Greater love has no man

From a recent exchange I had on Facebook with a universalist:

You have an undisciplined way of mixing and matching disparate passages. For instance, Jn 15:13 isn't about love in general. To the contrary, it's specifically about selective love: what we do for friends. That stands in implicit contrast to a stranger, passing acquaintance, or even a neighbor.

It's revealing to see how you filter passages through your universalism. Jn 15:13 trades on the fact that friendship is selective. A paradigm-case of selective love. That's why Jesus uses this example, because the connotations are universally accessible. 

We love some people more than others. We love friends more than strangers. Which, btw, doesn't mean we hate strangers. But there are degrees of affection or compassion. 

The whole force of Jn 15:13 lies in the implicit contrast between the special loves one has for friends in comparison to those who don't belong to that inner circle. Jesus is appealing to the universal intuition that we will do things for the sake of a friend that we wouldn't do for anyone else. Indeed, if we did it for everyone, there'd be nothing special about friendship. That would cheapen friendship beyond recognition. 

In fact, the sacrificial love that one is prepared to make on behalf of a friend is a defining mark of friendship, which sets is apart from most other social relations.

"Didn't Jesus lay down His life for everyone—even strangers, passing acquaintances, & neighbors?"

Jesus is using an analogy. Sure, there's a sense in which Jesus dies for strangers. He dies for people who weren't even born at the time of the Crucifixion. He dies for people he didn't know in his lifetime (humanly speaking). 

But that misses the point. He dies for people who are analogous to friends. And that implies selective love.

One of your problems is that you seem to operate with a concordance style associative methodology, where you take a word from one author in one context, take the same word from another author in another context, then use these unrelated passages to interpret each other. So, for instance, you use Rom 12:15 to interpret Rev 21:4. But to begin with, you haven't even established that Rom 12:15 has reference to mourning with mourners in general, rather than Christians mourning with fellow Christians in particular. 

In addition, Rom 12:15 wasn't written with Rev 21:4 in view. Likewise, John didn't have Rom 12:15 in mind when he wrote Rev 21:4. You've introduced an idea into Rev 21:4 from (your interpretation of) Rom 12:15. That idea isn't present in Rev 21:4. You have a habit of importing ideas from one passage into an unrelated passage, then reinterpreting the second passage with that additional frame of reference. But that's illicit.

True love

Freewill theists accuse Calvinism of having a defective view of divine love. Of course, I've discussed this on various occasions, but now I'd like to approach it from a different angle, or at least flesh it out.

I think it's safe to say that every normal person needs to have a least one person in their life who truly loves them. No doubt they'd like to have more than one person who truly loves them, but that's the bare minimum. If they don't have that, they don't have enough to sustain them emotionally. 

And what about the abnormal people? Well, I think they're abnormal because they didn't even have that one person growing up. For some of them, it's too late. They're emotionally stunted or sociopathic.

But over and above that, I think every normal person harbors a deep-seated need to have at least one person in their life who loves them more than he (or she) loves anyone else–be it from a father, mother, or grandmother, brother or sister, husband or wife, son or daughter, best friend, girlfriend, or boyfriend. 

If everyone is special to you, then no one is all that special to you. If no one is more special to you than anyone else, then no one is special. Not really.  

I think most people hunger to be the unrivaled object of affection in at least one person's heart. Hold that uniquely special place, in the inner sanctum of their heart. 

We don't merely want to be loved the same way as everyone else, like interchangeable parts. Whether adding or subtract someone makes no difference. 

There's nothing wrong with equitable love. That has its place. But there's a yearning that will never satisfy. A yearning to be that one person in someone else's life. To occupy the center. 

And that's the stuff of many dramas. Take a drama in which two lovers are threatened by natural disaster. But for whatever reason, his beloved can't leave. Maybe she's too weak or wounded to make the arduous journey. She urges her lover to leave her behind. Save himself. But he refuses. He will stay by her side. He'd never abandon her. If she dies, she won't die alone. They will die together. 

Another variation on this theme is where two lovers are separated when natural disaster strikes. The lover is off in a safe place. It is hazardous for him to go back. But, of course, he does go back to find his beloved. At great personal risk, he repeatedly endangers himself to get back to her–heedless of the perils. 

His beloved is injured. Hanging by a thread. The only thing that keeps her going is her faith in him. She's sure that he is out there, looking for her. She knows what she means to him. He'd never give up on her. He will always come back for her–or die trying. He can't live without her. That's her only hope. 

And, of course, it's reciprocal. She means that to him because he means that to her. They're devoted to each other. Each needs the other to love, and each needs the other to love them back. A tight, unbreakable circle of mutual giving and receiving. Inseparable unless death comes between them. And even then the love remains. 

That's all very romantic, and most of the time it's not very realistic. A dramatic cliche. But it's popular, retold in countless ways, because it taps into a deep and often unrequited longing. An ideal we wish was real. We seek it, whether or not we find it. 

And it would happen more often if situations like that happened more often. It's not just fiction. In many cases, the potential is there if all the circumstances were in place.  

Some lives are strangely linked. You have widowers who die weeks or months after their wife dies. As if marriage became a mutual life support system. When one was disconnected, both died. 

Needless to say, I'm not claiming that's directly analogous to divine love. God loves us without needing us. My point, though, is that "true love" can be very discriminating. The less extensive, the more intensive. That's not the only kind of love. Not necessarily better than another kind of love. But that's a kind of love that people hanker for–more than any other kind of love.  

Ponter's Last At Bat

David Ponter took his last at bat. He struck out again, and since he was behind, he lost the game. Here's his last swing:

And now to Manata’s comment:

So here’s the upshot: Ponter can’t offer necessary and sufficient conditions for what counts as a sincere offer. Therefore, he cannot properly demarcate an insincere offer from a sincere one.

I don’t need to. That is just a red-herring. All I need to show is a single condition which falsifies the (alleged) sincerity of an offer. This should not be rocket science.

What is the single condition that falsifies the purported sincerity of an offer? If you don’t have it, and you know you don’t have it, then you can’t sincerely offer it. God knows he has no provision of salvation FOR the NDF, so he cannot sincerely offer a provision for salvation TO the NDF. He has nothing to offer the NDF, so any pretense of offering salvation is just that, a pretense. Sincerity is indexed to at least this, having in your possession the thing you are offering, or setting forth, or presenting, or tendering, etc etc. I do not know how many ways or times I have to state this. The issue is all about God’s sincerity, for his part, in tendering the offer, not his ability to save the person who actually does come. Even and evangelical Arminian would agree with that God is able to save all who actually come to him.

So he's saying he needs to list one necessary condition. Since it's necessary, then a counterexample disproves his strictures. So:

1. Notice he has added the qualifier "and knows about it" to his constraint. I helped him on this score, because originally he didn't have the qualifier. So this is his re-worked constraint.

2. Notice Ponter simply stipulates a constraint for what counts as a sincere offer. he wants to win by stipulation. He cites no Bible verse that provides his constraint on sincere offers. He doesn't derive it from premises or the empty set. Why should we believe it? Because it rigs the game for him? What argument can be given to accept it? Ponter's offered none. He's offered his "gut intuitions," but perhaps it's a case of "there's a way that seems right to a man, but its end leads to death"? Now, I'm not saying Ponter's headed to destruction, but often our "intuitions" are wrong. Besides that, the problem with proof by stipulation is that the other side gets to do the same. So, here's a tu quoque stipulation: If you offer something to someone who you know cannot accept what was offered, you've made an insincere offer. What do we do at this point? Point fingers and yell nee ner nee ner at each other?

3. His constraint suffers from counter examples. Suppose a businessman had an infallible crystal ball that ushered in predictions. So he sees that some number less than the total population is going to buy his widget. He thus makes only enough for those he infallibly saw would buy it. Why waste the time, material, capital, etc., making ones no one will buy. He then advertises the widgets in magazines, etc. It's the same as all the advertisements we see around us on a regular basis and which we take to be ostensible offers of products. They seem sincere to us. Furthermore, suppose that he knows that the set of humans that are the remainder of humans who don't buy the product actually hate the product, the company, the CEO, etc. He knows they'll never want the product. But out of generosity he offers it to them anyway. He knows he has no more of the product on hand, but also knows exactly how much he'd need. Hence he made what he needed. He's not wasteful or irrational, after all. How is this an insincere offer? It doesn't seem so to me, but on Ponter's terms it's supposedly ruled out.

4. Now, Ponter wants to talk about fantastical per impossibles. He wants to talk about what if those who God decreed and knew would not come, ended up coming. Since if they did, per impossible, there'd be no atonement blood for them, then God's insincere. But if we get to talk about wild and crazy impossibles (like reprobates who end up coming), then there's no jumping off the roller coaster just because you don't like the upcoming drops, loops, and corkscrews. Go back to the business man. Suppose he also believes this: "Now, I know, thanks to my infallible crystal ball, that I only need n widgets (where n is some number less than the consumer population, C). I know that I only needed n widgets, so I only made n widgets. Thus, I know I don't have n+1 widgets. Thus there's no widgets for any in the set C-n. Yet, out of my kindness—since I know my product is pure awesomeness—I offer it to all men via television advertisements, magazine ads, etc. Now, I also believe this: If, per impossible [it's impossible that if S knows that p, that ¬p obtain], a member of the set C-n were to ask for a widget, then I'd make him one. I'd make a special case just for him, and make a widget just for him, done quite apart from my normal and usual production. This especially seals the deal in terms of agreeing that we have a sincere offer here, and it contradicts Ponter's constraints. Now, perhaps God holds a belief like this? So, perhaps the atonement blood has the potential to grow from amount b to b+1. Or, perhaps it has the potential to do something like fissioning, such that it is possible that it grow, even though it is now at an amount where only members of some select group could each have an equal share. Or, perhaps God could proleptically save the per impossible sinner, such that if he trusted in something that functioned like lambs did for OT Israel, he'd be saved. Or, perhaps God believes that if he needed to, he would send Jesus one a special rescue mission to die for this one per impossible sinner. Or, since it's not necessary that only Christ could become incarnate and die, perhaps the Holy Spirit fills a contingency role and would become incarnate and die for this per impossible sinner. There seems to me to be a number of beliefs God could have which would make him relevantly similar to the business man, who we agreed made a sincere offer.

So I'm afraid that Ponter's last at bat looks like this: K.