Betting on God

 A Challenge to the Author and Readers of Triablogue

A response:

Specifically, to those who adhere, more or less, to the version of Christianity which posits a place of everlasting torment for those who reject or otherwise don't believe in the biblical God (actually, I assume that rejection and non-belief are synonymous in this regard).

A Christian couple bears a child. They love her, nurture her, and otherwise provide her with the 'good life'; including an indoctrination into the religious concepts which, if cleaved to, will ultimately secure her a place in God's everlasting Heaven.

However, when the child is 15 years old, she becomes enamored of another faith, and leaves the Christian fold. Unfortunately, on her way to the train station to meet up with her 'guru', she is hit by a car and killed.

Now, leaving aside your personal regrets and/or righteous condemnations (I TOLD you so!), as well as those of the god you serve, let me ask you- Would it not have been better if the child had never been born as far as the child's welfare is concerned? I think this is a very pertinent question, since any Christian who has a child is taking the risk of something like the above hypothetical situation happening. Moreover, it seems to be a very GREAT risk, since 'narrow is the way, and few there be that find it', and with the stakes being so incredibly high and at someone else's expense, doesn't forbearance seem the wisest- and indeed, the kindest- course? After all, if this life is merely a short episode in which a single wrong decision might possibly damn your child to an eternity of unimaginable suffering with absolutely no hope of surcease, wouldn't it have been better FOR THE CHILD it she had never been born in the first place?

I look forward to your participation in this discussion.

http://antinatalism.blogspot.com/2011/03/challenge-to-author-and-readers-of.html

Several issues:

i) There’s a philosophical distinction between dispositional belief and occurrent belief, as well as a philosophical distinction between implicit belief and explicit belief.

And I think that philosophical distinction dovetails into certain theological distinctions as well. In Calvinism, regeneration is causally prior to faith. It causes a predisposition to exercise saving faith.

Conversely, sin, in the elect or regenerate, can also result in false beliefs or impede the formation of true beliefs.

Likewise, I think many true beliefs involve tactic knowledge.  That varies with age, education, and intellectual aptitude.

ii) Apropos (i), I don’t assume a backslider is damned if she dies before she had an opportunity to repent. Likewise, I don’t assume that a Christian’s loved one is damned if she died before exercising explicit or occurrent faith in Christ. I make allowance for that possibility, but there’s no presumption to that effect.

iii) There is also the question of what you mean by “torment.” Critics of hell generally invest that word with a heavy payload which they bring to the word, yet fail to exegete. But as I’ve often said, I don’t think hell is the same for all damned. The duration is the same, but I don’t assume the specific punishment is the same for one and all. Indeed, I assume that’s person-variable.

iv) Yes, I think the damned are worse off than if they never lived.

However, a cost/benefit analysis (which is how you’ve cast the issue) must consider aggregate goods and evils, not isolated goods and evils.

Suppose, ex hypothesi, Christian parents have 12 children, of which 11 are heavenbound, but 1 is hellbound. The damnation of a single child is bad for the child, and tragic for the parents, but how does that outweigh the good of all the other kids?

Which is better: that good never be exemplified if evil is ever exemplified, or that evil be offset by good? Why does the tradeoff only work one way? Should the good be disallowed for fear of allowing any incidental evil?

Why deny the other 11 kids the opportunity to enjoy the goodness of a beatific existence just because one grown child is justly doomed to hell? Why should she be allowed to spoil their opportunity for eternal bliss? Why should she exercise the unilateral veto on their existence?

Why does the “risk” of evil override the “risk” of good? Should I never marry for fear my wife might be a shrew? What about Tennyson’s celebrated saying that it’s better to love and lose than never love at all?

I’d be happier single than married to a shrew, but I’d be happier married to a wonderful woman than playing it safe. Either way there’s a risking of losing something good. But does the potential gain outweigh the potential loss? Great risks over against great rewards.

It’s worse for the damned. They’d be better off had they never tasted life. But by the same token, it’s worse for the saints had they never been born.

Antinatalism is pathologically risk-adverse. Should I never leave the house lest I’m run over by a bus?

v) In terms of risk factors, we’re ultimately betting on God. Betting on the wisdom and benevolence of God. And betting on God is always a safe bet–especially in the long run.

Life’s a gamble, but God’s the dealer, so I like them odds.

vi) Should someone benefit at another’s expense? That sounds callous, but it all depends on the details. If a sharpshooter kills a schoolyard sniper, the kids benefit at the expense of the sniper. But I don’t have a problem with that outcome. Do you?

vii) I also don’t assume that only a fraction of humanity will be saved. As I’ve discussed before, that turns on a rather disputable interpretation:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/10/are-there-few-that-be-saved.html

A marriage made in Sto-vo-Kor

I’ll respond to some objections that Paul Hoffer has leveled to my defense of TFan.

One wonders, too, of the hypocrisy in all of this. Mr. Hays does not hold the pseudonymous Mr. Fan to the standard he sets for me. Nowhere on Mr. Fan’s blog will anyone find his real name, his occupation, where he lives at, his actual denominational preference, the church he attends, or a link to his pastor in case of misconduct. For that matter, Mr. Hays does not hold himself to that standard either as he does not list his actual denominational preference, where he goes to church, a link to his pastor or even occupation or his address, unless the Klingon version of the afterlife is an actual address in the United States.

i) There’s no inconsistency in my holding you to your standards while not holding myself to your standards, since your standards aren’t my standards. That’s a pretty elementary distinction.

ii) In terms of Protestant standards of accountability, I believe that TFan is answerable to his elders, who also know about his blogging activities. I could say the same thing about my own situation.

iii) At the same time, accountability is not a one-way street in Protestant ecclesiology. There’s mutual accountability between clergy and laity.

I can hold Catholics to a hierarchical model of accountability while I myself reject that model. And the priestly abuse scandal is a prime example of what’s wrong with hierarchical models of accountability. 

My definition of accountability was that the author needs to own his words. It was Mr. Hays that imposed the additional requirement upon a writer of posting a listing of one's pastor and hierarchical authority. Mr. Hays did not object to my standard, he added to it.

I’m imposing an additional requirement? Is he suggesting that Catholics aren’t supposed to be answerable to their religious superiors?

How can you hold them to account if they refuse to provide direct contact info for their religious superiors?

Let us talk about ownership of words. When one takes ownership of his thoughts, his words, his actions, he is accepting responsibility for his thoughts, words, his actions. There are a variety of ways of accepting responsibility. One can be accountable by posting under one's own name which allows the readers to offer feedback directly. It is an outgrowth of the relationship created between writer and reader. There is nothing said about the imposition of a hierarchical authority to review and censor the remarks in my comments.

Isn’t he defining accountability in the very terms that Catholic epologists typically impute to Protestants? They say Protestants are only accountable to themselves, as individuals. And they tell us that to be accountable to yourself is to be accountable to no one.

Yet he’s defining Catholic accountability in terms of taking personal responsibility for his words and deeds. But that's quite different than being held responsible for your actions by someone in a position of authority.

Hello Mr. Hays, while it is true that Mr. Fan has acknowledged in writings that he is some sort of Presbyterian, there are as many flavors of those as there are ice cream at Baskin Robbins. Given the multiplicity of Presbyterian-leaning denominations out there, there must be some reason that they are different.

i) The fact that you put it that way shows you don't know enough to know what you reject.

They are generally differentiated by degrees of adherence to the Westminster Standards. To take some major examples, the PCUSA is a traditionally, but now nominally Presbyterian denomination that went liberal years ago. Clearly TFan doesn't belong to the PCUSA.

Far to the right of the PCUSA are the OPC and PCA. They basically adhere to the Westminster Confession, but with some caveats. They adhere to the 18C American revisions, and they don't enforce the Confession on the days of creation. Likewise, they don't adhere to the Westminster Directory of Worship.

Given TFan’s Puritan view of worship, it's clear that he couldn't in good conscience join the OPC or PCA.

Then you have very traditional Presbyterian denominations like the PRC. That’s the sort of church TFan would probably attend.

ii) Moreover, the fact that TFan’s favorite theologian is Francis Turretin already pinpoints his theological commitments. I assume TFan is an old school, jure divino Presbyterian. Given his strict adherence to the 1646 Westminster Confession and the Westminster Directory of Worship, it isn't difficult to narrow down his denominational sympathies.

As for yours, your profile show that you are Reformed in temperment but like some ritual with that. Thus, you could be anything from a Lutheran to a UCC man. That really narrows it down for me.

i) You keep superimposing your Catholic reference frame on me. But your comparison is equivocal. Since you believe the Roman church is the only true church, your denominational affiliation automatically selects for your theological identity.

Since, by contrast, I don't think any particular denomination is conterminous with "the church," my theological identity can't be inferred from the church I happen to attend. My church doesn’t select for my theology; rather, my theology selects for my church.

Denominational allegiance was never my standard. For that matter, an evangelical can attend an independent church. Many do.

In any case, my theological commitments are hardly shrouded in mystery. I have a very long, very public paper trail.

ii) Moreover, the fact that you and Armstrong are Catholic was never in doubt. That’s a red herring.

iii) Conversely, the fact that John Kerry is Roman Catholic tells you nothing about his theological commitments, or lack thereof. So why are you fixated on one's denominational affiliation?

The closest thing one can find on either yours or Mr. Fan’s website is a reference to Klingon hell, which must make your wife, if you have one, real happy.

Um, no, that's a reference to Klingon heaven. And I'll have you know that my beloved wife Vixis is more than happy with our accommodations in Sto-vo-Kor.

It’s bad enough that you’re a papist, but when you lack a rudimentary grasp of Klingon eschatology, that’s truly beyond the pale. Have you no priorities? 

Separated at birth?

(source)

Does God love the damned?

I see that the Society of Evangelical Arminians has allowed Thibodaux to repost a response to me that he originally posted on his own blog.

This is deceptive because I posted two subsequent responses to Thibodaux. Yet you wouldn’t know that from the SEA site.

Here they are:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-much-worse.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/05/arminians-twice-confounded.html

What SEA did is sadly characteristic of what passes for Arminian morality. They love everybody on paper, but they only love their own in practice.

Since I already responded twice over to Thibodaux’s retread, I won’t repeat myself here. However, I might as well take the occasion to make an additional point.

In another recent post at SEA, the contributor made the following claim:

Even from our finite perspective, we know that universalism is not a possibility, because Jesus said that "there are few who find" the narrow gate which leads to life (Matt. 7:13-14). Christ's command to everyone is to enter "through the narrow gate," but only few will -- most people will follow the broad path which leads to hell.

http://evangelicalarminians.org/node/979

If we combine this interpretation with the classical Arminian doctrine of divine foreknowledge, this means the Arminian God freely and knowingly created most human beings to spend eternity in hell. Put another way, he knowingly made only a few heavenbound sinners.

Assuming (arguendo) the Arminian interpretation of “every,” “all,” and “world,” in what sense does the Arminian God truly love the “world,” or truly love “all” sinners–when he clearly foresaw how the majority of men and women would suffer forever in hell in he made them, yet he went right ahead and made them with that dire outcome in mind even though he was in a position to spare them from that dire outcome?

Put another way, whatever God does, God intends to do. If he freely made the majority of the human race with their hellish future in full view, then he deliberately made them to go to hell. And that’s despite the fact that their hellish future was entirely avoidable.

God could preempt that outcome by never making them in the first place. And that would in no way violate their freedom, since nonentities have no freedom to violate–even if (arguendo) we define freedom in libertarian terms.

So it what sense does he love “everyone” when he dooms most of them to hell by making them? How is God acting in the best interests of “everyone” when most sinners will endure the worst-case scenario at his hands, even though that outcome was both foreseeable and preventable? 

Jerry Walls on Calvinism

Jerry Walls is a leading Arminian philosopher. Here he corrects a popular objection to Calvinism:

It is sometimes thought that Calvinism teaches that God forces us to do things against our will or compels us against our wishes. However, this is a serious misunderstanding of Calvinism. Look again at the passage above. It says that God enlightens the minds of the elect, that he renews their wills, changes their hearts, and so on. Consequently, God does not cause the elect to act against their wills, rather, he changes their wills so that when they come to Christ, they do so quite willingly. To be sure, they could not do otherwise—that is what makes it irresistible grace—but given how God has changed them internally, they do not want to do otherwise. They do exactly what God has determined them to do, and they do exactly what they want to do. They are both determined and free, in the sense that they do what they want to do. God causes them to have the beliefs and desires they do, and they act in accordance with those desires.

http://www.catalystresources.org/issues/351Walls.htm

The Catholic two-step

Dave Armstrong begins by quoting me.

Is he [Paul Hoffer] accountable? I notice the conspicuous absence of contact information, either at the end of his post, or over at his own blog, which would enable readers to report him to his parish priest or diocesan bishop in case of misconduct. By the same token, I notice that Armstrong hasn’t made that information publicly available either.

Before we proceed, notice how I worded my statement. The contact info for their parish priest or diocesan bishop. Now watch Dave perform his bait-n-switch:

When one looks at the top of my blog, there are seven major categories with which one begins a "card catalogue-type" search on my site. Steve (now pay close attention!) will want to select the second from the right, entitled "About Me." I think the average reader would be able to ascertain that this might lead to the desired personal information. Maybe not, and maybe Steve would find this difficult to comprehend. We all have our weaknesses and limitations, after all, and he stated outright that I haven't "made that information publicly available" and that my blog was notable for such information's "conspicuous absence."

 

But back to our task at hand. Now, here's where it could conceivably become quite frustrating for Steve, but we'll try our best to "dumb it down" and walk him through the process. Once there, readers are confronted with an incredibly complex, Byzantine set of three tables, each having eight sections. This might be over Steve's head, but if he puts his mind to it, I think it is entirely possible. He will (presumably, if he gets this far in his quest) look over these, and hopefully, by God's grace and a bit of luck, would be able to locate a category on the bottom-left corner of the second table down (the one in the middle).

 

Got that, Steve? Good! It is entitled (drum roll): "Home Parish: St. Joseph's in Detroit." This takes the reader to our parish website, complete with contact info! Now, that wasn't so hard, was it? Two clicks of a mouse: "About Me" (which is always on the top of my blog), and the parish link. This is even easier than a sidebar, because my sidebar has lots and lots of stuff, but the top of the blog is one small portion that is always visible.

But when we follow the links, I don’t see where it gives us the contact info for his priest. It gives contact info for a deacon. And it gives a church email address. Who does that go to? The church secretary?

Rather that showing us direct contact info, Dave is referring us to filtered lines of communication.

The archdiocese is another story. It's true that I don't have that contact information listed on my site, as far as I know. But of course it could be obtained from my parish if necessary. Failing that, let's see if we can actually find such a thing. How about searching in Google:"Archdiocese of Detroit." The fact that I live in the Detroit area is all over my blog and Facebook page: if you click on the bottom of my profile on the sidebar ("View my complete profile"), it goes to my Blogger Profile, wherein it states at the top that I reside in "Metro Detroit, Michigan." Or one can click "Resume": permanently on the top right of my blog. At the bottom of that is my lengthy blurb, "About the Author." At the very end of that and end of the Literary Resume one learns that I "reside in Melvindale, Michigan (metro Detroit)." I don't think this is rocket science. Does anyone else except Steve Hays, who has a whale of a time figuring it out?

 

But back to the elaborate, excruciatingly tough Google search for my bishop. Using the words above, we have success! The very first hit is called "The Official Web Site for the Archdiocese of Detroit." YES! Even as you view it there, sitting on the Google search page, attentive readers may spot a subsection entitled "Contact." This actually takes one to phone numbers, email addresses, and street addresses. So it is another two-mouse-click affair: "Archdiocese of Detroit" in Google and "Contact" under the first hit. I think even Hays could manage to navigate this ineffably complicated labyrinth. Two clicks to my home parish; two clicks to my archdiocese.

But once again, when I navigate that website, I don’t find contact info for his bishop. There’s contact info for sundary staff, but where’s the contact info for the bishop?

So Dave indulges in an elaborate exercise in misdirection, pretending that he’s always complied with the terms of my challenge when, to judge by the information he’s actually supplied, the trails runs out before it reaches his priest or bishop. Yet that’s precisely how I stated the problem at the outset.

In addition, notice that Dave devotes, by my count, about 16 paragraphs in his post to walking through the process by which one can allegedly obtain the contact info for his priest or bishop without ever actually giving the contact info for his priest or bishop. Why does he write 16 paragraphs that never get around to answering the actual question instead of writing one succinct sentence that supplies the direct contact info?

So this is just a decoy.

Okay, Steve! The challenge has been met to find this difficult information. Let's head over to Paul's site and begin our quest. Less than a page view's scroll down we see "About Me" on the sidebar, and we learn that Paul lives in Norton, Ohio. Good! That wasn't too bad. Next section: "Important Links." We look through those, and . . . ah! Tenth one down is "My Diocese - the Diocese of Cleveland." A click on that brings all the contact information. Very next link is "My Parish - Saint Augustine Church - Barberton."

Unfortunately, Dave’s chronology is backwards. He’s referring the reader to updated contact info which Hoffer only updated after I pointed out the lack of specific contact info on his post and blog. As Hoffer himself admitted to me:

Mr. Hays so there is no doubt, I will edit my links to make it abundantly clear that St. Augustine Church in Barberton, Ohio is my home parish. I apologize for any vagueness there.

So Dave is now appealing to something after the fact, as a result of my original statement. Dave is backdating updated info as if that’s what was there all along before I made my statement, when, in fact, that was updated in response to what I originally said.

Now let's go over to Cryablogue: Steve Hays' infamously imbecilic anti-Catholic site. How easy is it to find his contact information, so we can hold him accountable?...One can only shake one's head at such rank hypocrisy and foolishness . . .

It would only be hypocritical if we were discussing my standards of accountability. Once again, Dave is changing the subject. Dave hosted a post by Hoffer in which Hoffer was discussing standards of accountability. So I was holding them to their standards.  

Paralypsis

Dave Armstrong hosted a guest post by hatchet man Paul Hoffer.

The Problem With Placing One’s Faith On a Pseudonymous Blogger Rather Than In a Visible Church (Part I) (by Paul Hoffer)

i) TFan doesn’t ask readers to put their faith in him. Rather, he argues for his positions, using reason, evidence, and Scripture.

ii) By the same token, it would be a mistake to put your faith in bloggers who are not anonymous or pseudonymous, like Paul Hoffer and Dave Armstrong.

iii) The Mormon church is a visible church. Should we put our faith in the Mormon church because it’s visible?

…and on an article posted by my friend, David Waltz...

It’s ironic that a Catholic epologist like Hoffer would elicit the support of an anti-Trinitarian lapsed Catholic like Waltz.

…to the identity of Turretinfan, a pseudonymous blogger in the service of James White…

TFan works with White, not for White. TFan had already established himself in the blogosphere before White invited him to join Alpha & Omega Ministries. Indeed, it’s because TFan had distinguished himself apart from that ministry that he was invited to join.

Since some of those who commented on the above sites suggested that Mr. Fan is an Ohio attorney, and since some the accusations leveled against Mr. Fan implied that he may have violated some of the canons of the Ohio’s Code of Professional Responsibility…

Have they publicly recanted their scurrilous accusations?

…to see if I could learn the name of the individual who has caused scandal and consternation for so many, especially fellow Christians who do not share his blinkered-version of Calvinism.

i) A classic example of straining gnats while swallowing dromedaries in one gulp. Hoffer belongs to a denomination with a spiraling scandal of clerical pederasty, yet he fixates on the trumped up “scandal” of anonymous blogging. 

(I offer this explanation before I go any further lest someone wishes to suggest that I was motivated from ill-will, malice or a desire for “pay-back” which typifies the modus operandi of so many of the modern-day disciples of the dead lawyer from Geneva.)

i) Needless to say, if Hoffer were motivated by ill-will, malice or a desire for “pay-back,” we’d expect him to issue this preemptive disclaimer. Since when does someone motivated ill-will, malice or a desire for “pay-back” openly admit that he’s motivated by ill-will, malice or a desire for “pay-back”? So this calculated, self-serving disclaimer is worthless.

ii) Notice, moreover, the blanket smear regarding the modus operandi of so many Calvinists. 

Further, I will state unequivocally no confidences have been betrayed nor have I used any secret legal resource in any manner to ferret out Mr. Fan’s mild-mannered alter ego.

Once again, if he had betrayed a confidence or resorted to secret legal resources, wouldn’t we expect him to issue a preemptive disclaimer to the contrary? He calls himself to the stand as a character witness for himself. The exercise is transparently and viciously circular.

Now before I discuss Mr. Fan’s real identity, I wanted to touch upon the whole premise of his choice of blogging pseudonymously. Personally, unless one is writing pseudonymously out of humility or out of obedience to the directives of a superior, I believe that one must be prepared to own one’s words. If I am not willing to sign my name to an opinion, then it is not worth publicizing. In order to own your words, you have to have the courage to stand behind them, to be accountable for what you say. As poor as my writing may be, I have never been afraid of putting my name to it or being held accountable for what I write.

Is he accountable? I notice the conspicuous absence of contact information, either at the end of his post, or over at his own blog, which would enable readers to report him to his parish priest or diocesan bishop in case of misconduct. By the same token, I notice that Armstrong hasn’t made that information publicly available either. Yet Armstrong is hosting a post about personal accountability. Hoffer and Armstrong pay lip-service to the accountability-system of the Roman church while they shield themselves from direct accountability to their religious superiors. If they have the courage to stand behind their words, why don’t they provide the contact information for their religious superiors in case a reader has a grievance to lodge with superiors over their conduct?

Mr. Fan so long as I am not doing so out of malicious intent, have not breached confidences, and used legal means to ascertain his identity.

Isn’t there something self-incriminating about the steady repetition of the same tendentious disclaimer? Why does he feel the need to keep assuring us of his stainless motives?

It’s like a man who shows up at the police station, waving a newspaper in the face of the desk officer as he angrily proclaims his innocence, even though he was never named in the article as a suspect. Constant protestations of innocence before anyone even accused them of wrongdoing are not the way truly innocent men ordinarily conduct themselves.

…he has no expectation of privacy especially when he engages in speech that some consider to be abusive and un-Christian.

Actually, Hoffer’s post, which is laced with mock solicitude, the better to sugarcoat malicious intent, is arguably abusive and unchristian.

Now if anyone has a reason to “out” him, I would have a good reason to do so. In 2007, I wrote an article stating my reasons for critiquing Professor White’s misuse of cross-examination after he made the scurrilous (and frankly actionable) claim that I had engaged in a form of taqiyya in service of the Catholic Church. Rather than seriously engaging the points I made, Mr. Fan chose to attack the article and myself by directing the reader to my suspension from the practice of law for several months in 1999 for failing to appropriately deal with a health condition that was seriously impacting my practice.

Hoffer has just given us a good reason to suspect that he’s motivated by a personal vendetta.

Indeed, Hoffer’s whole post is an extended exercise in the rhetorical ad hominem device known as paralypsis. The speaker loftily denies that he will mention something, as if that would be beneath him, yet he incorporates what he’s not going to mention in the denial itself. “Far be it from me to point out that my esteemed colleague reportedly had sexual congress with a syphilic cow. I refuse to stoop to such ungentlemanly expedients.”

Despite what he and his fellow contra-Catholic bloggers may think of us, we Catholic apologists are a far more honorable, a far more charitable, and dare I say it, a far more Christian breed than he and they would credit us. If anyone is going to reveal Mr. Fan’s name, let it be either himself or one of his Protestant brethren to do so.

If, on the other hand, Hoffer’s motives were less than honorable, then we’d expect him to sugarcoat his dishonorable motives in a show of faux gallant oratory.

No, I do not intend to “out” Mr. Fan. Returning unkindness with unkindness is not my way. Our Lord taught us a different way to return such conduct.

Except that if he did intend to return unkindness for unkindness, we’d expect him to preface his vindictive agenda with preemptive disclaimers about his kindly motives.

No one should infer nefarious intent by not revealing his name. I am not withholding his name to coerce him or extract from him a promise not to attack the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Except that if he were issuing a veiled threat, we’d expect him to deny his true intentions.

Because of the stumbling block of pseudonymity that Mr. Fan has placed in the path of fellow Christians, witness the many unkind words that some have uttered against his pseudonymity, more so than over the subject matter conveyed by his words themselves.

As if Hoffer isn’t using the unkind words that “some” have uttered against TFan has a pretext to do the very same thing without acknowledgement.

Hoffer’s entire post is a study in the psychological dynamics of self-deception. 

Customizing hell

Dave Armstrong said...

Steve Hays over at Cryablogue is on record, saying that I am "evil" and (as an extra bonus) also a "schizophrenic." I think he actually believes these things, too: they were not mere name-calling. He stopped short of sentencing me to hell but perhaps that is yet to come. He doesn't want to shoot off all his ammo all at once, you see.

http://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_lumpkins/2011/03/doktor-james-white-on-fudging-his-teaching-assignments-by-peter-lumpkins.html#tp

Sentencing Armstrong to hell is bit above my pay grade. My role in that transaction is purely advisory and logistical.

You see, dear ol’ Dave presents something of an architectural dilemma. There’s only one of him, and the damned are ordinarily assigned to just one circle of hell rather than another. The problem this poses is that Dave is a deserving candidate for more than one circle of hell. His rapacious, fraudulent business in panacean hot tubs qualifies him for both the fourth circle and the eighth; his vindictive penchant for holding grudges qualifies him for the fifth circle, while his papistical heresies qualify him for the sixth circle.

The higher-ups had originally proposed a time-sharing arrangement, but that was overruled on the grounds that he ought to suffer simultaneously for his multifaceted transgressions. At that point I was brought into the deliberations as an unpaid consultant to render technical assistance in resolving the conundrum. I suggested to Gabriel that a new annex be designed and specially outfitted with state-of-the-art implements just for dear ol’ Dave.

So that represents the full extent of my contribution to his eternal reward. Last I heard, pandemonium’s best engineers are making the necessary preparations for his long-anticipated arrival. 

The not-so-new liberalism

I recently suggested that Roger Olson is a relic of liberal Southern Baptists. He recently confirmed my analysis

 

A personal, illustrative anecdote.  When I enrolled in an evangelical seminary in 1975 it did not have a statement on inerrancy and, to the best of my knowledge, none of the faculty believed in biblical inerrancy.  They talked about biblical infallibility but distinguished that from inerrancy.  They talked about inerrancy as a fundamentalist view of the Bible and preferred to adhere to the Bible’s full authority for faith and practice.  This was a mainstream evangelical seminary, not at all to the “left” or influenced by liberalism.  It did have a Pietist background, however, which inclined it toward a more generous orthodoxy (not a term coined by McLaren!).

 

After The Battle for the Bible was published, while I was still in seminary, the denomination’s pastors pressured the seminary to adopt a binding statement of the Bible’s inerrancy in the original autographs.  The faculty were asked to sign it.  I noticed that several of my professors who had criticized inerrancy in class signed it to keep their jobs.  One resigned and went on to a stellar career in American and Canadian Baptist seminaries.  The ethos of the seminary changed.  A chill came over the classrooms and student-faculty lounge and chapel.  At my graduation a fundamentalist pastor and radio preacher delivered the commencement address, much to the chagrin of most of the faculty and students.

http://rogereolson.com/2011/03/24/the-new-fundamentalism/

After it was published, internet Arminians used to tout Olson’s Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities, as a definitive corrective to the “lies” which Calvinists circulated about Arminianism. Olson was the authentic of true Arminianism.

Well, it’s fine with me if they make him the public face of Arminian theology. In Roger Olson we do indeed behold the realities of Arminian theology. 

The Last Battle

Bell does say it is okay to “long for” universal salvation.  So did Pope John Paul II!...Chapter 6 is about what is usually called inclusivism–that salvation through Jesus Christ is not limited to those who hear his name.  (I’ve discussed problems with restrictivism here before.)  I find nothing in that chapter that Billy Graham has not said.  (Go to youtube.com and look up Graham’s responses to questions from Robert Schuler.)

 

While reading Love Wins I kept thinking “This sounds like C. S. Lewis!”  In his Acknowledgments Bell thanks someone for “suggesting when I was in high school that I read C. S. Lewis.”

http://rogereolson.com/2011/03/25/the-promised-response-to-bells-love-wins/

This belies a fundamentally muddleheaded approach to theological questions. Merely quoting the opinion of a famous religious figure is irrelevant. Religious truth is not decided by committee. It’s not an opinion survey. It’s not about who has the most votes. Or someone we admire.

The first question we always need to ask ourselves is whether the speaker was in a position to know what he’s talking about. What’s his source of information?

Here we’re dealing with the question of what ultimately happens to you when you die. And the only reliable source of information to answer a question like that is divine revelation. This isn’t something you can determine by armchair speculation or empirical observation.

Personal experience is a poor way to discover what happens to you after you die, for if you wait until you find out the hard way, then it’s too late to make preparations for the afterlife before you die. If you find out what happens to you after you die…after you die, then you can’t go back and make a midcourse correction. You’re stuck with the outcome.

Billy Graham is a saintly man, but he’s not a great Bible scholar or theologian. C. S. Lewis was a gifted fiction writer, but The Great Divorce or The Last Battle is hardly a trustworthy way of finding out what awaits us when we die. The pope is not a prophet.

Olson is a blind guide. 

Easter Apologetics

I put together a collection of resources on issues related to Easter in 2009. Last year, I added to it.

Since that post, we've written an ebook, The Infidel Delusion, that covers a lot of subjects relevant to Jesus' resurrection. Paul Manata wrote a post on whether the early Christians were persecuted for their belief in the resurrection. I wrote a post about Acts 26:19, the nature of Jesus' resurrection appearance to Paul, and whether Paul was the only New Testament author who claimed to see the risen Jesus. I also wrote a review of Michael Licona's recent book on the resurrection. I wrote some posts that quote some of Licona's material on several issues, including problems with the hallucination theory, the nature of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15:44, the meaning of 1 Corinthians 15:50, scholarship on the empty tomb, scholarship on the authorship of Acts, and scholarly bias. Steve Hays and I participated in a discussion with a skeptic about whether the regularities of nature are as problematic for supernatural theories as they are for natural theories. In other words, if the evidence suggests that people don't naturally rise from the dead and that they don't naturally have the sort of hallucinations skeptics often attribute to the resurrection witnesses, then are those facts equally significant to the respective theories in question? Patrick Chan linked to an article about Bayes' Theorem and the resurrection and another one responding to Richard Carrier on a related subject. I wrote about the ordinariness of the resurrected Jesus in the gospels as evidence for the gospel accounts. Here's a post in which I linked to an interview with Gary Habermas on the Shroud of Turin. And here's a post I wrote about evidence for early Jewish acknowledgment of the empty tomb.

I recently put together a topical index for this blog that links to some of our posts on particular topics. Some of those topics have a lot of relevance to Jesus' resurrection, such as Biblical authorship and evidence for modern miracles.