First, CONGRATS TO THE LADY WILDCATS!!! They won for the first time the NAIA, section 2 championship. Woo-hoo! They had a 38 and 0 record. Outstanding! Ausgezeichnet! Tres manifique!
And I thought I would reflect on what became a week of arguing Arminianism versus Calvinism. Thanks to Once a Wesleyan for taking me to task.
What have I gained?
1. I like Baptists, especially if they would say that Christians who become serial killers were unlikely to have ever been Christians at all. I agree with you that it is really, really hard to miss it if you are truly converted. And I believe it surely breaks God's heart for those who "expose him to public disgrace."
2. I really respect Calvin and I respect Barth even more. Calvin was not a double predestinarian. He did not believe that God predestined those who were going to be damned. And Barth made the most sense of any Calvinist I have ever heard. He recognized that if God determines who will be saved and if God wants everyone to be saved then perhaps all will be saved. Barth resisted to his death saying that he was a universalist. But he added, "perhaps God is."
Am I neo-orthodox? I refuse to say I am because I'm not quite sure what anyone would infer thereby that I was saying about myself. There are some similarities between my thought and Barth's, but then again, he would detest other parts of my thinking, perhaps call me a Schleiermacher or a Brunner. I am orthodox, save a few tolerable heresy, according to Bounds.
3. What OAW has particularly catalysed for me is a good taste of how he understands sovereignty. In his view, and I don't know how representative he is, God's sovereignty could never stomach a human even He empowered to be able to disobey him. I am therefore assuming that OAW is a double predestinarian. That those who disobey God do so because God has caused them to disobey Him.
I am also assuming, therefore, that OAW must be a 7 point Calvinist. If God's sovereignty would be threatened by me being able to disobey Him, then it would have been threatened by Adam being able to disobey Him or for Satan to be able to disobey Him.
Thus,
6. God predestined Adam to fall and
7. God predestined Satan to rebel.
Perhaps some 5 point Calvinists have a slightly different understanding of sovereignty than OAW. But if he is standard, then you cannot logically stop half way. If his understanding is the 5 point understanding, then all 5 pointers must spit on Calvin's effeminate God and become 7 pointers.
But what are we left with if this is true? We are left with a God who could have created everyone to be predestined to serve him completely and absolutely. But, in His sovereignty, He decided to create a universe where He would absolutely destroy almost everything He created. He is a skeet shooting God, who created most things so that He could shoot them to pieces, and He did it purely for His pleasure.
We must now redefine so many words in the Bible.
"And God saw all that He had created, that it was good." Note: good here means good for hunting, good for destroying. Or good for messing up, like a child who stacks a whole bunch of blocks up carefully so he can enjoy knocking them all down.
"God is love." That is, God loves burning things. He's a pyromaniac, but He can burn those houses down because that's why He built them in the first place. On a whim, some days He doesn't burn down the odd or the even ones. Some days he leaves the prime numbered houses stand. The universe is one big romper room of His delight.
What have I learned this week? That I love Baptists.
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17 comments:
James, the guys almost got to the final four too, just one game short. Both teams did great.
OAW, thanks for continuing to present your theology. I will respond because I know googlers will find this debate and I want them to have answers to your questions.
I think that the "Lady Wildcats" is a reference to the Indiana Wesleyan University Wildcats...not the Kentucky Wildcats...as Tubby is the coach for the Kentucky Wildcats Men Basketball team.
OAW, to start in response to a previous comment you made, I allow for the things of God to be beyond rationality, to be suprarational. I believe this is a rational thing to do since, if God created the world out of nothing, He is outside this universe and not conformed to its rationality.
But I am stuck in my head. There is a "microreason" to the world that seems inescapable. I try not to step in front of traffic or jump off of tall buildings. If the Bible said, truly the world is not a sphere but is as flat as a pancake, I would not be able to make myself believe it. So in your quest to label me, you can throw a pinch of Bultmann (you can tell I scoff at the illogical practice of death by labelling). There are some things no sane person could truly make themselves believe to save their life.
I mention these things to say that if we could not conceive of a God concept that was coherent--I don't mean if we found out that we couldn't prove God--if we found out that we had to be fideists to be Christians, if we found out that the concept of God was in fact irrational, then the very Christian notion of God would deconstruct, in my opinion. I believe God is a God of truth, and so if the idea of God were incoherent, He could not be God. I don't buy Wittgenstein's argument that religious language isn't referential. I would be forced to abandon Christianity if someone could show it conclusively false. And I would have to abandon belief in the resurrection if someone could show definitively that they had found the bones of Jesus.
I say this because in my faith pilgrimage, the biggest challenge to my faith has been the problem of evil. If God is good, He presumably wants to stop evil, and if God is all powerful He can stop evil, so why is there evil? You know the drill.
Your answer (I know you won't agree, but you're wrong) pushes us to conclude that there really isn't any evil. God has willed sin and what we call "evil" in a directive way. He has willed the world to be the way it is. The new definition of evil is, "those things that fall within the domain of that toward which God is wrathful." But since God has willed it, we really should say that even evil is good, because God's destruction of it will bring Him glory.
By the way, I don't think your stated position is coherent. You say above 1) that the Bible teaches that God predestined Adam to sin yet 2) are only a single predestinarian and claim you agree with Calvin. Calvin believed that Adam had free will, so you disagree with him there. Also, if God predestined Adam to sin then God predestined the remainder of the fallen to be fallen and thus predestined their damnation. Calvin at least can pin it on Adam.
Also, your previously stated claim that for God to empower a person not to choose Him makes him effeminate and contradicts His sovereignty would apply to him letting Satan and Adam not choose him as well, so if you are not a seven point Calvinist, your theology is incoherent.
Back to the problem of evil. Your solution is no solution. It forces a redefinition of good, evil, and love that makes these words mean things that contradict what these words mean. If my own solution to the problem of evil makes me nervous, your solution would make me despair of faith (along with anyone else who knows the heart of Christ).
The distinction between God's permissive and directive will is not explicit in Scripture, but I allow for that. I am not a Leibnizian who believes this has to be the best of all possible worlds (how could anyone really know that?), but I believe it is a coherent creation God has made.
He has created a world where it is "better" and "more pleasing" for a person to love another freely than for a person to be forced to go through the motions of love. There are neurotic people out there who would disagree, but most humans who function healthily in the world recognize this.
So God created the possibility that Satan and Adam might not choose to love him (you have heard all these things before). They both chose wrongly. In consequence, we are all born disempowered. But because God is love, He lightens everyone at some point in their life, gives them the opportunity to be empowered further.
We do not see the whole picture, but if we did, we would recognize that God is love even though he allows many painful and displeasurable things to happen even to those who serve him.
This to me is the most coherent Christian answer to the question of evil. When you put atheism next to your answer, atheism is the next most coherent answer. I choose my answer.
More to come.
"What a wonderful education those young adults are getting."
Let's play nice OAW. ;-) I happen to know that those young adults are getting one of the best educations in the country.
To OAW:
When my husband and I came to IWU, I had my theology "all together" (ask Dr. Bence). I now could not tell you much about why I believed what I did in the past. You see, my brother committed suicide a number of years ago and that caused me to question my understanding of God. Do I surmise, according to your view, that it was "God's will"? Or do I understand it as "allowed"? But, what do I do with the fact that I prayed along with many others I'd called to pray during the time before we knew....what had happened...Did God hear my prayers? Did He Care???? You see, my questions began when both of your theologies seemed to fall short. Then, I started thinking about everything differently. And I can understand John Saunders, who believes in Open Theism, for it allows for true response on the part of man toward God and His universe. And it magnifies God's love, in that He limits His omnipotence, and omniscience for the benefit of a "free moral agent", as well as confounding our minds with His creativity in "working it all together"....
I do know that I want NOTHING to do with a God that coerces, controls, manipulates, and imposes...( I know that you believe that man is not coerced because he has been made to desire because of God's irresitible grace, but that truly does not hold men responsible for their choices and I can't bear that!) I have not come to conclusions about my theology. I am still in "process" of processing and I may not be able to view it objectively until the wounds that have taken hold of me are healed. Those wounds will not and can not be healed with platitudes of God's sovereignty and "working all things together for good". One thing I have learned is that I believe ferverntly that each person is a unique creation of God and that there can Never be a replacement with anyone else. That is why "love" is so important. Universalizing "God" has it's limitations when it comes to "real relationship" in which the person has understood God in a specific, special and personal way. That does not mean that "a reason for the hope within" is unimportant. The limitations to "theology proper" is like telling a starving man about "the Bread of Life" without giving him physical food. The spiritual apart from the physical is absurd for what did God do when He was incarnated? The spiritual people did not "recieve him". I think being human is good enough for God. That is who He made and who He loves.
Don't worry, OAW, I'm sure any confidence he might have in me is not eternally secure. ;-)
As with all words (as an emotionless statement: my default presumption is that your kind of Calvinist doesn't understand how words work, that you think they have fixed meanings), whether Barth is Calvinist or not depends on how you define the word. Obviously your circles define it in a way that excludes Barth or anyone who is neo-orthodox.
Now back to emotion. I chuckle every time you bring the neo-orthodox thing up because as far as I can tell, no one cares or is even discussing this label these days (how many people in my world even have heard of it? All its generation are dead). Sure, I'm sure it got Charles Carter's and Martin's dander up, but that was 30 years ago. As far as I can tell, I'm just a quirky (yet lovable) Wesleyan.
Alas, we agree! The word verification thing is driving me nuts. By the time you get a comment made, the letters it has on the screen are no longer valid any more!!!
Here is a similarity between me and Barth (don't label me neo-orthodox, because I'm unlike part on it too). While the essence or nature of God is, at least possibly, beyond our literal comprehension. He has revealed Himself by analogy and metaphor. These are not false because they are, at least potentially, non literal.
Also, rationality works within this universe, since God has made it to work down here. While you, I think, would have a view that God acts in this universe according to His nature. I would fall off on the side that says God acts in this universe in accordance with His will for this universe.
So to the age old question, is good good because God says so or does God say it's so because it's good, you would say that God's nature defines what is good and of course God could not possibly act against His nature. I would say that, within this universe, God has chosen to reveal himself in accordance with certain principles that we might metaphorically call His "nature." What it literally might be beyond this universe we could not possibly know. But because God chooses to be consistent, He for all appearances can be said to have a certain nature in this realm.
But, to maintain the sovereignty of God, I hold open the possibility that outside this universe, God might create other universes where His apparent nature is quite different. He might, thus, create a world of 7 point Calvinism "somewhere" else, but it would not look like this universe (there's the rub). Similarly, He might create a universe where murder is always good, but this is not that universe. Bounds considers me slightly unorthodox on this point.
But, and here let me say clearly, that these ideas almost never come up in class at IWU because I don't teach theology. I mention them in philosophy class as we discuss arguments for the existence of God, but I don't teach them as "the truth," I let them know that Bounds disagrees, and most of them probably don't have a clue what it is I'm babbling on about in the first place.
OAW
Your comment about Ken not knowing the difference between Calvinism and neo-orthodoxy was funny. I guess since he has plunged into the stream of post-modernism, both look the same, in a relative sense that is.
Very good, now you're getting to Scripture and to the kinds of truly "naughty verses" that I will need to explain (I will do a whole post on Romans 9 when I can).
A few preliminary remarks in relation to my method:
1. Job or any particular passage is first to be understood on its own terms.
2. But Job is also in a particular place in the flow of revelation--it's first meaning is a matter of the Hebrew Bible, which is not yet its Christian meaning. For example, a scrupulous and respectful reading of Job reveals that it has no belief in life after death (yes, I know about 19:25-26). And in fact it is just a little further along than 2 Samuel 24:1 on the Satan (see 1 Chronicles 21:1). It does not yet understand Satan the way the NT or we do. In short, we cannot assume that a single verse of the Bible gives the final answer on a Christian theological issue. Job must be "placed" in the flow.
3. In keeping with this ongoing working out of the details of how these things work, we must also ask how this deterministic imagery functions. If you had asked Augustine, "I notice it says here that God meant it for good." Does that mean that Joseph's brothers could not have done anything but do this to him? I think Augustine would say, yes, that's right.
But I am not convinced that Paul or other biblical writers would have said the same. In other words, I'm not sure that this deterministic language functions in this way for them.
I'll try to express this thought more clearly in my Romans 9 post, but in general, deterministic biblical language seems to function as "after the fact" language. In other words, deterministic language is not used to predict what will happen, but to express what has already happened. The meaning of a word depends on the language game in play. I am not convinced that Augustine and Paul were playing the same game on this one.
You are deceiving yourself if you think you have any assured transcendental, epistemological fixed point. Where can I get one of those? Don't say the Bible because that's a smoke and mirrors game (you always turn out to be the man behind the curtain). The consensus of the church as the mediator of the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures is the most stable access, but history shows this is not a completely fixed point.
In short, your transcendental point would be great--but you are smoking crack if you think you have one. I choose to believe that God's analogies are true by faith, believing this faith to be coherent and more rational than irrational (insert my mumbling caveats about what I call a pragmatic epistemology).
An example will suffice. If God is strictly in this universe, as yours is (your understanding of God limits Him to the logical rules of this universe), then His foreknowledge appears to imply determinism. If in some way He can observe the future ahead of time, we might wiggle out of determinism, but then He appears not to be omniscient at some point of his existence.
But what if these connections do not apply outside this universe? What if outside this universe God can do things that aren't possible in this universe? Why would you want to deny such a possibility? Because you wish to limit God?
Here is the question: Presuming that God wanted to, is God smart enough to create the possibility for a person to make a free choice while He knows what that choice will be beforehand and He won't gain knowledge when you make that choice. My answer is, on what basis would I say He can't? I think God is smart enough! By the way, this is why I consider open theism a waste of time. It is, in my opinion, just as stupid as the Calvinist argument against free will on the basis of determinism. It's only strength is that it is more literally biblical than either my orthodox position or the Calvinist one. ;-)
Do you get the distinction, there is a rationality within this universe. We cannot assume it applies outside this universe. This is my answer as well to the age old question, where did God come from? The argument that there needed to be a first cause is based upon what we observe in this universe. But one cannot then apply the question to God outside this universe. It doesn't follow. So I would say that you do not know how to distinguish between what is in this universe and what is outside this universe. The result is a idolatrous picture of God, one that builds a Zeus out of the materials of this universe without understanding what logically might follow from saying that God created the world out of nothing.
Surely you don't mean to say that my free will now is of the same sort as Adam's? You would say, I think, that I have free will along the manner of soft determinism. I experience my choices as freedom of my will, although in reality my choice for God is a product of His will. Would you say that Adam's free will choice was the same, then? That he experienced his choice as a free one, but that really it was determined? If so, then it's incoherent for you to stop short of the most radical Piperism?
You've said nothing that convinces me any of my comments on van Til, Calvin, or neo-orthodoxy were wrong in the slightest. What you have convinced me is that you live in a world that labors over distinctions that are irrelevant to my world, just as many distinctions important to my world are not significant to yours.
P.S. No reputable Pauline scholar today thinks Augustine's interpretation of Romans 5:12 was Paul's, that "in whom [Adam] all sinned." Keep the argument in theology and philosophy, because the house always comes down when we hit Scripture.
This is what tickles me about some Calvinists--when their arms and legs are cut off they stand shouting on the bridge to their assailant as if they have won the duel! I love them for that spirit--it is more fun than watching a movie!
"It's just a flesh wound! Come back and I'll bite your kneecaps off!"
He, He, He! This last few posts have been great but the responses have been awesome!!
Now the question is whether or not Dr. Schenck rides around clicking a bunch of coconuts??
Was it Tozer who confided to a student one day that it's be best to avoid Wesleyan/Calvinist arguments because even after you leave the room, they'll still be going at it and you can actually go out and make a difference in life.
I really love both sides of the equation here, but I don't believe either side is exactly correct. I find fault in both Calvin and Wesley on several points but I also find much to applaud in both. I guess that I am thinking about the issue of grace from Calvin and the issue of holiness from Wesley.
I really can't agree with many of OAW psuedoarguments and frankly wrong perceptions of Ken. I know he hardly needs my defense, but he'll get it.
I guess I take much exception with the absolutely OUT OF LINE comment #3 and about Ken's teaching about soteriology, which I can tell you first hand is NOT focused upon our work or about salvation. Such vitrolic statements only serve to antagonize and lessen any potential points one might make. Which does nothing to build the kingdom or persuade anyone to come to Christ. The more I read this, the more I believe Tozer, and that makes me sad.
Stop pushing me toward postmodern despair ;-) You're laughing at my thoughts; I'm laughing at your style and colorful rhetoric. I have a friend at another institution who would scold me, "Ken, I told you the human brain makes all this stuff up. You and OAW will never arrive at truth--you both prove there is no truth."
You'll be glad to know I've chosen not to give up on the notion of truth yet.
BUT... you do remind me of a Deep Thought by Jack Handy, "It seemed to me that, somehow, the blue jay was trying to communicate with me. I would see him fly into the house across the way, pick up the telephone and dial. My phone would ring, and it would be him, but it was just this squawking and cheeping, 'What?! What?!' I would yell back, but he never did speak English."
;-)
"a particular significant aspect of intellectual pride is the inability of the agent to recognize the same or similar limitations of perspective in himself which he has detected in others."
Reinhold Niebuhr 'The Nature and Destiny of Man' p.196.
that may be a helpful quote in this discussion. while i would never want to intimate these Biblical/theological discussions are unimportant, it may be helpful to recall 1 Cor. 13 - not the love talk, but the giving up of childish things (or in this case "rhetoric")
let us be careful...
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