Incompetence on Stilts

Robert has finally decided to reply.

Gene you present some real lack of awareness concerning libertarian conceptions of free will in your post. You said:

”Really, so God can do evil.

God having "libertarian" freedom does not mean He can do good and evil.

Libertarian freedom in humans, by definition, requires they can do both good and evil.”

God can do whatever He wants to do. He does not do evil however, He may have various choices available to Himself, all of which are good choices, He then chooses the one that He wants.

This, of course, is just an ad hoc restriction on libertarian freedom for you, Robert. You're the one that doesn't understand libertarian freedom here, as we shall see.

1. God has "libertarian freedom" insofar as He is not constrained to do whatever He chooses, and He can choose between any number of goods. None of His choices are "determined" by outside forces - but one of your persistent problems is that you define "determinism" with reference to external constraints alone - but libertarian action theory goes beyond that (see further below).

2. I do not deny this, but if libertarianism, as properly defined, is true, then God must be able to do both good and evil. God cannot even desire an unholy act, nor can He lie, for He would no longer be God if He did. In fact His choices are so wrapped up in His nature and essence that He could not do otherwise.

God’s freedom is the real freedom defined by the Bible -- a freedom from sin, not a freedom to do otherwise. God is free in the compatibilist sense in that He always acts according to His nature, never against it. God does not have ‘freedom’ to do what is contrary to His nature, so He is not free in the libertarian sense (in fact no one is).

3. But this isn't what you stated. You actually said:

both God and man have libertarian free will.

It was to this that I replied. So, you're analogized from God to man by placing them in parallel, and man having libertarian freedom means that his freedom is, by definition, contracausal, by your own admission. Man can do both good and evil, and his will is free from all constraints. We've been over this ground with you before, and I believe pointed you to several standard works on the subject.

So, you accord to man something you do not accord to God and you give no supporting argument for it.

4. The rest of your argument discusses the way Jesus acted in order to demonstrate your position. But choosing between options (like how to do something) is irrelevant. The question is "What lies behind that choice?"

Libertarian freedom in humans does not require that we must be able to do both good and evil in **every instance** to have free will. In heaven we will have libertarian freedom and will not be capable of sin (but we will be capable of choices). So we will have multiple choices all of which are good.

Another ad hoc restriction for which you give no supporting argument. Your arguments defeat themselves. You give libertarian freedom and then restrict it after they receive Christ. You give men libertarian freedom and then you restrict when they enter the intermediate and final states.

By the way, we're still waiting for your exegetical argument for libertarianism. Oh, you have none.

You will have to answer No to this question. But if you answer No, then you’ve got a real life historical situation in which a human person had multiple choices before him all of which were good and he could do as he pleased without doing evil. And that is all that is required for free will to exist, that he had multiple options he could choose from and the choices were up to him (note especially the word “freely” in Gen. 2:17)

1. Again, you have not made an exegetical case for libertarian freedom, and yet you've smuggled a definition of it into your assertion above.

2. Of course, the grounds on which I'm arguing against libertarianism besides the purely exegetical are causal grounds, not whether or not choices were "sinful" before or after the fall or people have "multiple options," for having "multiple options" is an insufficient warrant to conclude people of libertarian freedom, since libertarianism addresses what lies behind the choices they make.

3. You are conflating the concept of "choice" with "libertarian freedom."

4. There is a vast literature on the Libertas Adami. You'd think you would be familiar with it. All that we need to establish to show that Adam's freedom was not libertarian is to supply a reason sufficient to himself for the Fall - and this is true for any man's sins - but you, since you affirm libertarian freedom cannot do so, for libertarian choices are, by definition, uncaused.

You appeal to Plantinga:

“If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.” (God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 29)

I've emphasized the relevant portion for you, since it apparently went over your head.

Let's compare this with Scripture, shall we?

Scripture is very consistent in attributing the choices of men to antecedent causes. Proverbs 16 attributes several to God. James 2 is very clear that men are led astray "by their own evil desires."

Any appeal to an inner motive in man directly undercuts libertarian freedom, for libertarianism, by definition, cuts the causal nerve - and, when Scripture speaks on these matters it speaks of God's overruling, indeed outright directing, the minds and hearts and actions of men, and it attributes our decisions, actions, etc. to our motives as well.

The heart of man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. (Prov. 16:9, cf. 16:1, 19:21)

"the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords." (Jdgs 7:22).

"the filled (Israel) w/joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria" (Ezra 6:22)

The Lord foreordained that the robe of the Lord Jesus was not turn but lots were cast for it (Jn 19:24, quoting Ps. 22:18, cf. Jn 19:31 - 37).

Then we have the passages on divine hardening of Pharaoh and Sihon; God sending an evil spirit to torment Saul, and another instance of Him sending evil spirits to cause the false prophets to lie, in order to lead Ahab to his death (I Kings 22:20 - 23).

Isaiah 10 tells us that God raised of Assyria/Babylon to judge Israel and yet held them accountable for their sins in doing so.

Isa. 6 (and John 12) speak of divine hardening. The latter is an instance parallel to the former. Isa. 63 says that God makes us (Israel) wander from your (His) ways and hardens our hearts so we do not revere him (vs. 17).

Ps. 33:15 says the Lord fashions, eg. directs the heart not only of kings (Proverbs 21:1) but of all people.

Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Luke 6;45; Mt. 7:15 - 20, 12:33- 35).

John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ...8: 47"He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. By nature, they were not of God. There nature determined their desires.

Simply put, there is no passage of Scripture that can be construed to mean that the human will is independent of God's plan and of the rest of the human personality/psyche. Your "adductive argument" is an abject failure.

People do different things for different reasons. It should also be duly noted that if a person does something for a reason, then his/her choice is not “without cause”.

This is true, but you're confused since according to the very definition you cited:

no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.”

So, your own statements defeat your own definitions. One is inclined to wonder if you understand the definitions you offer. I am inclined to believe that to be the case.

You repeatedly claim that libertarians believe in actions done “without cause”, another misrepresentation that you repeatedly indulge in.

False. This is unintentionally comical. The definition to which you appealed states:

“If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.”

But, just in case you don't believe me, let's try this:

Walls and Dongell, Why I'm Not A Calvinist:

“The essence of this view is that a free action is one that does not have a sufficient condition or cause prior to its occurrence…the common experience of deliberation assumes that our choices are undetermined.”

Clark Pinnock, a well-known defender of this position, asserted that only the kind of freedom, which has the ability to choose the contrary, is genuine freedom. He says,

“It views a free action as one in which a person is free to perform an action or refrain from performing it and is not completely determined in the matter by prior forces---nature, nurture or even God. Libertarian freedom recognizes the power of contrary choice. One acts freely in a situation if, and only if, one could have done otherwise.” (Most Moved Mover pg. 127)

In other words, within libertarianism, we could acceptably choose to receive Christ apart from a desire to receive Him.

From an atheist perspective Oppy writes:

On the libertarian conception of freedom, one acts freely only if, in the very circumstances in which one acted, it was within one's power to do otherwise--which is incompatible with efficient causation of action. But as I see it, the only alternative to efficient causation is absence of causation; and, if one's actions are only 'free' because they have no causes, then this is not a kind of 'freedom' worth wanting.

Steve talked about him here:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/oppy-on-atheism.html

Note that even Oppy realizes where libertarianism cashes out at the level of causality - there are no causes to our behavior.

Libertarianism is an abstract generalization of the principle that "ability limits responsibility," such that, if our decisions (choices) are afflicted by any kind of inability, then they are not truly free and we are not truly responsible (eg. blameworthy) for them. Freedom is contracausal. Put another way, at the level of causality, choices are uncaused, but not unassisted.

And if that doesn't work, Robert, do a Google search for libertarian action theory and uncaused choices or causeless choices and have a good read.

One of your persistent problems is that you're defining "determine/d/ism" in a unidirectional fashion, in reference God and not man. Libertarianism is a theory of agent causation. It means that a person's choices are not determined by both external means (like God's decrees, direct actions, or broad "circumstances") AND internal means (eg. within the agent acting - man), like "sufficient reasons, desires, etc." Therefore, every time you appeal to reasons, you're appealing to sufficient causes, desires, etc. that are internal to the agent performing the action. That, Robert is NOT a libertarian argument, by definition.

And if you say that those reasons are present but insufficient, you've done away with

(a) your own argument for "free will" and

(b) the basis for moral responsibility, for if motives - which are reasons - are not sufficient reasons for blame, then you have no basis to declare a person's motives blameworthy or attribute their evil actions to their evil desires - which is what Scripture does.

Also, this is one reason why, to take one example, Molinism is problematic. In Molinism, God instantiates a particular possible world (this one) and no other from any number of possible worlds and so orders that world to ensure particular results infallibly occur. The problem should be obvious -as soon as external factors - we'll call them generalized "circumstances" - ensure a particular result, then that's an automatic defeater for libertarian freedom, and Molinism is designed from beginning to end to defend libertarian freedom.

Technically speaking the bible never defines “free will” for us. What it comes down to is an abductive argument for one conception over another. What it comes down to is an abductive argument for one conception over another. By abductive I mean that we have competing theories each claiming to be the best explanation of the given data (in this case the data is the bible verses that we have). Libertarians believe that the libertarian conception best explains the data, while Compatibilists believe their conception best explains the data.

1. Once again, compatibilism is not the heart of Calvinism. We do not begin with compatibilism and then work from there.

2. We invoke it only to answer the libertarian on his own grounds.

3. The argument for the Calvinist view of freedom is exegetical first, philosophical second - and the latter is an ancillary argument.

4. Thank you for this frank admission. Note that when the chips are down and Robert has to lay his cards on the table, he has to admit that he has no exegetical argument for libertarian freedom. He castigates John Owen for allegedly laying out philosophical arguments in lieu of exegetical arguments

You prove my point, you can argue for it, but you do not have the verses to show it to be true. Since you do not have the texts, you like Owen, must construct logical arguments to substitute for biblical texts.

and then proceeds to do exactly the same thing for his own conception of libertarian freedom.

The calvinist compatibilist view however, presupposes that all events are predetermined, there can never be any libertarian freedom under any circumstance (not even before the fall of Adam so he was not “mutable” he was predetermined to sin; nor did Jesus during the incarnation have free will).

Of course, Robert continues to trade in an equivocation between a decree and a means to the execution of the decree. He's confusing causality (providence) with certainty. Ends and means. He's been corrected numerous times and refuses correct. This is either dishonest or incompetent.

D.A. Carson is a much better exegete than you are, and he sees no “category error” in my interpretation. I say he has got it right, which means that you are wrong

Except, of course, Carson is a Calvinist and denies general atonement, and I specifically stated that you cannot derive general atonement from John 3:16, and, of course, your quotation does not touch my objection. You continue to equate a qualitative distinction with a quantitative one without a supporting argument.

Rather he sees “now” and He sees **everything** now.

I'll just quote this bit, since as usual you use too many words to admit to something simple: You believe in election based on foreseen faith. Go ahead and say it. Henry admitted that no passage of Scripture teaches this and it had to be deduced from Scripture. Will you?

Of course, the obvious problem with your view is that you're conflating ontology and teleology. Calvinism does not deny that God knows/sees everything "now."

This is muddled in several respects. For starters, God does have a concept of cause and effect in that logic is an attribute of God's mind. He does understand that in order for x to occur as a concrete instance of what is in his mind, y must come to pass. It's an ends-means relation. We understand cause and effect and the antecedence of x to y; ergo God does too, or else we have no ground for the logical process. God also grounds the passage of time in His creation. His own Word recognizes that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. The very terms "in the beginning" and "before the foundaton of the world," are about a cause-effect relation and a temporal relation. God does exist outside of time, but that also means He orders and grounds time. Likewise, you're conflating ontology and teleology. The timeless of God does not mean there is no teleological order to His attributes or the working of His mind. Ontologically, God is unaffected by relational sequence as to His person, but He is conscious of sequential duration, because sequential duration is a part of the ordering of his decree. We know this because we have a sense of past, present, and future that, because it exists and will exist, is grounded by His mind. For God, all of these are internally intuited and not arrived at chronologically through a process, but the concept or idea of durational sequence or succession is a distinct epistemological, not ontological category. God knows all our thoughts and actions in the past, present, and future,and at the same time knows His own thoughts and actions in relation to each other and to our own and in what order. Thus, He can inspire Paul to say, "He chose before He created." He knows that He created the sea and dry land before He created birds and fish and animals and man.


The problem here is libertarian freedom, not the conception of God. In libertarian freedom, the future free acts of men are not knowable, even by God, because if they are known by God they are part of His mind, but that would not be libertarianism, that would be compatibilism, which is not a libertarian argument. The problem for the libertarian is not what causes event x from the standpoint of God and man, but what causes x from the standpoint of man. Why does one person choose x and not y? A consistent libertarian has to cut the causal nerve in his own mind. If he appeals to any motives whatsoever, he is abandoning his libertarianism for compatibilism. Thus, by eschewing causality, libertarianism lacks explanatory power. And in the absence of explanatory power, it is irrational to the core. It cannot explain why agents act or refrain from acting.

So, as always Robert, we're back to asking you this:

If election is based on some sort of "foreseen faith" (however derived in God's mind) then you must still answer: why does one man believe and not another? You keep making a vague appeal to "reasons" but that's a defeater for libertarianism. So, if you believe in "reasons," what sort of reasons might those be?

You could say that ‘one understood and one did not’ … but where did such understanding come from to begin with? Was this understanding itself derived from nature or from grace?

In the libertarian scheme did God grant this understanding so that one believed? We are forced to conclude that He did not, for if He did this for everyone, then both persons would have the same understanding. So we must conclude that, to the libertarian, such spiritual understanding is entirely self-generated, apart from any work of God’s grace in us. Whatever differences there were between the two men, these differences were not derived from grace. Ultimately, it is a reliance on some innate ability in one man, which the other did not have. So we must ask, then, according to libertarianism, was it chance that generated this difference in natural wisdom between the two? Was it random? Or was one man naturally just smarter or wiser than the other? The only two alternatives left to us here are either that one person just happened to understand (‘just because’) by chance, or that one was already better equipped than the other (in his natural self) to respond positively to the gospel command. Neither of these possibilities is aligned with the teaching or intent of the gospel, which is by grace through and through. As soon as you answer, you'll have to admit that God elects people who are smarter, more afraid, more spiritual - something - and that, Robert, is election by merit.

Built into your entire line of argumentation is the assumption that grace is quantitative, not qualitative - a lot of grace and a little libertarian freedom. The big problem is the latter part.

Gene you seem to be incapable of seeing my point. Calvinist inability perhaps? :-) Yes, these things that God does will be done in connection with someone who has saving faith. But that faith is not what causes these things to occur; only God alone does these things and they are all sovereign acts of God. Didn’t you ever learn in logic that just because something follows something else in time, does not mean that the first thing caused the second thing to occur? You just cannot seem to get past that: if these things listed follow after someone has faith, then the faith that the person has **must** be causing these other things to occur (according to you). In your mind there are only two possibilities: either regeneration precedes faith, or faith produces/causes regeneration. That is a false dilemma. The truth which is a third possibility has been left out of your thinking completely.

You like to present yourself as something of a logician with your frequent references to fallacies, “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, after this, therefore because of this (or post hoc fallacy) is the one which you are committing here. You also seem to believe that if I believe that faith does not follow regeneration in time,that that must mean that faith is the cause of, or produces regeneration (which I do not believe). Regeneration is a miraculous action by God that human persons cannot do. So it is impossible for our faith to cause or produce regeneration.

But that faith is not what causes these things to occur; only God alone does these things and they are all sovereign acts of God. Didn’t you ever learn in logic that just because something follows something else in time, does not mean that the first thing caused the second thing to occur?

Of course, Scripture says precisely the opposite in 1 John, where the causal relation is spelled out clearly several times - and one of those things the new birth is said to cause is faith in Christ. One can't help but notice you've substituted a logical argument for an exegetical argument.

I never said you affirm that faith is the (efficient) cause of regeneration. I merely stated that, in your view, none of the things that you stated can occur apart from the agent's exercise of saving faith.

The argument that regeneration precedes faith is not that it precedes it temporally, but logically. Causal relationships depend on their logical / temporal order. Exegesis determines this order for all of these and whether there is a causal relationship.

8:47 He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.

John writes a grammatical construction exactly like I John 2:29, 5:1, and 4:7. He first spells out, verbatim, the causal relationship between ability to hear and understanding in v. 43 and endcaps with v.47's end that says "for this reason..." "He who is of God, hears the words of God." for this reason, you do not hear them, because you are not of God. There is a logical, causal relationship, verbatim.

1 John 2:29, 4:7, and 5:1 also are this same construction:

He who is of God hears the words of God.

They hear because they are "of God."

You do not hear them because you are not of God

They do not hear because they are not of God

Everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.

They practice righteousness because they are born again.

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

They love because they are born again and know God.

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

They believe because they are born again.

If that wasn't enough 1 John 3:9 spells out it directly and explicitly:

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him, and he cannot since, because he is born of God.

The point, which you have utterly missed, is that, by your own admission, in your view is that saving faith itself is not a product of the atonement. It is not a product of regeneration. It arises from the person's libertarian free will, which, according to your own appeal means it has no antecedent conditions or causally determinative factors - but Scripture directly and explicitly contradicts you.

And since you want to believe that God predetermines EVERYTHING Gene. Then who predetermines “what their hearts’desires” will be”?

Robert, as usual, ignores a number of things here:

1. The Arminian has an order of decrees too, including the permission of the fall.

2. And the Calvinist and Arminian are agreed that the fall was "decreed" and that it was "permitted." The difference is over whether that permission was "bare" or "efficient."

3. And the Calvinist does not say that God predetermines everything and then places evil in men's hearts. Rather, Calvinism has a doctrine of secondary causality.

4. But let's play with Robert's own objection. Does God determine when a person will be born in history? Does He determine their parents? Environment? Etc.

5. Are a person's desires sufficient for moral blame?

6. And since, according to Robert, a person's saving faith is infallible foreknown, then it is certain.

7. If Robert was consistent, he'd be an Open Theist. No wonder he defends them.

My concern is not that “ability limits their responsibility”. My concern is that a good person would not predetermine for most people to go to hell after predetermining their every thought and action so that they must sin and live a life of disobedience to God.

Really? You said:

If yes, then how are they held responsible for something that was not something that they had to/or could do?

That, Robert, means you are ultimately concerned about ability limiting responsibility.

A good and loving and merciful person would not do that.

Ah, I see, an ethical argument in lieu of an exegetical one! Goody!

A universalist can make the same argument against your own position. So, if you want to frame the debate ethically, you'll impeach your own position.

God presents himself in scripture as having a love for the “world” (Jn. 3:16),

And the rest of the text says,

"so that all the believing ones may have eternal life."

So, God "loves the world" with a purpose - for the believing ones to have eternal life. That could be a nifty prooftext for supralapsarianism, Robert, and, since you think so highly of Plantinga, we'll have to wonder if you agree to his supralapsarian theodicy.

not taking pleasure in the eternal death of the wicked (Eze. 18),

Calvinism affirms this too. I personally have affirmed this many times when writing about the doctrines of grace.

of desiring for all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4-6),

Calvinism affirms this too - see the work of John Piper.

of desiring to have mercy on all people (Rom. 11:32),

This particular passage, in context, is referring to all kinds of people, that is without respect to ethnicity (Jew or Gentile). But since you brought up the passage, it includes a nifty reference:

"God has bound all over to disobedience."

Robert quotes the last part without reference to the first.

To claim that something arises from man and not God, or to claim that God permits or allows something is to “borrow” from noncalvinism and depart from theological determinism.

False, "theological determinism" draws a distinction between ends and means to an end and has for centuries.

And your line that: “man's sin itself arises from his love of evil and not God”, is false according to your determinism. If I predetermine every event including the thought, intentions, actions, sins of people, then their sin directly arises out of my will, what I wanted to happen.

False. You've confused the determination of an END with the MEANS to the end. You've done this multiple times in this thread and in others.

Steve at least twice pointed out and I have pointed out myself three or four times myself as well, decrees are not the same thing as "causality," for decrees don't do anything by themselves. They act as a blueprint for certainty. Blueprints don't build buildings. That requires means - materials, machines, people. In Scripture, the decrees (God's counsels) are worked out by providence. Decrees are not interchangeable with "causality." In Scripture, providence, which is usually by second causes, works out the plan. Steve put it his way:

Robert is confusing *causality* with *certainty*.

I'd add that this seems to be regular feature of libertarians' objections to Calvinism's view of providence.

LBCF2 5. Paragraph 2. Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; so that there is not anything befalls any by chance, or without His providence; yet by the same providence He ordered them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

Are you so intellectually or ethically challenged that you keep ignoring the opposing position? Incompetence on stilts, I say.

You wrote:

But then when it is pointed out to you that this would make God the author of sin, the cause of sin, then you want to back off and appeal to “secondary causes” or “it’s not like that”, “it’s different than that”.

And since the standard confessions, which are several centuries old now hold the position I have outlined and quoted for you a number of times, as do our standard theology texts, I have not "backed off" of anything. It is you, Robert, the chronic liar, who cannot and willfully refuses to accurately represent the opposing position and has done so for weeks.

There are acts in which God directly intervenes: miracles, creation, regeneration, and conversion and acts in which He allows natural processes to work out His will.

The Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession are clear. God’s determination of men’s acts in this regard comes through decreeing they come about through “the efficacy of second causes.” Individuals still have the freedom to act out any number of possible goods or evils as dictated by their natures and circumstances.

God can choose goods. . Each and every act need not be “predestined” by God’s direct intervening action or from any number of possible direct actions of God, for much of what happens is predestined by virtue of God controlling the boundings and directings of our choices while giving us freedom to act within the constraints of our natures, intervening directly as He pleases, constraining us and permitting us as He so chooses. Nothing happens apart from the grounding, sovereign decree of God, but certain acts and choices and circumstances come about by God ‘s direct effort (what Charles Hodge calls His “potentia absoluta’) This are: miracles, creation, regeneration, conversion, the events of the eschaton, and specific acts of judgment.

What God decrees for His glory, men do with their own motives. For example, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to judge Egypt’s gods. Pharaoh’s will was not violated, in that God allowed Pharaoh’s love of evil, which was his natural state, to increase, keeping Israel from leaving. Pharaoh did not keep them from leaving in order to glorify God and worship Him. He did it because he hated God, Moses, Aaron, and the slaves. What God did for a righteous motive, Pharaoh did out of hatred for God. The motive behind an act, therefore, determines whether or not it is truly sinful. In theory, if Pharaoh had done what he did to glorify and worship God, he would not have been condemned, however, a man that does such a thing is, in reality acting in faith and love for God and would have to be regenerate. Such a man would not hold Israel back; he would have released Israel and taken down Egypt’s gods. That was not God’s purpose for Pharaoh. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

God is the author of evil, in the sense that He is first cause of all things. This simply goes with pay grade. His decrees, through either action or inaction render events necessary, but, evil is the result of permission, not His direct causation, or a result of His judicial hardening of sinners, an act of justice Scripture supports repeatedly, as in the above text and in Romans 1. Nothing happens that compels a man or demon to act in a way it does not wish to act or against its nature. He may withhold constraining grace, as in the fall, in order to render a thing certain, but the agent of the evil, in this case Adam simply acts in accordance with his nature as a second cause, for reasons and motives sufficient for himself and arising from his own nature. Men thus do what God decrees, but for motives all their own. In so doing, they may incur judgment. In this way men act as infallibly as if they had no liberty, yet as freely as if there was no decree rendering their acts certain. See, for example, the predestination of Judas betrayal and Jesus crucifixion. These men did, with evil desires, what God desired and planned to happen since before creation, for Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world itself.

Another Scholastic distinction I alluded to above even though we admit is has been discussed to death and fraught with difficulties since the Middle Ages, is the distinction between God's absolute power (Potentia Absoluta) and ordinary power (Potentia Ordinata). Whatever the difficulties of those distinctions in the older theologies (See Richard Muller's discussions in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics - it's too long to enter for my purposes here), I think they are useful, at their root, insofar as they help accurately describe the way God uses means. With respect to things like creation ex nihilio, miracles, the Incarnation, regeneration, etc. God's absolute and direct control is very involved. In all other things, the decrees fall out according to the nature of second causes "either necessarily, freely, or contingently."

Notice that even in the creation narrative, we have an implication of second causes. There are commands that say, "Let there be..." and others that say ,"Let the earth bring forth..." In the Incarnation, we have a direct miracle @ conception, but it isn't as if Jesus just appears full formed as a 30 year old man like some sort of animus springing from Mary's womb. Rather, there is a normal pregnancy; He grows through childhood into adulthood, etc. We speak of regeneration in two senses: the wider and the narrower. In the narrower, we mean the direct act of God raising the soul dead in sin to life, but we are comfortable pointing out that "means" are the ordinary mode of that occurrence. As Dr. Sproul has said, the Spirit and the Word of God (preaching, studying, reading, etc) are working together.

What I would like to particularly point out for the purposes of this posting is that what Robert has provided us with is his own use of one of his Libertarian objections to Calvinism where it suits him:

Scripture is clear that He does predetermine some events, most notably the crucifixion of Jesus Acts 2:23, 4:25-28), but not all events.

Notice how quickly the libertarian's "all means all" argumentation quickly turns into, "all means some." "God works all things after the counsel of His will" (in Greek, literally "all, all things)" is reduced, without benefit of argument, to "some things."

Here's Robert's schizophrenic logic: he'll take the "pantos" passages of Scripture regarding the atonement or God's desires (1 Tim 2:4 for example) to mean "everyone without exception" and then reduce "all things" to "some." All the while, he finds the doctrine of particular atonement odious, because we're turning "all" and "world" into "some."

Robert believes that God only predetermines *some things* but when we look at Scripture, we find that the list is quite exhaustive (indeed the above list can be multiplied greatly) and Robert, while accusing us of emphasizing the particular over the general and claiming, I suppose, that "all means all," quickly reduces "all," as in Ephesians 1 to "some."

And, by the way, Robert, you're just repeating yourself and moving me to do so (since I devoted an entire thread awhile back to this and you didn't respond) - that, and some personal health reasons that prohibit me coming back to reply to you again this week, is the reason comments here are cut off. I'm simply not willing to engage in protracted discussion with you given your behavior. The only reason I'm posting this here, aside from its usefulness for the readers, is because the parent topic is 81 posts long now.

Blogger is a free service. This is not a discussion board. If you're going to repeat yourself with that level of frequency over multiple topics, you need to get your own blogger account and use it. You're approaching the level of "Orthodox" who we banned awhile back in this regard.

All sins are covered in the atonement which is applied only to believers. For believers their every sin is covered. For unbelievers who reject the provision of Christ for their salvation, none of their sins is covered.

1. If that is so, then the atonement has no intrinsic efficacy, which proves my earlier statement to that effect.

2. Robert affirms general, not Amyraldian atonement, yet he is employing an Amyraldian concept while saying elsewhere that Amyraldians are incorrect.

2. And if that is so, then God is playing a game of double jeopardy, holding men to account for sins for which Christ has already atoned. It isn't without reason the majority of Arminians these days prefer the moral government theory of atonement, Robert, and this is it.

Center of the Universe: The Great White Throne

Center of the Universe: The Great White Throne

BY RICH RICHARDSON
Associated Press

In a stunning astronomical discovery, the Hubble telescope has taken pictures of the Great White Throne. In a series of telephone interviews, Drs. Robert and David Gentry said the universe has a nearby center that can be identified with the location of the Great White Throne, God's dwelling place in the heavens described in the book of Revelation.
They even go so far as to suggest that this discovery may have apocalyptic implications: Did the Creator long ago plan for this sign in the heavens to be discovered as a signal that the present age is nearing its close and will soon end with the second coming of Christ in power and glory?*

Art historian Tom Chippendale, of the Tate Museum, said the throne was in the French provincial style, while Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson identified the animals to either side of the throne as belonging to the genus Capra and Ovis respectively. Unfortunately, the low resolution of the photographs did not permit a more precise taxonomical classification.

William Lane Craig hailed the finding as a splendid addition to the cosmological argument, while William Dembski cited this discovery as a paradigm-case of specified complexity and intelligent design.

However, Richard Dawkins dismissed the “Goddidit” inference as a massive “cop-out” and “science-stopper.” “It wouldn’t be the first time that our smart genes played a dirty trick on their robotic, blindly programmed replicators,” he explained.

Attorneys for the ACLU petitioned Judge Jones to place a gag order on Observatories within the Continental United States and Hawaii.

*http://www.halos.com/videos/index.htm#cou

Please Pray For Rain

I know we don't often broadcast prayer requests publicly here, but since the news media seems more concerned with Brittney Spears and the new television season than the severe to exceptional drought that has gripped the Southeast United States for months (note this subject is utterly absent from the major news networks on an ongoing basis), I feel it necessary to call folks attention to this subject. Please pray for rain and lots of it, and pray for the people living in this area. While those in the West have been flooded this year, we have been without.

1. The Southeastern US is terribly, terribly dry. My part of NC is in extreme drought. However, the county next to me and to the East is under exceptional conditions. That's as bad as it gets. The far western part of NC has been hit just as badly. Fortunately, I live in the Yadkin River basin, which is quite large, and we get our water from the river, which is probably, of the rivers in NC, the one in best condition. Those on the Catawba are having a harder time. Many cities, particularly Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill get their water from lakes, not rivers; and the lakes are desperately dry. There are also folks along, I believe, Lake Norman who, for whatever reason, don't seem to understand that their water consumption affects those downstream from that reservoir. The state, however, has no laws to mandate their townships restrict water use. Pray the Lord will bend the hearts of these people to do the right thing.

2. Rather than dusty conditions, the ground is hard like brick, since the soil here is composed of red clay. It has baked, literally, in the sun such that rain we do get washes away. We are in dire need of many days of steady rain, or, in the winter, snow and ice that will cover the ground and work its way into it.

3. Needless to say, the crops have been drastically affected. The local fair for NW NC this year showcased no Red Delicious apples.

4. Much of the produce that was feature was malformed.

5. This will, of course, affect the price of food and vegetables, meat in particular, at least locally.

6. In Athens, GA, they are talking about the possibility of rationing water. I've heard talk of water being shipped around some parts of the South. Athens is, of course, north of Atlanta, and Atlanta is being greatly affected too.

Psalm 65

God's Abundant Favor to Earth and Man.

For the choir director. A Psalm of David. A Song.

1There will be silence before You, and praise in Zion, O God,
And to You the vow will be performed.
2O You who hear prayer,
To You all men come.
3Iniquities prevail against me;
As for our transgressions, You forgive them.
4How blessed is the one whom You choose and bring near to You
To dwell in Your courts
We will be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
Your holy temple.
5By awesome deeds You answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation,
You who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea;
6Who establishes the mountains by His strength,
Being girded with might;
7Who stills the roaring of the seas,
The roaring of their waves,
And the tumult of the peoples.
8They who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of Your signs;
You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy.
9You visit the earth and cause it to overflow;
You greatly enrich it;
The stream of God is full of water;
You prepare their grain, for thus You prepare the earth.
10You water its furrows abundantly,
You settle its ridges,
You soften it with showers,
You bless its growth.
11You have crowned the year with Your bounty,
And Your paths drip with fatness.
12The pastures of the wilderness drip,
And the hills gird themselves with rejoicing.
13The meadows are clothed with flocks
And the valleys are covered with grain;
They shout for joy, yes, they sing.

Historic Baptist Polity

I have also noted a number of questions from Roman Catholics regarding ecclesiastical polity. Most are directed toward Presbyterianism, but by way of reply from a Baptist perspective:

1. Presbyterians and "plural elder" Baptists differ over the distinction between "ruling" and "teaching" elders. In Baptist plural elder churches, all elders teach. That's the main difference at that level.

2. Baptists themselves who employ this model function on either an "elder rule" model or with "a shared responsibility with the congregation" (as Mark Dever's) model. I would add that Baptist single pastor/elder model churches use a board of deacons that does not really functionally differ from this model. It's really @ the deacon level that the differences play out. There are those who opt for a corporation-like model, usually in the largest churches. I have strong problems with this latter model, which, at this time, I'll waive discussing.

3. When it all cashes out, Presbyterian and Baptist polity really don't differ much internally. It's at the external level that we differ. Presbyterians operate with sessions, presbyteries, and assemblies so that the elders of one local church wind up having authority over and in another local church. Baptists are either independent altogether or function in associations. Conventions are slightly different structures, but they cash out as big associations.

4. The local church is independent and autonomous of the association, and, in conventioning churches, the churches, associations, state and national conventions are all independent.

i. However, these days if you don't give money to the state, you can't be seated @ the convention (either one).

ii. Churches must join the association in most cases to join the state convention (eg. to join one is to join the other), but they need not contribute to the association's activity, but it's not a good idea not to do so without good reason.

5. Baptists are somewhat divided over the role of the association. If you ask me this is a a weak point in Baptist ecclesiology. We need a clear theology of the association. I'd like to see a book devoted to this subject.

The Sandy Creek Association, according to G.W. Paschal, was quite high handed. The Charleston Association's Book of Discipline was less so. P. H. Mell's view was, if you ask me, even looser. The SBC has chosen to follow Mell's thinking in this regard. As a result local church autonomy has been abused far too much. This is unacceptable. I've written on this before.

6. Founders.org contains a repository of information collected by Mark Dever that many have forgotten. If they have questions, I'd refer them there. In addition, see John L. Dagg's work.

The Old Covenant and Infallibility

It seems that Saint and Sinner's Roman Catholic opponents, for whatever reason, simply don't get the Protestant argument from the Old Testament/Old Covenant against Sola Ecclesia and Papal infallibility.

The argument goes thusly: Since God Himself did not find it necessary to institute an infallible teaching authority under the Old Covenant, the Roman Catholic argument is thereby highly suspect unless it has exegetical support. Put another way:

If Christians require the services of a living Magisterium, wouldn’t the Old Covenant community be under the same necessity? Yet it’s clear from the Gospels that none of the rival parties spoke for God in any definitive sense. The priesthood was the only faction with any institutional standing under the Mosaic Covenant, and its members were frequently and fundamentally mistaken in their construal of its ethical obligations, such as the matter of putting to death their prophesied Messiah. So much for a divine teaching office to ensure unity and fidelity.

The typical Roman Catholic reply is rather too often something like this:

“In OT times, the Jewish assembly was not yet given the gift of infallibility. Things change after Jesus comes and the Holy Spirit indwells believers. Is this not elementary?”

Apparently, the argument has gone over Dave's head, so it appears we'll have to break it down for him.

1. His response assumes a great deal that it needs to prove. This should go without saying.

2. The Protestant argument is twofold:

a. It goes to God's historical modus operandi. Why is what was acceptable for God’s old covenant community unacceptable for God’s new covenant community? If you want to know God’s intentions for the future (e.g. the church age), a good place to start is with his historical modus operandi.

b. It is also exegetical:

3. Apropos 2b, a few notes:

a. Old Covenant polity and Roman Catholic polity parallel on several levels

i. The priestly class (the Magisterium) and a high priest (Pope).

ii. Mediate authority between God and man via this class.

iii. Outward mediation of grace via the Roman sacraments parallels the sacrificial system (the Eucharist), circumcision (baptism), Levitical priesthood (holy orders), feast days, etc.

iv. The Temple, some Romanists might say, would parallel the Vatican itself.

So, the Catholic who offers the argument for infallibility wants on the one hand to maintain some continuity with the Old Covenant's outward structures (including such things a Mary being a "Queen Mother"), but the appeal is, in reality, quite selective. The Protestant argument from the Old Covenant is, therefore, a way of answering the Romanist on his own level.

Of course, the Bible itself, namely Hebrews, is quite clear that the Old Covenant is simply signs and shadows of what was to come (the New Covenant). The New Covenant is also said to be disanalogous on several levels. For example, there is no more high priesthood except for that of Christ (Hebrews). The church as a whole is a holy nation, a royal priesthood, etc. (1 Peter), eg. a kingdom of priests (Hebrews 1:16, which - by the way is the fulfillment of Exodus 19, so this is also a point of analogy as well as disanalogy, for Israel ultimately failed), feast days and the Jewish liturgical calendar are abolished (Col. 2:16, 17), and, other than the Lord's Day no other liturgical calendar is given in Scripture.

So -

b. There is no infallible teaching authority under the Old Covenant, and, if the Romanist is going to make this argument, then the Romanist needs an exegetical argument that there is some sign / shadow in the Old Covenant that prefigures the need for an infallible authority in the New Covenant. It's not enough to say, "the gift of infallibility was not yet given," because:

i. The Bible nowhere names a spiritual gift called "infallibility," in the NT or in OT prophecy and
ii. The spiritual gifts in the New Covenant find analogues in the Old Covenant.

The Romanist can say, something like "the Levitical caste decided between difficult cases under the Law" - but this is not the same as saying "they were infallible teachers." They can say "Prophets spoke infallibly from God," but the Protestant simply replies that the Prophets, as to office, are analogous to the Apostles, and we have their extant teaching already. Thus, the Romanist makes the Pope the successor of Peter, and on and on the argument goes - yet what is always missing in the exegetical link to the need for and the promise of an infallible teaching office in the New Covenant.

Further, one of the discontinuities between the Old and New Covenants is that the mediate "gifts" like prophecy and teaching are given to individuals within the body of Christ as a whole, not a specific mediating office like "priest" or "Pope."

Thus, another of the points of disanalogy between covenant epochs is that these gifts are dispersed throughout the people of God widely, not concentrated within one or two classes of persons (priests, prophets). Teaching is immediate in the sense of not being mediated so much by an office as through individuals who are themselves from all "classes" and genders within the church. In fact, the intelligent Protestant would point out that the very office of "prophet" in the Old Covenant prefigures this distribution of gifts widely, for the Prophets were not all concentrated in the school of Samuel or Elisha, you know. They were not all priests or kings; rather the bulk of them were common people, what we'd call "laity" by today's standards. The exact level of dispersion will, of course show up with great variation within local churches - since not every local church in the same. Romanism, by way of contrast, comes off as trying to make the disperson of gifts artificially uniform. The contrast with Scripture could not be more stark.

Further "infallibility" is admittedly a "gift" in Romanism that is restricted to a specific class, for the "infallibility" of the "Church" (eg. the Roman Church - a visible, ecclesiastical body) is dependent on the Magisterium and the Pope - a specific class and a specific office. The Romanist who says that "the Church" is infallible can only do so by reference to these offices. This flies in the face of what was said by (ironically) Peter himself in his Pentecostal sermon:

7" 'In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.

And Paul's own discourse on gifts (1 Cor. 12, Eph. 4) does not lead us to the conclusion that the relevant gifts (teaching/prophecy) are restricted to a particular ecclesiastical class - and nowhere does he ever talk about the need for "infallibility."

In fact, he says that knowledge of sound doctrine is recognized and maintained not by a guarantee of infallibility that is attached to an office that administers particular gifts - rather, Paul speaks about division in the church in positive and negative light.

1 Cor. 11:18-19, "For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part, I believe it. 19 For there must also be factions among you, in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you."

1 Cor. 1:10, "Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you, but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment."

1 Cor. 11:19 uses the Greek word "haireses" for "factions". "Heresy" is a false teaching, something that deviates from orthodoxy. If we see that the Scriptures declare something clearly (orthodoxy), and if someone teaches contrary to that clear teaching, then he or she is teaching heresy. The Scriptures teach that there is a place for division and that is when opposing teachings that are contrary to sound doctrine. But division can only occur when the truth is known and those who abide with the truth should correct those who do not. If there was one place for Paul to talk about the need for an infallible arbiter of truth, here is where it should be. It is nowhere to be found.

The point, of course, is that the place where one would expect to find it: the Old Covenant system does not have it, and the New Covenant widely distributes the gifts without distinction, which flies in the face of the Romanist's own logic, for he can't argue that, because of this wide distribution there is a new need generated - an infallible teaching office- only to restrict it, for the appeal to infallibility requires the restriction of - not the wide distribution of - the relevant gift. Thus, he's left to argue, if he chooses that route, for the wide distribution of a gift like teaching among the people generally but the restriction of the gift of infallibility to an office, but this is self-defeating, for the gift of infallibility would have to be attached to the gift of teaching in order to be of any use or effect.

Now, the Roman Catholic can argue that the clergy has the effect of concentrating these gifts into particular offices - but the Protestant can agree to this much - for, with a few exceptions like Quakers, we ordain or appoint ministers of the gospel (elders) and deacons and try to employ our members who manifest the teaching gift to that ministry either formally or informally in the churches. In addition, most of us recognize there are teachers that exist outside of these specific offices (elder/deacon), which seem to serve the purpose of calling those in those offices to account from time to time. Many a Protestant minister (and Catholic priest) can tell of the "wise woman" or "incredibly intelligent young man" who sits in their church very humbly, doesn't call attention to himself or herself, and yet is somebody to whom that minister can go to for wise counsel, to help them study, and who will even challenge their teaching from time to time - yet in terms of ecclesiastical office, they submit themselves to the authority of the elders and deacons of the local church as prescribed in Scripture.

Further, if the Old Covenant is greater than the New Covenant, and the New Covenant is written on the heart of the people (Jeremiah 31), why would there need to be an infallible teaching authority? In fact, the Protestant argument is that one of the things that makes the New Covenant "new" is not the writing of the Law on the heart via regeneration or justification by faith alone via grace alone (and certainly not the need for or gift of an infallible teaching office) but things like:

1. The extension of salvation from a single visible nation, Israel, to "the whole world." The curse of the Diaspora upon the covenant community is reversed in the New Covenant - it becomes a blessing (1 Peter). The curse of Babel is reversed (Acts 2).

2. The revelation of the mystery of (1) and the making plain of the fact that this is how this has been how men have been saved all along (Romans).

3. The distribution of teaching gifts outside of the classes of "prophet" and "priest."

He can say that an infallible teaching office is "better" than not having one, but how does this follow? If the covenant is "better" as a whole, why would it require an infallible teaching authority? Where is the supporting argument from for the need for such a thing? Wouldn't it make more sense to have an infallible teaching authority for a covenant written on tablets of stone and than one one written on hearts of flesh, and if one of the hidden mysteries of the whole covenant of grace is, in fact, that it has been written on tables of flesh all along, in the sense of individual salvation being via the same means - faith alone and grace alone - and the Old Covenant did not require an infallible external teaching office then, why would it now need one? That's what we're really talking about anyway isn't it - an external teaching office? This isn't about the phenomenology of the inspiration of Scripture or the illumination of the mind, rather it's about an external teaching office, and that too carries over between covenants - both have an external teaching office both include a teaching/prophecy component, but in the Old Covenant the office and gift is restricted; in the New Covenant it is widened. The responsibility of the teaching office itself continues - as elders - but the gift itself is not limited to the eldership.

The Catholic can point out that the Old Covenant teaching authority "failed," but how is this an argument for the necessity of an infallible teaching office under the New Covenant?

1. Wasn't this "failure" precisely what precipiated the institution of the New Covenant? Matthew, after all, among other things, presents Jesus bringing a lawsuit from God upon the nation - faulting the priestly class. Since the New Covenant was prophesied in Jeremiah, isn't this precisely the intention of the Old Covenant's "failure?" If the OT rule of faith "failed," that is not because it was flawed. To the contrary, if it failed, then it did so because it was designed to do so. In fact, the OT rule of faith was a success. It succeeded in achieving the purpose that God meant for it.

2. Signs and shadows are just that. The sacrifices did not take away sin either - and they were never intended to do so. Old Covenant believers had their sins taken away via the cross, not bulls and goats. Likewise, in the Old Covenant, promises are made to Abraham for example, and yet they are not all fulfilled until Christ.

3. The Bible tells us about a wholly sufficient, "infallible" sacrifice offered once for all time (Hebrews) - Christ's - but makes none for an infallible teaching office. Note that on the one hand, the Catholic wants to maintain an infallible teaching office but wants to deny the once for all, complete sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice by the perpetual sacrifice of Christ "on a thousand altars" in that abomination called the Mass, and this must be administered by a priest in a valid holy order, etc. Again, the contrast could not be more stark.

The Gospel and Personal Evangelism

The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever

Endorsements:

“Mark Dever’s personal devotion to Scripture has led him to think deeply, read widely, preach clearly, and write simply to the great blessing of the body of Christ. Evangelism is the church’s mandate, and the one reason the redeemed are still on earth. Doing it effectively requires doing it biblically. Mark teaches us how to mobilize our churches to do just that.” - John MacArthur, Pastor-Teacher, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California

“For most of us, personal evangelism is the reverse of easy, and so it becomes a task we evade. Mark Dever writes to shake us up about this, clearing our heads as to just what evangelizing involves and motivating our hearts to go to it realistically and responsibly. This is a word in season that will surely do a great deal of good.” - J. I. Packer, Professor of Theology, Regent College

“Mark Dever has done every Christian and pastor a tremendous favor. With great humility, Dever helps us to connect the dots of our hopes for seeing people saved with the truth about the gospel and evangelism itself. This little book searches our hearts, corrects our thinking, calls us to faithfulness, and encourages us with practical examples and exhortations.” - Thabiti M. Anyabwile, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman; author, The Faithful Preacher

Too Much Confidence, Too Little Evidence

Worth noting in this regard is a well-known comment by C.S. Lewis. In his famous essay, "Fern-seed and Elephants," Lewis reflects upon the times when his own literary works had been subjected to redaction-critical assessments by his contemporary reviewers, that is, times when reviewers attempted speculatively to reconstruct the genesis and development of his works. Lewis responds,

"My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; that the method shows a record of one hundred per cent failure. You would expect that by mere chance they would hit as often as they miss. But it is my impression that they do no such thing. I can't remember a single hit....What I can say with certainty is that they are usually wrong. And yet they would often sound - if you didn't know the truth - extremely convincing."

This is enough to render the enterprise of speculating on the redactional motives and moves of the Gospel authors and the redactional histories of their writings suspect. But Lewis goes on to note that his reviewers had advantages that contemporary New Testament scholars do not have with regard to the biblical texts. For example, Lewis's reviewers shared the same culture and language as Lewis, something that is not true of critics of the New Testament. This strongly suggests that speculations about the redactional histories of ancient texts have far less likelihood of being correct than the speculations about Lewis's writings proffered by contemporary reviewers. And this cannot help but call the whole enterprise into question.

Yet, remarkably enough, the more extreme redaction critics, and especially those who employ redaction criticism in defense of the legendary-Jesus thesis, typically exhibit very little tentativeness in presenting their speculative reconstructions. Furthermore, it appears that often the rhetoric of confidence is rooted less in inevitable conclusions drawn from the literary evidence than in the simple fact that the speculations are inherently unfalsifiable. As Lewis himself notes - with no small tinge of sarcasm - "remember, the Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss." (Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, The Jesus Legend [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007], p. 400)

Coming Soon to 60 Minutes

HT: Justin Taylor


White Horse Inn: "Currently scheduled for Sunday, Oct 14th, the interview will focus on the teaching and ministry of popular televangelist Joel Osteen, author of Your Best Life Now. 60 Minutes airs on CBS Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/PT (check your local listings)."

The Fleecing of the SBC

If you are in the SBC and have not read Timmy Brister's post, you should - period.

State conventions are soon to meet. Ask questions; do some research...

Darrell Bock's Commentary On Acts

I recently got Darrell Bock’s commentary on Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007). I haven’t read much of it yet, so these are only my initial impressions.

The obvious comparison is to Bock’s commentary on Luke. The Acts commentary is about 800 pages long, which is a significant length, but it’s shorter than his two-volume commentary on Luke’s gospel. It’s disappointing in that sense, but I still highly recommend it. It carries endorsements from Ben Witherington, Steve Walton, Robert Wall, and W. Ward Gasque.

Bock interacts with a lot of recent sources, including some from 2006. I was pleased to see that he even includes a few references to Richard Bauckham’s book on eyewitness testimony, which didn’t come out until late last year. He often cites previous conservative commentaries on Acts, such as F.F. Bruce’s and Ben Witherington’s, but he also frequently interacts with less conservative sources, like C.K. Barrett and Joseph Fitzmyer.

Unlike many other commentators (R.T. France, in light of his 2007 commentary on Matthew, comes to mind), Bock places a lot of emphasis on harmonization. His material on the death of Judas and how the different accounts of Paul’s conversion relate to each other, for example, is handled well. Bock’s high view of scripture and his willingness to give so much time, effort, and space to issues of harmonization are commendable.

For those not familiar with the Baker series of commentaries, the format is easy to follow, with the commentary marked off by chapter and verse numbers in large, bold print at the side of each page. There’s a subject index, an author index, and an index for scripture references and other ancient sources. These commentaries are meant to be a middle ground between more popular level works aimed at laymen and “encyclopedic commentaries that seek to cover every conceivable issue that may arise” (p. ix).

A Left-Handed Salute

A Left-Handed Salute: A review of The Intellectuals and the Flag by Todd Gitlin

Between the she-devil and the deep blue sea

At the moment, conservatives find themselves in a typical quandary as we contemplate the next presidential election. I say this is typical because it’s almost the norm for us to be presented with a choice between a more electable, but less conservative candidate, and a more conservative, but less electable candidate. So this is a seasonal debate which we rehearse almost every election cycle.

And it isn’t always limited to presidential candidates. Back when I was living in California, there was the same debate over voting for Ah-nuld or McClintock to unseat Davis.

At present, the two candidates who are the principle objects of controversy are Rudy and Romney.

There are different ways of framing this issue. One question is whether it’s wrong to vote for a compromise candidate. Up to a point, I’m prepared to vote for a compromise candidate. The question is when and where to draw the line. How much compromise is too much compromise?

I don’t get to choose my choices. I only get to choose from among a set of choices which I didn’t choose.

Some people run for office, while others don’t. I have no control over that. So I can only choose from among those who choose to run in the first place.

For that reason, my personal responsibility is pretty limited. It’s a forced option.

BTW, Calvinism doesn’t deny that certain forms of inability are attenuating or exculpatory circumstances.

If I had an opportunity to actually elect the best candidate, then it would be wrong of me to vote for the second-best candidate. But the only reason we have these debates is when we’re not in a clearly defined position to elect the best candidate. Perhaps, if we vote our heart, our favorite candidate will win, but that’s in doubt. The second-best candidate may have, or appear to have, a better shot at winning.

There is also a difference between voting for a candidate you know is going to lose, and voting for a candidate who may have a fighting chance. One of the complications in these calculations is the danger of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t vote for my favorite candidate because he can’t win. Why can’t he win? Because not enough folks will vote for him. And you don’t vote for him for the same reason. And so on. Of course, if enough folks don’t vote for him because not enough folks will vote for him, then we are the cause of the reason we don’t vote for him. We are effecting, or at least affecting, the very outcome we cite as our reason to do otherwise. Circular counterfactual causation.

Mind you, in some cases the margin is so great that even if everyone had voted for his favorite candidate, that would be insufficient to put him over the top. But I suspect a lot of conservatives suffer from the nagging doubt that if only they had voted their conscience, their first-pick might have been elected.

Are we spiting ourselves? Are we allowing the opposition party to pick our candidates for us?

But if we knew the answer to this question, there would be no debate. There are so many free variables and mutually adjustable variables that it’s a matter of guesswork, and too much second-guessing may influence the outcome.

This is part of the human condition in a fallen world. We must often make momentous decisions with inadequate information. And when the choices are this ambiguous, it is less than clear which choice is the “right” choice—or the “wrong” choice. So, in situations like this, I think we’re in a condition of diminished responsibility.

It’s because there are so many imponderables to calculate and so many variables beyond our control that I don’t generally think we’re morally obligated to either vote for the more conservative, but less electable candidate, or the more electable, but less conservative candidate. If we really knew who was electable or not, we wouldn’t have this debate in the first place.

There are cases when conservatives voted their conscience, only to see their candidate go down in flames and take the entire party right down with him. The effect was self-exile from power.

But there are also cases in which choosing the “electable” candidate backfired. In some instances, he got elected and then proceeded to govern like a Democrat. If you run as a RINO, and you get elected as a RINO, why not govern as a RINO? What’s to lose? In other instances, the “electable” candidate imploded before the election, or there was so little difference between him and a Democrat that he wasn’t a serious alternative.

However, some pundits have inverted the argument. Whereas, for some conservatives, it’s morally compromising to vote for a more electable, but less conservative candidate—some pundits say it’s morally compromising to vote for the more conservative, but less electable candidate.

And I suppose that’s a niffty tactical maneuver. They are trying to put the conservative diehards on the defensive—which gives the pundits a psychological advantage. If Hillary wins, the diehards are to blame. Shame on you for putting her in office!

But this argument is rather unscrupulous. We didn’t choose the circumstances. Rather, the circumstances are forcing us—one way or the other—to make an inferior choice. In a world of bad options, it’s hardly fair to fault someone for choosing one bad option over another.

There are three bad options:

a) Vote for a more conservative, but less electable candidate

b) Vote for a less conservative, but more electable candidate

c) Sit out the election

The reason many conservatives feel conflicted in this situation is that they are, in fact, confronted with conflicting moral intuitions—for each option has potential upsides and downsides, while no option has upsides without significant (potential or actual) downsides.

Therefore, it’s inappropriate to excoriate conservatives who choose to vote their conscience. Fingerwaging would only be appropriate if there were a clearcut moral alternative. But in that event, we wouldn’t be having this debate in the first place.

Moreover, the question is not that abstract. Yes, we can all agree that Hillary would be bad. But politics is very unpredictable.

Suppose that Hillary wins. She might be so bad in the short-term that she would be good in the long-term—because she wouldn’t have a second-term, and she would discredit her party in the process. Between Hillary and a Democrat Congress, it’s not hard to imagine such a disastrous term of office that the Democrats would be radioactive for years to come.

It’s possible to lose by winning. This is also true for the GOP. A victory can cost you too much depending on how much you you’re prepared to shell out.

If Rudy can win as a social liberal, why wouldn’t he govern as a social liberal? A candidate has no incentive to govern any further to the right or the left than it takes him to get elected or reelected.

And in the process, he might also redefine his party. If a GOP candidate can win without the social conservatives, then it ceases to be a party in which the social conservatives have any clout. The wrong kind of success will get you evicted from your own party.

As long as they need your vote, it doesn’t matter whether they like you or want you. But if you’re both unwanted and unnecessary, then you’ll find your luggage on the front porch when you return home.

Of course, the argument is that Rudy can’t win without the religious right. But why should social conservatives vote for a social liberal? So do they win if he wins? Don’t they lose either way?

For purposes of this post, I’m not taking a position on Rudy. (I’ve done that elsewhere). I’m simply raising some issues which conservative proponents of Rudy are overlooking or ignoring.

What about Romney? Well, for one thing, he’s a Mormon. For now, I’m not saying if that should be a deal-breaker. However, there are (conservative?) pundits who act as if his Mormonism shouldn’t even be a liability to evangelical voters.

Well, I disagree. Personal beliefs invariably affect one’s policy judgments. So it does make a difference. We can debate how much of a difference, and we can debate whether his brand of Mormonism is better or worse than Hillary’s brand of Methodism—but it’s a valid issue, and a serious issue at that.

Some pundits are trying to take this issue off the table—indeed, force this issue off the table, as if it’s out-of-bounds even to discuss it. Well, they don’t get to dictate my priorities.

However, we don’t even have to decide whether his Mormonism is a make-or-break issue, since that is not Romney’s only liability. There’s also the question of whether he governed as a liberal when he had the top job in Massachusetts.

Let’s remember that Romney’s a very bright, well-educated guy who’s 60 years old. It’s very unlikely that a man with his backgrond is going to undergo an intellectual revolution. It’s far more likely that he’s had plenty of time to think through his positions and solidify his positions.

If he ran to the left, and governed to the left in Massachusetts, and if he’s suddenly running to the right in his presidential bid, then by far the most plausible explanation is that he’s a naked political opportunist.

Now it’s possible that he’d still be better than Hillary. It would be easy to improve on Hillary.

However, the notion that we have some moral imperative to vote for Romney is, itself, morally clouded. You could make a pragmatic argument for either Rudy or Romney, but let’s not pretend that we are duty-bound to vote for a liberal Mormon. We wouldn’t be duty-bound to vote for a conservative Mormon, much less a liberal Mormon.

I’ve read pundits who make a reasonable case for electing Rudy, Romney, or McCain. That’s not how I’ll cast my vote, but I think this is an issue over which reasonable men can disagree.

Yet some pundits are getting to be overbearing on the subject. They’re so desperately afraid of Hillary that they are beginning to lash out at conservatives who can’t bring themselves to vote for Rudy or Romney.

But, speaking for myself, if providence doesn’t offer me an acceptable candidate, then I take that as a providential permission-slip to either vote my conscience or sit out the election. This is not a problem of my own making. And it’s not a problem that I can fix.

Dawkins and Lennox debate the existence of God

-----Original Message-----
From: DAVID WOOD [deleted]
To: [deleted]
Sent: Wed, Oct 3 2:28 PM
Subject: FW: The God Delusion Debate

Yo,

This is only a few hours away. You might want to put a note about this on your blogs, so that readers will know it's coming.

David

I just got this e-mail from a friend...

Most of you may already know that there will be a debate tomorrow evening, Wednesday, October 3rd from 7-9 p.m. between fundamentalist atheist, Richard Dawkins and Christian apologist, John Lennox, both professors at Oxford University. This debate will take place in (of all places!) Birmingham, AL. The link below will send you to a radio station in our area which will carry the debate LIVE. It will be heard live all over the world via NPR and the BBC.

[Check it out here.]

Postcards From the Edge

I see Uncle Dave has been perusing the combox.

He writes:

Nana, Nana, Boo Boo!

Note how I wrote above:

"What the anti-Catholics don't comprehend is that they do not represent all Protestants in my mind. To the contrary, I think they are an extreme fringe element. Protestants who aren't anti-Catholic do not approach me at all like these guys do (and vice versa)."

Lo and behold I am a prophet today, as anti-Catholic Peter Pike idiotically stated at Triablogue:

I see Armstrong is continuing his defining of "anti-Catholic" as "whoever disagrees with Dave Armstrong."

Welcome to the club, Saint & Sinner, from your fellow "anti-Catholic"

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/ 2...776049876026031

Either these guys must be brain dead or they are so incredibly hostile that their minds literally cannot comprehend things that they disagree with. How could one misunderstand such a simple and patently obvious thing? It's a marvel to observe . . .

1. Notice that interlaced in his own article are accusations railing against James White for things like engaging in a "mudfest" and "personal insult," yet Dave feels free to call Pete "brain dead."

2. Here are some reasons, perhaps, that folks "don't get it."

a. Apropos 1, it's hard to "get it," Dave, when you commit the very sorts of actions of which you accuse your readers.

b. Add to that your rambling and mostly incoherent prose style.

c. Also, we're also pondering exactly what the connection is to what Saint and Sinner is posting in his exegesis and James White's alleged behavior.

Turretinfan, was quite right to point out that your entire post is constituted as follows (I'll break it down for you_:

[T]he bulk of Mr. Armstrong's post is in comparisons to other Reformed posters (first paragraph),

self-discussion and general criticism of Armstrong's critics (second paragraph),

complaints about Dr. White and supposed unkind treatment of Mr. Armstrong (third paragraph),

a one-paragraph summary of S&S post (fourth paragraph),

a one paragraph summary of the title criticism (fifth paragraph),

and an ad-hominem - suggesting that S&S is saying so because S&S is a "presuppositionalist" Calvinist and because he has read Dr. White's writings (sixth and seventh paragraphs).

After all that, a block quote summarizing S&S's list of the 9 fallacies identified in DA's writing so far is followed by a sarcastic-sounding best-wishes-hope-it-don't-blow-up-in-your-face paragraph.

After that, the remainder of the post is four paragraphs of criticizing Dr. White's rebuttal of DA's position with a lengthy block quote with color coded comments interspersed, and two paragraphs of conclusion in which DA points out that DA will ignore S&S if S&S refuses to accept DA's correction (no really: "I will tire of it if he doesn't accept correction" - with the shocking kicker "as in White's case" - as if DA had given any credible indication of being "tired" of interaction with Dr. White) and then paints S&S in colors aimed to make S&S's writings unpalatable to Dave's readers (such as Jonathan Prejean).

d. Further, one is hard pressed to find the logical connection between "anti-Catholicism" and something like young earth creationism - except as a substitute for any sort of reasoned argumentation and/or (e) below.

e. What we do get is that your entire post is nothing more than an exercise in well-poisoning.

Moving on...

What's difficult about talking with White is the same thing that makes talking to a lot of apologists difficult. Some apologists (especially James White and Steve Hays) have a staggering inability to empathize with their opponents. By that I mean that the attitude is never "Reasonable people differ over these matters, and I can see why someone wouldn't agree with my position." It's always "If you don't agree, you must be insane." And when White says that, he's not lying. He really thinks that if you disagree with him it can only be because of poor moral character, because no clearly thinking rational person would ever see things any other way than the way he sees them.

This is from Jon Curry, recently banned from Triablogue.

1. Of course, this raises yet another observation, one Steve has made before regarding Prejean. Catholicism, or at least certain versions of it, seem convertible with atheism. At the very least, I find it mildly entertaining that, when the cards are laid on the table, the atheist will run to the Catholic for "empathy." As they say, "Birds of a feather..."

2. I don't recall Jon saying to the folks here, "Reasonable people differ over these matters, and I can see why someone wouldn't agree with my position." Rather, he would go on and on about how unreasonable our position was on a regular basis, parroting the likes of Robert Price ad infinitum. Of course, he would also ignore a great deal of what was stated. One need only check the archives.

3. I don't recall Steve calling Jon "insane." We believe atheism is irrational however, and I would say that Scripture depicts sin itself as a form of "insanity," broadly speaking. Of course, I'm from the South, and, as somebody once said, in the South, we don't hide our crazy relatives, we ask who they are, so maybe I just don't notice it as much.

4. Has White ever called Svendsen, Shisko, etc. "insane?" Surely, this is Jon waxing hyperbolic. Surely, he would not mislead anybody.

5. And as far as not wanting to make anything into a prolonged personal dispute, one could list several threads here in which Mr. Curry persisted in doing just that. Again, one need only check the archives.

6. And isn't one of the stock objections of the Protestant rule of faith the allegedly diversity for which it allows? Of course, there are folks who view all who disagree as heretics, but as I recall, the persons named in this objection distinguish between levels and degrees of error. Of course, claiming to be a Christian does not obviate the use of harsh language when the occasion calls for it; and apostates like Curry are singled out in Scripture with harsh words indeed. Again, we've been over this many times. Check the archives.

The Neglect Of External Evidence

Several decades ago, in a landmark interdisciplinary symposium on the Gospels, noted classics scholar George Kennedy challenged New Testament scholars to take the report of Papias [concerning the origins of Mark's gospel] much more seriously. In his written response, Reginald Fuller initially expressed his "greatest surprise" over the weight Kennedy placed on external evidence regarding the authorship of the Gospels. However, in light of Kennedy's case, Fuller goes on to concede:

"New Testament scholars generally have not taken the external evidence (especially that of Papias) seriously enough....As a result of Kennedy's essay and the subsequent discussion, New Testament scholars have been challenged to take more seriously the external evidence regarding the origin of the gospels than they have been wont to do in the past....[T]hey must henceforth exercise great caution when they spin off theories about the internal evidence that flatly contradict the external evidence....This should be one item for the agenda of future studies of the relationships among the gospels." (Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, The Jesus Legend [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007], pp. 392-393)

The Eisegeted Verses

For those who are as yet unaware, "Saint and Sinner" has begun a running commentary critiquing Dave Armstrong's Catholic Verses.

It's also worth noting that he's already received his first love letter from Uncle Dave here.

Neener! Neener!

It's worth noting that, as usual, it is utterly irrelevant to anything Saint and Sinner actually wrote. How, exactly, young earth creationism affects one's exegesis of the texts that Dave examined isn't at all clear - except as, perhaps, an exercise in poisoning the well. Then again, nothing much actually addresses what was stated in the introduction to the series. Rather, Dave focuses on James White, which is, of course, utterly irrelevant to what Saint and Sinner himself is writing at present.

Textual Variations and Inerrancy

(Original article available here.)

Dear Alumni,

I attended a professional society meeting recently and heard two or three speakers mention that when they had attended seminary they learned that the New Testament has quite a number of variant readings, and that this fact had seriously shaken their faith in an inerrant Bible. We affirm that the Scriptures are inerrant in the autographs, meaning the actual documents of the original writers. What we have are ancient copies, since none of the autographs have survived today. But this view is regarded by some critical authors today as a convenient dodge on our part. Since we don’t have the autographs, how can we trust that the Bibles we read today are without error? Indeed, some claim that they are filled with serious errors and contradictions, especially because there exist so many variant readings in the various ancient manuscripts.

Now before I address this objection and others to inerrancy based on textual criticism, let me define a few terms and describe the situation in general. I should also add that I will only be addressing the New Testament (NT) situation. Old Testament textual criticism is similar but involves a few specialized issues like the role of the old Greek translations which we will not cover.

First, a "variant reading," or simply "variant," refers to different readings in the ancient copies of any one NT passage where a word, phrase, or even larger units might be different or be missing in some manuscripts. For example, in Eph 1:7 most ancient and medieval Greek manuscripts read the phrase "according to the riches of his grace" but a small handful read "riches of his kindness." In this instance "grace" and "kindness" are spelled similarly in Greek, and the variant is thought to have arisen because of a similar phrase in Rom 2:4. Manuscripts were all tediously copied by hand back then, and the errors of a tired copyist like this are perfectly understandable and appear from time to time. Even still, there is certainly no heresy introduced into the Bible when certain copies of the letter to the Ephesians say that God has forgiven our transgressions out of kindness rather than by grace. God is both kind and gracious. The fact is that no NT variant reading introduces insoluble heresy.

Secondly, the "problem" of textual variants of the NT is caused by the wonderful wealth of extant ancient manuscripts. Let us imagine that only one ancient copy of Hebrews had survived into our time. There would obviously be no variants because we would have only the one manuscript. But the fact is, we have well over 5,000 ancient and Byzantine copies of the Greek NT, not to mention dozens of ancient translations into other languages like Latin, Syriac, Coptic, or Georgic which are used to deduce ancient readings. Furthermore, the writings of the early church fathers are often filled with verbatim quotations of NT passages which show us the early readings available to them. And early fathers like Clement or Ignatius were writing at around AD 95 and 115 respectively, so they represent very early testimony to the readings of the autographs.

The marvel of possessing such an incredible number of ancient copies of the NT is best appreciated when we compare this with the state of the ancient Greek, comic playwright, Menander (342–291 BC). Like Shakespeare, Menander became hugely popular only after his death. His plays enjoyed quite a long and widespread popularity well past the NT period as evidenced by a number of sources including the Menander House in Pompeii, a fresco from a scene in a Menander play found in a private villa at second century AD Ephesus, or a third century AD mosaic depicting Menander from a suburb of Antioch in Syria. Many of the pithy, moral sayings from his plays entered the popular culture and were often written up in collections of such things including one which Paul quotes in 1 Cor 15:33: "Bad company corrupts good morals."

Now we would expect to have a fair number of copies of the works of such a popular author, but the fact is that until the early 20th century, only fragments of his plays were known and even now we have only one complete play of Menander filled out from one papyrus manuscript copied roughly 500+ years after the playwright’s death, and that was not published until 1958. Granted, this may seem to be an extreme case, but the number of ancient copies of many other Greek authors may only be in the dozens at best. Clearly, the NT enjoys an embarrassment of riches in ancient Greek manuscripts and translations in comparison!

Along with such a high number of ancient manuscripts of the NT naturally come thousands of differences in these hand-written copies. Copyist errors account for a large number of these differences. Imagine if you were to sit down and copy the NT (over 405 single-column pages in one modern English version). How many errors do you think you would unwittingly make, especially writing hour after hour in a cold dark room? For example, one set of errors are known to occur as the copyist’s eye jumped from the exemplar to his copy and back hundreds of thousands of times. This is particularly exacerbated by the ancient practice of writing in letters of one size with no spacing between words and only minimal punctuation at best. Let us say you were to copy these opening lines from the Gospel of John:

INTHEBEGINNINGWASTHEWORDANDTHEWORDWASWITHGODAN
DTHEWORDWASGODHEWASINTHEBEGINNINGWITHGODALLTHIN
GSWEREMADETHROUGHHIMANDWITHOUTHIMWASNOTANYTHIN
GMADETHATWASMADE

One common copy error occurred when the scribe looked to his copy to write "and," but in putting his eye back to the exemplar he unwittingly jumped to a later occurrence of "and," skipping the material in between. These kinds of copy errors in the manuscripts are fairly easy to spot with a little imagination and experience.

Now when you hear about thousands of variants in the NT, it may seem plausible that more weighty variants would arise than these kind of copy errors, which is indeed the case. These more significant variants, however, never make our Bibles suspect of grave error. To show this, I would like to look fairly closely at a substantive sampling of variants rather than to discuss them in a general way. I’ve selected the variants in Eph 1:1—14, which typify the kind one finds in the NT manuscripts.

The variant readings discussed below are reported in the Nestle-Aland 27th edition of the Greek NT (NA27). There are other variants in the manuscripts, but these are mostly trivial differences of spellings, of word order, and the like; the NA27 gives all the variants of any real interest.

There are 14 variant readings given in the NA27 for Eph 1:1–14, averaging one per verse. Here is the breakdown:

Four verses with no variant readings (vv. 2, 5, 8, 12)
Four verses with one variant reading (vv. 3, 4, 10, 14)
Four verses with two variant readings (vv. 6, 7, 11, 13)
Two verses with three variant readings (vv. 1 and 9)

Ten of the 14 variants are trivial, meaning that the meaning of the text is not impacted in any significant way. For example, v. 1 has the variation in word order "of Jesus Christ" or "of Christ Jesus" divided among the ancient manuscripts. A few early and later manuscripts insert "all" in the phrase "to (all) the saints who are" in v. 1. Twice (vv. 4 and 9) there is a variation in the spelling of "in him" to "in himself" (with the addition of one Greek letter), but this simply makes the pronoun more explicitly reflexive—a meaning the personal pronoun may already carry in Greek. In v. 6 the phrase "in the Beloved" is filled out with the words "in his beloved Son," which simply makes the identity of the Son here more explicit. This last example illustrates the tendency in later scribes to clarify what the text they were copying already implied. In some cases these later copies act like ancient commentaries on the text and can be quite helpful for understanding the grammar and meaning of the Greek. Obviously, the meaning of Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 1 is not changed in any way by these variant readings.

In some cases, the trivial variant readings involve the change of one character in a word. In v. 13, for example, "we" and "our" is found in later manuscripts for "you" and "your" respectively through the change of one character in each word (an eta for an upsilon), which were pronounced the same in some locales and thereby prone to confusion. This is actually a variation found in a number of places in the NT manuscripts, and while the difference of meaning may be interesting, it in no way moves the text into erroneous teaching.

Some of the other trivial variants are merely stylistic. For example, in v. 10 some scribes used a more common, synonymous preposition for "in" in the phrase "things in heaven" while a few manuscripts further added a nice untranslated conjunction in keeping with a more literary convention in the Greek of their day. Furthermore, there are some variants in Eph 1:1–14 that appear in only a few manuscripts. For example, "and Father" in the phrase "the God and Father of our Lord" in v. 3 is missing in one manuscript according to the NA27. It is obvious one scribe simply made a mistake for some reason. If others had used this copy as an exemplar, the "error" would have been passed on down through more and more copies. But again, this may simply be a copy error; it introduces no doctrinal error into the Scriptures. The difference between a copy error and a doctrinal error here should be underlined.

So far, 10 of the 14 textual variations found in Eph 1:1–14 have been trivial. However, there are four that are worthy of more careful consideration. What should be emphasized at this point is one key observation. The opponents of inerrancy speak about an error-ridden Bible because of the variations in the copies. But the vast majority of these variants—as we have seen—make no difference whatsoever in the meaning of the biblical text, and those that may (like the omission of "and Father" in v. 3) do not impact our understanding of biblical truth. The relation of God as the Father of the incarnate Lord Jesus does not depend on Eph 1:3. Because of the complete clarity and widespread redundancy in Scripture, no essential doctrine of our faith is based on any doubtful text. Indeed, notice the teaching contained in Eph 1:2–6, 8–10, and 12–13 where there are either no textual variants at all or only trivial ones given in the NA27—there is no reason to question the reading of these verses in any way, even in their most subtle nuances, because of textual variants. So even if there are four significant variants, the general flow of the discourse in Eph 1:1–14 is perfectly clear and without serious doubt. It is the nature of human communication that we can leave out or change individual words in statements without changing the essential meaning. One has only to read Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" to find a delightful example of this phenomenon!

Now let’s look at the four weighty variants from Eph 1:1–14 and see what they look like. The first is the change of the word "riches of grace" (charitos) to "riches of kindness" (chrêstotêtos) in v. 7 found in a handful of Greek manuscripts—including the important Alexandrinus—and at least one ancient translation. The word kindness here is probably not the original reading, and even if it were, the text would not say anything substantively different as already noted. I call it a weighty variant only because it seems not to be a mechanical scribal mistake and it does appear in the important early witness Alexandrinus.

In the second variant the Greek verb eklêrôthêmen at the beginning of v. 11 is changed. This verb is rendered as "we have obtained an inheritance" in the KJV, NASB (with "we were made a heritage" in the margin) and ESV, but as "we were chosen" in NIV. The different renderings represents the difficulty of understanding the verb here, since it usually refers to appointing or receiving something by casting lots. When ancient scribes encountered a difficult reading like this, they sometimes substituted a clearer word either intentionally or not. In this case, eklêrôthêmen was replaced by eklêthêmen "we were called" (deleting the two letters "rô" in the middle) in a minority of manuscripts, including important Alexandrinus again, according to NA27. This smooths out the reading. Since scribes tended to make things easier to understand, text critics point out that the more difficult reading (lectio difficilior) is probably the original as is probably the case here.

The third variant is an interesting one theologically. In order to understand this variant you have to know that Greek nouns and pronouns have gender forms like some modern languages besides English. In Greek, the word for "spirit" (pneuma), used to refer to the Holy Spirit, is neuter in gender form. In v. 14, the opening relative pronoun "which" refers back to "the Holy Spirit of promise" in v. 13 and is properly neuter in gender form in the text of NA27. However, some early (and most later) manuscripts substitute the masculine gender form of the relative pronoun "who" here, acknowledging the personal character of the Holy Spirit. This is not the only place this occurs in the NT and it is even grammatically acceptable in Greek (and Latin) to substitute a natural gender form for a grammatical one. In either case, we hardly have to rely on this variant to prove the personal nature of the Holy Spirit. As an interesting study, look at what the Holy Spirit does in the NT: baptizes, leads, empowers, causes people to prophesy, bears witness, comforts, guides into truth, groans, intercedes, speaks, raises from the dead, etc.—these are not the actions of an impersonal force, so the gender form of the pronoun in Eph 1:14 is hardly needed to establish this.

The final variant in Eph 1:1–14 is the most interesting and the most difficult. In v. 1 the words "in Ephesus" are missing in several (though not all) early manuscripts. The implication of this is that the letter to the Ephesians may not have been sent originally to Ephesus after all but to some other unknown destination. Now the first thing to note is that this should come as no surprise to you if you read your Bible closely, since all major translations have a footnote mentioning this variant reading in the manuscripts. You don’t have to go to seminary to learn that there are variations in the manuscript tradition since our English versions report quite a few of them as well.

But what do we do with the missing reference to Ephesus in v. 1? In fact, this is one of the more difficult variants in Ephesians to untangle. The manuscripts that omit "in Ephesus" are among the earliest and best witnesses to the early reading of the text. This could mean that the omission occurred very early in the copying process, but it is usually taken to indicate the reading of the autograph manuscript. If "in Ephesus" is not original, the problem is twofold. First, Paul normally identifies the city of his recipients at this place in his epistles. Consider these three letter openings, for example:

Rom 1:7 "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Phil 1:1–2 "To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

2 Cor 1:1–2 "To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Now compare Ephesians:

Eph 1:1–2 "To the saints who are [in Ephesus], and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

There is certainly an expectation that "in Ephesus" or some other location would be expressed in Eph 1:1.

Secondly, when "in Ephesus" is omitted it is possible to still make sense of the phrase to mean something like: "to the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus." However, this is very clumsy in Greek and seems to be unduly repetitious since the saints are faithful by definition. This is such a problem that many scholars including myself believe for these and other reasons that "in Ephesus" is the reading of the autograph and that it was omitted from early manuscripts for some unknown reason, though many plausible suggestions have been offered. We should also note that the traditional heading of the letter as "to the Ephesians" is found in the early manuscripts.

Let us say, though, that we are wrong here and "in Ephesus" is not the original reading. Then Paul would have written the unusual and awkward "to the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus." The result would be that we would know with no certainty who the original recipients were beyond members of an early Christian congregation. In this case we would have to regard Ephesians to be like Hebrews, 1 John, or Jude, which are epistles sent to unknown destinations. I fail to see how our interpretation of Ephesians is impacted by this beyond a nuance or two here and there. No doctrine of our faith rests on the destination of this epistle!

The case of this last textual variation in Eph 1:1 brings out something that we should emphasize in conclusion. Paul addressed his epistle either "to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus" or "to the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus." These are the two options witnessed in the manuscript tradition. What this means cannot be stressed enough: we know without any serious doubt that one of these two readings is what Paul wrote on the autograph document. Yes, it is true we do not have the papyrus (or parchment) scroll Paul wrote upon, but we do undoubtedly have the very inerrant words he wrote evidenced in the thousands of manuscript witnesses. All the autograph readings have indeed most assuredly survived, so that the task of text criticism is to discern through careful study what the original reading most likely may be. Generations of dedicated, immensely talented Christian scholars have devoted their lives to the study of textual variations in the NT at least since the days of Erasmus in the early 16th century, in order to discern the reading of the autographs. As fruit of their selfless labors, we undoubtedly do have the reading of the autographs either in the texts or the variants given in the footnotes of our Greek editions.

Yes, there are places where we have real doubts about what the original reading of the biblical text might be. Yet in no case can anyone responsibly assert that our Bible is full of errors which could undermine anyone’s faith in the inerrant Word of God. If they do have doubts, it is not because of the facts of the case, and so perhaps we should keep Menander’s Old Cantankerous in mind.

S. M. Baugh
Professor of New Testament

© 2006 Westminster Seminary California. All rights reserved.

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