Thursday, April 14, 2016

Last plane out of Saigon

Lotharson: And what about four-point Calvinists rejecting limited atonement?
Jerry Walls: That is only because it is rather embarrassing to admit you don’t really believe “God so loved the (whole) world” and gave his Son for all. But that is only a feeble attempt to mask the hard reality that the Calvinist God does not truly love all persons.  
Such claims make shambles of the claim that God is love. 
Jerry Walls: Calvinists are skillful at employing the rhetoric of love and most people do not really understand what Calvinists are saying. So Calvinism maintains credibility by way of misleading rhetoric about the love of God that their theology does not really support. 
Jerry Walls: The idea of unconditional election to salvation and damnation is morally abhorrent, and applying it to your own children only makes it more graphic. But that is Calvinist piety at its best. You sacrifice not only your child but also your moral intuitions in the name of worshiping a God whose “goodness” is utterly at odds with the normal meaning of that term. 
https://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/bound-to-eternally-suffer-an-interview-with-philosopher-jerry-walls/

This is typical of what Walls has said in many books, articles, and live presentations. What's arresting about Walls is his officious self-confidence in his indubitable moral intuitions. He acts as though it's a self-evident truth that God must love everyone. To deny that God loves everyone is morally abhorrent. Unless God loves everybody, God's goodness is "utterly at odds" with the "normal" meaning of the term. Jerry presumes that, deep down, every person shares his moral intuitions. You can only disagree with Walls on pain of sacrificing your moral intuitions. 

My immediate point is not to debate the factual question of whether God does or doesn't love everyone. I'm just dealing with Jerry's authoritarian appeal to his unquestioned moral intuitions. It's a kind of natural theology. 

Part of the superficial appeal lies in resorting to faceless abstractions or one-sided examples. But let's put some faces on his moral intuitions:

In 1978, Singleton raped 15-year-old Mary Vincent, cut off her forearms and left her naked in a ditch near Modesto to die.  
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jan/01/local/me-19534

According to Walls, to deny that God must love Lawrence Singleton violates our moral intuitions. It would be morally abhorrent for God not to love the man who raped an adolescent girl, chopped off her arms, and left her for dead in a ditch. I wonder if Mary Vincent shares his moral intuitions. 

A 9-year-old girl [Jessica Lunsford] was raped, bound and buried alive, kneeling and clutching a purple stuffed dolphin.  
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/04/20/prosecutors-lunsford-raped-buried-alive.html 

According to Walls, unless God loves John Evander Couey, God's goodness is "utterly at odds" with the "normal" meaning of the term. If we could interview the dead 9-year-old victim whom he raped and buried alive, I wonder if she'd share his moral intuitions. 

Mengele promoted medical experimentation on inmates, especially dwarfs and twins. He is said to have supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn together to create Siamese twins; the hands of the children became badly infected where the veins had been resected. (Snyder, Louis. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich Marlowe & Co., 1997.) 
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/auschwitz_faq_16.html

According to Walls, it would be morally abhorrent for God not to love Josef Mengele. You can only deny God's universal love for men like Mengele by sacrificing your moral intuitions. I wonder if the Gypsy twins who were the guinea pigs in Mengele's experimentation would resonant with Jerry's moral intuitions. Unfortunately, they're unavailable for comment. 

Victims were reportedly skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, and rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Chinese Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat into the other end which was then closed off with wire netting. 
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Cheka

According to Walls, God isn't good in any recognizable sense unless he loves the men who perpetrated these atrocities. But if you were to interview the victims, would they share Jerry's moral intuitions?

It's striking how Walls arrogates to himself the right to speak on behalf of everyone else's moral intuitions. Although I've read and seen lots of his material, I don't recall Jerry ever making a systematic effort–or any effort at all–to investigate the viewpoint of people who were on the receiving end of hidious evils. He talks like a man who's lived a charmed life. A sheltered life. 

Let's compare Jerry's presentation of freewill theism with another freewill theist:

If the story is true, much of the evil in the world is due to chance…It could well happen that a woman was raped and murdered only because she yielded to a sudden impulse to pull over to the side of the road and consult a map. There may be, quite literally, no more to say than that in response to the question, "Why her?".  
According to the story I have told, there is generally no explanation of why this evil happened to that person…It means being the playthings of chance. It means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly, and it means something worse than that: it means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly for no reason at all. It means living in a world in which the wicked,through sheer luck, often prosper. 
But whether a particular horror is connected with human choices or not, it is evident, at least in many cases, that God could have prevented the horror without sacrificing any great good or allowing some even greater horror. 
No appeal to considerations in any way involving human free will or future benefits to human beings can possibly be relevant to the problem with which this case [Auschwitz] confronts.  
There are many horrors, vastly many, from which no discernible good results–and certainly no good, discernible or not, that an omnipotent being couldn't have achieved without the horror; in fact, without any suffering at all. Here is a true story. A man came upon a young woman in an isolated place. He overpowered her, chopped off her arms at the elbows with an axe, raped her, and left her to die. Somehow she managed to drag herself on the stumps of her arms to the side of the road, where she was discovered. She lived, but she experienced indescribably suffering, and although she is alive, she must live the rest of her life without arms and with the memory of what she had been forced to endure. No discernible good came of this, and it is wholly unreasonable to believe that any good could have come of it that an omnipotent being couldn't have achieved without employing the raped and mutilated woman's horrible suffering as a means to it.  
If the Mutilation had not occurred, if it had been, so to speak, left out of the world, the world would be no worse than it is. (It would seem, in fact, that the world would be significantly better if the Mutilation had been left out of it… 
If the expanded freewill defense is a true story, God has made a choice about where to draw the line, the line between the actual horrors of history, the horrors that are real, and the horrors that are mere averted possibilities, might-have-beens. And the Mutilation falls on the "actual horrors of history" side of the line. And this fact shows that the line is an arbitrary one; for if he had drawn it so as to exclude the Mutilation from reality (and had excluded no other horror from reality), he would have lost no good thereby and he would have allowed no greater even. He had no reason for drawing the line where he did. 
In the bright world of good sense, this is why God did not prevent the Mutilation–insofar as there is a "why". He had to draw an arbitrary line, and he drew it. And that's all there is to be said. P. van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil (Oxford, 2006), 89,95,97,105,108.

Inwagen doesn't indulge in Jerry's invidious comparisons between Calvinism and freewill theism. Inwagen doesn't adopt the unctuous tone of moral superiority that Walls constantly resorts to. 

But Inwagen's presentation puts freewill theism in a very different light than Walls. Why didn't the freewill theist God intervene to prevent Mengele from sewing the Gypsy kids together to create Siamese twins? Because God had to draw an arbitrary line, and they happen to fall on the wrong side of the line. Don't take it personally! It's just the luck of the draw! 

It reminds me of when we evacuated the US embassy in Saigon. Many South Vietnamese were utterly desperate to escape. They were terrified of what awaited them when the Viet Cong took over. But there were only so many helicopters. Only so many seats. 

If 9-year-old Jessica Lundsford is raped and buried alive, that's because all the seats were taken. Tough luck, kid! 

The freewill theist God could have added more seats, but the number of seats is arbitrary, so the cutoff between that extra seat which would have saved Jessica Lundsford or Mary Vincent or the Gypsy twins is random. A few are rescued, but the rest of left behind–to be scalped, skinned alive, burned alive, boiled alive, buried alive, eaten alive, and so forth, for no reason at all. God had no reason for drawing the line where he did, but hey–he still loves you! He's so good, compared to that awful Calvinist God. 

Although I disagree with Inwagen's theodicy, my intent is not to come down hard on his position. He can only play the hand he was dealt, and the problem of evil is a tough hand for any Christian to play. (The problem is much worse for atheists.) I'm simply drawing attention to the contrast between Jerry's rose-tinted commercial for freewill theism, and the far starker, bleaker, franker version of Inwagen. Walls is always defaming Calvinists about our "deceptive" rhetoric, but he's hardly forthcoming in how he packages freewill theism.   

16 comments:

  1. Smashing. I think you've left a smoldering crater and a heap of rubbke where Wall's flimsy edifice once stood.

    Nice work.

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  2. 1. Are you defending the idea that God does not "love the world (kosmos)," that is, "the inhabitants of the earth" (Thayer)?

    2. When you say that " to deny that God must love Lawrence Singleton violates our moral intuitions," are you saying that God hated Singleton and did not die on the Cross for him?

    3. Is this article you have written, are you dismissing or re-enforcing the Calvinist theological worldview that God decreed and brought to pass those acts of rape and murder, as you illustrated, because he hated both those who committed the evil and/or those on whom the evil was committed and that for neither one is atonement provided?

    Thank you.

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    1. Nelson,

      "I'm simply drawing attention to the contrast between Jerry's rose-tinted commercial for freewill theism, and the far starker, bleaker, franker version of Inwagen."

      Reading comprehension is a magical thing.

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    2. "Are you defending the idea that God does not 'love the world (cosmos),' that is, 'the inhabitants of the earth' (Thayer)?"

      i) I took no position on the meaning of Jn 3:16 in this post. This post was not directly about Calvinism, but freewill theism.

      ii) But since you bring it up, Jerry's characterization was dishonest. He said "That is only because it is rather embarrassing to admit you don’t really believe 'God so loved the (whole) world' and gave his Son for all."

      He acts as though Calvinists agree with his interpretation of Jn 3:16, then proceed to reject the verse. Needless to say, a Calvinist doesn't find it embarrassing to reject the Arminian interpretation of Jn 3:16. Calvinists agree with Jn 3:16. They simply understand the passage differently than Arminians.

      iii) Thayer is an antiquated lexicon. Perhaps some laymen use it because it's so old that it's now in the public domain. But you need to use more up-to-date resources in lexical semantics.

      iv) In Johannine usage, cosmos generally has a qualitative rather than quantitative connotation. It's not about the number of people, but the kind of people. The cosmos as a fallen world system, antithetical to God.

      v) Finally, this is not primarily about Jerry's prooftexting. From what I can tell, Jerry's position is independent of Scripture. He believes that as a matter of moral intuition, God would not be good unless he loves everyone. Jerry's position is not dependent on revealed theology, but natural theology.

      He thinks the Bible supports his position, but when he appeals to moral intuition, that's not an appeal to Scripture, but reason.

      "When you say that 'to deny that God must love Lawrence Singleton violates our moral intuitions,' are you saying that God hated Singleton and did not die on the Cross for him?"

      i) Since your inference is palpably fallacious, that could hardly be what I'm saying. My statement didn't take any position on God's actual attitude towards Singleton or the extent of the atonement. I have considered options on that, but it didn't enter into my analysis.

      Rather, as I made explicitly clearly, I'm merely assessing Walls on his own grounds. He acts as though it's intuitively indubitable that a good God is obligated to love everyone.

      So I gave some examples (or counterexamples) to test his intuitive appeal. Is it morally self-evident that God ought to love Singleton? Surely that's not a universal moral intuition.

      "Is this article you have written, are you dismissing or re-enforcing the Calvinist theological worldview that God decreed and brought to pass those acts of rape and murder, as you illustrated, because he hated both those who committed the evil and/or those on whom the evil was committed and that for neither one is atonement provided?"

      I didn't address that question in this post.

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    3. Exactly. And because you didn't, your response was miserably inadequate.
      For one thing, you never demonstrate that Jerry agrees with van Inwagen or that his commitment to "freewill theism" implies that he needs to. You draw a contrast between Jerry's position and van Inwagen's, and you respect van Inwagen's more. Of course you do--it's closer to Calvinism. That proves nothing. You're just scoring some cheap rhetorical points.

      There is a valid argument to be made that "freewill theism" has troubling moral implications of its own, to be sure. But inasmuch as you don't actually engage with Jerry's version of freewill theism at all, you haven't made that point. And your own position has all the same difficulties _and more_. Your argument (such as it is) amounts to saying "you still have to believe some things that are contrary to our assumptions about what a good God would do, so why not go whole hog and believe even more such things?" Hardly convincing. There's more I could say, but I'll say it (if at all) in a blog post of my own.

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    4. I didn't think it was possible someone could miss the point so badly. But I like how you argue!

      Contarini, your response is miserably inadequate. For one thing, you haven't demonstrated that Steve needs to agree with Jerry or you, or that his commitment to "moral intuitions" implies that he needs to. You draw a contrast between Jerry's & your position and Steve's and you respect Jerry's/yours more. Of course you do--it's less rational. That proves nothing. You're not even scoring cheap rhetorical points with this.

      Yes, brilliant tactic. Insert yourself into a conversation, assert that it must be about the topic you wish it to be instead of the topic actually being discussed, and then complain that your topic wasn't addressed.

      Has Trump offered to hire you for speechwriter yet? I think you have an opportunity.

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    5. I'm not interested in proving that Steve needs to agree with Jerry or me here. I'm simply pointing out that the problems Jerry finds with a conservative Calvinist theology are not problems that exist in the same way or to equal degree in "free will theism." Steve's theology adds to the burdens of Jerry's and van Inwagen's theology. Steve appears to be arguing (it's not clear, because he didn't really bother making an actual argument) that if any theology requires us to believe something counter-intuitive about God's goodness, then it is equal with all other theologies that do that. But in fact that is quite clearly not the case. Some theologies strain the meaning of the phrase "God is good" more than others. Some break it altogether, so that it's no longer meaningless. Jerry argues that Calvinist theology does the latter. Steve has failed to refute, or even engage with,Jerry's argument. And he furthermore has spent most of his time arguing against a completely different theologian (who is, ironically, from a Calvinist background and may still consider himself theologically a Calvinist for all I know, though he's Episcopalian now--he is certainly coming from a different perspective than Jerry's Wesleyanism and there's no reason to assume that he and Jerry would agree).

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    6. Contarini,

      Yes, that shows you're changing the subject from what was being discussed. Jerry Walls is acting as if his view is self-evident and no rational person could possibly disagree with him as to his moral intuitions. Steve's point is that THAT is erroneous. He's not arguing that the problems in viewpoint exist in the same way or to equal degrees. In fact, he specifically said: "[T]he problem of evil is a difficult hand for any Christian to play." That should clue you in that he's not talking about YOUR topic.

      It's boneheaded to fault someone for not addressing something you wanted him to address when it has nothing to do with the topic he is addressing. Like, if I wrote an essay on how Louis Armstrong was the best trumpet player in the 20th Century and you responded with "Why haven't you talked about how great of a tenor Pavarotti was?" Because that's not the topic.

      Now, it's certainly true that one can discuss whether Calvinism takes on more of a burden than free will theism does in the Problem of Evil, and Steve's written on that topic many times in the past. Just because that topic exists in the wild doesn't mean it exists here, and someone shoehorning it in as if they get to control the conversation is just rude behavior.

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    7. "Steve appears to be arguing (it's not clear, because he didn't really bother making an actual argument) that if any theology requires us to believe something counter-intuitive about God's goodness, then it is equal with all other theologies that do that."

      Actually, I'm arguing, in part, that Walls is arbitrarily selective in his appeal to moral intuition. Let's takes some examples from the book (Good God) that he coauthored with David Baggett:

      We think of our argument as unapologetically appealing to general revelation… (67).

      Whereas biblical authority trumps in the realm of theological norms, there are more basic philosophical processes at play that hold logical priority in the realm of basic epistemology (67).

      The Bible is taken as authoritative in the realm of theological truth. But before we can rationally believe such a thing, as human beings privy to general revelation and endowed with the ability to think, we must weigh arguments and draw conclusions, that is, do philosophy (68).

      At a minimum, for example, scripture must be understood in a way that's consistent and coherent, not just internally, but also with what we know outside of scripture (76).

      What violates our reason or nonnegotiable moral intuitions in contrast, is beyond the pale and so irrational to believe (77).

      If the Bible did indeed teach such a doctrine [i.e. "unconditional reprobation"), wouldn't it be more rational to believe that it's not morally reliable? (78)?

      By his own admission, Jerry's position is ultimately based on a priori moral intuitions.

      And by that token, I'm simply measuring Walls by his own yardstick. Do people in general share his moral intuitions regarding the necessity of a good God loving everyone, including the morally repellent examples I gave?

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    8. "and you respect van Inwagen's more. Of course you do--it's closer to Calvinism."

      PVI takes the position that many evils happen by sheer chance. Happen for no particular reason. That's the polar opposite of Calvinism.

      "But inasmuch as you don't actually engage with Jerry's version of freewill theism at all…"

      I've done that in detail on multiple occasions.

      "And your own position has all the same difficulties…"

      I've engaged that allegation on multiple occasions.

      "And he furthermore has spent most of his time arguing against a completely different theologian (who is, ironically, from a Calvinist background and may still consider himself theologically a Calvinist for all I know, though he's Episcopalian now--he is certainly coming from a different perspective than Jerry's Wesleyanism."

      It's funny to witness your special pleading. To begin with, Arminius came from a Calvinist background. Does that make Arminius a crypto-Calvinist?

      PVI is a premier freewill theist. For you to classify him as "theologically a Calvinist" is patently absurd.

      Jerry is far from being a traditional Wesleyan. He defends purgatory. He defends postmortem salvation. He's made statements implying that he espouses open theism. And I've heard through the grapevine that he's now a closet universalist.

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    9. In other words Walls self-consciously takes *himself* as the ultimate authority and arbiter in matters of morality, ethics, and epistemology, and then he interprets what the Bible *must* mean through that filter.

      This plainly explains his grandiose and arrogant pronouncements of, "Thus saith Jerry".

      His appeal is to himself, so steve is rightly attacking, and frankly demolishing Jerry's pagan altar to himself.

      It's not hard to understand. In fact I believe Jerry has been documented in writing as stating in effect that if it proven to him that "the Calvinist God" were the actual God of the Bible, he (Jerry) wouldn't worship Him.

      How's them 'taters?

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    10. I don't know where Contarini came up with the factoid that Inwagen is from a Calvinist background. I reality, he was raised in the Unitarian Universalist Church. But I guess Arminians invent the evidence they need.

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    11. When misrepresentation is the starting point for one's conception of Deity, well, everything else sort of goes downhill from there.

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  3. A man repeatedly molested and eventually raped a 9 year old little girl with a door knob. I wonder if she shared Walls' moral intuitions that God must love her rapist? She absolutely does share Walls' intuition about the depth of God's love, because if it were not for the fact that God was capable of loving such a man who was so utterly undeserved of that gracious love, then I would not have ever been able myself to extend grace to such a disturbed and wicked man. Instead, I would have been condemned to hate, not only him, but filled with self-condemnation and self-hatred. How could I love such a man if God Himself could not love such a man. But, because my God is so loving and IS love that He so full of grace, enough even to cover a man such as this man who harmed me, I share in that very grace, the very same grace that He has shown to that man.

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    1. Two basic problems:

      i) You're failing to distinguish between the Gospel and intuition. The Gospel isn't based on intuition. In fact, the Gospel is counterintuitive. In Scripture, the hallmark of a just God is to punish the wicked. That's what makes God a just God. And that, in turn, generates a prima facie dilemma: how can a holy God pardon *anyone*?

      Arminians like Walls have it backwards: from a biblical standpoint, the question at issue isn't, How can a good God refuse to forgive everyone?–but, How can a good God forgive anyone?

      The solution to that prima facie dilemma is penal substitution (which many Arminians reject).

      Walls has completely lost sight of the counterintuitive character of the Gospel.

      ii) And while I appreciate your testimony, it suffers from sample selection bias. You can't extrapolate from your personal experience to moral intuition in general. For instance, many Jews consider the Gospel to be antinomian. It doesn't jive with *their* intuitions. Likewise, consider Jewish Nazi hunters who tracked down fugitives. *They* didn't forgive their Nazi assailants. *Their* moral intuitions were very different from Jerry's.

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  4. Jerry Walls posted a link to this blogspot on his Facebook wall with the caption: "Calvinists love me..."

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