Helm reviews Live Not By Lies

Paul Helm reviews Rod Dreher's Live Not By Lies.

JIP and WCF

Paul Helm on J.I. Packer and the Westminster Confession of Faith. (There seem to be more than a few spelling and punctuation errors.)

Helm on Packer

Paul Helm's tribute to J. I. Packer, whom Helm calls "the most talented man that I ever met".

Likewise Helm's older piece on 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God is worth a read. By the way, 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God is currently about $3 on Kindle.

Coronavirus19 – What’s It for?

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

Easter gifts

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2020/03/easter-gifts.html

"He is not here"

"He is not here" (Paul Helm)

Traveling by car or train

The process [of canonization] was more "bottom up" via local churches, than "top down" from a big Church council. P. Helm, Just Words? Special Revelation and the Bible (Evangelical Press  2018), 40. 

This points to a basic difference Catholicism and evangelicalism. Both believe there's an interplay between providential and supernatural factors with respect to divine activity in the world, but there's disagreement on the extent. Catholics imagine that their denomination enjoys special divine guidance and protection from error. And that includes conciliar or papal pronouncements. That's a topdown view of divine agency. 

Evangelicals don't deny that God sometimes uses a topdown approach. The paradigm example is biblical revelation. 

To change metaphors, the topdown approach is like handing a driver a roadmap. It's up to the driver to read the map, comparing the map to what he sees through the windshield. 

The bottom-up approach is like putting somebody on a train. So long as they're on the right train, that will take them to the destination. All they have to do is board the right train, and the train takes care off the rest.

Metaphors are flexible, so it's possible to develop the same figurative illustration in different ways. However, the point of my comparison is that on the Catholic paradigm, God provides direct verbal guidance throughout the church age. The Magisterium is a living oracle. It gives Catholics up-to-date answers. So that's analogous to having to drive your to your destination, but using a street map or roadmap as an aid.


By contrast, in the Protestant paradigm, especially in Calvinism, divine guidance (over and above Scripture) is usually oblique and providential. God directs our steps by ordering the circumstances of our lives. We're not generally conscious of divine guidance, because it's not direct, topical communication. Rather, one thing leads to another. That's analogous to taking a train, where the medium convenes you to your destination.

Calvinism and Middle Knowledge A Conversation

https://wipfandstock.com/calvinism-and-middle-knowledge.html

Explaining evil, part 2

Now I'll comment on some aspects of Helm's presentation. 

An important feature of this contribution to the questions raised by evils is that such a theism is monistic….Some contrasting systems are dualistic, positing two equally ultimate sources of good and evil, Light and Darkness, engaged in an everlasting wrestling match, and so on. Judeo-Christianity is not like this. God is the creator and purposer of all that is. So the question, "Why evil?" when posed of this God, becomes at least two questions (50).

In that regard, freewill theism is dualistic. Although the forces of good and evil aren't equally ultimate, they are independent of each other. 

"What is God's purpose in permitting/ordaining evil?" The fulfilling of what end or ends required evil?…This  is a question that is teleological in character. I don't think an atheist has a place for this question, because any atheistic system has only one set of sources of evil, namely uncreated matter. A theist may reply to our question by recognizing that he does not have a clue as to why there is evil in God's world. But the question nevertheless makes sense: God must have a ground or grounds. The second question is, "Granted that God is the ordainer of evil, how does evil occur?" (50).

In this monism there are two categories of players: God the creator and human beings his creatures, with the use of their own minds and wills…In materialist atheism, there is only one set of players, configurations of matter more or less complicated. Some of these posses agency, others do not (50).

How such configurations get to ask anything is a major problem in such an outlook…Atheists, like theists, may resort to anthropomorphism. Perhaps these evils are bound up with the self-preservation of some species, or of species generally. Maybe evils and pains are spurs to good: to maternal care, or the development of clothing for a covering against heat and cold, or as a sign of the onset of serious sickness…They arise from our penchant for imputing functions or purposes to some of the natural order that does not having anything like human intentions a we experience these…And if we are thorough-going materialists, we also have the task of explaining how those arrangements of matter that are you and me come to have the capacity to impute good and evil to other chunks of matter. Good and evil are ultimately epiphenomena of physical changes (51).

Useful contrast. 

The fault, the incarnation, and the offering of the Incarnate One is needed, for the display of the glory of God in the redemption of men and women. The point here is not simply that the incarnation was necessary, but that an evil world in which God himself came and suffered for us is incommensurably better than one in which there was no evil, but also that there was no incarnation (53).

The problem is that Helm never gets around to explaining what makes a redeemed world incommensurably better than an unfallen world. He never gets much beyond the bare assertion. 

In fairness, he isn't presenting a full-blown theodicy since the topic of the book has a different emphasis than the problem of evil. Still, for a Christian, to ask why there's any evil at all is necessarily bound up with the problem of evil and theodical considerations.  

The theist must end his explanatory narrative by invoking the will of God; it was the good pleasure of God that this is so. Why is it the good pleasure of God that this is so? This is a question that cannot be answered, not because there is no answer, but that there is no answer apart from the will of God (55).

I don't know what that means. Sure, the answer can't be detached from God's will, but God has reasons for what he wills, so a Christian can explore the possible reasons. God's bare will is not the ultimate explanation. I don't think Helm is a theological voluntarist. God's will is characterized by his wisdom and benevolence. There's a rationale for whatever God wills. 

Given the immaculate and necessary perfection of God, moral evil can only arise from the creature. It is a logical consequence of the monistic character of the Creator-creature distinction that God is the only source of good and that moral evil has its source according to orthodox Christianity in the creature (55).

i) I don't think that's an option for a Calvinist. Predestination is the ultimate source of evil. 

Now there are different aspects to that. To take a comparison, in Perelandra, why doesn't the Queen succumb to the Un-man? At one level, that's because everything that happens was plotted by the novelist, who exists outside the narrative. At another level, the Un-man would eventually wear down her resistance but Ransom finally gives up on trying to outargue the Un-man and kills him. So there's an explanation within the narrative as well as an explanation outside the narrative.

By the same token, there was a plot in God's imagination. In the plot, Lucifer fell, then successfully tempted Adam and Eve to follow suit. God instantiates his mental narrative in real space and time, with conscious agents. Lucifer fell in the real world because that necessarily corresponds to the plot in God's mind. 

ii) However, that doesn't rule out factors or motivations within the plot. For instance, although Adam sinned, perhaps he didn't perceive his action as evil. Perhaps he misperceived his action as virtuous. 

There is about evil a deficiency or loss of negativity. Augustine, influenced somewhat by the neo-platonists at this point, called evil a privation. Hence it could not be the direct action of God who is only capable of creating not of destroying. Blindness (say) is not a positive property, but a negative property (56).

i) As I understand it, the motivation for the privative theory of evil is that if evil is nothing, then God didn't create evil–since nothing can't be a creative object. An agent, even an omnipotent agent, can't create nothing. Nothing isn't the effect or result of anything. So that let's God off the hook–or does it?

ii) Even if we grant that technical distinction, does it really hold up? For instance, suppose you say the empty spaces in a snowflake are nothing. Yet those specific empty spaces, those particular shapes, are caused by the lattice pattern of the snowflake. The configuration of the empty spaces wouldn't exist apart from the crystalline structure. So even though the empty spaces aren't directly created, they are caused. 

Likewise, even if we say blindness is a privative property, blindness is caused by certain factors. Even if you say blindness isn't directly created, it is indirectly created by whatever conditions give rise to blindness, viz. disease, accident, genetic defect. So I don't see how you get any theodical mileage out of that distinction.

In fairness, Helm isn't necessary trying to justify the ordination of evil at this juncture, but explain its origin. How rather than why. But it still reflects the limitations of that theodical strategy. 

Someone who is compatibilistically free may go through stages in which, until he makes up his mind, he is as ignorant of his future as is any open theist who hold that God is ignorant of some libertarian future (31).

Corrects the popular misconception that the experience of deliberation implies libertarian freedom. Also, useful comparison with open theism. 

Explaining evil, part 1

I plan to do a series of posts on yet another book on the problem of evil: W. Paul Franks, ed., Explaining Evil: Four Views (Bloomsbury 2019). Here's a description:

https://philpapers.org/rec/FRAEEF-2

I think the problem of evil is overemphasized in atheism and Christian apologetics. If we were starting from scratch, would the problem of evil receive so much attention? I think it's like a social contagion or reinforcing loop where, if you keep saying the problem of evil is the main objection to belief in God, that's the effect of constant repetition. It feeds back into itself in a circular, self-conditioned dynamic. 

Strictly speaking, the book isn't about the problem of evil but the preliminary question of how, why, and whether evil exists. For a Christian respondent, that's intertwined with the problem of evil. Christian theology takes the existence of evil for granted, but that's not a given in atheism. Are pain and suffering evil? What is evil from a secular standpoint? Is there such a thing?

I bought the book primary for the contributions of Paul Helm and Erik Wielenberg. Helm is the preeminent Reformed philosopher of his generation while Wielenberg is one of the best atheist philosophers. 

Here is Wielenberg's response to Helm's felix culpa theodicy:

(ii) The atonement of sin is so good that it is better that there be atoned-for sin than that there be no sin in the first place (73).

Although that may be how the felix culpa theodicy is usually formulated, I disagree that God's permission/ordination of evil is only justified if a redeemed world is better overall than an unfallen world. Suppose there's a better world than the world in which my loved ones exist. If so, it's a cause for gratitude that God created a lesser world in which my loved ones exist rather than an upscale world in which they don't. God isn't elitist. We should be grateful that our existence is not in competition with "the best". What if we wouldn't make the cut? What if God picks losers rather than winners because he loves the underdog? Existence isn't a meritocracy. Salvation isn't theological eugenics. 

Accordingly, it seems that atonement can at best cancel the evil of sin, turning the overall balance of good and evil to zero; I don't see a plausible basis for holding that atonement–as distinguished from divine incarnation–could make the overall combination of sin and atonement into good (74). 

To be a redeemed creature, to experience reconciliation and restoration, is a richer experience than never failing in the first place. Which Wielenberg considers:

Diller considers the thought that "there is a special excellence to the quality of relationship that can be known by those once lost who are redeemed"…However, it is hard to see how to justify (ii) on such grounds without thereby committing oneself to such implausible claims as "the strongest marriages are those that have involved a period of divorce, or that the deepest mother-daughter relationship is enabled once the daughter commits patricide" (74).

It's not implausible that the strongest marriages are marriages that weather crisis and conflict, but survive the ordeal. There is, moreover, the interesting phenomenon of divorced couples who reconsider and remarry the original spouse. At the time they were too immature to appreciate each other. But in retrospect they came to realize they were right the first time around. The time apart gave them perspective. 

Furthermore, such grounds for (ii) suggest that greater degrees of alienation make possible more valuable goods of reconciliation later on. In the case of isn, that line of thinking appears to lead to the following problem:"If sin is the occasioning cause of grace…then  shouldn't the upright man try to overcome his repugnance to sin, and commit still more sins?" Acceptance of (ii) and the felix culpa theodicy suggests that more sin enhances the overall value of the world, all things considered–a dubious implication (74).

1. That doesn't follow. For one thing, it's not as if humans are morally pristine agents who must devise creative ways to experiment with evil so that we know what it's like. Rather, we're already born with a propensity for evil, and the question is how to break free. I have plenty of regrets without having to devise and explore novel exercises in sinning. 

2. Moreover, it's not as if you need to be repeatedly lost and found to have insight into what it's like to be lost and found. Indeed, if you were constantly rescued, it would become blasé and expected. If a hiker is lost in the forest, part of what makes rescue such a relief is the fear that he may not be found. He's in a state of desperate suspense. Waiting in hope and fear. 

Michael Peterson writes, "God's original purpose…[thus the highest good for creation is available without creation's descent into sin and evil" (74).

Is that supposed to mean God was blindsided by events and had to scramble to salvage his nearsighted plans?

"agency that is hardened and biochemically twisted (serial killers, child sex murderers, schizophrenics)"…Adam's worry is that God would be insufficiently loving and merciful toward such wrecked and ruined human agents were he to create them in order to display his perfection through divine atonement.

i) I'll bracket the "display his perfection through divine atonement" for another installment.

ii) What exactly is Wielenberg's responding to? Is he saying that's inconsistent with a felix culpa theodicy? If so, how does a felix culpa theodicy require God to be loving and merciful towards serial killers and child sex murderers? 

ii) Is he saying that's inconsistent with Helm's Calvinism? If so, does Calvinism require God to be loving and merciful towards serial killers and child sex murderers? In Calvinism God loves the elect. It's not a presupposition of Calvinism that God is merciful to everyone. Indeed, there's a fundamental sense in which God is unmerciful to the reprobate. 

iii) Is he saying that's inconsistent with what it means for God to be a benevolent being, from Wielendberg's perspective? Is Wielenberg supposing that to be good, God must be loving and merciful towards serial killers and child sex murderers? If he's operating from his own standards, then the onus lies on him to make a case for why divine goodness demands that. 

Psychopaths lack "the shackles of a nagging conscience"…for psychopaths, "moral…rules are annoying restrictions to be manipulated or ignored. None of these rules have any normative force for them". Psychopaths lack the emotional capacity to grasp the weight of morality and because they are devoid of guilt, see no need for any of their actions to be atoned for. It is hard to see why the existence of a particular sort of damaged agency is necessary for the great good of divine atonement. God could have omitted psychopaths from his grand plan without sacrificing the need for atonement (75).

i) Once again, what exactly is Wielenberg responding to? Since Helm is a Calvinist, he doesn't think everyone is redeemed. 

ii) Perhaps Wielenberg would say there's a point of tension between a felix culpa theodicy and limited atonement. If so, it's up to Wielenberg to explain why psychopaths, serial killers, and child sex murders must be redeemed for a redeemed world to be better overall than an unfallen world–even assuming that all psychos, serial killers, and child sex murderers are reprobate.

iii) Finally, if, according to Calvinism, God regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies a psychopath, then he will come to perceive how his actions were blameworthy and desperately in need of atonement. Perhaps that discernment will be incomplete in this life. It may only be in heaven that his "wrecked and ruined agency" is fully repaired, although grace can enable him to gain some insight even in this life. Christian apologist David Wood appears to be a real-life example. 

The last things

An interview with Christian philosopher Paul Helm about "the last things": death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

It looks like Helm's The Last Things is currently unavailable at all the other major online bookstores I'm familiar with (e.g. Amazon), but it can still be purchased from the Banner of Truth. It's the final book in a trilogy. I've read the other two books, The Beginnings and The Callings, and I would highly recommend them too.

As many already know, Paul Helm has a weblog here.

The Westminster Confession

I agree with Helm regarding Craig's misinterpretation of the Westminster Confession:

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-westminster-standard-i.html

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-westminster-standard-ii.html

I also agree with his criticisms of middle knowledge. And Helm is correct that divine foreknowledge is grounded in divine foreordination. 

However, Helm's appeal to certain prooftexts (Acts 2:23; Rom 8:29; Rom 11:2) is somewhat confused. Proginosko sometimes means "to choose beforehand" rather than "to know beforehand". The meaning is idiomatic. A carryover from OT usage, where treaties and covenants use yada to denote "choosing". 

Our rock

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2017/11/something-else-that-martin-said.html

Hylomorphism

I usually agree with Paul Helm. Here's a rare exception:

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-puritans-soul.html

I agree with Helm on the importance of the body in Christian anthropology. But we don't need Thomistic hylomorphism to value the body. Indeed, a dreaded Cartesian dualist can value the body, without the obscurities of hylomorphism. It's a philosophically and theologically problematic position. Consider the view of analytical Thomist, Elizabeth Anscombe:

This is why I call "immaterial substance" a delusive conception…There is no reason whatever for believing in a temporal immortality of the soul apart from the resurrection…I take the Christian doctrine of immortality to be the doctrine of an unending human life, happy or unhappy, after the resurrection, and not the doctrine of an immortal sort of substance, the soul., to which is appended the doctrine of the resurrection because a disembodied soul is not a complete man, "The Immortality of the Soul," Faith in a Hard Ground, 72,77.

Now, it's possible, I suppose, that her position was partially influenced by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein once made a skeptical comment about dreams, which his student, Norman Malcolm developed. If we conceive the intermediate state as analogous to dreaming, and if, following Wittgenstein, we're dubious about the "folk psychology" of dreaming, then perhaps that has something to due with her skepticism. But I have no actual evidence that was a factor in her thinking. 

It is, of course, possible, that her skepticism isn't specifically Thomistic, although she devotes time to analyzing the Thomistic category of substance. And I'm not suggesting that Helm ought to be persuaded by her arguments. 

But it's no mystery that hylomorphism, even of the Thomistic variety, is hard to square with the intermediate state. As I recall, Peter Geach, another analytical Thomist (and Anscombe's husband) raises similar difficulties in God and the Soul. From what I've read, Thomists must make ad hoc qualifications to adapt hylomorphism to the intermediate state.  And that's from astute Catholic philosophers who are highly sympathetic to Thomism. 

Who's the magician?

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2016/09/whos-magician.html

Thinking outside the box

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2016/09/thinking-outside-box.html

Calvinism and the Problem of Evil

Now available for preorder:

https://www.amazon.com/Calvinism-Problem-Evil-David-Alexander/dp/1498284760

"This book contains a vigorous challenge to the widespread belief that Calvinist views on human freedom and divine sovereignty make the problem of evil insoluble. Written by a diverse group of first-rate thinkers, the book also shows that 'Calvinism' itself is not monolithic, but a diverse movement with the resources for creative rethinking of old questions. Highly recommended."

--C. Stephen Evans, University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Baylor University; Professorial Fellow, Australian Catholic University

"In recent years, advocates of libertarian freedom, or Molinism, have dominated the discussion of the problem of evil in Christianity, creating a consensus that traditional Calvinism is unacceptable. The present volume counteracts that consensus by sophisticated and detailed philosophical argument of a high order. I strongly recommend it."

--John Frame, Professor of Systematic Theology & Philosophy, Reformed Theological Seminary

Contents:

Introduction, by David E. Alexander and Daniel M. Johnson

1: Calvinism and the Problem of Evil: A Map of the Territory -- Daniel M. Johnson

2: Molinist Gunslingers: God and the Authorship of Sin -- Greg Welty

3: Theological Determinism and the "Authoring Sin" Objection -- Heath White

4: Not the Author of Evil: A Question of Providence, Not a Problem for Calvinism -- James E. Bruce

5: Orthodoxy, Theological Determinism, and the Problem of Evil -- David E. Alexander

6: Discrimination: Aspects of God's Causal Activity -- Paul Helm

7: On Grace and Free Will -- Hugh J. McCann

8: The First Sin: A Dilemma for Christian Determinists -- Alexander R. Pruss

9: Calvinism and the First Sin -- James N. Anderson

10: A Compatibicalvinist Demonstrative-Goods Defense -- Christopher R. Green

11: Calvinism and the Problem of Hell -- Matthew J. Hart

12: Calvinism, Self-Attestation, and Apathy Toward Arguments From Evil -- Anthony Bryson

What are creeds and confessions?

https://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2016/07/what-are-creeds-and-confessions.html

Crossing the finish line

Scroll down to the interview with Paul Helm:

http://ashfieldpresbyterian.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/AP1002.pdf

God and Time

http://www.academia.edu/1180974/review_of_God_and_Time_Four_Views_ed._Gregory_Ganssle