he means faith is the result of justification. 

ii) The act of justification is a timeless divine act whereas the act of faith is a temporal human act. Given the difference in principle, it's unclear how one can logically precede the other. The act of justification belongs to a different domain than the act of faith, so they can't be arranged like points on a common line.

iii) It's unclear what it even means to say the act of justification must enjoy logical priority, whether in time or eternity. At the very least there seems to be a failure to distinguish teleological order from temporal order. 

If, moreover, the act of justification is timeless, then what does it mean to say it must logically precede the act of faith in time? This seems to confound timeless and temporal relations. We can distinguish between the timeless act of justification and its temporal realization.  

iv) Finally, why must a person be just in God's sight before he can be given the gift of faith in God? In Reformed theology, justification is an "alien" righteousness. It presumes that the object of justification is a sinner. The object of justification is personally unrighteous, both before and after he is justified. The object of justification is actually guilty. So how could his innocence or righteousness be a precondition for the gift of faith? 

Deviant atonement

Even if unbelief is dealt with at the cross, according to unlimited atonement, faith is still required for the application of the atonement that has been accomplished. In this case, there is no double-payment objection to answer, because those who are damned have simply not exercised the faith requisite for redemption. Christ dies for their sin, all right–including their unbelief; but if they do not have the faith necessary to have the benefits of his death applied to them, then they suffer the just punishment for their sin regardless. Oliver Crisp, Deviant Calvinism (230). 

So Christ died to redeem unbelievers, who will still be damned because they are unbelievers! That's really ironic. Critics of 5-point Calvinism think it's a travesty of justice. Yet they resort to this Kafkaesque alternative. A divine Catch-22, as if God takes malicious delight in trapping them in this circular predicament. 

Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?

In his recent interview with apostate Dale Tuggy, Oliver Crisp suggests that St. Paul ducks a tough question in Rom 9:19 with a rhetorical riposte in v20. But that's somewhat misleading:

i) To begin with, Paul's audience consists of Christians and Messianic Jews. So an argument from authority is not out of place in that context. 

ii) Paul doesn't merely leave it at that. He sketches an answer in vv21-22 which give an overarching reason. So it's not arbitrary.

iii) But ultimately a question like that is unanswerable within the confines of a pastoral letter. It gets into very intricate issues of morality, modality, and metaphysics. Any detailed answer would be much too technical and time-consuming. 

There's a difference between answers and explanations, in the sense that it's possible to give short answers, but not always possible to give short explanations–such as explaining your answer. It's hard to see how Paul could give a short explanation to that challenge. The issues are too involved. He couldn't give an adequate explanation even if he had one. That would be a treatise unto itself.

iv) Of course, if Paul was a freewill theist, he could easily parry the accusation by stating that we are able to resist God's will. 

v) Moreover, there's no presumption that Paul had even an adequate explanation up his sleeve. Like many other Bible writers, he can only share what's been revealed to him. 

vi) Finally, as a friend of mine commented: how one answers a question will depend in part on what one takes to be the motives behind the question . At a superficial level, Jesus himself 'ducks' some of the questions posed to him.

Oliver Crisp on universalism

In his interview with apostate Dale Tuggy, Oliver Crisp says there are NT passages that seem to press in the direction of universal salvation and other passages that seem to press in the other direction. So there's a kind of tension in the NT concerning which set of data you use to privilege the other.  Do you use the universalistic passages as your control to understand particularistic passages or vice versa? What hermeneutical decision is a work there?

That raises a legitimate question of systematic theological method. What's the proper starting-point? By way of response:

i) The way he frames the alternatives is too generic. If you had some passages which prima facie affirm that all will be saved and other passages which prima facie affirm that some will be saved, you could fold the latter into the former. If all are saved, then that includes some. The whole includes the part. 

ii) However, the Biblical descriptions are more specific. They don't merely say that some will be saved, but that some will not be saved. They don't merely affirm the salvation of some, but disaffirm the salvation of others. So that precludes a facile harmonization in which you simply make the universalistic passages as the frame of reference. For Scripture frames the relation in antithetical terms. 

iii) In addition, although passages which specify the eternal damnation of the lost are not especially numerous, there are many more passages which simply deny that everyone will be saved. Even if a universalist could somehow neutralize the passages which explicitly say the lost will suffer eternal damnation, that wouldn't clear the field for universalism–for you still have all the other passages which deny that everyone will be saved–even if they don't use certain adjectives (e.g. "eternal"). 

iv) Finally, universalism poses a much greater threat or challenge to Arminianism (and variations thereof) than Calvinism. Arminians and universalists quote the same passages to prooftext their respective positions. As such, Calvinists don't have to devise new arguments or new interpretations to refute universalism. Rather, they have ready-made arguments. They can redeploy the preexisting arguments they use in response to Arminians.

Calvinists are used to fielding appeals to universalistic passages. Arminians do that to prooftext universal atonement, universal provision, God's universal redemptive desire. So that's part and parcel of the traditional Calvinist/Arminian debate. 

By contrast, Arminians can't very well deploy the universalistic passages to counter a universalist, for a universalist lays claim to the very same turf. Indeed, a universalist enjoys a certain advantage over an Arminian in that regard, for he can accept the universalistic passages as is, whereas the Arminian must introduce some qualifications. 

Arminians can try to parry the universalist appeal by quoting passages about eschatological judgment. But Calvinists occupy the same ground in that respect. So it's very hard for Arminians to find any prooftexts they don't share with one opposing side or another. 

High-risk parenting

Apostate Dale Tuggy recently interviewed Oliver Crisp on Deviant Calvinism. Towards the end of the interview, Tuggy alluded to a thought-experiment by open theist William Hasker. Tuggy recast this in terms of a magic potion or love pill. 

I will quote and then comment on Hasker's hypothetical:

Imagine yourself, then, as a prospective parent shortly before the birth of your first child. And suppose that someone has offered you the following choice. On the one hand, the child will be one that, without any effort on your part, will always and automatically do and be exactly what you want it to do and be, no more and no less. The child will have no feeling of being constrained or controlled; nevertheless, it will spontaneously carry out your wishes on any and every occasion. Or, on the other hand, you can choose to have a child in the normal fashion, a child that is fully capable of having a will of its own and of resisting your wishes for it, and even of acting against its own best interest. You will have to invest a great deal of effort in the child's education, with good hopes to be sure, but without any advance guarantee of success. And there is the risk, indeed the near-certainty, that the child will inflict on your considerable pain and suffering, as you strive to help the child become all that he or she can be and ought to be. Which would you choose? 

It is my hope that many readers–perhaps even a strong majority–will agree with me in saying that it is far better to accept the challenge of parenting a child with a will of its own, even at the price of pain and possible heartbreak, than to opt for an arrangement in which the child's choices will all really be my choices made for it, its life a pale reflection of mine lived through the child. Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, M. Peterson & R. VanArragon, eds. (Blackwell 2004), 222-23. 

i) To a great extent, the intuitive appeal of that illustration depends on how we cash out the dire alternative. To say "possible heartbreak" or "acting against its own best interests" is very vague. A safe abstraction.  

What if you knew that by not administering the love potion, your daughter would grow up to be a hopeless drug addict? Or that your teenage son would shoot another teenager in the head, causing irreparable brain damage and disability. Not only is there your own heartbreak, but the other set of heartbroken parents–based on what your son did to their son. 

Likewise, if you foreknew that by conceiving a child at that particular moment, you child would become a hopeless drug addict, would you contracept on that occasion? If you foreknew that this is how your son was going to turn out, by ravaging the future of someone else's son, would you even conceive him in the first place? 

ii) Admittedly, Hasker is an open theist. He doesn't believe God knows the future. That, however, complicates the hypothetical. It's not a straightforward comparison between two different outcomes, because in one (crucial) case the outcome is unknown. You can't make a risk assessment. Maybe it will turn out for the best, but maybe it will turn out for the worst. If, with the benefit of hindsight, you could do it all over again, would you? Clearly that depends on how the scenario plays out.  

Parents assume the risk because they don't know how things will work out. For them, it's a choice between parenting or not parenting. If, however, they could foresaw the catastrophic consequences of having that particular child, I expect most of them would opt out. So Hasker's hypothetical is misleading.

iii) Another problem with the comparison, which Crisp touches upon, is the radical disanalogy between the Creator/creature relation and the human parent/child relation. The later distinction is relative and temporary. Human children are supposed to become their parents' equal. Grow up. Become adults. Become physically and psychologically independent of their parents. Human children are, in a significant sense, expected to outgrow their parents. That's a necessary part of the maturation process.

I agree with Hasker that your (grown) child's choices shouldn't really be the choices you made for him. His life shouldn't be a pale reflection of yours lived through him. But that's in large part because a parent's plan for his child's life isn't ipso facto superior to a grown child's plan for his own life. Parents aren't necessarily or even probably wiser than grown children. Their priorities may be askew. At that point we're comparing adults to adults. In both cases, these are short-sighted creatures. 

That's completely different from Calvinism, where God's plan for your life is for the best. Infallibly wise and good.

Admittedly, God doesn't act in the best interests of the reprobate. But in freewill theism (or open theism in particular), a free agent may make the same disastrous choices as the reprobate.  

iv) The theological analogue would be paganism, viz. Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto. Gods begetting gods. 

Mind you, it might be prudent for mother and father gods to give their kids a love pill. That forestalls the danger of their grown children deposing them! No battle of the Titans!  

Libertarian Calvinism?

"Libertarian Calvinism?" by Prof. James Anderson.

A word on Oliver Crisp's "Deviant Calvinism"

http://theologui.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-word-on-oliver-crisps-deviant.html?m=1

Burnt to a Crisp

I'm going to comment on an interview with Oliver Crisp:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/september-web-only/softer-face-of-calvinism.html

There are many tensions in his interview, but one in particular is the tension between ecumenism and the progress of dogma. The progress of dogma is divisive and sectarian rather than ecumenical. The progress of dogma generates increasing theological divergence rather than convergence over time.

The less people are required to agree about, the more they agree. It's easy to agree with the uninterpreted statements in the Apostles' creed. That conceals a lot of latent disagreement. It's easy to agree with the Nicene Creed, because it only covers a few topics.

The Westminster Confession is more sectarian because it covers far more ground. The more theological questions you presume to answer, the more room for disagreement that creates or exposes. 

The progress of dogma begins with many open questions in theology. Over the centuries, more questions are given official answers. There are ever fewer open questions. People takes sides. That's moving apart. 

The catholic creeds of the first few centuries of the church are a secondary tier of norm that witnesses to Scripture. Then we have confessions that represent particular church bodies, like the 39 Articles of Anglicanism—which are very Reformed, I might add—and the Westminster Confession for Presbyterians. Confessions are a third tier of witness, norms that stand under Scripture and the catholic creeds.

I understand that that ranking system is appealing to an ecumenist. But if we're truth-seekers, why would the earliest creeds, the most theologically underdeveloped creeds, outrank later, more theologically reflective creeds?

Or one might end up cherry-picking some things and not others.

What about a different agricultural metaphor? Winnowing the wheat from the chaff?

No one theologian, however important, can trump the voice of the church expressed in the creeds or confessions. 

Are creeds or confessions "the voice of the church"? Creeds and confessions are formulated by a handful of bishops or theologians. They can be appropriated by "the church." Christians can embrace them. But they don't start out as "the voice of the church." They must earn that right. They must be true. A creed can speak on my behalf if it's true. 

But in that respect, a theologian a trump a creed. It just depends on who is right. 

There's no tradition of universalism in Calvinism. No universalism in Reformed confessions. Heck, no Reformed theologians of any note who espouse universalism. 

Perhaps that's why he tries to classify Barth as a Reformed theologian. To use Barth's implicit universalism as a foothold. But that's circular. That begs the question of whether Barth is Reformed.

And tradition aside, reprobation goes to the deep structure of Reformed theology. It's not just a historical accident–like some inherited doctrines. 

Although universal unconditional election is theoretically possible, reprobation concretely demonstrates the unconditionality of election. God doesn't have to save everyone, and he proves it directly by not in fact saving everyone. 

Moreover, this isn't just a question of different possible ways to combine different ideas. There are factual constraints on Calvinism. Calvinism is guided by its understanding of revealed truth. 

Does he mean universalism is compatible with Calvinism because Calvinism has the internal resources to pull it off? If predestination is true, then God can predestine everyone to be saved? (Which would require other adjustments, like universal atonement.)

If so, how does that fit into his libertarian Calvinism?

Finally, yes, all things being equal, God could save everyone. But what if, all things considered, God has objectives which conflict with universal salvation? 

It's not just a matter of extending the scope of election, while leaving everything else intact. There are tradeoffs.

For that matter, why would God predestine the Fall in the first place if he intended to save everyone? 

Two 19th-century Reformed theologians come to mind. The first is William Cunningham, who was a professor at the University of Edinburgh and one of the founding fathers of the Free Church of Scotland. He wrote an important essay on this topic, arguing that the Westminster Confession neither requires nor denies “philosophical determinism,” as he called it. He believed the Confession is conceptually porous on the matter and doesn’t commit its adherents to determinism, though it doesn’t exclude it either.

He's wrong about that. Cunningham was distinguishing between spiritual inability due to original sin, and Edwardian necessitarianism. Edwards isn't just a divine determinist. Arguably, he's a divine necessitarian. 

It isn't just a question of whether humans could do otherwise, but whether God could do otherwise. I think this is related to his appeal to the principle of sufficient reason which he deployed against Arminians. God must have a sufficient reason for what he does. And that means God can't do otherwise. Alternate possibilities aren't live possibilities–even for God.

You have that tension in Leibniz, as well as Aquinas. Cunningham is noncommittal on metaphysical necessity. That's a very strong version of determinism. 

One question is what is he opposing? William Hamilton is one of his foils, whom he quotes:

That man has no will, agency, moral personality of his own, God being the only real agent in every apparent act of His creatures…that the theological scheme of the absolute decrees implies fatalism, pantheism, the negation of a moral governor, as of a moral world (471).

Clearly, to reject that is not to endorse either libertarian freewill or merely partial predestination (pace Crisp).

Cunningham then defines his terms:

The advocates of this doctrine [philosophical necessity] maintain that there is an invariable and necessary connection between men's motives and their volitions,–between objects of desire and pursuit as seen and apprehended by them and all their acts of volition or choice; or that our volitions and choices are invariably determined by the last practical judgment of the understanding.The invariable and necessary influence of motives in determining volitions,–and a  liberty of indifference, combined with a self-determining power in the will itself,–are thus the opposite positions of the contending parties on this question.  The dispute manifestly turns wholly upon a question as to what is the law which regulates those mental processes that result in, or constitute, volitions or choices (484).

Throughout the essays he refers to a "system of necessity" or psychological "laws." He associates philosophical necessity with a regime of psychological laws.

It's an interesting question where that framework comes from. Does that involve a parallel between physics and psychology? Does that involve an extension of Newtonian physics to psychology? Just as there are laws of nature, there are laws of the mind? 

On that model, philosophical necessity suggests that God determines human choices through the mediation of psychological laws. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but in any event, the logical alternative to that framework isn't libertarian freedom. It's not as if "psychological laws" are the only way God could determine human choices. 

Cunningham says:

Predestination implies that the end or result is certain, and that adequate provision has been made for bringing it about. But it does not indicate anything as to what must be the nature of this provision in regard to the different classes of events which are taking place under God's government, including the volitions of rational and responsible beings (509).

Here he distinguishes between what God predetermines and how he brings it about. He's noncommittal on the mode of execution, but not on the scope or inevitability of predestination. 

It [the will] is not emancipated from the influence of God's decrees foreordaining whatever comes to pass. It is not placed beyond the control of HIs providence,–whereby in the execution of His decrees He ever rules and governs all His creatures and all their actions. It is not set free from the operation of those general laws which God has impressed upon man's mental constitution, for directing the exercise of his faculties and regulating his mental processes. But it is set free from the dominion of depravity; and thereby it is exempted from the necessity of willing only what is evil… (521).

Here Cunningham affirms the universality of predestination. Everything is foreordained. Everything comes to pass by God's providence. 

The closest thing Cunningham says which might give Crisp is "wiggle room" is:

The doctrine of necessity, when once established, leads by strict logical sequence to predestination, unless men take refuge in atheism. But it does not seem to follow e converso, that the doctrine of predestination leads necessarily to the doctrine of necessity; as men may hold, that God could certainly execute His decrees and infallibly accomplish His purposes in and by the volitions of men, even though he had not impressed upon their mental constitution the law of necessity, as that by which its processes are regulated and its volitions determined (513).

But that doesn't reject divine determinism. Rather, it's noncommittal on a model of divine determinism based on "law-like" mechanism. 

He does say, two pages earlier, that:

...we think, unwarranted and presumptuous to assert, that even a self-determining power in the will would place it beyond the sphere of the divine control,–would prevent [God]…from superintending and directing all its movements according to the counsel of His own will (511). 

Although taken by itself, a "self-determining power of the will" suggests autonomy, he couches that as a hypothetical position, and even so, he states that in the context of God's ability, even in that hypothetical situation, to control the outcome.  

Cunningham distinguishes lack of freedom due to original sin from lack of freedom due to psychological laws. Although he discusses Edwards, one limitation of his analysis is that his interpretation of Edwardian philosophical necessity doesn't consider another definition of philosophical necessity: the principle of sufficient reason.

However, I don't think commitment to the PSR commits one to metaphysical necessity. At most, God must choose the best provided that there's one best thing to choose. But that seems equivocal. Since not all possible goods are compossible, some possible goods must be sacrificed to achieve other possible goods. In that event it's not clear that there is one best choice. The distinctive goods of one possible world are gained at the loss of other distinctive goods. So God is never confronted with a forced option. 

Back to Crisp:

On one hand, I am concerned about ecumenical theology and the place of Reformed theology relative to other communions within Christianity. But I am also trying to show there is a significant breadth to the Reformed tradition that is often overlooked, that there is more wiggle room than is often perceived.

Ecumenists are such silly people. Every generation has ecumenists. They fail, just like the previous generation.

That's because ecumenical dialogue consists of ecumenists dialoguing with fellow ecumenists. It's circular from start to finish. 

Ecumenists don't really come to agreement. Rather, they wouldn't be ecumenists in the first place unless they were noncommittal on some doctrines. Those are the bargaining chips. That's what they are prepared to give away. Those were always negotiable. Their commitment to ecumenism precommits them to find areas of agreement. Their agreement was a foregone conclusion. So they end where they began. There's no real progress (even if that was a good thing).

Ecumenists remind me of women who knowingly marry philanderers. They think to themselves, "But this time it will be different. He won't cheat on me, because he truly loves me. I'm special. Why, he looked in my eyes and told me that never met anyone like me." Yeah...which is something he says to every woman. 

Take, for example, the Book of Confessions of the PCUSA, my own denomination. 

Well, I'd say he just tipped his hand. 

God and Corn Flakes

One is the question of free will and salvation. Reformed theology is often identified with determinism—the idea that God determines everything, and we don’t really have free choice. From my eating Corn Flakes for breakfast to my having faith in Christ, all of these decisions are determined by God, and if we’re not automatons or robots at least, my decisions are only free in some very minimal sense. Well, historical material suggests there is a broader way of thinking about this within Reformed theology. 

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/september-web-only/softer-face-of-calvinism.html

Critics of predestination use examples like one's choice of cereal to belittle predestination. Does God really predestine what I eat for breakfast? How silly! Surely God has more important things to predestine. He can leave the little choices up to us. 

The problem with that objection is that it's so shortsighted. Small innocuous changes in the present can generate huge changes in the future. In a case/effect world, changing a variable in the past can snowball. 

Corn Flakes is a Kellogg's product. Kellogg's is headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan. That makes it the largest local employer (in Battle Creek). But the primary production center for Corn Flakes is Manchester, England. In the US, corn production is centered in illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Texas. 

Compare that to Wheaties. That's a General Mills' product. General Mills is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota. In the US, white wheat production is centered in Idaho, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Washington.

If more people eat Corn Flakes, that benefits the economies of Battle Creek, Michigan, Manchester, England, and corn-producing states. If, by contrast, more people eat Wheaties, that depresses the the economies of Battle Creek, Michigan, Manchester, England, and corn-producting states, but benefits the economies of Golden Valley, Minnesota and white wheat-producing states.

If Kellogg's is prosperous, that benefits its employees and shareholders. If General Mills is prosperous, that benefits its employees and shareholders. If Kellogg's does better, it can hire more people. If General Mills does better, Kellogg's has to lay people off. 

People usually live within commuting distance of where they work. As a consumer, you will patronize local businesses. The local supermarket will benefit from your presence. And so on and so forth. 

Where you live impacts who you meet and mate with. If you grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan, you will probably have kids by someone else from Michigan. If, by contrast, you grew up in Golden Valley, MInnesota, you will probably have kids by someone else from Minnesota. Same thing with corn and wheat producing states. 

How many people choose Corn Flakes over Wheaties, or vice versa, affects who will or will not be born. It affects where various crimes like murder will occur. If affects where–or whether–you will attend church. That, in turn, can affect whether you go to heaven or hell. 

This generates two diverging timelines. The existence or nonexistence of some humans in relation to other humans who take their place. Increasingly different events the further into the future past changes ramify. Alternate histories. What might seem like a trivial choice in the present has vast, complex consequences down the line–for good and ill. 

Libertarian Calvinism – 3

http://analytictheologye4c5.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/libertarian-calvinism-3/

Tradition or truth?

I'm going to comment on this interview:

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/interview-with-oliver-crisp-and-his-book-deviant-calvinism.php

I have had a serious interest in Reformed history and theology for a long time. In the last decade I've been drawn to marginal or less-well-known figures in the Reformed tradition, and have been writing about them (e.g. William Shedd, John Williamson Nevin, John McLeod Campbell, John Girardeau, John Davenant, Donald Baillie, and so on).

There's a reason for that. Most of them aren't exactly topnotch.  

But there is a constellation of divines who are part of our tradition, and whose work informs and fructifies it, e.g. Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Turretin, Ames, Preston, Owen, Schleiermacher, Edwards, Hodge, Barth, and so on. 

I'm puzzled by why he'd included Schleiermacher. Also, although Barth was in dialogue with Calvinism, he wasn't a Calvinist. Barth has a very idiosyncratic theology. A one-man vision. 

For instance, Huldrych Zwingli believed that we are not culpable for being born with original sin, and that God graciously saves humans who have not heard the name of Christ. 

But, of course, Zwingli was one of the very first Protestants. We'd expect Reformed theology to become more reflective, sophisticated, and internally consistent/developed with the passage of time. 

One of the aims of the book is to challenge some of the ways in which this narrative is sometimes presented--as if there is only one acceptable Reformed view about the ordering of God's decrees, about what God intends in salvation, about the scope of salvation, and about the number of the elect. 

One basic problem with how he frames the issue is his failure to distinguish between how we draw the boundaries of Reformed tradition and how we draw the boundaries of theological truth. Shouldn't our primary concern be with the correct "ordering of God's decrees,  what God intends in salvation, the scope of salvation, and the number of the elect"? Shouldn't our theology aim to match reality? 

I discuss various issues in the neighborhood of these claims. For instance, the worry about eternal justification: is my election and justification eternally decreed so that my change of heart on coming to Christ is merely an epistemic matter, or is such a view inherently antinomian? 

That's confused. As the divine act of a timeless God, justification is, in that respect, eternal. However, God has decreed to effect justification in time. Justification is contingent on faith. 

Or, to take another issue, must those who adopt a Reformed or broadly Augustinian account of the divine decrees hold to the notion that only a tiny remnant of humanity is saved, or is this scheme consistent with universalism, the doctrine that all are saved by the work of Christ?

i) That's a gross false dichotomy. Are these the only two alternatives? Either God saves everyone or else God only saves a "tiny remnant" of humanity? 

ii) Moreover, this isn't just a question of ideas, but truth. Yes, it's antecedently possible for God to save everyone. But the real issue is what God has, in fact, decided to do.   

Are we determined to act as we do by God in every single action we perform, or is the Reformed doctrine of bondage to sin consistent with some robust account of human freedom that, in some instances, includes a notion of alternate possibilities?

That's confused:

i) Spiritual inability due to original sin is different from inability to act contrary to what God predestined. Apart from the fall, it would still be impossible to act contrary to what God predestined.

ii) Reformed theology allows for alternate possibilities, but those are ultimately divine options. 

Finally, is it the case that to be Reformed one must opt for the view that the atonement is particular and definite in scope and intention? 

Again, is he asking how broadly/narrowly we should define Reformed tradition, or what is the true scope and intention of the atonement? 

Helm reviews Crisp

http://www.reformation21.org/shelf-life/deviant-calvinism.php

Muller on “The Breadth Of The Reformed Orthodox Phenomenon”

Just a while ago Steve Hays posted a link to Paul Helm’s brief analysis of Oliver Crisp’s “Deviant Calvinism” on the discussion between “freedom of the will” and “grace” in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

I don’t intend to get into the specifics of that discussion. But in my own reading of Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, I’ve found that Muller has found a tremendous amount of leeway “within the boundaries established by the major national confessions and catechisms of the Reformed churches”, wherein things may legitimately be termed as “Reformed”.

This goes against the grain of some of those who require more narrow boundaries around “the Reformed Confession” – yes, I’m thinking of Scott Clark, especially with regard to some of the things he’s written about John Frame. But yes, Muller paints the “Reformed Orthodox” period with a very broad brush.

Here’s that selection from Muller.

"Deviant Calvinism" and the WCF

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2014/10/freedom-liberty-and-westminster.html

Libertarian Calvinism, Part 2

http://analytictheologye4c5.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/libertarian-calvinism-2/

Deviant Calvinism in review

Paul Manata is currently doing a serial review of Oliver Crisp's new book. Two installments thus far:

http://analytictheologye4c5.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/deviant-calvinism/

http://analytictheologye4c5.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/libertarian-calvinism-1/

Roundtable discussion on analytic theology

Crispianity

I’m going to comment on parts of an interview that’s getting some buzz:

http://exiledpreacher.blogspot.com/2010/05/interview-with-oliver-crisp.html

Crisp gives a number of good answers. I’m not going to comment on what I agree with, since that would be redundant. I’d just be paraphrasing what he said. And he can express himself quite well without me.

Theology that is not done in the service of the Church is seriously defective, in my view. Although I work in a so-called 'secular' university, I am very conscious of the need to address the Church in what I do. I hope that in some small way my own work may be of use to the Church through the trickle-down effect of students of theology and prospective ministerial candidates getting trained in theology and reading the sort of stuff I write. I have taught in both secular and confessional contexts in the UK and North America, and I think effective theological education is of vital importance for the life of the Church. If we want an educated and effective laity, we need an effective and educated clergy to teach them.

I largely agree with this, although I’d add two caveats:

i) I’d actually broaden the vision. I think theology should be done in the service of unbelievers as well as believers. It should have an evangelistic, outward thrust as well as an ecclesiastical, inward thrust.

ii) In principle, theological insights can have practical value even if the theologian wasn’t consciously practical, but just pursuing a line of thought. It’s like spin-offs in math and science, where pure math or scientific speculation is developed without any practical application in view, but the results have an unforeseen practical payoff. Sometimes we can solve a problem better by looking away from it. Because all of reality is interrelated, solutions may not occur to us if we’re too focused on the problem before us, whereas work in apparently independent fields can pay unexpected dividends.

No, I don't. The creedal heritage of the Church is very important. We cast it aside at our peril.

There’s some truth to that. In particular, we shouldn’t clean out the attic and discard the contents without even looking inside the boxes to see what we’re casting aside.

On the other hand, there’s the opposite peril of following the path of least resistance by letting others make all the important decisions for us.

Some evangelicals are very much embedded in the tradition (e.g. some Episcopalians or Lutherans or Presbyterians).

i) And that can be a problem. That can foster an unquestioning, chauvinistic herd-mentality. Let’s not confuse following Christ with following our forbears. Unless we can see Jesus apart from our forebears, we don’t know if they were headed in the right direction.

ii) Different theological traditions present different reading strategies. You can read the Bible with Lutheran spectacles, Anabaptist spectacles, Catholic spectacles, Calvinist spectacles, and so forth. Although we may always be reading the Bible with tinted glasses, it’s useful to try on different glasses, comparing and contrasting one view with another.

 But evangelicals in what we might loosely term 'non-confessional' traditions, such as some baptistic denominations, and charismatic/Pentecostal traditions tend to be less concerned about confessions, thinking they can simply leap over the tradition to Scripture. This is a mistake.

i) As a matter of fact, it is possible to “simply leap over the tradition to Scripture.” That’s the point of the grammatico-historical method.

And this isn’t limited to the exegesis of Scripture. When Crisp studies Jonathan Edwards, I assume he tries to immerse himself in the social and intellectual milieu of Edwards. Likewise, when Crisp studies Barth, I assume he makes allowance for the historical and political situatedness of Barth’s theology.

For that matter, when we read Homer, Dante, or Lady Murasaki, the point is to escape our own cultural mindset and step inside a very different culture. To see the world through a different pair of eyes.

Of course, initially, we bring our own framework to whatever we read. But in the course of reading, it’s possible to put some distance between our hereditary viewpoint and the viewpoint of the narrator. That’s a useful exercise. That provides a valuable contrast to our prereflective assumptions.

ii) In fairness to Crisp, I suspect he has a particular type of individual in mind. The kind of “Bible-only” Christian who’s oblivious to the impact of his own nationality, education, social class, and religious prism on his reading of Scripture. A Christian who’s unconscious of the degree to which his approach to Scripture has already been framed by a tacit, internalized tradition.

It’s important to become self-aware of our operating assumptions. Both confessionalism and “Biblicism” are vulnerable to the bias blind spot.

 We read Scripture in the household of faith, in company with the saints before us, not in isolation from them. And in so doing, we learn from our forebears (from their triumphs and their mistakes). It is folly and hubris to think one can set this great cloud of witnesses to one side in theologizing. Not that I think the fathers and Reformers of the Church trump Scripture. But they help us to understand Scripture better just as a teacher helps the student to understand matters that might be difficult to grasp were the student to be left alone with the class textbook.

Up to a point that’s true, but one-sided.  The household of faith includes the faithful who went before us, as well as those who come after us, as well as those who walk beside us. We can learn from them, but they can learn from us.

At the end of the day, we’re not answerable to our forbears. Rather, we are directly answerable to God.

Because he is a theological titan. I am a critical, but I hope appreciative, reader of Barth. In some ways, I am more sympathetic to Barth than I used to be, though it is sometimes a sort of love-hate relationship! But Barth is a profound theologian by anyone's estimate, and someone worth wrestling with. One is unlikely to find any theologian with whom one concurs on every point of doctrine. Yet great theologians like Augustine or Anselm or Thomas or Calvin or Luther or Edwards or Barth are the sort of thinkers with whom we can engage with fruitful results.

It is very difficult to isolate one voice from the great chorus of those who have gone before us as THE person I would like to meet if I had the chance. But in my top five (and in reverse diachronic order) would be Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury, Augustine of Hippo.

To judge by this answer, Crisp’s methodology isn’t really confessional. He isn’t using the lens of the church’s creedal heritage. Rather, he has a theological meritocracy. A short list of the most intellectually impressive or challenging theologians. He picks out these thinkers to be his sparring partners. He tests his theology against them. Develops his theology in a dialectical conversation with the theological giants. That’s selective rather than collective.

Robin Parry in his book Worshipping Trinity makes this point really well when he says that too many evangelical Christians he speaks to are effectively binitarians, not Trinitarians. Their understanding of the Trinity is borderline heretical.

It’s funny to see a heretical universalist be so judgmental. But I guess the best defense is a good offense.