Christianity's Wax Nose

They were designed to show that persons who allow a conception of divine goodness to govern their reading of Scripture and even to affect their acceptance of the doctrine of inerrancy can be serious and dedicated Christians, who have a clue as to what it means to be a Christian.

No, Victor, you're wrong. At least with Wesley. He didn't say Scripture was in error, he said it couldn't mean what the Calvinist says it means. So, he doesn't think Scripture teaches Calvinism.

My point has been, and you have not interacted with it, if you're going to say that you believe in inerrancy, and you believe the Bible teaches X, and you believe ~X, while still believing in inerrancy, then you are irrational. Then you are an odd form of Christian. At least Lewis would deny that X was true.

You have refused to clarify exactly what your objection is.

If you deny inerrancy, speak up! Show people where you had to go (because you didn't start out the debate there) to deny Calvinism. Some might say that's a hefty price.

If you don't deny inerrancy, then if you are in the position described in my first paragraph, you are irrational and anti-Christian. How could you not be?

And, what do you mean your "concept of goodness?" Where did you get it from? You're debating on borrowed capital. You have a Christian conception of "good" since you've grown up in the largely Christian west. A Hindu's conception of good wouldn't be the same. As many Arminians have pointed out, one's Scriptures will play a role in how you understand "good" when you say, "God is good."

In Reppert’s favorite haunt, the god of the philosophers, a being is worthy of worship if he is the greatest conceivable being. But as most philosophers of religion point out, this is almost meaningless given the various religious traditions we find, and the various intuitions we have. Is impassibility a perfection? Some say yes, some say no. How about necessity? Mormons wouldn’t agree. Does God's omnipotence mean he can, say, do the logically impossible? Aquinas said no, Descartes yes. Does God's omniscience include knowledge of the future? Again, some yes, some no. Does God's goodness mean he cannot willingly permit some to go to hell for their sinful actions? Some yes, others no. In Christianity, we go to revelation to figure this out.

In Christian theology, we take God's goodness to be shown as his benevolence, lovingkindness, graciousness, mercifulness, faithfulness, longsuffering, compassion, those are some starters.

Of course these undefined terms don't do much, especially for those who want a god of the philosophers:

"It should be recognized that in setting for God's attributes we cannot possibly ignore the religious and theological tradition within which any given theology operates. If, for instance, we were to offer the Jewish religious community a conception of God radically at variance with that which is found in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish tradition, that conception would not be warmly received. [...] As we have noted, intuitions about perfection may vary and a philosopher of religion who is seeking to apply that notion would do well to pay attention to the conception of God that actual religious communities have found best to represent perfection and worshipfulness" (Reasons & Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, eds. Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger, Oxford, 2003, pp. 61-62, emphasis added).

I'm sure Calvnists think the Lewis passage and the Wesley passage were wrong.

Again, they never said that the Bible in fact taught our beliefs. I do not think some Christian is wrong to disbelieve a religious teaching if he thinks it is not in fact taught in the Bible!

Reppert knows my reasons, he don't need to speculate on what I think. He can deal with what I have said rather than taking to easy way out and speculating about my position. I have spent considerable amount of time in this debate with Reppert and Reppert has consistently ignored my posts and posted re-heated objections without taking my answers into consideration. To not even read the other guys' stuff, take his position into account, shows that Reppert isn't motivated to honestly study this issue. He simply wanted to make his opinions known. He already knows he's right, so why read the other guys stuff, right?

Wesley does engage in inflammatory anti-Calvinist rhetoric. But with him you suggest that he had a bad day, and is a better Christian than that most of the time.

But when a Calvinist does it they, "Show their evil beliefs about God." They "Show that they are totally depraved just like their teaching." They "Don't have the love of Christ." Or other statements from the Arminian Peanut gallery in response to some things Steve has said. This debate has served as a testament to hypocrisy. Arminians love to bach the "mean" Calvinists, but we see invective from their side as well. Hopefully this side-tracking tactic of the Arminian will end as Victor has documented plenty of "mean" things said about Calvinists.

My point was not to agree with Wesley's rhetoric but to insist that you can't draw conclusions about someone's understanding of what it is to be a Christian on that basis. Unless you want to go the route of Calvinists who say that, for example, Lewis wasn't a real Christian.

But given all that Steve and I have said, this is simplistic. Reppert refuses to take into account the distinctions and qualifications made yet forges ahead repeating what he originally claimed.

Does Scripture actually teach not only that predestination is true, but also that those who use their conception of God's goodness to influence their theology and their reading of Scripture have no idea what it means to be a Christian?? Are all Christians inerrantists?

i) What if God came to Victor and told him that Calvinism was true? Would Reppert say that the being wasn't God, even though, ex hypothesis, he was? Or would he call God a liar to his face? Or, would he say, "Well, you're wrong God. You don't know how to think of yourself." What would a Christian say if, ex hypothesis, God told them that Calvinism was true and that he was good?

ii) Not all Christians are inerrantists. And I thank you for showing were you'd have to go to answer us. If you don't go their, you get caught in my dilemma argument.

You see, every time I get into an exegetical argument about Calvinism I usually end up saying "All means all," and the Calvinist says "well, it means from all groups, not all persons." To people like us, Calvinists are saying "OK you signed onto following Jesus and you think He loves everybody. But read the fine print."

All means all:

"All" always means all and "world" always means all of the world. (Note: this must be the interpretation because all(!) Calvinists do grant that some of the alls mean all and not some. Rather it is some alls that mean some but not all alls. Put differently, all the alls in scripture, taken as a sum, do not always mean all but some of the sum mean some. Same with world. If Reppert grants this, then what's the complaint? That is, if Reppert grants that some of the alls and some of the worlds do not always have universal extension, then does he also tell people to "read the fine print?" If so, he's a hypocrite and he picks on Calvinists about things he does himself.) So then, all always means all and world always means the entire world. Let's now proceed with this assumption in mind and see how Reppert reads his Bible:

Genesis 6:17 And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon this earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is in the earth shall die.

So, ALL flesh that the breath of life was in will be destroyed and EVERYTHING that is in the earth shall die. But, we are also told that Noah and his family, along with the animals Noah brought, will live. So, the "all" in v. 17 does not really mean all but rather some. Did Noah read the fine print? Did he think, "We have a contradiction here, God says ALL living will die but then says that I will live?" Indeed, Noah, being something of a proto-Aristotelian, probably reasoned thus,

P1: All those with the breath of life will die.
P2: I am one of those with the breath of life.
____________
C1: Therefore, I will die.

Guess all doesn't mean all here and earth doesn't mean entire earth (since Noah and company were "in the earth").

Joshua 8:33 And all Israel, and their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on this side of the ark ...

Here we have the view that 1 day old infants were able to "stand!" I guess all that manna made for some good breast milk.

Ecclesiastes 1:14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

All means all and so Reppert must believe that going to Church, reading the Bible, sitting under the preaching of the word, and seeking to mortify indwelling sin, philosophizing, etc., is nothing but vanity and a striving after wind! Read the fine print!

I Timothy 6:13 I charge thee in the sight of God, who giveth life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession

Reppert's position is that dog poop is living!: 1) All things are given life; 2) Dog poop is a thing; 3) Therefore, dog poop has life.

3 John 1:2 Beloved, I pray that in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

So we have a rather "creepy" idea that John prayed that some professing believer engaged in, say, pedophilia would prosper and be in health. After all, he said ALL things, did he not?

Let's now look at "world:"

Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.

Reppert thinks Jesus commanded the disciples to preach the gospel to the Mayan Indians. Also, McCain thinks that he should, in a St. Francis Assisi-esk style, preach the gospel to fawns, flowers, and fish! After all, Jesus did say "the WHOLE" creation, did he not? Just like he said he died for the whole world.

John 14:17 even the Spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him: ye know him; for he abideth with you, and shall be in you.

Reppert thinks that NO ONE IN THE WORLD can receive the Spirit of truth. Jesus doesn't mean "some of the world" here, that is. So, Reppert cannot receive the Spirit of Truth.

Romans 1:8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world.

Wow! 1st century American Indians heard about the 1st century Church of Rome's faith. How did that happen? Get out the small print.

Colossians 1:5 because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, 6 which is come unto you; even as it is also in all the world bearing fruit and increasing, as it doth in you also, since the day ye heard and knew the grace of God in truth;

Is Reppert something of a crypto-Mormon, since they're the only ones who hold that 1st century inhabitants "heard the gospel."

Read the fine print indeed!

Shoot, a Calvinist can't even walk up to someone and say Jesus loves you and He died for you, because for any random individual person it is more probable that both those statements are false for them.

i) We can if we are commanded to.

ii) Reppert doesn't know the probability. How does he know the probability of how many people in San Diego, Ca, in a particular generation, are going to hell?

iii) I have no exegetical reason to suppose that the sum total of saved will be less than the lost. It may be, it may not be.

iv) Even given libertarianism, how does Reppert's position go through. Assume he believes in foreknowledge. Then those people will not ever, no matter what, go to heaven. If Reppert thinks the Bible teaches that more will be in hell than in heaven, he has the same problem.

v) Assume Reppert tells someone that Jesus died for them. If Reppert thinks it is true, and he allows for a hell, then Reppert's position has the unjust, anti-intuitional outcome that sins are paid for twice!

vi) Where do you find people in the Bible "walking up to people and saying 'Jesus loves you and died for you?'"

For people like me, we look to Scripture to show us more deeply the loving God who sent Jesus. Believing Scripture isn't an end in itself, it is a means, a means to knowing this kind of a God.

But what if Scripture doesn't say what you think or want it to? Care to debate the text? Or, is ignorance bliss?

To be told that God is running an enormous puppet show with living breathing puppets who are going to be tortured forever at the end of he show, however "just" that may be in some sense, is, for people like me, horrifying.

Anyone can mock a position. How's this:

To be told that god is such a weakling that he intended to come to earth to save everyone and couldn't, makes him an incompetent fool. To not be in control of every detail leaves the possibility that chance could swallow him up. Rob him of a final victory. To foreknow that the world would contain thousands of raped children, and then justify it by saying, "But I gave you libertarian freedumb," makes a mockery and a spectacle out of god.

(I know this is not how Calvinists would put it, but that is how the picture appears to me to be, however it might be dressed up theologically).

(I know this is not how Arminians would put it, but that is how the picture appears to me to be, however it might be dressed up theologically).

What you denigrate as mere "intuition" is based on a picture of God that is built up by what appears to be the teaching of numerous passages of Scripture.

Anytime you want to do the exegetical debate, let us know.

It also leaves us with a picture of God that resembles to a large extent the way humans ought to treat others. It doesn't use the creator-creature distinction to justify all sorts of conduct on God's part that in human contexts would be considered reprehensible.

Of course Reppert doesn't engage the arguments Steve and I have given.

I've addressed this very objection probably 10 times.

Furthermore, as I've done numerous times, it is open to reversal. God could stop the evil. He doesn't have to allow it or permit it. He could even stop the majority of it and still give man free will. Any human who allows an evil to occur that they could have stopped with no loss of their own, is an immoral person. So, using Reppert's very reasoning, Reppert must think his god is immoral!

If the vision of God's universal love is an illusion, it's nevertheless one that is undergirded, at least on the face of things, by many Scriptures. Just off the top of my head John 3:16 and the Prodigal Son come to my mind.

i) Care to debate the text of John 3:16?

ii) The prodigal son was ALEADY A SON. It actually should be re-named the parable of the running father. The father saw him, "From a long way off." Anyway, no Calvinist would deny that God does not love his very own. No Calvinist would deny that God would turn away someone who came to him.

I could fear and perhaps obey a Calvinistic God, but without brain surgery, I don't think I could love Him.

Right, 'cause Reppert has no appreciation for his sin. Reppert thinks God owes man his saving love.

In Christianity, man hates God, spits in his face, shakes his fist at God, and kills his only son.

Say you did this to a human.

Say he forgave you.

Reppert's saying that he wouldn't love this human.

Given our sinful state, given the price paid for our sin, how could we not love God in response?

For me. God's love for all human creatures and his earnest pursuit of their salvation is what inspires my devotion to Him.

Then you worship an irrational God. God knows that Sam will never turn to him. Never ask for salvation. Yet God still tries to save Sam? That's means-end irrational.

My God desires to save someone, and he does it.

My atonement is limited in number, yours in power.

C. S. Lewis rejected inerrancy, did not defend the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement (which, by the way, is hardly the majority view through most of the Church's history), and was certainly no Calvinist. His picture of hell certainly would not pass muster with Jonathan Edwards. It is certainly possible to go beyond just differing with him on these theological points to actually questioning his faith as a Christian.

Reppert's trying to draw an analogy between Lewis and Reppert. Steve pointed out relevant areas of dissimilarity.

Anyway, I'd like to ask Victor what his definition of a Christian is. How one can be made right before God? What is sin? Does Victor seek to put it to death? Does Victor read his Bible? How often? Does he pray? How often? Does he attend a church? How often? What effect does Christianity have on his life? And, if he rejects inerrancy, what criteria does he use to determine what passages are revelation from God and which ones are not? Does his rejection of inerrnacy allow him to mold the perfect form of Christianity? Wax nose Christianity?

Whatever is, is right?

dmitry chernikov said...

“So, when you see X number of murders committed per 100,000 people, you say to yourself, ‘I guess God wanted a world with (exactly) so many murders!’ Is it possible that God would prefer fewer murders/denominations and that it is precisely our job to minimize the number of them (to the extent compatible with other goals)?”

Hi Dmitry,

There is no yes or no answer to your question. We need to break it down.

1.Does God will evil? Depends on what you mean. There is evil in the world. But unless you believe the world was necessitated, then God willed the existence of the world. And this means he willed the existence of a world with evil. So, in a sense, he willed the existence of evil. In a sense, he wills evil.

If he hadn’t willed this state of affairs, he could have prevented this state of affairs by never making the world in the first place.

2. Is evil inevitable? I don’t know of any theological tradition that goes quite that far. Usually, a theological tradition will say that evil is conditionally necessary. According to freewill theism, it isn’t necessary that human beings exist, but if they exist, it’s necessary that they exercise libertarian freedom. Or, according to supralapsarian Calvinism, the fall isn’t intrinsically necessary, but it is a necessary means of attaining certain second-order goods.

So, on either account, there is still a sense in which God wills evil. He could prevent evil by preventing an evil state of affairs. By not creating libertarian agents in the first place. Or by preventing the fall.

3.Plantinga floated the thesis of transworld depravity. On this thesis, every possible world is infected with evil. But even if you accept his thesis, this doesn’t mean that evil is inevitable. For God was a liberty to refrain from instantiating any possible world. There could be nothing rather than something. So even on transworld depravity, there’s a sense in which God wills evil.

Mind you, I don’t think that transworld depravity is plausible. I only introduce this for the sake of argument, for the sake of completeness, to run through every alternative, so that we can see how, on any construction, there’s a sense in which God wills evil.

If we define libertarian freedom as the freedom to do otherwise, then I find it implausible to say it’s inevitable that a free agent will commit evil. Inevitability implies determinism.

Chances are, I might have a winning streak at Vegas, but if every roll of the dice comes up sixes, casino security is going to deposit me in the trunk of an unmarked car, drive me to a pond in a remote location, and give me free swimming lessons.

4.To use your example, it lay within God’s power to create a world without murder. So there’s a sense in which God wills murder. That conclusion is unavoidable.

5. In what sense does God will murder? He doesn’t will murder for murder’s sake. Rather, he wills murder as a means to an end. Murder serves a purpose in his overarching plan.

God also has a very different purpose for ordaining murder than the murderer. The murder’s intent is generally evil. I say “generally” since there are some cases of justified homicide.

There are also times when good can come of evil. There is a possible world in which the expectant mother of Stalin is murdered. It’s evil to murder her. Yet her murder would have spared millions of innocent lives.

6.Is it God’s will that we minimize the number of homicides? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.

In terms of the decree, our specific knowledge of God’s decretive will is retrospective rather than prospective.

(We also enjoy a generic knowledge of the decree by divine revelation.)

We don’t know in advance what God has decreed. If I successfully prevent a murder, then God decreed that I prevent that murder from occurring. If I try, but fail to prevent a murder, then God decreed that I fail to prevent that particular murder.

My abstract knowledge that God has predestined every event doesn’t keep me from trying to prevent various evils, because I don’t know what God has predestined to take place.

That’s why we regulate our lives, not by God’s decretive will, but by his preceptive will.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I did know that God had foreordained the murder of some contemporary. In that event, it would not be my duty to warn the murder victim.

Mind you, this raises questions of coherence. One of the key differences between fatalism and predestination is that, in predestination, God doesn’t tip his hand, so the victim isn’t trying to escape his fate. There’s an implicit incoherence in fatalism, for once you’ve seen the grand plan, you can choose to stay in bed that day. If the oracle of doom is too detailed, it thereby invites evasive maneuvers.

7.Finally, I was targeting Armstrong’s facile argument that you can single out some consequence that you deem to be unacceptable, then reason back from that “unacceptable” consequence to infer God’s will. In this case, that God couldn’t possibly will “20,000 denominations,” therefore: Roman Catholicism must be true.

But there’s a sense in which God clearly did will “20,000 denominations.” Therefore, Armstrong will need to use a far more discriminating argument to make his case.

Like a Broken Reppert

Apparently Reppert wasn't clear on my argument, I'll have to repeat it (and add a new one at the end). He writes,

I had asked: "Could it not be rational for a person to say that they have more reason to believe that a predestinating God would not be good than to believe that Scritpure teaches predestination even if, upon the study of the Scripture, they discover that, so far as the biblical evidence is concerned, it is more likely than not that Scripture teaches predestination."

As I said, it depends. Fill your question out more.

Who is this "person?" Is he a Christian? Does he believe in inerrancy?

Say the person is a Christian. Say that they believe in infallibility.

Here's two ways to answer your question:

[1] Sam is a Christian. Sam believes in infallibility (No Error, NE). Sam believes that whatever the Bible teaches is true. If it teaches some teaching T, then ~T is false. Sam also believes that Scripture teaches (a) Calvinism and (b) God is a good God. Sam also believes, by intuition, (c) God is not good if (a). At the same time, (d) Sam believes NE. In this case it would not be rational for Sam to believe (c) given his other beliefs.

So, [1] is a case where the person would be irrational.

Here's another way to read your question:

[2] Sam is a Christian. Sam believes in infallibility NE. Sam believes that whatever the Bible teaches is true. If it teaches some teaching T, then ~T is false. Sam also believes that Scripture does not teach (a) Calvinism. But it does teach that (b) God is a good God. Sam also believes, by moral intuition, (c) God is not good if (a). At the same time, (d) Sam believes NE. In this case Sam is not irrational.

I read your question in sense [2] because of your statement that,

(*) "Could it not be rational for a person to say that they have more reason to believe that a predestinating God would not be good than to believe that Scripture teaches predestination . . .

The italicized portion in (*) indicates that Sam does not believe that the Bible teaches Calvinism.

But on this reading, [2], the best argument for not believing in predestination, for Sam, is because Sam believes that it is not taught in the Bible. Why would a Christian believe a Christian doctrine not found explicitly or implicitly in the Bible? Thus the moral intuition would just be, perhaps, confirmation why Calvinistic predestinarian doctrines aren't found in the Bible.

Here's another way to look at your question:

[3] Sam is a Christian. Sam does not believe in infallibility NE. Sam does not believes that whatever the Bible teaches is true. If it teaches some teaching T, then ~T might be true or false. Sam also believes that Scripture does teach (a) Calvinism. And, it does teach that (b) God is a good God. Sam also believes, by moral intuition, (c) God is not good if (a) is true. At the same time, (d) Sam does not believe NE.

In this case Sam is not irrational given this particular set of beliefs. I should say that he is not internally irrational. Sam may be irrational for other reasons. Say he believes ~NE due to cognitive malfunction. Or, he could gain another belief, (e) all Christians should believe in inerrancy, such that he would be internally irrational.

So, in what sense should I read your argument, [1], [2], or [3]?

Victor goes on to say:

"The Triabloggers are claiming that an adequate sense of what it is to be Christ's disciple means that I must believe what I think is most likely to be Scripture's teaching based on biblical evidence alone, regardless of what any other sources of knowledge might provide."

i) Reppert hasn't been debating all "Triabloggers" and so it is unwise to categorize or implicate all of them this way. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. If they do, it's not because of the debate Reppert has been engaged in.

ii) I specifically denied this claim. For example, I previously wrote:

"There is nothing we know that contradicts what Scripture teaches. There are some things we think we know that might affect how we interpret a passage. But, we cannot know that the passage teaches X, and also claim to know ~X."

And,

"I never denied that my situation is involved in my exegesis. I never denied that we use extra-biblical knowledge or evidence to help with our exegesis. So I'm not clear on how you think you're arguing against my position, at all."

iii) I know that Steve Hays will use extra-biblical knowledge to aid in interpretation too. In response to Reppert Steve said,

"If, in fact, it conflicts with something else we *know*. But Reppert isn’t talking about something he knows to be true. Rather, he’s appealing to his vague moral intuitions."

iv) So Reppert is, as has been his forte this entire debate, forging ahead with critiques of us without reading what we write. Or, at best, skimming what we write.

This kind of tactic is not epistemically virtuous.

v) The point is that if you are Christ's disciple, and you believe he is divine, and Christ says X, you don't say, ~X, you say, "Yes Lord." Remember, Peter is the one who said, "I will never betray you Lord. Not I!" Peter probably had strong intuitions, and reasons, to the effect that he would not deny Jesus; once, let alone three times!

"What is in my way, they suggest, is my arrogant refusal to humble myself. They haven't quite said that I am not a Christian, but they have suggested that my devotion to Christ is massively deficient."

i) Again with the "they." I have purposefully refrained from any statement to this effect so that I could avoid the Arminian peanut gallery turning attention from this debate to things irrelevant to the argument.

ii) Again, what is your developed story. If you believe that Scripture teaches X, and you believe in inerrancy, but you continue to believe ~X, then, yes, you are arrogant and irrational. This was proved by [1] above.

Lastly,

Or how about this from John Wesley;

This is the blasphemy clearly contained in the horrible decree of predestination! And here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every assertor of it. You represent God as worse than the devil; more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you say you will prove it by scripture. Hold! What will you prove by Scripture? That God is worse than the devil? It cannot be. Whatever that Scripture proves, it never proved this; whatever its true meaning be. This cannot be its true meaning. Do you ask, "What is its true meaning then?" If I say, " I know not," you have gained nothing; for there are many scriptures the true sense whereof neither you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory.

Now my response to this is for the purpose of our objective debate, not to call you or Wesley non-Christian.

I maintain that your agreement with Wesley either forces you to be inconsistent in your arguments against me, or forces you to allow one of my main arguments to go through.

When I resorted to Skeptical theist arguments, resorted to mystery and the secret council of God, you responded:

REPPERT: "It seems we should prefer positions that offer something in the direction of an explanation over positions that offer nothing."

And,

REPPERT: "If you have one scientific theory that says "I have no idea why there are gaps in the fossil record" and someone else says "I have a way of telling you how they got there" the second theory has an advantage."

And,

REPPERT: "As I see it, there is an epistemic cost involved in appealing to mystery and unknown or unknowable reasons, and so you want to bring that pitcher in as late in the game as possible."

And,

REPPERT: "It's my contention, however, that the more you appeal to mystery, the worse it is for you epistemically. The more of an explanation you can have for suffering, the better your theology is, all things being equal."

That's enough.

So, it is my contention, that Victor's endorsement of Wesley offers evidence against his previous responses to my arguments to the effect that he must (a) admit my arguments are sufficient to answer his ethical objections to Calvinism, or (b) self-except himself from his own critiques.

Who blinks first?

Victor Reppert wants to play a game of chicken. Who blinks first?

Fine. I’m prepared to call his bluff. The first thing I’ll do is to remark on Reppert’s tactics. Reppert is a philosophy prof., but when he gets cornered, he resorts to sophistry and demagoguery. This is a case in point.

He’s resorting to the argument from authority. He’s invoking C. S. Lewis and John Wesley. “Steve, I dare you—I double dare you—to challenge the Christian credentials of C. S. Lewis or John Wesley!”

Tell me, now: is this a philosophically cogent argument? Is this the sort of argument you’d expect from a philosophy prof.? No.

It’s a patent fallacy. Reppert retreats into these blatant sophistries and fallacies whenever he’s cornered.

Not only is it philosophical rubbish, but it’s theological rubbish. Take this statement which he quotes from Wesley:

“This is the blasphemy clearly contained in the horrible decree of predestination! And here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every assertor of it. You represent God as worse than the devil; more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you say you will prove it by scripture. Hold! What will you prove by Scripture? That God is worse than the devil? It cannot be. Whatever that Scripture proves, it never proved this; whatever its true meaning be. This cannot be its true meaning.”

To begin with, if I, as a Christian, have to choose between God and Wesley, who do you think I’m going to choose? Hmm.

If push comes to shove, then Wesley walks the plank. If Reppert insists on forcing the issue, then Wesley loses the bet. No question.

It says something about Reppert’s humanistic orientation that he imagines anyone should choose Lewis or Wesley over God or Scripture.

And, yes, I also happen to think the reverent and deferential attitude of Moses and the prophets, psalmists, Apostles, and Jesus Christ himself towards the authority of Scripture takes precedence over the insubordinate attitude of Wesley and Lewis. How dare I!

This is the second time that Reppert is quoted a juice statement by Wesley. In both cases, Wesley’s statements were laden with invective. I don’t have a problem with that myself. But Reppert is a bit like a man in a tuxedo who hires the muscle to rough up his business rivals. His doesn’t ruffle his own suit and tie. He leaves that to the beefy guys in the backroom while he sips his Bacardi on the rocks.

Not only are we dealing with theological rubbish, but hermeneutical rubbish as well. Would Reppert approach any other text the same way? Would he stipulate in advance that Plato or Aristotle or Hume or Locke or Quine cannot possible mean what he seems to mean because we can’t stand the consequences if he meant what he seams to mean? Would Reppert accept such a willfully defiant and prejudicial approach to the meaning of any other historical text?

When is Reppert going to grow up and start acting like a professional philosopher? The funny thing is that Reppert is more evangelical than Bill Vallicella. But Vallicella takes philosophy far more seriously. Vallicella doesn’t jump in and out of philosophy the way Reppert does. Vallicella doesn’t reason like a philosopher on just those occasions when it happens to suit his purpose, only to take refuge in the most glaringly fallacious antics when he finds himself in a bind.

One more point on Wesley and Lewis. There’s Wesley on a good day, and Wesley on a bad day. If all I had to judge Wesley by were his intemperate outbursts against the doctrines of grace, then, indeed, I would doubt his salvation. But there’s another side to Wesley, just as there’s another side to Lewis. So I simply chalk it up to sin. To their historical circumstances. To their upbringing. And so on.

At the same time, it’s funny that Reppert thinks I should be so charitable towards Wesley, according him every benefit of the doubt, when Wesley goes out of his way to be so utterly uncharitable towards Calvinism, going out of his way to reach for every scorched-earth adjective which his rhetorical talents can muster. It’s not as if he’s trying to leave himself an out.

Apparently, Reppert thinks that I should step over the line that Wesley drew in the sand and drag him across the line against his will—kicking and screaming. Kinda like tackling a suicidal bridge-jumper who’s off his meds. Should I first secure a waiver from Wesley lest he sue me for violating his inviolable freewill?

“They haven't quite said that I am not a Christian, but they have suggested that my devotion to Christ is massively deficient.”

That’s because, as Reppert himself has made abundantly clear in the course of this debate, Calvinism isn’t limited to Calvinism. The debate inevitably spills over into related issues: the doctrine of Scripture, the final judgment, penal substitution, and ultimately the doctrine of God himself.

Reppert is quite correct to draw attention to the fact that a debate over Calvinism implicates other core doctrines of the Christian faith.

Frankfurt Schmrankfurt II

Last time Victor Reppert thought he had a silver bullet objection to Frankfurt-type counter examples. I pointed out that Frankfurt-cases have been employed that dealt with choice and not only action.

Another objection to Frankfurt-cases we will look at has a strong pedigree. It has been advanced by Kane (who many of our Arminian friends here have lauded ad nauseum), Widerker, Ginet, and Wyma. It goes like this:

If free choices are undetermined then a Frankfurt controller could not ensure or control them without actually intervening and making the agent choose what the controller wants. In indeterministic worlds, as Widerker has put it, there will not be a reliable "tell" sign which lets the controller know that the agent will do. In other words, since no one can know what a free agent will do in an indeterministic world, the only way a choice (or action) controller could work is by forcing the choice he wants, which takes away responsibility for the agent (cf. Kane, Free Will, Oxford, 2005, p. 87-88).

Thus to use this out the Arminian would have to grant Open Theism. A move most Arminians, especially those who come here, don't want to make.

So Victor's answer won't work, neither will this prominent one work for the Christian who wants a traditional view of God's foreknowledge.

(Note: There are other Frankfurt cases that work even in an indeterministic world. Mele's is one such example. But to discuss that would take us beyond the scope of this post.)

Does God change his mind?

alan rhoda said...

Hi Vic,__Some open theists (e.g., John Sanders) believe that God can and sometimes does literally change his mind in response to creation. Others, such as Greg Boyd and myself, believe that God does exhaustive contingency planning from the beginning. (And given that He can, why wouldn't he?) We would say that what changes in these passages is not literally God's mind or will. Rather, what changes is which of God's original conditional resolutions is applicable to the current situation.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10584495&postID=7165685044978782774

This is a very ironic development. The compromise position of Boyd and Rhoda manages to combine the disadvantages of standard open theism without its putative (albeit specious) advantages.

1.One putative (albeit specious) advantage of open theism is that it supposedly takes the Bible at face value. If, however, Boyd and Rhoda don’t take the stock neotheist prooftexts literally, then their hermeneutical approach has no advantage over the “Platonic” exegesis of Calvinism at this juncture.

They’re still treating these passages as essentially anthropomorphic or anthropopathetic. So there’s no hermeneutical difference.

2.Perhaps they’d say they retain the other putative (albeit specious) advantage of open theism. It’s still “relational.” Dynamic. Responsive. Lots of reciprocity.

But even if you think that’s a theological virtue, it seems to me that this is a charade. For even in open theism, God and man are hardly equal partners in the transaction. Man is very much the junior partner.

What’s the point of God endowing man with libertarian freedom if God has a contingency plan for everything that man may do with his freedom? It’s like Capablanca playing chess with a four-year-old.

It seems to me that open theism lacks the courage of its convictions. It flirts with radical freedom, but it also wants a safety net.

Logically, open theism should embrace deism. If libertarian freedom is all-important, then human beings should be free to make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences. God shouldn’t ride to the rescue. That would spoil the significance of their freedom. Where there’s no genuine risk, there’s no genuine freedom.

Open theism is libertarianism for yuppies. Like rich people who hire companies to kidnap them for the thrill.

3.Ironically, open theism is far more ruthless than Calvinism. In Calvinism, God knows exactly who will be harmed, and why. Also, there’s a sense in which, in Calvinism, there are no innocent victims (although one human being may wrong another).

But in open theism, God doesn’t know in advance what the body-count will be. And there may be a lot of collateral damage along the way.

People turn to Arminianism because they think that Calvinism is callous, then they turn to open theism, which is far more callous than anything you find in Calvinism. Open theism is clumsy and fatalistic.

"20,000 denominations"

I wouldn’t ordinarily be bothered with Dave Armstrong’s trifles. However, Victor Reppert has plugged one of Armstrong’s articles, so I’ll comment on it, even though Armstrong has nothing original to say on the subject, and I’ve addressed this topic ad nauseum.

“Most conservative, classical, evangelical, ‘Reformation’ Protestants agree with Luther’s sentiments above totally or largely and hold to the view that—when all is said and done—the Bible is basically perspicuous (able to be clearly understood) in and of itself, without the absolute necessity for theological teaching, scholarly interpretation, and the authority of the Church (however defined).”

http://www.chnetwork.org/journals/sola/sola6.htm

This is a caricature of the actual position. Consider the carefully caveated statement of the Westminster Confession:

“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them” (1.7).

Moving along:

“But what could possibly be imagined as more fatal to this abstract view than more than 20,000 denominations?”

Of course, that inflated figure includes the Roman Catholic denomination.

“Yet Protestant freedom of conscience is valued more than unity and the certainty of doctrinal truth in all matters (not just the core issues alone).”

I’m not a Protestant because I value freedom of conscience. This is simply a question of how God has chosen to govern his covenant community. When Armstrong sees “20,000 denominations,” he’s aghast. He’s scandalized. He’s horrified.

He’s like a child who disapproves of his parents’ childrearing methods. When he grows up, he’s going to do a better job of raising his own kids. His kids will never bicker with each other.

When I see “20,000 denominations,” I say to myself, I guess God wants a world with 20,000 denominations! And if that’s good enough for God, then that’s good enough for me.

Ultimately, this is God’s world, not mine. It’s none of my business how God conducts his business. If God wants a world with “20,000 denominations,” I’m game with that. Who am I to take issue with God’s administration of the universe? I’m just along for the ride.

Unlike Dave, I don’t think I could to a better job of running the world than the Almighty. I actually think that God has a pretty good idea of why he does what he does. And I don’t think the world would function any better if David Armstrong sat in the big chair for a day. In fact—and forgive me for saying this—but I suspect that things might work out rather less well if Armstrong were God for a day.

I’m a Protestant, not because I value freedom of conscience, but because I’m resigned to reality. God hasn’t directed us to the church of Rome as the wellspring of doctrinal truth.

“The inquirer with newfound zeal for Christ is in trouble if he expects to easily attain any comprehensive certainty within Protestantism.”

I don’t stipulate to a prior expectation regarding religious certainty. We are entitled to as much certainty as Scripture has entitled us to, under the conditions stated in Scripture.

Let’s remember, though, that the Church of Rome explicitly denies that a Catholic can ordinarily enjoy the assurance of salvation. So if your looking for certainty, then the Church of Rome has already opted out of that particular quest. Look elsewhere.

“All he can do is take a ‘head count’ of scholars, pastors, evangelists, and Bible Dictionaries and see who lines up where on the various sides of the numerous disagreements.”

This is a really stupid statement. What a reader can do is see which side has the best argument. If Armstrong lacks confidence in the power of rational persuasion, then why is he a Catholic apologist?

“Or else he can just uncritically accept the word of whatever denomination he is associated with.”

And sometimes a Christian will find himself in that situation. Depending on when and where he’s born, his opportunities may be severely limited. It’s often a historical accident that you’re a Lutheran or Baptist or Anglican or Abyssinian or Presbyterian or Russian Orthodox or Catholic or Pentecostal. Catholicism is not exempt from cultural conditioning. And it’s not as if a Catholic longshoreman has worked his way through the Five Ways of Aquinas or subjected the Great Schism to searching historical scrutiny.

Mind you, I think that divine providence is guiding these historical “accidents.”

“In effect, then, he is no better off than a beginning philosophy student who prefers Kierkegaard to Kant—the whole procedure (however well intentioned) is arbitrary and destined to produce further confusion.”

Well, since Armstrong is so bothered by doctrinal confusion and “20,000 denominations,” I’m prepared to meet him halfway. If he’ll drop Catholicism along the other high-church traditions, then I’ll drop all Protestant denominations except for Calvinism. That way we’ll just have one big Reformed denomination. Perhaps he can email Richard Neuhaus while I email Timothy George and we’ll see how far we get with our initial overtures.

“The usual Protestant reply to this critique is that denominations differ mostly over secondary issues, not fundamental or central doctrines. This is often and casually stated, but when scrutinized, it collapses under its own weight. Protestants will often maintain that the Eucharist and baptism, for instance, are neither primary nor essential doctrines. This is curious, since these are the two sacraments that the majority of Protestants accept. Jesus said (John 6:53): Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. This certainly sounds essential, even to the extent that a man’s salvation might be in jeopardy. St. Paul, too, regards communion with equally great seriousness and of the utmost importance to one’s spiritual well-being and relationship with Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 10:14-22, 11:23-30). Thus we are already in the realm of salvation - a primary doctrine. “

i) Of course, this is tendentious. Armstrong is simply presuming the Catholic interpretation of his sacramental prooftexts. Needless to say, many Protestants would deny his interpretation. So he’s generating a specious inconsistency by imputing to them an interpretation which they would reject in the first place.

ii) Moreover, his tactic his at odds with his own theology. Modern Catholicism doesn’t take the position that you can’t be saved unless you’ve been baptized or attend Mass. In modern Catholicism, you don’t have to be Catholic to be saved. You don’t have to be Christian to be saved. So Armstrong is dissembling.

“Protestants also differ on other soteriological issues…These are questions of how one repents and is saved (justification) and of what is required afterwards to either manifest or maintain this salvation (sanctification and perseverance). Thus, they are primary doctrines, even by Protestant criteria.”

Armstrong is equivocating. There’s a difference between what God must do to save you and what you must believe that God must do to save you. Christians can be saved despite a certain amount of defective theology. It’s ultimately a question of whether the individual is regenerate or unregenerate.

“The same state of affairs is true concerning baptism, where Protestants are split into infant and adult camps. Furthermore, the infant camp contains those who accept baptismal regeneration (Lutherans, Anglicans, and to some extent, Methodists), as does the adult camp (Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ). Regeneration absolutely has a bearing on salvation, and therefore is a primary doctrine.”

Once again, Armstrong is equivocating. Regeneration is essential to salvation. And if baptismal regeneration were true, then baptism would be essential to salvation. But if baptismal regeneration is false, then baptism is inessential to salvation. And “accepting” baptismal regeneration doesn’t make a primary doctrine.

“Scripture seems to clearly refer to baptismal regeneration in Acts 2:38 (forgiveness of sins), 22:16 (wash away your sins), Romans 6:3-4, 1 Corinthians 6:11, Titus 3:5 (he saved us, . . . by the washing of regeneration), and other passages.”

One of the reasons we needed a Reformation was to emancipate ourselves from this sort of Mickey Mouse prooftexting.

“The doctrine of baptism in particular, as well as other doctrinal disputes mentioned above, illustrate the irresolvable Protestant dilemma with regard to its fallacious notion of perspicuity. Again, the Bible is obviously not perspicuous enough to efficiently eliminate these differences.”

So what? How does that pose a dilemma for the Protestant? There were doctrinal disputes in the time of Jesus. It isn’t God’s will to eliminate all these differences. If God had wanted more doctrinal unity, he could jolly well have made a world with more doctrinal unity. He had plenty of possible worlds to choose from. But he chose to create this world. This messy world of ours. God obviously values some things more highly than doctrinal unity. So he created a world to reflect his scale of values. I can live with that. Dave cannot. I think that God got the world he wanted—complete with “20,000 denominations.”

“Unless one arrogantly maintains that sin always blinds those in opposing camps from seeing obvious truths, which even a ‘plowboy’ (Luther’s famous phrase) ought to be able to grasp.”

Since I’m not a Lutheran, I’m not bound by Luther’s formulation of perspicuity. For that matter, I don’t think that Lutheran’s feel honor-bound by every word that fell from Luther’s lips. You need to turn to the Lutheran confessions if you’re going to critique official Lutheran theology.

“Obviously, an authoritative (and even infallible) interpreter is needed whether or not the Bible is perspicuous enough to be theoretically understood without help. Nothing could be clearer than that. Paper infallibility is no substitute for conciliar and/or papal infallibility, or at least an authoritative denominational (Creedal / Confessional) authority, if nothing else.”

There was no Pope in OT times. No ecumenical councils back then. There was no Pope during the Intertestamental Period. No ecumenical councils back then. There was no Pope when Jesus walked the earth. Or ecumenical councils. How did the people of God survive for all those centuries without the Magisterium? God had other arrangements.

“The conclusion is inescapable: either biblical perspicuity is a falsehood or one or more of the doctrines of regeneration, justification, sanctification, salvation, election, free will, predestination, perseverance, eternal security, the Atonement, original sin, the Eucharist, and baptism, all ‘five points’ of Calvinism (TULIP) and issues affecting the very gospel itself—are not central. Protestants can’t have it both ways.”

Actually, we can have it both ways since Armstrong’s “inescapable dilemma” is riddled with fallacies.

“Since most Protestants are unwilling to anathematize other Protestants, perspicuity dissolves into a boiling cauldron of incomprehensible contradictions, and as such, must be discarded or at the very least seriously reformulated in order to harmonize with the Bible and logic.”

No, it just means that we regard the church as a family, and members of the same family have been known to disagree with one another. Now maybe that’s alien to Armstrong’s personal experience. Maybe he’s the only child of doting parents. Maybe he’s married to a mousey, wallflower wife. But most of us, who grew up in normal families, have learned by common observation that husbands, wives, and siblings occasionally have a difference of opinion. I know that may come as a shock to someone as insulated from reality as dear old Dave, but there’s a lot of empirical evidence to bear out my contention. And the church is just an extension of the family. The family of God.

“Whether one accepts the Tradition and teachings of the Catholic Church or not, at least it courageously takes a stand on any given doctrine,”

I don’t see much evidence that the Catholic church has courageously taken a stand on unpopular issues. For example, when is the last time that Armstrong’s church excommunicated a high-profile, pro-abortion Catholic politician? I see the Catholic church using a lot of words without any actions to back up the rhetoric.

“And refuses to leave whole areas of theology and practice perpetually up for grabs, at the mercy of the ‘priesthood of scholars’.”

I prefer a “priesthood of scholars” to a priesthood of charlatans. Not to mention a priesthood of child molesters.

“And the individual’s private judgment—which in turn often reduces to mere whim, fancy, or subjective preference, usually divorced from considerations of Christian history and consensus.”

“Considerations of Christian history and consensus”? Funny. Isn’t that how Robert Sungenis has defended geocentrism? But I don’t recall Armstrong deferring to Christian history and consensus at that juncture.

Oh, and Catholicism is all about whim, fancy, and subjective preference. The difference is that Catholicism simply elevates the private judgment of a particular pope or church father to the status of dogma.

“For this so-called ‘dogmatism’ and lack of ‘flexibility,’ the Catholic Church is often reviled and despised. But for those of us who are seeking to be faithful to Christ within its fold, this is regarded, to the contrary, as its unique glory and majesty, much preferable to the morass of competing truth-claims (i.e., relativism) which prevail within Protestantism (even among the subgroup of evangelicals).”

Yes, a majestic church whose glorious membership includes Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Cardinal Law, Cardinal Richelieu, the Mafia, the Borgia papacy, and other luminaries of note.

“Orthodox Catholics believe that Christians can place full confidence in the firmly-established Tradition which is found not only in Holy Scripture, but in the received doctrines of the Catholic Church, appointed by our Lord Jesus Christ as the Guardian and Custodian of the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).”

Unfortunately for Armstrong, Jude forgot to mention the Roman Catholic church.

And how does Armstrong propose to verify the chain of custody? How does he verify every link in a 2000-year-old chain? How does he verify the valid administration of holy orders? How does he verify the valid administration of the Eucharist?

Papal conclaves are held in secret. How does he verify that a pope is not an antipope? That no voter fraud took place?

How can Dave be sure he is correctly exegeting his Catholic prooftexts? He can’t very well appeal to the authoritative interpretation of his church if he’s using these verses to verify the authoritative claims of his church. So he must be able to interpret these verses apart from his church. But, in that event, the Magisterium is expendable.

God 'Gut' Said It, That Settles It

Reppert's latest:

An issue that has come up in the exchange with Calvinists here deserves a closer look. Suppose we come to our study of Scripture with a set of ideas as to what it is for God to be good. What this amounts to, for at least many of us, is that for God to be good, God must at least attempt as best he can to save everyone.

Sure, some people might think this way. Some atheists also think that a good God wouldn't allow his son, his only son, a truly innocent person, to be murdered. Some atheists think a good God would visit each and every one of us, personally, and perform all sorts of feats and wonders before their eyes so that they would believe. Some atheists have thought that a good God wouldn't have made us susceptible to things like aids and cancer. In fact, I once read an atheist say that a good God would have made us with wings so that we wouldn't fall to our deaths.

That's what a loving God is expected to do.

I actually think its unfathomable that a just God would save any of us. Punishment is what a just God is expected to do.

"This cashes out either into classical Arminianism, in which God knows the fate of all but does not cause the free choices that result in damnation, whether this cashes out in open theism, according to which God must limit His own knowledge in order to insure that our acts are free, or whether this results in universalism, where God successfully converts all souls and fits them for eternal life with God, is surely open for discussion, but the concept of what it is for God to be good in all these systems is the same."

Victor forgot one. According to the testimony of many atheists, beliefs based on conceptions of goodness cashes out into atheism.

"On the other hand, Calvinists here have said that this is based merely on moral intuition,"

Not "merely." As Steve said, we questioned the intuition itself. Furthermore, I gave 5 or 6 arguments showing that you do the very same thing. You hold to all sorts of things that don't fit with our intuitions. I argued that we ask non-believers to believe all sorts of things that they don't intuit. Heck, read the Bible. The Greeks laughed and scoffed at what Christians asked them to believe. Same with the Jews. Christianity was never the poster child for walking lock-step with mankind’s intuitions (religious, rational, or ethical).

"I will concede that the discovery that something is taught in Scripture could result a reasonable Christian's changing their minds about what it is for God to be good."

Good, 'cause that's what I argued you should concede.

"But wouldn't this be a matter of how strong a moral intuition one had as opposed to how sure we are that we are able to read an answer to the Calvinist question off Scripture."

It very well may be a matter of how strong their belief in the authority of Scripture is.

"The question I have is first that is it not the case that we sometimes have to accept an interpretation of a passage that we would not have accepted just examining the passage itself, simply because it conficts with what else we know."

There is nothing we know that contradicts what Scripture teaches. There are some things we think we know that might affect how we interpret a passage. But, we cannot know that the passage teaches X, and also claim to know ~X.

"For example, a perfectly good inerrantist like J. P. Moreland suggests that although an exegetical study of the book of Genesis suggests that it is offering a comprehensive genealogy and therefore grounds for saying that the heavens and the earth came into existence in 6 literal days somewhere around 6000 years ago, scientific evidence suggests that if that is what is in text, either the text is errant or is being misinterpreted. Moreland therefore accepts a "second choice" interpretation of the Genesis genealogies, one that is consistent with an ancient earth."

That's fine as far as it goes. But notice that Moreland also gives a reading of the text, supported by exegesis, such that the Bible is not teaching that the earth is in fact 6,000 years old, created in 6 literal, 24 hour days, etc.

I would wager that if Moreland was fully persuaded that the text taught, inerrantly, the young earth view, he would be a young earth creationist. Or, he might give up inerrancy. But one could not hold both - inerrancy and ~X - consistently.

This is why I've repeatedly challenged Reppert to an exegetical debate.

Now, if he grants inerrancy, and he is shown that the best arguments support the Calvinist reading, and it would be irrational to deny the force of the exegesis, then Calvinism goes through. He would have to believe God had a good reason for all those things the Arminian Reppert thought were nasty.

Or, he might say that he doesn't want to debate the text, but is persuaded by other exegetical arguments. Okay, but in an argument with a Calvinist, if he's not going to engage in the exegetical debate, then if my exegesis is correct - or if I have good reason to believe it is, then he must grant that, for me, the position in the paragraph above is the most rational thing to believe. And, he must admit that all his intuition arguments mean diddly. He must admit he has not done what he needs to do in order to persuade the Calvinist that the Calvinist should give up his beliefs. Perhaps he has persuaded like-minded friends, but that is easy. I could stand on my soap box, use premises my side accepted, preach my talking points into the megaphone, and be greeted by cheers from my like-minded constituency at the close of my speech. Therefore, Reppert must admit that he's not given any reason, any good or persuasive reason, for the Calvinist to drop his Calvinism. On Calvinist assumptions, then, Reppert must hold that God is not evil for what he has done. Perhaps he is on Arminian assumptions. But as I said time and time again: I GRANT THAT, GIVEN ARMINIANISM, CALVINISM HAS PROBLEMS.

Now, Reppert could try to give some cogent argument against the Calvinist by showing that the Bible doesn't teach what we say. Or by showing that, given our theological premises, we still have ethical or philosophical problems. For example, I don't think God can commit an evil act, i.e., be the actor who commits evil. So, show me that given all my other beliefs I still have to believe God is the actor who commits evil.

"Second, don't we sometimes have to accept a "second choice" interpretation based on what else we know from Scripture itself. Does God repent? Some passages say he does, but Christians usually interpret those passages in light of a wider doctrine of God according to which God is not really repenting."

"[A] common ground assumption [between most professing Christians is] that biblical teaching is from God and is to be taken as true and trustworthy; interpretation and application are singled out as the areas of dispute. Now the proper key principles here are, and always will be, that interpretations must be context-specific, author-specific, and focus-specific. That means, first, that passages must be exegeted in terms of the thought-flow of which they are a part and not have their meaning extrapolated beyond the manifest perspectives, limits, and boundaries of that thought-flow; otherwise, we will be reading into them what cannot be truly be read out of them. It also means that writers must not be assumed to contradict themselves, but must be respected as knowing their own minds; thus, what they write in one place must be treated as cohering with what they write elsewhere. And it means, finally, that in seeking the writers meaning, we must never loose sight of the immediate point he is making, the persuasive strategy of which that point is part, and the effect that he shows himself wanting to produce on his readers. The way into the mind, meaning, and message of God the holy spirit in the biblical text is always through the mind, meaning, and message of its human writers. Though many passages in their canonical context carry greater weight of meaning than their divinely human writers knew, none carries less meaning that its human writers actually expressed, and none should ever be treated as if the three guidelines set out above do not apply to it.

Therefore, all impressionistic selectivity that discounts some things Scripture specifically says while claiming to detect and affirm the Bible's general thrust, overall view, basic perspective, sustained trajectory, or whatnot - as if the Bible is partly out of sync with itself, and its writers sometimes vacillate and speak out of both sides of their mouths - are false trails" (J.I. Packer, Universalism: Will Everyone Ultimately Be Saved?, in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, eds. Morgan and Peterson, Zondervan, 2004, p. 177).

"But a third suggestion might be that one might refrain from accepting what would otherwise be a "first choice" interpretation of a passage because it conficts with our conception of what is would be for God to be good."

Does the person believe in inerrancy? Does the person believe that the best way to read the Bible, the best arguments for a particular reading, the interpretation with the best credentials, etc., is in a way that teaches X? Is he saying, "It looks like it teaches X, but really doesn't?" Or, does he admit that it does, in fact, teach X? If he believes that it does in fact teach X, yet refuses to believe it, while also holding to inerrancy, then he is irrational. Or, if he simply says, "I don't know what it teaches, but it can't be teaching X!" Okay, is this person resolved to find another interpretation? Doesn't he have a responsibility to find out what God's word is saying? Isn't the verse(s) inspired? Given so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped (II Tim. 3:16)? Or, will he just be content to remain in ignorance? Is that appropriate? And, if he does not have answers like I gave for expecting mystery, or silence, or reasons beyond our ken, then this position would fall right into criticisms Victor has given regarding appeals to ignorance or mystery! Thus if this out was taken, it would be inconsistent with other arguments Reppert has given.

"You see, I am to be humble about my moral intuitions about what it would be for God to be good, but I have to be supremely confident in my ability to figure out whether 1 John 2:2 really teaches a universal atonement or not."

But has Reppert even tried?

"I say "I am surer that a predestinating God would not be good than I am that Scripture teaches predestination" am I sticking my fingers in my ears and sticking out my tongue, refusing to consider the evidence? That's what the Triabloggers would have you believe."

As Steve pointed out, you are the one who chose to use the wagging fingers and tongue line.

As I pointed out above, that depends.

You see, right now you're just speculating. Sitting in your armchair. You have the luxury of saying this because you haven't put in the time to look and study the text.

When you do, though, notice that you'll have the respectable (but wrong, in my opinion) position of saying the Bible doesn't teach predestination and reprobation and limited atonement, and so that's primarily why I don't believe it, let alone all the philosophical and ethical problems with it.

To me that would be a respectable position for you to take in this debate. That's why I can respect the reasons, say, Dan from Arminian Chronicles gives for not holding to Calvinism, over against the ones you do. Though I do think he brings in a lot of philosophical baggage, he is attempting to be faithful to the text. And, if he was convinced by our exegesis, he would say, "To hell with my moral intuitions on the matter!"

Does that make sense?

"This issue seems to have been extensively debated by exegetes over the centuries. Even if I had a good exegetical argument that Romans 8-9 is teaching predestination, is that necessarily better evidence that this would not be good for God to do."

For a Christian, who believes in inerrancy, and the authority of the Bible, yes, it would be.

As I've indicated time and time again, much of this debate and how I would answer is person relative.

If you don't believe in inerrancy, then I don't expect the exegesis of Romans 9 to be a cogent reason for you to believe God was good and a predestinator (whether it should be is different matter).

If you do, then it is a good reason. One of the best.

So, where are you coming from? Do you want to affirm or deny inerrancy?

"Now it is quite true that some things are in God's secret counsel, that he has left unrevealed. That's true, and so there may be some things I do not understand."

Right, which is what I've argued for weeks with you.

"The answer could be that Scripture is God's way of communicating with us and, as such, God has given us the tools to understand Scritpure and to answer the question of predestination from Scripture. On the other hand, we have to derive our concept of what it is for God to be good on the basis of what it is for humans to be good, but the analogies are too weak to get us anywhere. Therefore, exegetical arguments always trump moral intuitive arguments."

A point of clarification - secret things are not revealed things.

For revealed things, yes, God has made us able to understand them. One place to start would be: Is There a Meaning in This Text: The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge, Zondervan, 1998.

I also would offer arguments from testimonial models of warrant, rationality, and knowledge.

"If Scripture really does give us a clear answer to all these questions (there are others which are frequently debated amongst evangelical Christians, such as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, infant baptism, etc.), why is the evangelical community so divided on these matters?"

The doctrine of perspicuity is not that all things are clear, that's a Catholic straw man:

WCF 1.7:

"All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them."

Indeed, as Peter said of Paul: 2PE 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things: in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

So, predestination may not be as obviously clear as how one is made right before God. But that means that you need to apply yourself and study harder. Have you done that? Can we examine your exegesis? Or is your picture of the Bible and its teachings a naive one? Just whatever "pops off the page as obvious" is what it means?

Furthermore, notice that some of what we debate is "what it means for God to be good." So, our "intuitions" are not clear either!

And, as Steve said, some of the issues were not important to the Apostles so they didn't wax theologically about it.

But this doesn't mean we can't have a warranted belief that, say, the Bible teaches paedo (or credo!) baptism.

So, if we can, then that's all one needs, I'd say.

But it's not always something to take a bullet for. I could be wrong about my belief in paedobaptism.

But I sure as heck wouldn't argue against it by saying: "sprinkling babies makes no sense to me."
Now, take Calvinism, if I believe the Bible teaches it, and that belief is warranted, then what's wrong with how I’ve been responding to Reppert's arguments.

If the Bible does teach it, and if you believe in inerrancy, who cares what your moral intuitions say? Now, you can either drop inerrancy, or you can offer your own exegesis.

Also, Victor, remember, you gave arguments against us. We are telling you how your arguments don't defeat us.

"I am linking to an article by Dave Armstrong criticizing the perspicuity of Scripture. Armstrong is a Catholic, and I am not endorsing his Catholicism here, but only raising some issues about how confident we should be in biblical arguments as opposed to moral arguments."

I already debunked the straw man now didn't I?

Also, it's not as if I've only used biblical arguments. In fact, most of my time has been used by arguing and defending a theodicy, showing that your very arguments against me work on you, and showing my position is internally consistent, and showing that what you think is intuitively wrong, isn't; or, at least, you can't spell out how it is.

Also, does disagreement about X mean that we shouldn't or can't be confident in an interpretation of X?

If so, enter self-excepting argument # 200. I cite as evidence the multitudinous debates in ethics!

I could make a list 10 times as long as Armstrong’s, documenting all the areas where moral philosophers disagree.

Hoisted by your own petard!

"Could it not be rational for a person to say that they have more reason to believe that a predestinating God would not be good than to believe that Scritpure teaches predestination even if, upon the study of the Scripture, they discover that, so far as the biblical evidence is concerned, it is more likely than not that Scripture teaches predestination."

Depends. Not if you're a professing Christian who claims to believe in inerrancy. Who claims to submit to the authority of Scripture. Who is a Berean. Searching the Scriptures to see if the things said by Paul were true.

If you believe the Bible teaches X, and you believe what the Bible teaches is inerrant, and you believe ~X, then you're irrational.

So, you'd have to be claiming here that you deny inerrancy.

And thus I say: Step up to the microphone and tell everyone where you had to go in order to avoid the arguments by Calvinists.

(note: this still wouldn't be enough given the loads of non-exegetical arguments I've given.)

Rhoda's trump card

“I'm interested here in the general practice of appealing to some allegedly absolute authority - whether that be the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon's revelation knowledge (i.e., ‘burning in the bosom’), or what have you - as a ‘trump card’ for defeating rational objections.”

http://www.alanrhoda.net/blog/2008/05/theologians-fallacy.html

That’s a prejudicial way of framing the issue. By stringing together a number of conflicting sectarian claims, the reader is bound to reject most-all of these examples. Hence, this makes the very idea of a “trump card” look suspect through guilty association. But that’s inherently unfair. The candidates should be judged on a case-by-case basis.

“In closing, I say to any of my readers who are inclined to commit the Theologian's Fallacy and appeal to the Bible, Koran, Vedas, Book of Mormon, Communist Manifesto, Magic 8-ball, or what have you, as a Trump to defeat external criticisms to your pet theories, knock it off!”

He continues his tactic of jumbling a whole lot of things together to make it look ridiculous by comparison. That’s a disreputable ploy.

“If you really have the Truth that you think you do, then you can and should be able to meet the criticisms head on without whipping out a Trump card.”

That isn’t true. We don’t have direct evidence for everything we know or believe. Sometimes the argument from authority is a perfectly legitimately appeal. Especially in the case of religious claims, revelation may be our only source of knowledge. And as long as our source of knowledge is reliable, then that quite rightly trumps extraneous objections.

“The Trumper believes that his favorite Trump (the Bible, the Koran, etc.) is or contains absolute and infallible Truth (with a capital 'T') of a vitally important sort.”

These adjectives strike me as superfluous. For example, what’s the difference between mere truth and infallible truth?

If the Bible is infallible, then the Bible will be true, but I regard infallibility is a property of inspiration.

“Moreover, the Trumper is prepared to submit to that Trump over and against, if necessary, the most secure deliverances of human reason.”

This is a bit tendentious. The Bible-believing Christian doesn’t regard unaided reason as all that secure. So he doesn’t see any great tension between reason and revelation—as if he’s having to sacrifice his intellect for the sake of his faith. Indeed, reason was never meant to operate apart from revelation.

“This he takes as evidence of his intellectual humility and sincerity, of his preparedness to sacrifice all for the Truth.”

Muslims may be hoping that Allah will give them a merit badge for their intellectual hari-kari, but that’s hardly a motive in Calvinism. Rhoda is painting with a very broad brush.

“Conversely, the Trumper sees external critics of the Trump either as ignorant children who need to be taught or as malicious rebels vainly raging against the admantine Truth with the feeble sticks of human reason.”

You mean like Jn 3:19-20 or Rom 1:18-25? I guess St. Paul and St. John were “Trumpers.” That puts me in good company.

“But how could one honestly answer 'no' to this question without committing the sin of intellectual pride?”

Since sin is a Biblical category, you can’t very well commit the sin of intellectual pride by denying that you might be wrong about the veracity of Scripture.

“If one's Trump is self-authenticating in the highest possible degree, then one would expect it should be accessible to human reason and inquiry, just like the cogito and simple conceptual truths are. In that case, of course, it can no longer be used as a Trump over and against human reason and inquiry.”

Alan seems to be assuming that a self-authenticating truth must be an undeniable truth. But that hardly follows. For a self-authenticating truth might also be an unwelcome truth, and human beings have a well-attested capacity for denying the obvious if it makes them look bad.

“But those who still have a robust sense of reality, of their own finitude and fallibility, will look at their prospective Trump (the Bible, say) and realize that they are not in fact more or even equally confident of its Trump-worthiness than they are certain of the best deliverances of human reason. And if they realize that, then they should realize that they are no longer in a position to use it as a Trump.”

But what if the Bible is the word of God? If it were divine revelation, then why would it not be in a position to trump our finite and fallible reasoning? Why does Alan think our finitude and fallibility only work against the primacy of Scripture, or for the primacy of reason, rather than vice versa?

Scepticism cuts both ways. If it undercuts religious authority, then it also undercuts rationalism.

“People who have a healthy confidence in their positions have no need for Trumps. They realize that if they have the truth they think they do, then their position will stand up to critical scrutiny without the need for ad hoc strategems (like Trumps).”

Once again, this assumes that we have discrete, independent evidence for everything we know or believe. But much of what we believe is based on secondhand information at best. Inference. Testimony. So the argument from authority is not inherently ad hoc.

“It takes a mature person, one who accepts his own limitations and fallibility but nevertheless trusts that the Truth (whatever it may turn out to be) is of greater worth than any particular doctrine, to consistently resist the urge to employ Trumps and instead to follow the argument where it leads.”

But this assumes there is some “absolute,” “infallible” truth out there, which “trumps” all rival claimants. Why does Alan automatically disqualify Biblical revelation from assuming that role? And what does he think takes its place? At the end of the day, Alan substitutes his own ad hoc trump card. And that’s because you need truth to find truth.

Submission to intuition

“An issue that has come up in the exchange with Calvinists here deserves a closer look. Suppose we come to our study of Scripture with a set of ideas as to what it is for God to be good. What this amounts to, for at least many of us, is that for God to be good, God must at least attempt as best he can to save everyone. That's what a loving God is expected to do. This cashes out either into classical Arminianism, in which God knows the fate of all but does not cause the free choices that result in damnation, whether this cashes out in open theism, according to which God must limit His own knowledge in order to insure that our acts are free, or whether this results in universalism, where God successfully converts all souls and fits them for eternal life with God, is surely open for discussion, but the concept of what it is for God to be good in all these systems is the same.”

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/05/on-intellectual-humility-and.html

i) This, of itself, exposes the utter inadequacy of intuition as a substitute for revelation—as Reppert runs through several mutually exclusive alternatives: classical Arminianism, open theism, or universalism. If intuition can’t pick out one coherent alternative, then it’s pretty unreliable.

We lack a univocal, intuitive definition of divine goodness if we oscillate between divine goodness as defined by Arminianism, open theism, or universalism. So his example falls to the ground on its own grounds.

ii) Universalism isn’t based on intuition. Can Reppert cite a single pagan philosopher who was a universalist? No. That’s because universalism is a Christian heresy. Can Reppert cite a single pagan philosopher who was an Arminian? Obviously not. If Reppert had been born in Outer Mongolia in the 10C BC, would he be a softhearted universalist? No.

Reppert is so conditioned by historical theology that he’s oblivious to the degree to which his “intuition” has absolutely nothing to do with pure reason and everything to do with his acculturation.

iii) I’d add that Christianity is a revealed religion, not a Turkish bazaar. An event, not an idea. A theologian is not a novelist, writing a happy ending.

“On the other hand, Calvinists here have said that this is based merely on moral intuition, that this our moral intuitions are not infallible, and therefore it should be possible, upon a close study of Scripture, to discover that this conception of divine goodness is not taught by God's revelation and should be abandoned in favor of a view that says that God unconditionally elects, effectually calls, and sanctifies some persons, but others are left in sin and condemned eternally even though God could have chosen to give irresistible grace to everyone.”

i) Well, that’s not all I said. I challenged the operating premise. I don’t think there’s a conflict between Scripture and intuition on this score.

For example, I don’t equate love and goodness. Therefore, I don’t assume that a good God must do the loving thing.

Intuitively speaking, I think that justice is just as much a defining property of goodness as love. Absent justice, love is evil.

ii) As I’ve also said, “intuition” is often a euphemism for prejudice. A snap judgment. A first impression.

Intuition should be subjected to philosophical scrutiny as well. Intuition is often superficial. Overstated. Intuition frequently loses its slick appeal as soon as you begin to introduce a few counterexamples.

“I will concede that the discovery that something is taught in Scripture could result a reasonable Christian's changing their minds about what it is for God to be good. But wouldn't this be a matter of how strong a moral intuition one had as opposed to how sure we are that we are able to read an answer tot he Calvinist question off Scripture.”

How does one measure a moral intuition? Does moral intuition comes in ounces or inches?

“The question I have is first that is it not the case that we sometimes have to accept an interpretation of a passage that we would not have accepted just examining the passage itself, simply because it conficts with what else we know.”

If, in fact, it conflicts with something else we *know*. But Reppert isn’t talking about something he knows to be true. Rather, he’s appealing to his vague moral intuitions.

“Second, don't we sometimes have to accept a ‘second choice’ interpretation based on what else we know from Scripture itself. Does God repent? Some passages say he does, but Christians usually interpret those passages in light of a wider doctrine of God according to which God is not really repenting.”

True, but a fallback interpretation must still to do justice to a passage on its own terms. It can’t cut against the grain of the text. It must appeal to genuine textual phenomena, such as the context, cotext, flow of the argument, intertextual allusions, narrative cycles, and so on. And this has nothing to do with intuition.

“But a third suggestion might be that one might refrain from accepting what would otherwise be a ‘first choice’ interpretation of a passage because it conficts with our conception of what is would be for God to be good.”

At this point Reppert has abandoned all pretense of doing exegesis. It’s a Bible-optional brand of Christianity—which isn’t Christianity at all, but a syndicated theism which is hired out to the highest bidder.

“If I say ‘I am surer that a predestinating God would not be good than I am that Scripture teaches predestination’ am I sticking my fingers in my ears and sticking out my tongue, refusing to consider the evidence? That's what the Triabloggers would have you believe.”

Actually, that’s how Reppert chose to frame the issue, not us. We simply acceded to his framework.

“Even if I had a good exegetical argument that Romans 8-9 is teaching predestination, is that necessarily better evidence that this would not be good for God to do.”

Notice how he makes a mockery of Biblical authority.

“If Scripture really does give us a clear answer to all these questions (there are others which are frequently debated amongst evangelical Christians, such as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, infant baptism, etc.), why is the evangelical community so divided on these matters?”

i) If he doesn’t think the Bible furnishes a clear answer on predestination, why is he resorting to this escape clause?

ii) I never said the Scripture gives clear answers on everything. Mind you, that is ambiguous. It could either mean scripture is unclear in what it reveals, or else that scripture is unclear because it’s left many things unstated. One reason we have debates over infant baptism is not because the Bible has a lot to say on the matter, yet with a lack of clarity, but because the Bible has said precious little on the matter.

iii) This is also a matter of ongoing debate because it’s far more important to some Christians than was to the authors of Scripture. Many Christians have a vested interest in infant baptism.

“Could it not be rational for a person to say that they have more reason to believe that a predestinating God would not be good than to believe that Scritpure teaches predestination even if, upon the study of the Scripture, they discover that, so far as the biblical evidence is concerned, it is more likely than not that Scripture teaches predestination.”

Notice that this ultimately comes down to a question of whether or not we should we Christians, rather than whether or not we should be Calvinists.

Victor Reppert really has no clue about what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is a follower. He doesn’t call the shots. God takes him by the hand and leads him.

Reppert’s Bible-optional brand of Christianity would be alien to Moses and the prophets, to the psalmists, to the Apostles, and to Jesus Christ himself.

Babbleinski

EDWARD T. BABINSKI SAID:

“Steve,__If you read Enuma Elish you see that the creator high god Marduk slays a female water goddess, Tiamat, and cuts her in two and one half is used to make the heavens, and stars made from other divinities are placed on her body. This is a flat earth cosmology, whether or not the earth below is ditch shaped or pancake shaped. __The Egyptians also produced plenty of iconography showing one god lying down and another arched above it.”

It’s possible that ancient people thought the earth was flat. However, I wouldn’t infer that from their use of corporeal or architectural metaphors to model the earth. It was natural for ancient people to use the human body or human buildings to depict the world, just as we use technological metaphors to illustrate the brain. And the metaphors vary depending on the state of our technology. Is the brain a telephone switchboard or a computer? Depends on whether you read a book from the 60s or the 90s.

Do you assume ancient people really thought the Tigris and the Euphrates sprang from the eye sockets of a goddess? I suspect this says far lot more about your naïveté than theirs.

Human beings think in metaphors. Metaphors drawn from daily experience.

I’d also avoid sweeping generalities about human beliefs. Some human beings are more observant than others. More intelligent.

“It's not difficult to find evidence in Scripture that its authors assumed the earth was flat.”

It’s not difficult to find evidence in Scripture that its authors depicted the earth as a microcosmic temple. And its authors used architectural metaphors to cue the read to the sacral significance of the earth as sacred space.

“What's difficult if finding evidence otherwise, of any inspiration they might contain of a spherical earth that spins daily and revolves yearly around a stationary sun, or evidence that other planets exist and are doing likewise.”

Scripture is indifferent to the solar system. So what? The Bible is written to and for human beings. Concerning God’s relation to man, and vice versa.

“The author of Gen. 1 only calls the Sun and Moon ‘great lamps’ not any of the stars, which are merely afterthoughts.”

“Afterthoughts” because the narrator is suppressing impious curiosity in astromancy.

“The biblical authors show no special knownledge of such things, none at all.”

But they show special knowledge of other things, viz., the future.

“And the only time the earth moves in the Bible it's an earthquake.”

Which is an argument against geocentrism, since the motion is seismic rather than geocentric.

“That’s also sometimes depicted as shaking the heavens along with the earth, as in a singular earth-centered cosmos.”

No, that’s eschatological judgment, where the entire creation is subject to the final judgment.

“Heck, evey day in creation is to create something just for the earth, including creating light in the begnning just for ‘days and nights’ ‘evenings and mornings" on earth. Very earth-centered I'd say.”

Not earth-centered. Man-centered. Man as the apex of creation on day 6.

You’re making no effort to read Gen 1 in context. Instead, you’re superimposing the Copernican controversy onto Gen 1, which is grossly anachronistic. Try not to be such a twit.

“And then there's verses that say ‘God moves’ the sun, stars, constellations in their seasonal treks across the sky. Is God really moving such things or not? Is the Bible lying?”

Does modern astronomy regard the sun, stars, and constellations, as motionless? Are you lying?

“But of course if you'd rather believe the Bible is inspired in an inerrant fashion and can't be proven wrong, maybe you ought to be taken to a ‘very high’ mountain to be ‘shown all the kingdoms of the earth’."

The devil is a discarnate spirit. A diabolical apparition is a vision. We’re talking about a visionary mountain. Visionary kingdoms. Try not to be such a twit.

“Why is the tree (in Daniel) described as ‘very tall’ instead of just tall? And how come all the earth can ‘see the tree.”

Because it’s a case of visionary revelation. Try not to be such a twit.

“Mere coincidence in both cases, or flat earth assumptions of the authors?”

Visionary flat-earth typography.

Are you this pedantically literalistic when you dream? When you dream about a city, do you crack out a street map the next day and see how accurate your dream was? Is a dreamscape errant if it deviates from a real cityscape?

“And have you ever tried arguing with Dr. Bouw at his geocentricity website? You're both Christian believers in an inerrant Bible and in sola scriptura and the perspicacity of Scripture. So why don't you agree? Unless of course he's already converted you to biblical astronomy which he argues equals geocentrism. See also my online article, ‘Varieties of Scientific Creationism’ for a discussion of the ways Christians deny and explain away the plain words of Scripture cited by other Christians, depending on where each group first draws the line between what they are wiling to define as mere metaphor and what they are willing to accept as science.”

Actually, Ed, you have more in common with Bouw than I do. You’re still a Fundy under the skin. You shuffle under the same lead-footed, hermeneutical assumptions you did back in your Fundy days.

I never made literalism my guiding principle. Grammatico-historical exegesis in my guiding principle. Not the “plain sense” of scripture,” which is just a cipher for contemporary social conditioning.

I also reject your caricature of perspicuity. The Westminster Confession has a very nuanced statement of perspicuity, which you ignore—since that would get in the way of your prefabricated agenda.

Why DNA is Information

One strong argument that non-Darwinists have against Darwinism is the simple fact of DNA. Darwinism requires evolution to occur due to random mutations coupled with Natural Selection. DNA, on the other hand, requires some very specific sequences in order for some very specific organisms to exist. As a result, non-Darwinists (be they Creationists, theistic evolutionists, or believers in panspermia) find DNA to be a convincing counter to gradualistic Darwinist claims regarding the origin of life. The basic argument can be summarized thus:

A) DNA is information.
B) Information cannot arise from a random, non-directed process.
C) Darwinism requires DNA to have arisen from a random, non-directed process.
D) Therefore, Darwinism cannot explain DNA.

Since C) is a given under Darwinism, the only thing that a Darwinist can do to reject this proof is to deny either A) or B). In a coming post, I will seek to demonstrate the truth of B). For this post, I will seek to demonstrate the truth of A).

Information is something that is most commonly associated with language. But what separates information theory from linguistics is that information theory moves beyond mere language and incorporates many other things. Information theory really began only recently, after it was discovered language could be transmitted via mechanical devices. Even before it was a science, telegraph operators would have to engage in information theory to distinguish between the pulses of Morse code on the line and random noise (caused, say, by a tree swaying in a breeze with a branch striking the telegraph wire and interrupting the electrical signal). This became more pronounced with radio signals. The need to differentiate between information—the message being sent—and noise—radio interference, random fluctuations, etc.—required the spawning of information theory.

To discuss this, we need a working definition of information. As you can see from the above examples of the genesis of information theory, one way would be to say: Information is non-random.

This, however, is not sufficient. After all, if a telegraph operator received only a constant signal of dot-dash (for A) that would convey no information either. Linguistic meaning is not conveyed in that manner.

So we can start with: Information is non-random and non-repeating.

But non-random and non-repeating…what? If we’re looking at text being written on the page, it’s obvious: non-random and non-repeating letters. Thus, we know that

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

is information, whereas

lasdkfjuyqwensd

and

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

are not information.

But if we’re dealing with telegraph signals, we’re not looking at letters on the page. We’re listening to electrical pulses being translated into sounds and visual representations created by the raising and lowering of a pen based on those electrical pulses. And with radio, we have to examine radio waves, using instruments to detect whether or not information is present (which, today, you can do by turning on your radio and listening to the radio pulses transformed to electrical impulses which drive a magnet that creates airwaves that bring sounds to your ears and differentiating it from static).

But why stop there? Why not examine the natural world as well? And it is when we do that that we discover the richness of information in living structures.

Consider rocks for instance. Sandstone is a great example. If you examine a piece of sandstone under the microscope, you will notice that the individual grains that make up that stone appear quite random. While there are certain elements that show up more often (due to their greater abundance on Earth), there is no foundational law governing which grain in the sandstone should be next to another grain in the sandstone. It’s random.

Now look at a diamond, one that has not been cut so as to avoid human interference. It’s crystallized carbon. The atoms of carbon are structured in a specific pattern, and there are no random variations from it (the only random variations in a diamond come from the inclusion of other elements that are not carbon, which will affect the diamond’s color, etc.).

Neither a rock nor a diamond carry information in their structure. However, someone can carve an inscription into a rock and someone can laser designate a diamond. Someone can take sandstone rocks and organize them in such a manner as to build a bungalow, and someone can put a diamond into a ring setting. So consider a bungalow. Is a bungalow information? Is a diamond ring information?

If we use the above starting definition, then they would be. A bungalow and a diamond ring are both non-repeating and non-random.

But this immediately brings to mind the next question. What if someone were to design a bungalow that was repeating. A bungalow on top of another bungalow? Story after story, until you have a repeating-structure: a sky scraper. Now the building would be repeating, and therefore not information.

But sky scrapers do not appear in nature. They have to be built, and that requires work beyond the foundational laws that govern matter. When a diamond is in a crystal shape, it takes no extra effort on the part of the carbon atoms to get there; in fact, that’s the simplest way that the carbon atoms can organize under those circumstances. Likewise, it takes no special effort for a grain of sand in sandstone to sit next to another random grain of sand. That’s the natural state.

Therefore, we can add our final requirement to what determines information. Information isn’t just non-repeating and non-random, but it must be something that is non-repeating and non-random and cannot be explained by only foundational forces. (Note: by “foundation forces” I mean the laws of the universe that materialists consider to be basic, such as the laws of magnetism and the way atoms will bond with each other. For the sake of argument, we will assume these are the basic laws and that they will happen by “default” without any divine guidance needed.)

So a sky scraper may be repetitive and it may mimic a crystallized structure. But sky scrapers are not created using foundational forces of nature. Indeed, the individual units that create the sky scraper themselves are composed of bungalows, and bungalows (in our example, anyway) are composed of sandstone. Sandstone does not form bungalows using foundational forces of nature. It requires something else to organize sandstone into a bungalow. Therefore, sky scrapers exist due to something beyond foundational forces of nature.

And that brings us to DNA. As we know, DNA functions as the blueprint for life. It’s called that because the DNA is used to form all the amino acids that are used for cellular life. And the cellular life must function in order for organs to function. And organs must function for organisms to function. DNA therefore determines many things about the organism, including the means by which that same DNA can be replicated.

Let us therefore ask our questions. Is DNA repetitive like a crystal? If it was, it would mean that Adenine had a proclivity for having Thymine next to it, so you’d have ATATATATATATATAT. Or perhaps Guanine and Thymine would be structured like that.

But the fact is that there is no real proclivity at all between the various bases. Thymine could just as easily follow a Cytosine as an Adenine, or even another Thymine (note that I am not talking about the base pair here, but only which base would be next to another base on the same strand).

Since there is no proclivity, then we would expect natural forces to create random structures of DNA. But is DNA random? Obviously not, because the higher organism depends on the structure of DNA creating the right amino acids to form the right cells to form the right tissues, etc. If the DNA is not exactly like it is, the organism does not exist. But since there is not only one organism, but in many cases there are billions of the same kind, then DNA must have structure; it is not random.

If it is not random, and it is not crystallized, and if it would be one or the other if left only to foundational forces, then DNA is information.