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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Sloppy philosophers


Eric Reitan says:
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 6:00pm

Here is, for me, the big problem: God’s preordaining some sinners for reprobation is supposed to reflect God’s justice, which tempers His mercy and love (or the other way around?). The idea is that sin is such an intolerable affront to God’s holiness and majesty that divine justice demands that it be repudiated. And so God casts some sinners away forever as a display of His just wrath against sin, even as he elects others for salvation to display His mercy and benevolence.
 
The problem is this: In casting sinners away from His presence, He casts them away from the only thing that (according to the very theology underlying this theory) can overcome sin. Thus, God guarantees that this intolerable affront to His majest continues eternally in the souls of the damned. In short, the view essentially amounts to this: sin is so terrible that God decisively acts to guarantee that this intolerable thing continue in all its intolerability forever and ever. “What you’re doing is so inconceivably unacceptable that I am going to make absolutely sure that there is no way for you to ever stop doing it!”
 
And making sure that this intolerable affront to His holiness never stops is supposed to be God’s justifying reason for not electing all, and so for truncating the scope of his benevolence? Is that a coherent understanding of divine justice?
 
I think a variant of this problem obtains not only for Calvinists, but for any adherents to that understanding of hell according to which the God-justifying purpose for damnation is to justly punish sin. It is not a problem for those understandings of hell more like C.S. Lewis’s, in which damnation is a regrettable outcome of divine respect for the free choices of rational creatures.
 
But if I go on, I’ll end up summarizing John’s and my entire book in a blog comment, and then no one will buy it even when it comes out in the affordable paperback version…


i) First off, I’d like to thank Reitan for sparing us the need to read his book. Given the quality of his summarized argument, it would be poor stewardship of time and money to invest in the book.

ii) I’d also like to make a general observation: in theory, philosophers ought to be more logical than folks who lack formal training in philosophy. A large part of philosophy involves spotting fallacious arguments.

Yet, in practice, philosophers frequently use their training to retroactively justify their prejudice. This is often the case in political philosophy, but it spills over into other branches. They use their training to rationalize positions they didn’t arrive at rationally. Reason in the service of emotion.

iii) As for Reitan’s argument (such as it is), he tries to contrive an artificial dilemma by casting the issue in terms of tolerance. As he frames it, the Calvinist God tolerates the intolerable. Hence, Reformed theism is self-contradictory.

iv) But he’s burning a straw man. In Calvinism, “sin” is not “intolerable” to God. “Sinners” are not intolerable to God.

What’s “intolerable” (if you wish to put it that way, which may not be the best way to put it) isn’t sin, but injustice. Isn’t sin, but allowing sin to go unpunished. What’s “unacceptable” isn’t the existence of sinners, but justice denied. Sooner or later, the scales of justice must be righted.

It not a question of “overcoming” sin, but exposing sin for what it is, then meting out a suitable punishment. That, in turn, reveals the moral character of evil–for the punishment fits the crime.

v) Put another way, in Reformed theodicy, evil is “acceptable” to God as a means, but not as an end. Evil has an instrumental value in God’s plan.

Something can be evil in its own right, but also be a source of good. The Crucifixion is a paradigm-example.

vi) Finally, Reitan is a universalist, to that’s his underlying objection to Calvinism.

1 comment:

  1. "Yet, in practice, philosophers frequently use their training to retroactively justify their prejudice. This is often the case in political philosophy, but it spills over into other branches. They use their training to rationalize positions they didn’t arrive at rationally. Reason in the service of emotion."

    Seems to be a rather apt description of Dr. Randal Rauser.

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