Can salvation be lost?

In response to a Facebook question:

Salvation can't be lost because:

i) It's not a matter of chance who will or won't be saved. The Father made that decision (election). Salvation is too important to be left to chance.

ii) The Son atoned for the sins of those on whose behalf he died. The Son didn't die for them in vain. He went on a mission to save them. He didn't come up short. He got exactly what he died for. He got exactly what he went for (John 17).

iii) The Spirit renews and preserves the saints. 

iv) The Father, Son, and Spirit complete the work they began. They don't leave the job half-finished.

v) Put another way, sinners were lost before they were saved. So they can't be lost again. What's the point of saving the lost if they end up right where they began? If it comes full circle, why not leave them where God found them? 

Who is God?

God is the ultimate reality. An omniscient, omnipotent, wise, just, good, merciful, and self-existent agent subsisting outside of time and space. God is the source of all possibilities, actualities, and necessities. Source of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The Creator of the world, redeemer of the fallen world, and judge of saints, angels, and the wicked.

Rounding Off My Response to Richard Carrier On Undesigned Coincidences (Part 6)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/04/rounding-off-my-response-to-richard.html

The meaningless Covid-19 models

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-meaningless-of-the-covid-19-models/

Why it's hard to make a good coronavirus model

"Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model"

The existence of the soul

Currently J. P. Moreland's series on the existence of the soul is available for free here.

Welty on evil

"The Problem of Evil" (Greg Welty)

Breaking the spell

Because freewill theists often confuse Calvinism with fatalism, I've discussed the difference on a number of occasions. In Classical literature, Creon and Oedipus are paradigm examples. Although it's a bit cheesy, Final Destination 1 (2000) is a convenient illustration. 

But is fatalism real, and is there a way to successfully cheat fate? Cosmic fatalism is incompatible with the sovereignty of God. However, witchcraft has a fatalistic streak. By that I mean, hexing somebody. Suppose you come under a curse. Can you cheat fate?

I don't think that's a hypothetical or isolated case. For instance, witchcraft is common in cultures that practice animism, polytheism, and ancestor worship. 

I'm not talking about folks who merely practice occult rituals, but those who gain actual occult power through the practice of sorcery. 

Within the realm of witchcraft, fatalism may be a real phenomenon. If you've been hexed, you may be doomed.

There is, however, a way to break the spell. Christian missionaries have always engaged in "power evangelism". If a pagan converts to Christianity, then he's not doomed. That's a way to cheat fate. That liberates the convert from occult bondage, although there may be some lingering, residual effects. You've transferred allegiance from a lesser, malevolent power to a greater, benevolent power. 

Coronavirus19 – What’s It for?

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2020/04/coronavirus19-whats-it-for.html

Can We Measure the Value of Saving Human Lives in Dollars?

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/03/61900/

Bishop Barron Q/A

This month, Bishop Barron did another Q/A, this time from non-Catholics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_dQOHyfts

1. I didn't watch the whole thing since not all of the questions interest me. He did a pretty good job of fielding the question about alleged pagan parallels because Jesus and mythic heroes. 

2. He also gave an adroit answer to how a loving God can send people to hell: 

It's like someone at a party, everyone is having a great time, but you've decided, because you're in a kind of a funk, to sit sullenly in the corner and refuse to participate. Not only are you happy in yourself but the party around you is making you more unhappy. If you're in a really bad frame of mind, who are the most annoying people? Those who are in a good mood.

We're often our own worst enemies. Drug addicts. Choosing contrary to self-interest. 

There's a grain of truth to those explanations. They're useful up to a point.

But what was glaringly absent from his justification is any reference to the punitive function of hell, even though that's fundamental to the biblical concept. 

In Scripture, damnation isn't primarily about rejecting God's love but retributive punishment from wrongdoing. The theme of eschatological justice, which is hell's primary rationale in Scripture, has disappeared from Barron's concept of damnation.

That may be because Barron is a hopeful universalist, so he believes in remediation rather than retribution. 

In contemporary Catholicism as well as contemporary freewill theism, the concept of damnation and warrant for damnation has been recast in terms of love rather than justice. It's all about rejecting God's love, not about just deserts.  

External Coincidences and Acts of the Apostles: Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 5)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/03/external-coincidences-and-acts-of.html

Is public worship a nonessential service?

Robert A. J. Gagnon

The very first line of the very first amendment of the Constitution contains the words that "Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise" of "religion." How prohibiting people from meeting and praying in person and arresting pastors who hold such a meeting, even when practicing a 6-foot-distant rule, distributing a hand sanitizer to everyone who comes, and installing a $100,000 hospital-grade air purification system is not a restraint on the "free exercise of religion" I know not.

When the state can prohibit people from meeting to worship in person, for any length of time that the state deems appropriate, and even arrest pastors who violate such a prohibition, that's quite a restraint on the free exercise of religion, isn't it?

Especially when the ruling in question permits any business to continue running where a 6-foot distant policy is implemented. Or when "shelters" are still permitted. Or when people continue to congregate in mass supermarkets, Walmarts, liquor stores, shelters, and gas stations. Or when abortion clinics are still open for business, killing babies and not practicing a 6-foot-distant policy.

Or when, as NYC ICU doctor, David Price notes, if you stop touching your face before washing your hands, you will not get the virus; and you would need prolonged (15-30 minutes) exposure to someone aspirating the virus within 3-6 feet in order to get it that way.

Or when according to an infectious disease expert, a mandatory national lockdown is no cure and ultimately more dangerous to the country than the disease itself.

https://www.facebook.com/robert.a.gagnon.56/posts/10163518182565045

The State has no right to determine whether religious assemblies constitute an "essential service" in the midst of a pandemic, much less the right to arrest pastors for gathering their flock. The first line of the First Amendment makes that absolutely clear. This is all the more obvious when the State declares abortion an "essential service." The State can issue a strong advisory for churches not to assemble regularly. Churches that assemble can be subject to criticism by the State, the general public, and other churches. But the State cannot order churches to stop assembling, much less arrest pastors for assembling, without violating the First Amendment right to "free exercise" of religion. If you don't know that, then our major problem is not the virus. I'm shocked that so many Evangelical leaders seem not to know this.

https://www.facebook.com/robert.a.gagnon.56/posts/10163519642380045

Are churches prepared not to meet in person for the next year-and-a-half that it will take to develop a vaccine and distribute it widely when parishioners can protect themselves by not touching their faces with unwashed hands and not being within 3-6 feet of the same infected person for 15-30m or more? Is that really a workable option? When 50,000 people die every year from seasonal flu and 443,000 from diseases related to smoking? When other outbreaks of severe virus are possible in the future? Are they going to condone the state arresting pastors who meet with their congregations during that interval? Do they value so little the scriptural injunction not to forsake meeting, much less the First Amendment that absolutely prohibits any restraint on the free exercise of religion? Do they have any idea what the long-term ramifications for religious liberty are from surrendering their rights to the state? Are they sheeple?

https://www.facebook.com/robert.a.gagnon.56/posts/10163518918530045

Plague and providence

1. Thus far I haven't commented on the pandemic from a theodical standpoint. One reason is that I've written so much about theodicy in general that anything I have to say about the pandemic is apt to be repetitious to some degree, and repetition is boring.

2. In addition, there are atheists who act like every time there's some new natural disaster, such as the Christmas Day tsunami (2004) or the Japanese tsunami (2011), this is supposed to shake the faith of Christians. That every natural disaster ought to send us back to the drawing board. But in Christian theology, moral and natural evils are to be expected. And we have a number of preexisting theodical strategies to deal with these events. Natural and moral evil aren't something new, and theodicies aren't generally new, although they undergo refinement.

3. There's a sense in which I agree with unbelievers that evil can call into question God's existence. By that I mean, many people labor under a faulty concept of God, and evil may expose their faulty concept of God. In that regard, evil can have a winnowing effect on theology.

4. It's common to ask why God allows evil. When a Calvinist uses that terminology, some freewill theists object that it's deceptive for a Calvinist to characterize evil in terms of divine permission. According to Calvinism, God predestined evil.

That's true, but when I say God allows evil, I simply mean that God did not prevent a particular evil. You allow something you were in a position to prevent. That's a coherent concept. To say "allow"/"didn't prevent" are stylistic variations on the same idea.

5. Moral and natural evils are not unplanned events. They happen for a purpose. I'd add that even according to influential models of freewill theism like Molinism and simple foreknowledge, these aren't unplanned events.

In open theism, God doesn't have a master plan for the world, but a set of contingency plans.

6. A basic function of theodicy is not to explain why God allowed a particular evil, but to show how that's consistent with God's existence. There may be different reasons God had for allowing the evil in question. Even if we lack the information to narrow it down to one "correct" explanation, we can offer a number of potential reasons showing that the evil is consistent with God's existence.

7. Some Christians deny that natural evils or natural disasters preexisted the Fall. I disagree. I think they serve a necessary purpose to maintain the balance of nature.

I think one effect of the fall is to expose humans to natural dangers that always existed, from the time of creation. In an unfallen world, humans would be divinely shielded from certain natural hazards, but due to the fall, God withdrew his providential protection.

8. This doesn't mean God directly created a pathogen like the coronavirus. God created a world in which natural organisms adapt and mutate.

9. Although Christian theologians tend to focus on the punitive aspect of death, as divine punishment for original or personal sin, that's one-sided. Human mortality has other spiritual purposes. Nothing exposes human vulnerability and helplessness like death. So death provides an opportunity for humans to renounce their feigned autonomy and admit their total dependence on God's mercy and provision.

10. We like to be in control. An unnerving aspect of the coronavirus is the element of uncertainty in terms of scale, lethality, and distribution. It's so unpredictable. Who will it strike next? For unbelievers and nominal believers who live in denial regarding the inevitability of death, who shove the prospect of death into the back of their minds or only think of death in abstract terms, the coronavirus forces them to confront their mortality and lack of control.

11. It exposes the ineptitude of many public officials. It chastens blind faith in the cult of expertise. It's a test of moral character, revealing what people are really like when altruism is costly. Does ruthless self-interest dominate?

12. It raises questions about the importance and relevance, or unimportance and irrelevance, of public worship. By the same token, it raises questions about how we prioritize risk assessment. Is a supermarket an essential business but a church service is inessential?

13. Several standard theodicies are germane to the pandemic. For instance:

i) The soul-building theodicy, where suffering is an opportunity to tap into compassion and cultivate sacrificial virtues.

ii) Second-order goods. There are certain kinds of goods whose existence is contingent on the existence of evil. If you eliminate the evil, you eliminate the resultant or compensatory good. So there are tradeoffs. Some evils a necessary evils, in the sense of conditional necessity. They don't have to exist, but they're a necessary source of certain otherwise unobtainable goods.

In that respect, there are tradeoffs. It's easy to imagine ways the world might be a better place, yet that mental exercise involves freezing the goods in place while changing some variables to eliminate the evils. Yet in a cause/effect world, that's artificially compartmentalized.

iii) Events in a cause/effect world have a domino effect. Like time-travel stories, changing a variable in the past changes the future. And the change is more far-reaching the farther it extends into the future. When we think about improving the world, we artificially isolate or insulate causes and effects. But it's not possible to strike an optimal balance where a single world history or timeline contains all the distinctive goods, devoid of evil.

iv) Apropos (ii-iii), housebound couples will result in a baby boom a few months from now. Although many people will die as a result of the pandemic, many new lives will come into being as a result of the pandemic. Individuals who'd never experience the gift of life had it not been for the pandemic. The dying already had an opportunity to live. The tragic death of some creates a situation where others will now have the same opportunity.

v) Human life is brief. What ultimately matters is the world to come (i.e. the New Eden). But you can't participate in the world to come unless you participate in the lifecycle. You must be brought into existence, and you must die, before you can step into eternity. Of course, many humans fail to take advantage of that. They live for what this world has to offer, so the world lets them down. They lose what they had while missing out on what they might have had by squandering their opportunities.

Bishop Wright's response to the pandemic

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? 

The point of lament, woven thus into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.

God was grieved to his heart, Genesis declares, over the violent wickedness of his human creatures. He was devastated when his own bride, the people of Israel, turned away from him. And when God came back to his people in person—the story of Jesus is meaningless unless that’s what it’s about—he wept at the tomb of his friend. St. Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit “groaning” within us, as we ourselves groan within the pain of the whole creation. The ancient doctrine of the Trinity teaches us to recognize the One God in the tears of Jesus and the anguish of the Spirit.

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead.

https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/

1. N. T. Wright has always been a mixed bag. As I recall, he developed a conservative reputation by debating Jesus Seminar types, and he was pretty good on his side of the debate. He also wrote a classic defense of the Resurrection. But in addition he churns out hasty, forgettable potboilers. He spreads himself way too thin. He's overrated and overexposed. He's become an oracle who's expected to have something wise to say about everything.

Joe Rogan's biblical illiteracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fownDeTsw0Y

Crackdown on churches and synogogues

Robert A. J. Gagnon

Tampa megachurch pastor Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne was arrested for holding voluntary services and "faces a punishment of up to 60 days in jail and fines totaling up to $500." This raises an important church-state concern, as does New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's outrageous threat "to permanently close churches and synagogues [mosques?] that hold services during the coronavirus pandemic." He doesn't have the constitutional authority to "permanently close" any church, though he apparently thinks he does.

Getting an abortion is an "essential" service according to Democrat-governed areas (and the wicked NYT). In many places keeping liquor stores open is also an "essential" service. We go to grocery stories in close contact with tens or hundreds of people. If you don't touch your face with unwashed hands, you are very unlikely to get COVID-19, particularly if not standing within 3-6 feet of the same person for 15-30 minutes or more. Many church buildings have enough space to make such a seating arrangement possible.

How long should churches allow the state to close their doors? Are churches not going to meet for Easter celebration? What if the restrictions persist over many months, even over a year? In ancient Israel a disease or plague would have prompted people to hold a national convocation of repentance, not to disperse. Democrats are already inclined to act with impunity against the church, as Beto's remark about removing the tax-exempt status of any church that does not kowtow to the LGBTQ agenda. These recent events will only make matters worse, with long-term ramifications well beyond the time that it takes COVID-19 to run its course.

https://www.facebook.com/robert.a.gagnon.56/posts/10163515743555045

Is atheism the religion of the godless?

@SecularOutpost

I’ve never understood the motivation of some / many / most Christians to define religion in a way that makes some / many / most atheists religious. (I agree that an atheist can be religious, FTR.) Especially when combined with the idea that Christianity is not a religion.

https://twitter.com/SecularOutpost/status/1244367119061401601

The reason is the way in which atheism so often becomes the functional equivalent of religion. In practice it's not just nonbelief in a God or gods. They feel they need to fill the void with substitutes that take the place of God and play the explanatory role of God. A cause or ideal to live for and center their lives on. 

Just like we might say football is Joe's religion or becoming a senior partner in the law firm is Jerry's religion. And all-consuming passion that mimics religious devotion. 

BTW, Jeff Lowder is an apostate, so his question reveals the fact that he never really understood atheism or religion. 

Is church attendance a pact with the devil?

It's revealing to compare these two positions by David French: On the one hand, voting for Trump in the 2016 general election was a betrayal of Christian faith. Caving into worldly fear. Diametrically opposed to 2 Tim 1:7. 

Instead, the evangelical church is called to be a source of light in a darkening world. It is not given the luxury of fear-based decisionmaking. Indeed, of all the groups in American life who believe they have the least to fear from American politics, Christians should top the list. The faithful should reject fear.

This is made plain to young Christians from the early days of Sunday school. There, many millions of young believers are taught the biblical verse: “For God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

But in 2016, something snapped. I saw Christian men and women whom I’ve known and respected for years respond with raw fear at the very idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency. 

https://time.com/5615617/why-evangelicals-support-trump/

On the other hand, when Christians appeal to the same verse to justify church attendance during the pandemic, that's succumbing to the diabolical temptation, when Satan tried to strike a bargain with Jesus in the wilderness: 

Even within those churches that have chosen to comply with public health warnings and temporarily cancel services, there are rumblings of dissent and discontent. You see it all over social media. And whether sophisticated or simple, these impulses toward defiance are virtually all grounded in a similar question: Why should Christians surrender to fear? People of faith should reject the guidance of public officials. Our gatherings are different. After all, isn’t it true that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control”? 

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:5-7).

The first set of verses represents the second of the three great temptations of Jesus as outlined in the book of Matthew. Satan demanded that Christ perform an ostentatious display of power and faith—that he throw himself from a great height to demonstrate his invulnerability. Yet Christ refused, declaring that such a ridiculous and ostentatious act would put God to the test.

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/coronavirus-courage-and-the-second

Now, I agree with French that going to church is a not a talisman that will safeguard parishioners from contacting the virus. Some of them might even contract it by going to church. Mind you, there are so many ways to contract the virus that I think the vector of transmission is often untraceable. But it's a malicious caricature to attribute that motive to every churchgoer or would-be churchgoer during the pandemic. 

What's striking, though, is French's priorities. Voting for Trump was (and still is, by his lights) a cowardly, faithless action. But keeping church services available during the pandemic is tantamount to making a pact with the devil. French's theological priorities and elastic use of Scripture are so inverted that it's hard to know what more to say.  

Monsters in my closet, monsters under my bed

No, I've never had thoughts in bed like the woman in the cartoon:

https://twitter.com/nakedpastor/status/1244629272700035078

But as far as that goes, what if your belief in God is in the same category as the monsters you believed in as a kid? It can be a mistake to outgrow belief in monsters. Sure, monsters in comic books and Hollywood horror flicks are fictional characters, but the world contains real monsters, both natural and supernatural.