Hierarchy is second nature for Calvinists

a response to David Fitch's post about Mark Driscoll on Reclaiming the Mission:

I think Dave is right – hierarchy for everything is second nature to Calvinists. Jonathan Edwards was the same way. He applied hierarchy to everything – acts of God, the Godhead, etc. I think they apply Reagonomics (I know – anachronistic) to theology; i.e. find out what theory or definition is the king and then hyper-focus on it and then depend on the trickle down effect from your hyper-focuson one aspect to positively affect every other aspect without being directly involved with those other “lower” aspects. Piper does the same thing with much of his work.

KEEPER: "God can do anything!"

Six years ago  I wrote a blog entry, prompted by the children's song: 
"My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do." 
The truth is, there ARE some things that God cannot do:   

1) he can't lie ( Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29 and Titus 1:2); 
2) he can't not exist (Exodus 3:13-14)
3) he can't not be holy (Lev. 11:4-45; Ps.99:3,5; Is. 45:11, etc; 1 Peter 1:15-16 etc. ).

Why would we want a God who could contradict himself? (cf. James 1:17; Malachi 3:6) Such a God would not be sovereign, but nonsensical.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, 

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it’, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can’. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

Of course, Lewis was no nominalist. Neither am I, and because I am not a nominalist, I cannot be a voluntarist or a Calvinist. 
-------------------------------------------------------

From Jesus Creed: December 13, 2011

“God can do anything he wants!” (by David Opderbeck)
Filed under: Law — scotmcknight @ 12:06 am

David Opderbeck is Professor of Law and Director of the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science  Technology at Seton Hall University Law School. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophical Theology at the University of Nottingham. David’s post today is academic and complex, but he’s right in saying it is this distinction that was at work in the Rob Bell and hell debate with with Francis Chan. Chan’s appeal to submission to God at times sounded like nominalism. Read on, read slowly.

Nominalism, Voluntarism, and God’s Being and Will

“God can do ANYTHING he wants.” So say Preston Sprinkle and Francis Chan in their book Erasing Hell. It’s fair to say that this proposition is the cornerstone of Sprinkle and Chan’s theodicy of Hell. “Won’t God get what he wants?” So asks Rob Bell in his book Love Wins. It’s also fair to say that this question, along with the belief that God wants everyone to be saved, is the cornerstone of Bell’s theodicy of Hell.

Both Sprinkle / Chan and Bell focus on God’s will. But is there something missing from their theodicies? Theologically, the question concerns the relation of God’s will to His nature. Philosophically, the question relates to whether “universal” substances exist apart from their particular instantiations (“universals”), or whether substances are merely names for particular instances of things (“nominalism”).

Consider an apple. What is an apple? Is this particular apple on my kitchen table one instantiation of the substance “apple” – a substance with some sort of universal metaphysical (“beyond-“ or “above-“ physical) properties that are shared by all apples? Or is “apple” simply a name I apply to this object before me as a result of some observable similarities with other objects (other things we also call “apple”) that have no metaphysical connection to the “apple” on my table?

What do you think? Do nominalism and voluntarism improperly taint our conversations about ethics, justice and theodicy? Or, does “realism” about universals compromise God’s sovereignty? How can we avoid speaking about God in ways that seem either to compromise His sovereign freedom or to reduce His actions to the arbitrary exercise of power?

For many who claim a modern scientific worldview, there are only particular objects called “apple,” which are more or less related to other particular objects in morphology and chemical composition, all of which are categorized as “apples” for the sake of convenience. What is “real,” in this view, is merely chemistry and physical laws, not any substance “apple.” In contrast, for those who believe in universal properties, “apple” implies properties that are real and transcendent of any one apple. This apple on my table has properties such as “red” in common with other apples because those common properties transcend any one particular apple. (For a good overview of the problem of “universals,” see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The modern nominalist view of “nature” derives from and is related to nominalist and “voluntarist” views of God in late medieval philosophy. The medieval scholastic philosophers wrestled with this question: Is God’s will a product of God’s rational nature, such that God only calls things “good” that are substantively “good”? Or is God’s will utterly unconstrained, such that God is free to call “good” whatever He desires to call “good,” without any limiting principle (referred to as “voluntarism”)?

One of the key figures in the development of these ideas was the monk and philosopher William of Ockham (c. 1288-1348). Ockham took a strong – some would argue extreme – view of Divine sovereignty in relation to morality and ethics. Here is an example of Ockham’s voluntarist approach:

I say that although hate, theft, adultery and the like have a bad circumstance annexed de communi lege [“by the common law”] so far as they are done by someone who is obliged by divine precept to the contrary, nevertheless, in respect of everything absolute in those acts they could be done by God without any bad circumstance annexed. And they could be done by the wayfarer even meritoriously if they were to fall under a divine precept, just as now in fact their opposites fall under divine precept . . . But if they were thus done meritoriously by the wayfarer, then they would not be called or named theft, adultery, hate, etc., because those names signify such acts not absolutely but by connoting or giving to understand that one doing such acts is obliged to their opposites by divine precept. (Ockham, Various Questions, Vol. 5 (emphasis added)).

For Ockham, then, there was no “absolute” notion of “the good.” “Good” is just a word we apply to whatever God commands. The parallels to both Sprinkle / Chan’s and Bell’s theodicies are obvious.

This sort of view sounds humble and pious. Who are we to question God? The problem, however, is that it begs the question of who “God” is.

Before the rise of nominalism, Christian theology generally held that God’s being and will are inseparable. God is “simple” and does not have separate “parts” such as “being” and “will.” This means that God wills and acts as He is. If God acts in ways that are “loving,” it is because in His Triune being “God is love” (1 John 4:8); and if God acts in ways that are “just” it is because in His Triune being God is just.

To be sure, Christian theology has always held that God’s essential nature is fundamentally unknowable by human beings, because God is radically other than His creation. However, many of the Church’s great thinkers believed we could know about God either through His “energies” in creation (e.g., many of the Eastern Fathers) or by “analogy” to the being of creation (e.g., Thomas Aquinas). At the very least, the apophatic theologians held that we can speak about what God is not like.

Nominalism and voluntarism, in contrast, divorced God’s will from His being, and thus drastically limited the role of theology for ethics. As theologian John Milbank notes,

In the thought of the nominalists . . . the Trinity loses its significance as a prime location for discussing will and understanding in God and the relationship of God to the world. No longer is the world participatorily enfolded within the divine expressive Logos, but instead a bare divine unity starkly confronts the other distinct unities which he has ordained. . . . This dominance of logic and of the potential absoluta is finally brought to a peak by Hobbes: ‘The right of Nature, whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those that break his Lawes, is to be derived, not from his creating them, as if he required obedience as of gratitude for his benefits; but from his Irresistible Power.’” (John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, at pp. 15-16 (quoting Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.))

Catholic philosopher Edward Feser recently summarized the fruits of Ockham’s reductionism as follows:

the Renaissance humanists’ revolution in culture, Luther’s revolution in theology, Descartes’ revolution in philosophy, and Hobbes’s revolution in politics also have their roots in Ockhamism. With the humanists this was manifested in their emphasis on man as an individual, willing being rather than as a rational animal. In Luther’s case, the prospect of judgment by the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle – was cause for despair. Since reason is incapable of fathoming this God and good works incapable of appeasing Him, faith alone could be Luther’s refuge. With Descartes, the God of nominalism and voluntarism opened the door to a radical doubt in which even the propositions of mathematics – the truth of which was in Descartes’ view subject to God’s will no less than the contingent truths of experience – were in principle uncertain. And we see the moral and political implications of nominalism in the amoral, self-interested individuals of Hobbes’s so-called “state of nature,” and in the fearsome absolutist monarch of his Leviathan, whose relationship to his subjects parallels that of the nominalist God to the universe.

I might not agree completely with Feser’s hasty appraisal of Luther. Note, however, Feser’s reference to judgment by “the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle….” If the governing principle of a theodicy is that “God can do ANYTHING he wants,” how does that theodicy avoid the capricious, irrational god of nominalism and voluntarism? How could even someone presently confident of his election to salvation have any reason to believe that his election will not be suddenly and arbitrarily revoked on the last day? Why should God keep His promises? At the same time, if the governing principle is that “God always gets what he wants,” how can human beings retain any moral freedom or responsibility?

Note also Feser’s linkage between nominalism, voluntarism, and ethics. If law and ethics derive from God’s commands, and God’s commands are the product of pure, ungoverned power and will, then what principle can check the tyranny of earthly rulers who claim absolute and unquestionable power on the basis of Divine right?

Finally, note Feser’s reference to epistemology. This relates to the broad question of universals versus nominalism, because a belief in metaphysical universals suggests that God first conceives of and then brings into existence by His commands a reality with stability and purpose. For Augustine and Aquinas, universals were Ideas in the mind of God, and so to investigate the order of things was to learn something of God. For Ockham, there was no reason for any similarity between things other than God’s choice. This lead Ockham to conceive of “science” as a strictly empirical and logical investigation into particular things, a move that led to the sort of empiricism in which God is no longer a necessary “hypothesis” (ala Pierre Simon-Laplace and Richard Dawkins).

1. This in many ways gets to the heart of Calvinist theology which is in the forefront of many theological discussions these days. Even my daughters, whom I homeschool, have picked up on the idea that God can do anything he wants. When I have expressed that God cannot act outside of his nature, they are incredulous.
   My problem with this thinking, as expressed by Ockham and even somewhat by Aquinas is that it ignores scripture and presents a God who resembles Allah more than Jesus. Lewis writes of God worthy of worship, not because of his power, but because of his goodness.
   We worship a God who lives in loving relation within the Trinity and with creation. While I can’t get to the point of all will be saved, as some don’t want to be, I also can’t accept that God is choosing who will go to Hell just because without him becoming a monster. If we are to trust God, then we must believe in his inherent goodness.
   Comment by Gina Wright Hawkins — December 13, 2011 @ 12:50 am

Calvinism as a Nominalist Project

Great discussion over on Jesus Creed about Calvinism, Arminianism, double predestination, and the character of God. 

I especially appreciated comment#2:

The closer I get to this debate the more I am convinced that underneath it is the ongoing issue of realism vs. nominalism. Luther was a nominalist, a strong and growing movement of his time. Nominalists believe that attributes like love, goodness, beauty, etc. are not real existences. They are only names we give those attributes, hence nominalism. When applied to God categories like the good, the true and the beautiful are not real in and of themselves, as if for God to be those things he has to meet a standard outside of himself. This would seem to make God less than God since he is subject to a measure and it would seem to make God less free since he is constrained by that measure. Luther’s response? He glories in the God who simply is apart from categories that do not arise from his own being. What this can lead to is an arbitrary God, who no matter what he does is always glorious. Therefore, God can be exalted for what on the face of it would normally be considered horrendous evil – i.e., damning people you could save. So we can end up with the strange configuration of being willing to go to hell for the glory of God as a sign of true salvation. To which I respond, huh? In fact, the more arbitrary God seems to be, the more glorious he is. And in some of the Reformed circles I have been exposed to, moral categories for God can seem unstable. And in such a case arguing as Olson does seems to diminish God’s glory. This is always the Reformed response. Olson is simply pleading for the existence of real moral categories. If these are thrown out, there is nothing left to discuss anymore and moral debate becomes senseless. So, to sum it up, I am not so sure that the debate is primarily about free will in man. It might be more about free will in God. I think pursuing the debate along these lines would be more fruitful. I am hoping that Olson presses this trajectory a bit more.

Comment by don bryant — November 9, 2011 @ 2:48 am

Why evangelicals reject reason, or, Catholics have an easier time

A friend pointed out this article from the New York Times:

The Evangelical Rejection of Reason
By KARL W. GIBERSON and RANDALL J. STEPHENS
Published: October 17, 2011


THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.


The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.


Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.


Fundamentalism appeals to evangelicals who have become convinced that their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy; denial is the simplest and most attractive response to change. They have been scarred by the elimination of prayer in schools; the removal of nativity scenes from public places; the increasing legitimacy of abortion and homosexuality; the persistence of pornography and drug abuse; and acceptance of other religions and of atheism.


In response, many evangelicals created what amounts to a “parallel culture,” nurtured by church, Sunday school, summer camps and colleges, as well as publishing houses, broadcasting networks, music festivals and counseling groups. Among evangelical leaders, Ken Ham, David Barton and James C. Dobson have been particularly effective orchestrators — and beneficiaries — of this subculture.


Mr. Ham built his organization, Answers in Genesis, on the premise that biblical truth trumps all other knowledge. His Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Ky., contrasts “God’s Word,” timeless and eternal, with the fleeting notions of “human reason.” This is how he knows that the earth is 10,000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and that women are subordinate to men. Evangelicals who disagree, like Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, are excoriated on the group’s Web site. (In a recent blog post, Mr. Ham called us “wolves” in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as Christians while secretly trying to destroy faith in the Bible.)


Mr. Barton heads an organization called WallBuilders, dedicated to the proposition that the founders were evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation. He has emerged as a highly influential Republican leader, a favorite of Mr. Perry, Mrs. Bachmann and members of the Tea Party. Though his education consists of a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and his scholarly blunders have drawn criticism from evangelical historians like John Fea, Mr. Barton has seen his version of history reflected in everything from the Republican Party platform to the social science curriculum in Texas.


Mr. Dobson, through his group Focus on the Family, has insisted for decades that homosexuality is a choice and that gay people could “pray away” their unnatural and sinful orientation. A defender of spanking children and of traditional roles for the sexes, he has accused the American Psychological Association, which in 2000 disavowed reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality, of caving in to gay pressure.


Charismatic leaders like these project a winsome personal testimony as brothers in Christ. Their audiences number in the tens of millions. They pepper their presentations with so many Bible verses that their messages appear to be straight out of Scripture; to many, they seem like prophets, anointed by God.


But in fact their rejection of knowledge amounts to what the evangelical historian Mark A. Noll, in his 1994 book, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” described as an “intellectual disaster.” He called on evangelicals to repent for their neglect of the mind, decrying the abandonment of the intellectual heritage of the Protestant Reformation. “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he wrote, “is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”


There are signs of change. Within the evangelical world, tensions have emerged between those who deny secular knowledge, and those who have kept up with it and integrated it with their faith. Almost all evangelical colleges employ faculty members with degrees from major research universities — a conduit for knowledge from the larger world. We find students arriving on campus tired of the culture-war approach to faith in which they were raised, and more interested in promoting social justice than opposing gay marriage.


Scholars like Dr. Collins and Mr. Noll, and publications like Books & Culture, Sojourners and The Christian Century, offer an alternative to the self-anointed leaders. They recognize that the Bible does not condemn evolution and says next to nothing about gay marriage. They understand that Christian theology can incorporate Darwin’s insights and flourish in a pluralistic society.


Americans have always trusted in God, and even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins. Faith, working calmly in the lives of Americans from George Washington to Barack Obama, has motivated some of America’s finest moments. But when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even if it means criticizing fellow Christians.


Karl W. Giberson is a former professor of physics, and Randall J. Stephens is an associate professor of history, both at Eastern Nazarene College. They are the authors of “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.”

Here's my response, after reading the above article: 

Mark Noll wrote "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" in 1995. Things haven't changed much, have they?

Protestantism has always had a complicated relationship with the mind. Recall Luther's 1569 Table Talk: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” Then there's this little gem: "Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."
Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148. Also,

Calvinists have a more difficult time articulating their nuanced attitude toward the mind, because they hold differing interpretations of the extent and the degree to which man has been corrupted by original sin. See this . Furthermore, it is harder to hold a balance between faith and reason when one stresses the "sensus divinitatus" as the means of knowing God, and denies argument and disputation a role in that process. Ultimately, for Calvinists, faith is "beyond reason;" See this. For those whose Calvinism is more loosely held, or more remote (for example, many Baptists and non-denominational types) a "faith beyond reason" can easily slip into being a "faith AGAINST reason."

No doubt, Catholics have had their share of Jacopone da Todi's, mystics, and holy tortillas...but they've never been able to completely repudiate the "both-and" orientation of Thomas Aquinas toward faith and reason. I know many Catholics who are infuriated by American Catholic politicians, whose spiritual formation reflects more of Protestant nominalism/modernism/anti-intellectualism than their own tradition. But at least they can appeal to their tradition, which is not anti-intellectual, in criticizing those politicians. I envy them.

Rob Bell: crypto-Covenanter?

Okay, so I finally broke down and read Bell on hell. I don't usually read the latest evangelical best sellers until at least a couple of years go by. That way anything that isn't worthwhile will be remaindered and forgotten, and I won't need to waste my reading time. If something is still around, then it merits my attention.

However, Bell's Love Wins has created quite a fuss among some New Hope students and faculty. Wayne Cordiero, NHCC president, is a close friend of Francis Chan, who has recently written his own book in response to Bell. I certainly didn't want to be drawn into discussions and pull a Piper so I figured I should have a look.  (I am grateful that a good friend loaned me the book, so I could save my money for something more deserving, like James Dubay's The Evidential Power of Beauty or Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine. )

Anyway, it's my first Bell book. It's easy to read, full of questions, very, very popular and deliberately non-scholarly. In fact, it's downright sloppy about exegesis. That's really frustrating!  find myself agreeing  with Kyle Small, writing in the June 2011 Covenant Companion, that the book isn't really about heaven and hell: it is about election, and that Bell is reacting against his Reformed Calvinist tradition. This might explain Bell's stridency at various points. For those of us who do not share that tradition, reading "Love Wins" is not all that upsetting or enlightening.

I had to laugh at Kyle's observation:

This book is anything but radical for the Evangelical Covenant Church. The Covenant has held strongly to a view of the atonement where “God’s love for the world is magnified” and less so to the more classic substitutionary model of atonement where “the wrath of God is satisfied.” Covenant theology rejoices that God came to love the world and generously gave himself fully to us. I would venture to say that Bell becomes a Covenanter in his middle chapters. He even sounds like P.P. Waldenström in a few places (who was also wrongly criticized for being a universalist). As I re-read sections of the book, I wondered if the Covenant Church (via the Communications Department) had been invited to edit the work, especially the tone and phrasing, would this book have be more palpable? Perhaps!

Kyle is spot on as he concludes his review:

This book that many of us cannot understand. I continually felt like I had entered another family’s argument. Bell is overly polemical throughout these pages. Several friends have commented that wherever Bell says something clear and helpful he uses the next page to make a point that resembles a sword and not a ploughshare. He seems to write as if embattled from the outset.

I think Bell is responding to his theological past—a past that many North American young people continue to revolt against—in profound ways. Bell is a Reformed guy with a love for C.S. Lewis. If you grew up Baptist, Bible church, Reformed Church, or even conservative Presbyterian, this book might deeply resonate with you. And most Americans have a Reformed view of God in their back pocket, even when they are not aware of it (see Sydney Ahlstrom’s A Religious History of the American People). Lutherans would be one of the few groups to be somewhat disengaged from the topic altogether.

Reformed theology is centrally concerned with the theological topic of election. Bell’s tradition most often stresses certainty of salvation and election, including predestination. Reformed folks, like John Piper, read the Bible through the lens of election, asking, “Who has God chosen and not chosen? God chose Israel, God chose Jesus; did God choose me?” This question strikes fear in the heart. This fear responds by seeking salvation because the other options scare the hell out of us.....

American Calvinism has this interesting acronym for their theology called TULIP. I don’t necessarily understand it, but it has to do with the question, “Who is in/out?” If you resonate with John Piper, your perspective is primarily on “Who is in?” and “How do we assure ourselves of this?” If you resonate with Bell, the perspective is “Who is out?” and “How do we welcome them in?” If you resonate with neither and wonder why this book has produced such a firestorm, perhaps it is because you believe in a God who blesses the world, inside and out, or possibly because regardless of debates about heaven and hell, open or closed, you believe that Jesus Christ is the world-concerned story of how love wins.

Precisely. Reformed theology has nominalist DNA.   One of the by-products of nominalism is individualism, and a preoccupation with the problem of how it is possible to "group" individuals. This leads to a focus on a sovereign God who becomes the ultimate agent for grouping. "Either/or" thinking prevails. However, those of us whose theology is informed by a realist metaphysic delight in the way all things are related and ultimately relate to God, who Himself is a perfect community of Three Persons. Sin ruptures relationship, and separates us from God, and this leads us to focus on Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate agent of reconciliation.  As Waldenström writes,

When we started to speak of reconciliation, we raised the question if it was God, or man, or both parties, who was, or were, to be reconciled. Now we have searched the Bible and have found that it does not speak of God as being reconciled. The love of God had not been diminished through man's sin, so that it needed to be improved, increased or restored; nor could God's hatred of sin be done away with, for if He did not hate sin, He would not be righteous; neither could God's displeasure to those who live in sin be done away with, because even yet, this very day, God is displeased with all who live in sin. No change has taken place in Him. He remains the same; with Him there is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning." He is the eternally faithful, unchangeable God, whose name is Jehovah (that is, "I am that I am").

On the contrary, man needed to be reconciled to God....The Scriptures testify that man, as estranged from God, is carnal. It is not the Spirit of God that fills and rules him, but the flesh. But "the carnal mind" ("the mind of the flesh," according to the Revised Version) "is enmity against God," says Paul (Rom. 8:7). That is the chief trouble; not this or that transgression or misdeed; nay, but the very mind, is enmity against God: "for it (that is, this mind) is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." Of the same thing the apostle speaks in Col. 1:21, where he says to the Christians: "Ye were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works." "The wicked works" of the ungodly are never isolated; they are expressions of the wicked, or evil mind. And the evil mind is enmity against God. This the natural man will never admit. Even though he may admit that now and then in his life and in his works he may be at fault or be mistaken, still he will hold that in the depths of his heart he is good. But no, says the apostle, the natural mind itself in man is enmity against God. It is a terrible judgment which the apostle by these words pronounces upon all that bears the name of man; but it is a true judgment.
In short, the heart of the world is estranged from and dead to God, averse to him; and this makes it unblest. Here, as we have said, a reconciliation must take place, a reconciliation which brings man into an entirely different relation to God, if he is to become happy. But how, then can such a reconciliation be brought about? By the removal of sin, and by the justification of man. That which separates must be removed. Otherwise there can be no reconciliation. But that which separates is sin. From this fact we understand why "the reconciliation of the sinner to God" always depends on "the atonement of the sins," that is, on removal of the sins. We repeat it again: By being cleansed from sin, the sinner comes into a right relation to God. In no other way can such a relation be brought about.

 Hell, then, is that condition of being estranged from, averse to and dead to God, just as heaven is that condition of being in a living, loving relation to Him.  Rob Bell gets it right when he writes,

There are individual hells
and communal, society-wide hells,
and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. (p. 79)

Eternal life doesn't start when we die;
it starts now.
It's not about a life that begins at death;
it's about experiencing the kind of life now that can
endure and survive even death. (p. 59)

Jesus invites us
in this life,
in this broken, beautiful world,
to experience the life of heaven now.
He insisted over and over that God's peace, joy, and love
are currently available to us, exactly as we are...

There's a heaven now, somewhere else.
There's a heaven here, sometime else.
And then there's Jesus's invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place. (p. 62)
       

Bottom line:  IMO Bell asks good questions, but doesn't have the personality, mind and theological tradition to provide good answers.  I'm going to look for Jerry Wall's Hell: The Logic of Damnation. It's been out for 9 years now, and it has infuriated some Calvinists, so it ought to be good. ; )

Jerry Walls, Evangelist of the Mind

This afternoon on Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan had Jerry Walls as his guest for a brief segment on the upcoming end of the world and our fascination with "end times." Jerry fielded a Swedenborgian and other callers, and gave a clear orthodox affirmation of his faith: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." Great stuff!

We knew Jerry when we were at Notre Dame. In 2005 we heard him as keynote speaker for the Wheaton Philosophy Conference: "Philosophers Think about Heaven and Hell." Jerry is an engaging speaker, and a vocal Arminian, as the clip below shows:
Jerry Walls



Jerry's Bio, from The Christian Studies Center

B.A., Houghton College
M.Div., Princeton Seminary
S.T.M., Yale Divinity School
Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

Jerry Walls is one of the most respected Christian philosophers in America. His engaging, energetic lectures make Jerry a student favorite, and his lively debates outside the classroom help students learn to think and communicate Christianly on a variety of topics. For many years, Jerry taught at Asbury Theological Seminary and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. He has authored and edited nearly a dozen books and has been a contributor to almost 20 others. Jerry has published a pair of books that make a philosophical defense of Christian views on the afterlife, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy and Hell: The Logic of Damnation. He is also an editor of a volume in the prestigious Oxford Handbook series, The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. Two of his other books explore the thought of C.S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer (with Scott Burson) and The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (with Gregory Bassham). Not merely a cut and dry philosopher, Jerry also won a national poetry contest in his college years, and in 2009, he published his first book of poetry Who Watch For The Morning. When he is not writing books, Jerry serves as a pastor, guest lecturer or avid sports fan.










Areas of Specialty: C.S. Lewis, Heaven and Hell, Calvinism and Arminianism

Monergism on Eastern Orthodoxy

Sometimes all you can do is laugh, otherwise things are too painful.

Following a long list of purported errors, here's what the good folks at Monergism have determined (pun intended!) about our brothers and sisters who are Eastern Orthodox :

"We can only conclude that Eastern Orthodoxy is an inconsistent, unbiblical substitute for a Christ-centered Biblical Christianity."

The ultimate irony is this judgment:

"EOC unapologeticly hold that they are the one true church of Christ on earth, which alone has guarded right belief and true worship in absolute identity and unbroken succession with the apostolic church. In other words, Evangelicals have lapsed from the true faith into error, if not outright heresy, according to Orthodox believers. The salvation of non-Orthodox is, therefore, in question."

How offensive it must be for the Monergists to be treated the way they treat others!

Modernism is characterized by its demand for certainty and its belief that the present is always preferable to the past. It is also preoccupied with discursive reason, laws and formulae. From what I can tell, the Reformed Christianity espoused at this site is doing its best to live up to its modernist DNA. If only the Monergists could explain to me why modernism is the sole way to be Christ-centered, Biblical Christians!

Είπε ο γάιδαρος τον πετεινό κεφάλα
("The donkey called the rooster a fathead.")

"Knowing"

We saw Knowing last night...an apologetic for Calvinism, or an opportunity to think about providence and prophecy? Depends who's watching it.

While I enjoyed the film, I had a hard time with its black-and-white orientation: "Either determinism or randomness." Either everything is caused, and stands in a long chain of cause and effect, or else nothing is caused. There is no option for metaphysical libertarianism, which defines freedom as the ability to act against a cause (contra-causal power). From this perspective, persons are regarded as agents, as initiators themselves of causal chains, but the film does not countenance that possibility.

To me, the most telling scene occurred in the MIT classroom, as Koestler lectures. He equates purpose with determinism. In a world starved for final causality, it is refreshing to hear the word "purpose" even mentioned in a film. (No, I am not a Purpose- Driven Groupie. If anything, my sympathies lie much further down the line, with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas). But what if there is a God who allows us the freedom to determine our own ends? Then there would be purpose without either a "hard" or "soft" determinism. Then we could understand and appreciate Ezekiel 18.

If you roll with its presuppostions, the film is certainly a thriller. It has the definitive image for Malachi's "Day of the Lord," though I found its (super?) natural beings at the end not at all convincing.

Bottom line: Worth the ticket, but Signs was better.

Here's Roger Ebert's review

and there's more (including spoilers) at Roger Ebert's Journal.

There's a great resource for Christians interested in the question of God's omniscience, foreknowledge and human freedom here.

And finally, there's this little video explanation of determinism by David Sosa, chair of the philosophy department at the University of Texas, Austin.

Calvinist Romance

via Brad; this is just too good to resist!
There's some great commentary at Stand Firm . One potential caption: "The man in the picture is obviously totally depraved, and her father is therefore free to unconditionally impose any punishment he may elect. In any case, said atonement should in no case be limited to less than 40 pellets of 12-guage rock salt. Thus does a good father insure his saintly daughter may perservere in her life of virtue." But my favorite is this snappy retort: "“What, no tulips?”

Finally, isn't it ironic that Mark Driscoll's wife is named Grace? (via New York Times Magazine)

Monergism? Thanks but no thanks...

There's a vibrant Presbyterian church in town that has produced some wonderful students at EBC. They all have been fans of monergism, the theological concept, and Monergism, the website.

I am learning a lot from these fellows, but I cannot agree with their interpretation of scripture or church history. I do not think it is possible to hold that the Synod of Orange's condemnation of Pelagianism establishes monergism. For instance, see Peterson and Williams, Why I am not an Arminian. To say that it does is an appeal to ignorance.

I cannot help but remember Dr. Vernon Bourke's comments on Augustine in our class on Medieval Philosophy at St. Louis University. "He wrote a lot, over a long period of time. He wasn't always as consistent as we might have liked." If this is true, then appeals to Augustine, muchless exclusive appeals to Augustine, are a dangerous thing.

Finally, on Abet, Brad offered this response to my question, "Do the Eastern Orthodox hold a concept of 'alien righteousness?' Do they speak of 'monergism?' If so, where?"

The EO are not very monergistic. They would emphasize synergism -- but not in a Pelagian or semi-Pelagian sense. Once you shift through all the language and nuances I think they are similar to the Western Arminianism. Wesley drew heavily on the Church Fathers so he was drinking from the same pool. The EO, however, do not emphasize the radical nature of sin, that is, the consequence of death. Rather they would emphasize the alienation aspects of sin and speak more in terms of sin as disease.

Alien righteousness is a foreign concept -- or rather emphasis -- although they might not disagree with the concept of imputed righteousness--once you shift through all the terminology differences and nuance everything. While Westerners tend to stress what Christ did -- the work of the cross -- the EO would stress (without denying the other) who Christ is -- the Incarnation.
We become participants in the righteousness of Christ through theosis (which in Evangelical lingo is the union with God through sanctification and glorification).

IOW, we tend to emphasize the work of Christ as justification which is worked out in sanctification. The EO tend to think of justification as an aspect of sanctification (theosis). When you work that direction alien righteousness does not play as big of a role. There is in some sense an ontological union -- and since we are one with him we participate in his righteousness.

Of course, the idea of "alien righteousness" was most famously expressed by Martin Luther. There is, however, a school of Lutheran thinking in Finland which argues that when you take Luther in context he was a lot closer to Eastern Orthodoxy in his emphasis on union with Christ. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, who teaches theology at Fuller (and who is actually a Finnish Pentecostal) has written a great book on the topic -- One with God. "

Stay tuned.

Contra Arthur Pink

The Abet bulletin board is allergic to my posts, so I'm pretending that they can hear me here:

On 8/13/08, Pastor Greg wrote,

Let's tackle this one a bit, just for a refresher: I am reading an old book on Sovereignty, by Arthur Pink, 1914.

He writes:

"To argue that God is 'trying His best' to save all mankind, but that the majority of men will not let Him save them, is to insist that the will of the Creator is impotent, and that the will of the creature is omnipotent. To throw the blame, as many do, upon the Devil, does not remove the difficulty, for if Satan is defeating the purpose of God, then, Satan is Almighty and God is no longer the Supreme Being." —Sovereignty Of God, The

I agree with him there, but here is what I would say: God, in His sovereignty, does not /insist/ that his will be done though he could. Over all, God /does/ insist that his will be done. His purposes /shall/ come to their ends, taking into account the rebellion of man and devil. But part of His divine plan is to allow man and the devil to have their own way in regard to the outcome of their personal destinies though not to the extent that it can effect any defeat to His overall purpose.

Does my statement contradict the Doctrine of God's Sovereignty?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Here is my response:

Greg, check out the Wikipedia article on "Molinism." It's really pretty good. Molinism offers a "middle way" that preserves both divine sovereignty and robust human freedom (aka "libertarianism.") Steve and I both agree with William Lane Craig (and it would seem, Dan Whitmarsh!) that God's omniscience includes knowledge of necessary truths, contingent truths, and "middle knowledge," or knoweldge of counterfactuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molinism

God's Types of Knowledge

Taking after Luis de Molina, Molinists divide God's knowledge into three separate categories. The first is God's knowledge of necessary truths. These truths are independent of God's will and have no possibility to be false. Examples include statements like, "All bachelors are unmarried" or "X cannot be A and non-A at the same time, in the same way, at the same place".

[Beth's note: Of course, the above assumes the principle of non-contradiction, but it is important to understand that for Christian Molinists principle of non-contradiction reflects something about God's nature, not that God's nature is subservient to the principle of non-contradiction. C.S. Lewis has a great quote on this topic:

"God's omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not
intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him,
but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose
to say, "God can give a creature free will and at the same time
withhold free will from it", you have not succeeded in saying
anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not
suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the
two other words "God can." It remains true that all things are
possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things
but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the
weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually
exclusive alternatives -- not because His power meets an
obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we
talk it about God.

... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Problem of Pain

I take it that in this discussion we are talking about the Biblical God, not Homer Simpson's Jesus who "could microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it!" See http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/scripts/weekend-at-burnsies.php ]

The third kind of knowledge is God's free knowledge. This type of knowledge consists of contingent truths that are dependent upon God's will; or truths that God brings about, that He does not have to bring about. Examples might include statements like "God created the earth" or something particular about this world which God has actualized.

The second kind of knowledge is middle knowledge (or scientia media) and describes things that are contingently true, but are independent of God's will. These are truths that do not have to be true, but are true without God being the primary cause of them. "If I had taken the train instead of driving, I would not have been late for work," is an example of middle knowledge. I did not take the train, so God is not involved as a cause. The train being the better option is not a logical necessity, so it is contingent if true.

Molinists support their case with Jesus's statement in Matthew 11:23:
"And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day."

The Molinist claims that in this example, God will know what is contingently true and independent of God's free will, namely that the Sodomites would have responded in such a way that Sodom would still have been in existence in Jesus' day. This would be an example of a counterfactual statement.

Matthew 11:23 contains what is commonly called a counterfactual of creaturely freedom. But counterfactuals are to be distinguished from foreknowledge. The Bible contains many examples of foreknowledge or prophecy such as Deut 31:16-17 where God tells Moses that the Israelites will forsake God after they are delivered from Egypt.[1] But counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and foreknowledge are generally considered to be two separate things.[2]

Some opponents of Molinism claim that God's foreknowledge and knowledge of counterfactuals are examples of what God is going to actively bring about. That is, when Christ describes the response of the Sodomites in the aforementioned example, God was going to actively bring it about that they would remain until today.[3] Molinists have responded to this objection by noting that scripture contains examples of God's foreknowledge of evil acts. For example, the Israelites forsaking God, or Peter's denial of Christ, are both examples of what one would call overt acts of sin. Yet, according to opponents of Molinism, God is actively bringing about these overt acts of sin. This is obviously fallacious according to the Molinist. In order for this account of prophecy to be valid all prophecies must be wholly good, and never contain evil acts; but this is not the case.


A counterfactual is a statement of the form "if it were the case that P, it would be the case that Q". An example would be, "If Bob were in situation X he would freely choose A over B." The Molinist claims that even if Bob is never in situation X God could still know what Bob would do. The Molinist believes that God, using his middle knowledge and foreknowledge, surveyed all possible worlds and then actualized a particular one. God's middle knowledge of counterfactuals would play an integral part in this "choosing" of a particular world.

Molinists say the logical ordering of events for creation would be as follows:

1. God's knowledge of necessary truths.

2. God's middle knowledge, (including counterfactuals).

---Creation of the World---

3. God's free knowledge (the actual ontology of the world).

Hence, God's middle knowledge plays an important role in the actualization of the world. In fact, it seems as if God's middle knowledge of counterfactuals plays a more immediate role in creation than God's foreknowledge. The placing of God's middle knowledge between God's knowledge of necessary truths and God's creative decree is crucial. For if God's middle knowledge was after His decree of creation, then God would be actively causing what various creatures would do in various circumstances and thereby destroying libertarian freedom. But by placing middle knowledge (and thereby counterfactuals) before the creation decree God allows for freedom in the libertarian sense. The placing of middle knowledge logically after necessary truths, but before the creation decree also gives God the possibility to survey possible worlds and decide which world to actualize.[4]

Calvinists typically deny that God has "middle Knowledge," or knowledge of counterfactuals. (Unless one is a "Calvinist" like Alvin Plantinga!) Molinism allows possible worlds where human will is causal, and then this actual world-- that possible world which God wills to actually exist. It's premodern both-and thinking at its finest.

Pink rejects that there are counterfactuals and such "possible worlds:" there must either be an actual world where God's will is sovereign, or an actual world where human will is sovereign.

"To argue that God is "trying His best" to save all mankind, but that the majority of men will not let Him save them, is to insist that the will of the Creator is impotent, and that the will of the creature is omnipotent." (Pink)
This is quintessential modernist either-or thinking. To my mind, it is admirable that Pink wants to glorify God by stressing His sovereignty; but his god is a lesser being than One Whose omniscience is even greater. Or, to put it another way, which God is greater?

1) One whose knowledge includes only (a) necessary and (b) contingent truths
2) One whose knowledge includes (a) necessary, (b) contingent and (c) counterfactual truths?

Bottom line: for those of us who are Molinists, the Calvinist God is just too small! Calvinism, instead of glorifying God, diminishes his omniscience, thus causing His sovereignty to suffer as well.

(P.S. To all the postmoderns out there: notice that I am not saying that God's knowledge is LIMITED to just these truths!

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

But neither am I saying we must immediately punt to either a mysticism or to a social activism that gives up/forbids any discussion of providence and God's nature!)

Blessings in Christ,

Beth