Handel's librettist

https://albertmohler.com/2010/12/10/for-the-mouth-of-the-lord-hath-spoken-it/

Deism as atheism's poor cousin

As I recently noted, Deism is neglected in Christian apologetics. That's because most folks either convert from atheism to Christianity, or Christianity to atheism (or some other religious alternative, like Islam or Judaism). 

I'd like to briefly note a basic problem with that position: there's no specific evidence for Deism. 

On the one hand, evidence for the existence of a divine Creator, although consistent with Deism, is equally consistent with Christian theism.

On the other hand, the alleged lack of evidence for divine activity in natural history and human history, although consistent with Deism, is equally consistent with atheism. 

So there's no line of evidence that singles out Deism. It falls between the cracks. 

Conversely, there's an abundance of specific evidence for Christian theism. 

Interventionist theism

Jeff D:

I have trouble seeing much of a difference between Calvinism and deism, functionally. The Calvinist God created the world he created. End of story. How can the Calvinist God be meaningfully described as an "interventionist."
It seems hard for God to intervene in a universe where God knows how the future will unfold is because he predetermined that is the way the future would unfold. What is [he] intervening with, himself?

To some extent I think this is a semantic quibble, although it goes to deep questions concerning the nature of God and causality. Let's begin with some exposition:

i) In mainstream Calvinism, God subsists outside of time and space. 

God has made a physical universe. The physical universe includes physical causes. Natural processes. 

The physical universe is like an automated machine. It does whatever it was programmed to do, no more and no less. The same kind of cause will produce the same kind of effect. 

That's, in part, what we mean by ordinary providence. 

However, the created order is not confined to the physical dimension. There's mental causation. The created order includes finite minds. Some finite minds are discarnate agents (angels) while other finite minds are embodied agents (humans). In addition, reality includes the divine mind, which exists outside the created order.

Unlike physical processes, which are thoughtless, intelligent agents can exercise rational discretion. Moreover, intelligent agents can manipulate a natural process to produce a desired effect that's different than what the natural process would produce absent the intervention of an intelligent agent. 

That can involve mundane things like technology, or supernatural events like miracles. There are basically two kinds of miracles:

a) Classic miracles which circumvent natural processes. In the case of a classic miracle, the effect is not the result of the antecedent state. Rather, it's discontinuous with prior conditions leading up to that event. It has a mental rather than physical cause. It's not the end-result of a preceding chain of events. 

b) Coincidence miracles which utilize natural processes. A coincidence miracle is the coordinated result of independent chains of events converging for the benefit of a particular individual or group. It reflects the discriminating intention of a powerful agent. 

ii) Deism asserts the uniformity of nature. The universe operates according to natural laws. Natural events are law-like in the sense of mechanical regularity. The same kinds of things always happen. A closed system. A seamless causal continuum. 

According to the classic metaphor, we inhabit a clockwork universe. God made the watch, wound it, and set it. Thereafter it runs of its own accord. It requires no maintenance.

Deism regards a miracle as analogous to a mechanic on the night watch who must superintend the machinery in case of malfunction. The mechanic must repair it in case it breaks down.  

Or to continue with the watchmaker metaphor, God must periodically rewind or reset the watch if it runs down, runs fast, or runs slow. But that makes God a poor designer. So goes the argument. 

Deism makes no allowance for supernatural mental causation as an integral element in natural history. 

iii) In theological discourse, "intervention" is a term of art. As I use the term, an interventionist God is a God who works miracles and answers prayer–to take two paradigm examples. A Deist God or noninterventionist deity is a God who does not work miracles or answer prayer. 

Put another way, divine "intervention" is synonymous with God's ongoing involvement in natural history and especially human history. By contrast, a Deist God is uninvolved in the subsequent course of world history. His participation begins and ends with the initial act of creation. (In some versions of Deism, God will judge the wicked when they die). 

There are critics of "interventionist" terminology. They think the terminology has misleading connotations. For instance:

Some biblical fundamentalists think of God as an engineer who designed and created species of animals and plants like a watchmaker designing a watch. Ironically, this God of the world machine has more to do with science than with the bible or traditional Christian doctrines. When the machine model of nature took hold in seventeenth-century science, a new image of God came into being as a supernatural engineer, a machine-maker separate from nature. 

You don’t believe in this kind of God, and neither do I. In traditional Christian theology, God is not a kind of craftsman, or demiurge, who makes the world in the first place and then retires, leaving it to work automatically, except for occasional interventions when he arbitrarily suspends the laws of nature. God is not a demiurge, and not a meddler with machinery. According to the traditional understanding in Christian and other theologies, God is the ground of all being, the reason why there is something rather than nothing. He sustains the world in its existence from moment to moment, and is doing so now.[1] 

http://www.thebestschools.org/sheldrake-shermer-god-and-science-opening-statements/

Problem: "miracle," as used in these controversies, is not a biblical category. The God of the Bible is not a normally absent God who sometimes "intervenes." This God is always present and active, often surprisingly so...The "closed continuum" of cause and effect is a modernist myth. The God who does not "intervene" from outside but is always present and active within the world, sometimes shockingly, may well have been thus active on this occasion. 

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=17

In English theology, the easy-going pre-Enlightenment assumption that the world of creation gave reliably straightforward witness to a good creator (I cited Bishop Butler above; we might include writers like Joseph Addison, too) had been shaken to the core by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which as Susan Neiman has argued must be seen as one of the proximate causes at least of the Enlightenment revolution.[12] That revolution attempted to solve the problem, as well as several others, by cutting God loose from the world, drawing on the old upstairs/downstairs world of English deism. Religion became the thing that people did with their solitude, a private, inner activity, a secret way of gaining access to the divine rather than either an invocation of the God within nature or a celebration of the kingdom coming on earth as in heaven. God became an absentee landlord who allowed the tenants pretty much free rein to explore and run the house the way they wanted, provided they checked in with him from time to time to pay the rent (in much middle Anglican worship until the last generation, taking up the collection has been the most overtly sacramental act) and reinforce some basic ground rules (the Ten Commandments, prominently displayed on church walls, and the expectation that bishops and clergy will ‘give a moral lead’ to society). As we know, the absentee landlord quite quickly became an absentee, as in Feuerbach, whom Robinson quotes to this effect (p. 50) without any sense that Feuerbach himself has been subjected to damaging critique. 

My sympathy for his plight has grown over the years as I have lived within the continuing split-level world of much English piety. The word ‘miracle’ is a case in point. Most people, not least in the media, still think of it as meaning an action performed by a distant, remote deity reaching in to the world from outside—just as to many people, still, the word ‘God’ itself conjures up a basically deist image of that kind of a being. I know that in fact that word ‘supernatural’ has a longer history than this and that, for instance, mediaeval theologians were able to use it in such away that it did not carry the baggage of an implied deism or semi-deism [192] (by which I mean the view which, while sharing deism’s gap between God and the world, holds that from time to time this ‘God’ can and does ‘intervene’). But I continue to find that this model dominates UK theological discourse, particularly among those of, or near, Robinson’s generation. Thus, for instance, when I have written about Jesus’ mighty acts, or about the resurrection, I have often been heard to be affirming one kind of post-Enlightenment supernaturalism (with an ‘interventionist’ God) over against one kind of post-Enlightenment naturalism (with a ‘non-interventionist’ God), even though I have frequently and explicitly renounced precisely this distinction and the framework which facilitates it (to the consternation of my ‘supernaturalist’ friends). 

http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Doubts_About_Doubt.htm

iv) There's some truth to these criticisms, but they are confused. 

a) In classical theism, God is an "outside agent." God exists apart from the creation. God exits apart from the space-time continuum. 

b) There are different ways of making something. I can plant an orchard, then abandon the orchard. What the orchard will be like 50 years later has nothing to do with me, beyond my initial contribution. It will be very different than if I tended the orchard on a regular basis.

c) Compare that to a novelist. The novelist exists outside the story. Yet he's involved in every detail of the story. In one respect, he causes everything to happen, from start to finish. The novelist is responsible for everything that's said and done in the course of the story. 

But in another respect, characters drive the course of events. Conversely, characters react to events. Characters within the story drive the plot. They influence other characters. And they themselves are influenced by their circumstances.

You have both primary and secondary causation. 

d) Does the God of Calvinism "intervene"? Depends on what you mean. As I said at the outset, I define an interventionist God as a God who does things like working miracles and answering prayer. That's clearly consistent with Calvinism. 

I don't define an interventionist God as a God who alternates between participation and detachment.  Indeed, the usual rap against Calvinism is not that God is too remote, but that God is too involved. Critics of Calvinism think God ought to be more detached. 

Freewill theists limit divine intervention. Too much intrusion would either infringe on human freedom or trivialize the consequences of free choices. 

Clearly the Calvinist God doesn't intervene in the sense of acting at cross-purposes with his plan. But why should we define divine intervention in that way?

iv) There are, of course, freewill theists who think God intervenes in the sense that he has to jump in every so often to make midcourse corrections lest things get totally out of hand. But that's not how Calvinism uses the term. 

The part I don't really get is that Calvinists insist it is vitally important to point out that God knows all the possible games of chess the two players could have theoretically played. I guess I agree that that is knowledge that God has, but why is that relevant? God knows that it is theoretically possible two people could sit down for chess and just move their knights back and forth over the same spaces until they die of old age. So what? Why does that matter? Like I said, I think the important thing is that God knows ahead of time what game of chess the two players will actually play and the game of chess they would have played if he had not intervened on white's 10th move.

It's relevant for God to have counterfactual knowledge since God must be in a position to know what the possibilities are in order to instantiate a particular set of possibilities in space and time. God made the world by selecting and combining some possibilities to the exclusion of other possibilities. It doesn't a blind draw. 

It amounts to God predetermining every move and pretty much playing chess with himself. When he is intervening, he is intervening with himself because he created a person to act one way, but finds it necessary to nevertheless intervene in time to bring about his predetermined outcomes.

i) One limitation of the chess analogy is that ordinarily, chess pieces are unintelligent. If, however, the chess pieces were rational agents, then you'd have some pieces playing against other pieces. Indeed, the pieces on one side strategize with each other on how to defeat the other side, and vice versa. And as the game progresses, from their perspective (unlike God's), they adapt their strategy to the changing situation. 

ii) The other problem is that Jeff is hung-up on a particular connotation of "intervention."

iii) In addition, a lot depends on the metaphor we use to illustrate the point. If, instead of chess, we use a novel, you could say the novelist is telling himself a story. If, however, the characters were real people, like sentient virtual characters, then they experience the story. They are an audience for the story, like stage actors. 

Deistic evolution

Contemporary Christian apologetics devotes massive attention to atheism, but ignores deism. In one respect, that makes sense. Historic deism is long gone. However, there's a version of deism that's fairly dominant in some intellectual circles, and that's deistic evolution. Much of what flies under the banner of theistic evolution is really deistic evolution. And many religious critics of intelligent design theory espouse deistic evolution. Even if they allow for divine intervention in human history, the disallow divine intervention in natural history. Moreover, I suspect some of them are just maintaining pious appearances. 

There are basically two versions of deistic evolution: 

i) Deterministic deistic evolution

This is planned evolution. A frontloaded process where the outcome is inevitable. It isn't necessarily that every detail is predetermined. It's more like general providence. But progress is built into the process. A means-ends relation.

ii) Indeterministic deistic evolution

This is unguided or undirected evolution. Like a stochastic, adaptive program that takes on a life of its own once the program is switched on. 

In both versions you have a noninterventionist God who merely initiates the process. In the case of (i), God takes a personal interest in the ultimate outcome, although there may be multiple paths for arriving at that outcome.  It's broadly teleological, but redundant. 

In the case of (ii), God is indifferent to the outcome. It rejects human exceptionalism. Both versions are consistent with open theism, although (ii) leans more strongly in that direction. 

iii) Deistic evolution raises questions about divine benevolence and rationality. Why would God create sentient beings if he had no concern for their welfare or destiny? Do individuals count? 

In the case of (ii), God did not intend to create humans. He did not foresee their development. Yet once the process happens to produce in sentient beings, would he not take a subsequent interest in the result?

But perhaps, on this view, it's like a science experiment conducted by an alien. Our species is too insignificant to merit his concern. He's interested in the overall process more than any particular result. Humans are like disposable characters in a vast video game. It's the game, and not the fate of any specific character, that's the object of divine curiosity.

In the case of (i), God cares more about the end-result than how the process arrives at that solution. Rupert Sheldrake employs the metaphor of an attractor:

Dynamics is a branch of mathematical theory dealing with change, and a central concept in dynamics is that of the attractor. Instead of modelling what happens to a system by considering only the way it is pushed from behind, attractors in mathematical models provide an explanation in terms of a kind of pull from the future. 

The principal metaphor is that of a basin of attraction, like a large basin into which small balls are thrown. It would be very complicated to work out the trajectory of each individual ball starting from its initial velocity and angle at which it hit the basin; but a simpler way of modelling the system is to treat the bottom of the basin as an attractor: balls thrown in from any angle and at any speed will end up at the bottom of the basin. 

http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/

Simon Conway Morris toys with the same metaphor to model convergent evolution. Cf. The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe became Self-Aware. 

This emphasis puts a premium on the desired outcome at the expense of individuals. After however many failed trials, the goal is eventually reached. 

In natural theology, you first prove the existence of a Creator God. You then show that such a God would be likely to take a personal interest in the wellbeing of the sentient creatures he made. We'd expect him to be actively involved in human history. Reveal himself to humans. Act on their behalf.

An irony of deistic evolution is that it posits the existence of a powerful, rational Creator God. And as the either intended or unintended consequence of the process he put into motion, religious creatures arose. Creatures who believe in a Creator God. Creatures with detailed religious narratives about God's character and agency in human affairs. They believe in a Deity, and there is, in fact, a Deity. Yet what they believe about God bears little resemblance to what he is truly like. Their religious narratives don't correspond to world history. Not just Gen 1-2, but the entire story–from Genesis to Revelation–is a systematic mismatch for God's nature and behavior in deistic evolution. And the same holds true for other religious narratives. 

Conversely, evidence for the religious narrative (e.g. argument from prophecy, argument from miracles, answered proper) will serve to undermine the deistic evolutionary narrative. 

The Deist dilemma

I'll begin by stating my interpretation of historic Deism. It's my impression that during the Enlightenment, most Deists were closet atheists. They used Deism as a stalking horse for atheism. They did so for two tactical or strategic reasons:

i) It was politically hazardous to be a public atheist back then. Deism gave them some cover. It maintained a pious facade.

ii) In addition, it gave them an opportunity to perform jujitsu. They appealed to natural religion and the natural rights of man to undermine religious autocracy and political autocracy. They deployed this weapon against absolute monarchy and state religion. 

This religious appeal was basically a ploy. If they succeeded, they could then dispense with the religious justification. It was a temporary, opportunistic means to an end. 

However, that created dilemma. Initially, the natural rights of man were grounded in nature's God. The Creator endowing humans with "certain inalienable rights."

Once invocation of the deity served its purpose in defeating autocracy, God could be discarded. Problem is, as soon as God is kicked out, you lose the foundation for human rights. You must cast about for something else to ground human rights. 

More cynical, consistent atheists like Nietzsche and the Marquis de Sade appreciated the nihilistic consequences of godlessness. By the same token, it's my impression that monarchs like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were closet atheists who found it useful to cultivate popular piety among the masses as a way of keeping them submissive to the crown. Religious morality for the hoi polloi. That made them docile subjects. By contrast, Peter and Catherine held themselves to a very different standard. A law unto themselves. 

Circuit breaker

Andrew Preslar said,

But I was referring to the visibility of the hierarchy by means of the tactile succession.

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/arguments-concerning-the-papacy/#comment-101131  

Tactile succession is a very mechanistic model of sacramental grace (e.g. the grace of holy orders). Catholicism reduces the grace of God to an electrical current which must run along a continuous circuit or wire. If there’s a break in the circuit, the Holy Spirit can’t jump the break. Everything below the break is a dead line.

 

Notice how that trammels God, as if God’s grace is wired. God can’t act outside the circuitry. This is similar to Deism and Spinozism, which disallows miraculous interruptions in the uniformity of nature.

 

Compare this to Pauline ecclesiology:

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills (1 Cor 12:4-11).

Notice on Paul’s view that God’s grace operates at the discretion of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t confined to the wiring, where you flip a switch to turn it on or turn it off. God’s grace is wireless.

Neodeism

It’s revealing to study the progression in Arminian apologetics. When they think they can argue from Scripture, they argue from Scripture. That’s the first move.

But then you have Arminians like Jerry Walls, Victor Reppert, and Roger Olson who have a backup plan in case the exegetical arguments fail. If the Bible taught Calvinism, then they’d chuck the Bible. If the Bible taught Calvinism, they’d recant the Christian faith.

Then you have Arminians like Randal Rauser who go them one better: for him, chucking the Bible if it teaches Calvinism isn’t merely a hypothetical escape maneuver. Rather, he’s been putting that contingency plan into effect. He’s been chucking whatever parts of Scripture support Calvinism.

It’s like the old adage of the crooked lawyer: when you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you don’t have either one, attack the witness.

But the strategy is self-defeating. If you don’t think the Bible is a reliable witness to God’s character and intentions, the logical alternative is not to say, “I reject the Bible because I know what God is really like!”

For, absent revelation, you don’t know what God is really like. You’re in no position to say that God is loving, therefore I’ll accept or reject the Bible depending on whether the God of Scripture is loving (as you define it). For you have no independent reason to think that God is loving.

Appealing to natural revelation is counterproductive at that juncture. For the world seems to be quite random in the distribution of weal and woe. The world is full of inscrutable suffering. Arresting disparities. Oftentimes there doesn’t appear to be any discernible pattern or correlation.

We don’t enjoy direct access to the mind of God. Only he can disclose his intentions for the living and the dead.

It’s revealing to see these days what Arminians feel free to attack Calvinists for believing. Rauser doesn’t just attack Calvinists for espousing reprobation. He attacks them for espousing eternal punishment, original sin, the imprecatory psalms, God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, as well as God’s command to execute the Canaanites.

Same thing with Adam Omelianchuk:

Let me grant your claim that Scripture claims that “God has commanded that children be killed and God is good.” IF that is the case, THEN I don’t believe what Scripture teaches…As far as I can tell, this argument is valid. But I do not know any of the premises MORE THAN I know that bludgeoning babies is wrong. Even if I wanted to, I could not change this belief. It is as entrenched in my mind as the belief that I have two hands. You could say I am a moral particularist on this issue. That is, my knowledge judgments concerning how we ought to treat infants, no matter what people group they belong to, overrides any methodological principles that purport to yield moral truth to the contrary. That includes Sola Scriptura.

Does this mean I have jettisoned the Bible altogether? Not necessarily…If I reject [2], at most I reject inerrancy. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is trying to worship a God I believe to be unworthy of worship. I cannot allow my mind to be “transformed” into something that denies the obvious.

http://randalrauser.com/2011/12/singing-the-praises-of-the-imprecatory-psalms/

BTW, I have to remark on Adam’s glib appeal to intuition. Indiscriminate slaughter is common place in human history. Many cultures have done that. So you can’t invoke some universal moral intuition to the contrary.

Rather, what’s typical in human history is a double standard: one standard for the in-group, another standard for the out-group. Historically, kinship dictates social mores.

Increasingly, contemporary Arminians apologists represent a throwback to the 18C Deism:

Deducing the full consequences of Locke’s theory, John Toland (d. 1722), in his Christianity not Mysterious (1696), maintained that the content of revelation must neither contradict nor transcend the dictates of reason. Revelation is not the basis of truth, but only a ” means of information ” by which man may arrive at knowledge, the sanction for which must be found in reason. Primitive Christianity knew nothing of mystery, whose sources are Judaic and Greek, and the original Christian use of the word mysterium conveyed no idea of that which transcended reason. The basis is thus laid for the critical study of early Christianity. Further problems of Biblical criticism and the distinction between the diverse parties in primitive Christianity are advanced in Toland’s Amyntor (1699) and Nazarenus ; or Jewish, Gentile and illahometan Christianity (1718). In like manner, Anthony Collins (d. 1729), in his Discourse of Freethinking (1713), developed the consequences of Locke’s propositions. Revelation depends for its sanction upon its agreement with reason, and what is contrary to reason is not revelation. Practical morality is independent of dogma, which, on the contrary, has been the cause of much evil in the history of the world.

 

Matthew Tindal (d. 1733), in his dialogue Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730), produced the standard text-book of Deism. Proceeding from Locke’s proposition of the identity of the truths of revelation with those of reason, he adduces a new array of arguments in support of that position. The goodness of God, the vast extent of the earth, the long duration of human life on earth render it improbable that only to Jews and Christians was vouchsafed the favor of perceiving truth. We now have brought in the classic example of the three hundred million Chinese who surely could not all be excluded from the truth, and Confucianism begins to be extolled against much that is repugnant and harsh in the Mosaic law. Christianity, to be the truth, must find the substance in all religions; it must be as old as creation. The doctrines of the fall and of original sin can not stand, since it is irrational to believe in the exclusion from the truth of the vast majority of humanity.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/deismeng/

Take another example:

drwayman says:

Dr Rauser – For me, this practice of singing the imprecatory psalms can be quite problematic. There was someone earlier in this thread, or the other thread about this, I can’t find it now, where someone alluded to killing their son like Abraham and hoped that they had the courage to do so if God commanded them.

 

I also remember another conversation I had with a Christian gentleman who said a similar thing, “If God asked me to chop off my daughter’s head, I would do so!”

 

So, when a psalm singing church sings some of the imprecatory psalms, do they insure that children and those who are mentally impaired are absent or otherwise occupied? Do members take the time to explain to these individuals that this is simply language to meditate upon not act upon?

 

I could see a young person with a mental illness, especially one towards a propensity of God talking to him/her, that could leave the service and smash a baby’s skull. When stopped by the police, s/he would say, “I just left my church service where we were singing about smashing baby’s skulls, breaking off people’s teeth and dancing in their blood.”

 

One may that that is pretty far fetched. However, just last week, I put a young man in the hospital for walking around naked. When I asked him why he did so, he said, “God told me to. My name is Isaiah. I am a prophet.” I asked him if he was going to do this for three years, he said, “probably not because it’s gonna get cold.”

 

How do you make such determination? Does your pastor, who has a doctorate in psychoanalysis, interview each person that comes thru the door? Does he do a mental status exam of each person every time? Peoples’ mental states change. Does one have to complete an MMPI or a Hare Psychopathy Scale to attend your church?

http://randalrauser.com/2011/12/singing-the-praises-of-the-imprecatory-psalms/

i) This raises some valid questions concerning religious epistemology, especially for Pentecostalism, but before we get  to the contemporary application, what about the Biblical counterparts?

Imagine Wayman having Isaiah or Abraham involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. Would he do a mental status exam on Abraham? Make him complete an MMPI or a Hare Psychopathy Scale?

ii) What made God’s command to Abraham a test is the fact that it was counterintuitive. It seemed to be unreasonable. It generates a prima facie tension between God’s promise and God’s command. On the one hand is God’s promise–involving a covenant between God and Abraham’s posterity, via Isaac. On the other hand is God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, which apparently revokes the promise.

Some Arminians are taking the position that God never should or never would issue a counterintuitive command. Never give an order that seems to be unreasonable.

Yet that’s what makes the command a test of faith. If the command made sense, that’s why you’d follow the command, and not because you put your trust in God. But because the command is counterintuitive, it requires sheer trust in God to motivate obedience. You just take God’s word for it. 

iii) Wayman’s objection is also nonsensical. It’s futile to tell a madman to stop acting crazy. If you’re sane, you don’t act crazy–and if you’re crazy, you don’t act sanely.

Somebody in his right mind doesn’t need Wayman’s admonition, while somebody out of his mind won’t heed Wayman’s admonition.

Yes, some folks are deluded. They think God speaks to them when he doesn’t. But in the nature of the case, you can’t reason with them. Telling a deluded individual that he’s deluded won’t make him see the light.

Who is Wayman warning? The criminally insane? Good luck with that.

And there’s no point warning individuals who aren’t deluded. They aren’t the problem. So, practically speaking, Wayman’s advice is otiose.

iv) There’s also the question of verification. If the God of Abraham exists, then he can presumably make himself known to Abraham. He made him. He controls his environment. He has direct access to his mind. Such a God is more real to Abraham than Abraham’s memories or sensory perceptions, for Abraham’s memories and sensory perceptions are ultimately the result of God’s creative and providential agency. He can know that God spoke to him better than he can know that there really is an oak tree which corresponds to that sense datum in his field of vision. If the Creator of his mind is deceptive, then there’s no reason to assume his sensory perceptions map onto extramental objects. It would be like those science fiction stories in which telepathic aliens capture human beings and then subject them to convincing hallucinations.

v) That doesn’t mean every ostensible vision or audition from God is veridical. Just that if God exists, there’s no antecedent objection to the possibility of veridical encounters with God.

vi) Abraham occupies a pretty exclusive and unrepeatable position in redemptive history. God made a covenant with Abraham. God has only done that with a half dozen individuals: Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, Christ.

So there’s no presumption that God is going to repeat that exercise with someone else. Just the opposite. God isn’t making any more covenants.

vii) Unbelievers sometimes ask, tauntingly, if you or I would do the same thing in Abraham’s situation. But this counterfactual invites a counter-counterfactual: if we wouldn’t do the same thing, then God wouldn’t command us to do it in the first place. We wouldn’t find ourselves in that situation. God wouldn’t choose us to play that particular role.

viii) The command that God gave to Isaiah had a specific rationale (Isa 20:3-4). It’s not repeatable.

Practical Deism

The Bayly bros did a recent post which drew my attention to an older post by Scott Clark. I’ll excerpt what I take to be Scott’s key contentions:

As I pointed out in those places both as a matter of history and, more fundamentally, as a matter of biblical revelation, we are clearly taught not to try to interpret providence. It is a temptation that we must resist. When God has not revealed himself (either explicitly or by “good and necessary inference” from Scripture) we should be silent. The plain fact is that we don’t know why a tornado struck that steeple just at that moment. It is fascinating, and surely it is sobering, just as a cancer diagnosis is sobering. But think of the difficulties attached to interpreting providence. I grew up in Tornado Alley. Like snow, humidity, and hail, they were a natural fact. When the “Big One” hit Omaha in 1975 or an even bigger one hit Grand Island (Neb) the next year, was that a message from God? Was God particularly displeased with the sinners in Omaha and Grand Island? When a tornado hits a lonely farmhouse in Kansas or even wipes out an entire town (Greensburg, Kan) does that mean that God was particularly displeased with them?

What makes me roll my eyes is not the wrath of God or the folly of denying his instruction regarding sin and grace but the presumption of those who think they can know the “hidden things” of God (Deut. 29:29).

We don’t need to add gravity to the Word by appealing to interpretations of providence which, in the nature of the case, is ambiguous. Piper may be right, but he may not be right. The truth is that God knows the end from the beginning. We cannot even begin to fathom what that means. God knows from eternity. He knows in a single act. He knows comprehensively. He knows intuitively. He knows freely. He knows sovereignly. He knows easily, effortlessly. He knows in a way that we can try to describe (apprehend) but in a way that we can never comprehend. One of the biggest problems with proposed interpretations of providence is this: not only do they directly contradict the express teaching of our Lord, but they also entail an insufficient appreciation for the majesty of God. I know it sounds odd to challenge John Piper on a theme like this, but that’s what is ironic. God’s ways are mysterious. They are far beyond our finding out. We’re not canonical actors. God doesn’t reveal to us the meaning of this earthquake, that flood, or that tornado. He just doesn’t. We don’t have what the classical Reformed and Lutheran theologians called “Archetypal theology,” i.e., we don’t know what God knows, the way he knows it. We have “ectypal theology,” i.e. we have “analogical” (their word) theology. God gives us analogues of his knowledge, but our intellects never intersect with his. We’re not capable of knowing what God knows, the way He knows it. Such knowledge would destroy us.

There is another problem. I’ve seen cases where a given interpretation of providence becomes binding, a kind of extra-canonical word from God, a fence around the law as it were. In such a case, Christians are no longer bound only the Word (which has to be interpreted, applied, and confessed by Christ’s church) but to the interpretation of natural revelation beyond that given in the Word. Rom. 1 teaches us the general meaning of natural revelation, but, beyond that we have no inspired interpretation and certainly not of particular episodes. The human lust to know that which we should not, to seek that which is hidden from us, is ancient and deadly. Whoever knows “God’s will for your life” is a very powerful person indeed: ask the victims of the Word-faith and Kansas City prophets (etc).

The meaning of a particular providence is hidden from us. If God wanted us to know the meaning of a particular providence, he would tell us but He hasn’t, has He? I don’t know that John is wrong, but I don’t know that he’s right. That’s just the point: I don’t have to know. We have the Word. Sola Scriptura.

http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/interpreting-providence/

Confessions of a recovering confessionalist

http://opc.org/os.html?article_id=157

http://opc.org/os.html?article_id=164

Rick Warren: Evangelical Deist

From a 2005 interview of Rick Warren by Good Morning America on Katrina:

Roberts: Rick Warren is the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life.”[…] In my hometown of Pass Christian, I ran across a woman who came up to me and she said, Robin, it’s, it’s as if God tried to wipe us off the face of the earth. You know there are some people that look and see this destruction and, and say, where, where is whatever it is, or whomever they, they, they look to …

Warren: Right.

Roberts: … for guidance in a higher way?

Warren: Right. Well, first thing we need to understand that not everything that happens in this world is God’s will. I have a will, you have a will, we have a free will. […] And so, we have a lot of things that go bad. […] But what God wants to do is he wants to comfort us. Somebody asked me when I was actually on the floor of the, the, the Houston Astrodome talking to people and praying with people, said, where is God in all of this? And I’ll tell you where God is, he’s in thousands of lives of people who love him and follow him, and they are the hands and feet of God.

Well, there you have it folks. Rick Warren proclaiming a God who is somehow worthy of our worship even though his own creation acts outside of his sovereign will. Not to mention that Warren failed to call for national repentance—the primary purpose for unbelievers and the church.

Did you notice Warren’s response about the woman who thought that God was trying to wipe us off the earth? He said, “Well, first thing we need to understand that not everything that happens in this world is God’s will.” Really? Rick Warren failed to take into account God’s opinion:

• Amos 3:6 …When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?
• Psalm 148:8 Fire and hail, snow and clouds; Stormy wind, fulfilling His word
• Psalm 135:6-7 The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
• Lamentations 3:37-38 Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?

Strange when you’re on national television these verses seem to escape the memory. Then Warren makes a leap from a natural disaster to man’s will, “I have a will, you have a will, we have a free will.” I thought we were discussing natural disasters? Does nature have a “free will”? Not once did he mention that God was in control over nature, but suggests that nature has some will on its own outside of God’s active providence.

He also cites a person who came up to him at the Houston Astrodome and asks, “Where is God in all of this.” Warren responds with this platitude (that any world religious leader could have said), “And I’ll tell you where God is, he’s in thousands of lives of people who love him and follow him, and they are the hands and feet of God…” What a lost opportunity to explain to this person the unique God revealed in the Scriptures who is sovereign and works out his purposes through his all-wise, all-just, decrees.

Warren also told more than 8,000 displaced evacuees at the Houston Astrodome shelter on Monday, “The question we need to ask at a time like this is not ‘Why?’ but ‘What do I do now?” Observe how Warren has divorced the decree of God in Katrina with our responses to it. In Biblical times the question of “Why” was paramount; yet now in the 21 Century, Warren thinks he has the authority to jettison this all important question. Let’s put this in perspective: In Biblical times the “Why” was God’s action, and the “What do I do” was repentance. For Rick Warren the “Why” is suggested as simply a natural event, and the “What do I do” is only a physical response not a spiritual one. Warren has simply not given glory to God in his workings and purposes in nature and basically given them a naturalistic interpretation where God picks up the pieces.