Regarding your three points: (briefly re-summarized below)
Some will undergo eternal torture.
God is omniscient across and through all time, past and future.
God is powerful and will effect whatever he wills to be done (by whatever means).
There are a lot of other points I would lead with first (before your #1) in any theology. You have my agreement on points 2 and 3. And it isn’t even that I am necessarily disagreeing with you even on point #1. I just don’t feel I have the biblical warrant to follow you there, and feel I have plenty of biblical warrant to be suspicious of any who likes to push that particular point. So I guess that means I’m withholding affirmation on point #1, but I’m also agnostic about what “eternity” even means and so am not in any position to dispute much about that point, as stated.
I would also come back to you with a couple points that seem even more pressing to me.
Do we at least agree with each other that:
God’s defining attributes are always characterized by justice, love, mercy, compassion, and that nothing he does (however it looks to the recipient(s) at the moment) is ever done in the absence of, or in spite of those final motivations? I.e. - if he is punishing you, it is for your ultimate good, not for your ultimate destruction, much less never-ending torture?
God has granted us a capacity (even in our sinful state) to recognize and know at least enough of these things (justice, love, mercy, compassion) to be able to see those things in God and in others and to be able to appreciate them, and cultivate them (with God’s essential help) in ourselves? And that we furthermore can recognize and deplore the absences of those things (many of the evils), even if we become blinded to some or much of them? Essentially - we are given enough tools so that when scriptures tell us to “judge for ourselves…” or “taste and see…” or “does not even the nature of things teach you…”; we can properly be held responsible for exercising that very real capacity, and that it is not a mere illusion?
To me, the answers given to these two questions determine whether the answers to the remaining questions you pose should even be of interest. Because if I learn that the God you want me to worship is not even a good God to begin with, then the prospect of such a God’s omnipotence only lends a nightmarish quality to an already hopeless universe. With Lewis I would have to say … “If in the end the monsters must win and evil triumph, would that be any reason for us to switch sides? Let us at least go down in despair with Odin … fighting on the side of good.”
[And this does leave aside some other really important (and always intractable) theological questions that we’ve at least touched on … yes, God allows or permits evil to be done and evil things to happen, natural calamities to cause lots of death and suffering. As always - the theodicy inherent in all that and how it gets answered (or more likely, set aside) by each of us from moment to moment will also play into how those questions get answered.]
You can appeal to the big picture of scripture to me. No trees. Only the forest. Disagreeing with an isolated passage in Paul is not disagreeing with God.
The incarnation and the cross.
My own personal experience.
The experience of others.
General revelation
History
Church teachings.
Revelation (Sacred Scripture–the Bible)
I have no issue affirming 2 Timothy 3:15-17 or that the Christian church in general agrees on most of its canon. Could we be a few books off? Sure. Does it really matter? I’m going with no.
15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Scripture at the time was the Old Testament and it doesn’t talk about Jesus as much as early Christians thought but I can affirm a canonical dimension to the Bible only insofar as I can accept the authority of the Church that teaches it. Canonization requires significant faith as does accepting that our works look like the autographs.
Also, I am of the ilk that God-breathed does not mean God chose every single word of scripture or that it all must be inerrant in all details. The purpose of scripture is to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus and for training us in righteousness. Whether there is free will or we are predetermined as God’s elect, or these mutually exclusive terms in our reality are somehow compatible in God’s mind is completely superfluous to the primary goal of scripture. None of the aforementioned purposes of scripture actually require inerrancy or even suggest it.
Calvinism is clearly orthodox in today’s church. It not a heretical doctrine per the church. It is a moral heresy in my view per the second definition of the term: “opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted.” The idea that a just God literally bound us into disobedience and sin meets that definition to me. I don’t think his position is actually heretical. Nor do I think he worships the Bible. His view on inspiration is far more mainline than my own. I was just throwing back what he said hypothetically. Daniel said “I could respond by saying” to which I said, “Then I will respond by accusing you of bibliolatry.” I might have droned on about it a bit too much but my apologies if anyone, especially Daniel, was offended by my theological sparring.
I already conceded that there are passages implying divine election in the Bible and passages teaching free will. As I noted, the Biblical authors believed man had free will and was responsible for his actions but also that God is always in control of all things. Parts of the Bible are simply mutually exclusive with other parts. If you dispensed with inerrancy, you would be choosing free will over election. But that theological antivirus software causes you to try to affirm both simultaneously.
Calvin, Luther, Augustine, Aquinas all had strong deterministic views of the God-human relationship. They were all wrong. Determinism and free will are mutually exclusive.
You also listed Acts 13:48 but Acts 2:47 seems to deliver the opposite impression.
47 praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added [s]to them day by day those that [t]were saved.
Can Acts 13 have more to do with the ordaining of the Gentile mission or must it refer to the faith of specific individuals? You also quoted the hardening of the pharaohs heart. If God is in control of all things then the problem with this account is the pharaoh could never even harden his own heart to begin with. It is God. It is always God. God choosing to intervene and soften or harden a heart does not imply exhaustive election or control over the world. It implies the opposite. He steps in to act to change the way things are going. The incarnation and atonement could have been planned all along if man acted up. That doesn’t support any one view. I can accept that as an open-view theist. Most of your verses are not as conclusive as you seem to think. I agree there are definitely some deterministic passages in there that make you go hmm.
The biggest problem for Calvinism is the moral one. As Hasker wrote in The Openness of God (by Pinnock and others): “But by far the strongest objections to Calvinism are found in the phenomenon of sin and moral evil. How can we say that God desires for all to be saved, when he eternally decreed that some will be lost? It is not that God “reluctantly permits” those who reject him to go their own way; rather, that is the way God wanted it all along. And in general, all the evil that is done in the world—from the murder of bel to “ethic cleansing” in Bosnia—is precisely what God wanted to happen. At this point Calvinists usually take refuge in the inscrutable wisdom of God—often, at the same time, lashing out indignantly at those who have the temerity to raise such questions. But all else aside, does not Calvinism attribute to God an attitude toward evil that is logically incoherent? God, the Calvinists say, is wholly good; everything that occurs God has willed to occur in preference to any other logically possible state of affairs God might have chosen. And then a just and loving God assumes toward part of what he himself has chosen to create and bring about—namely, sin and moral evil-an attitude of utter, implacable hostility. So the Calvinist must believe—but is this even coherent, let alone plausible?” pg 143
Calvinism also undermines our personal relationship as it turns it into a ventriloquist (God) having a relationship with his dummy (us). Imagine the absurdity of the puppet master getting mad at the helpless puppet due to his forced behavior.
I think the amount of control God exercises is either flatly overstated in the Bible or we are mistaking temporal statements of a hyperbolic and charismatic character as universal principals.
Does Romans 13:1 apply to all governments of all times? “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”
Were Southern slaves escaping North to their freedom disobeying the governing authorities implemented by God? I would be willing to bet a lot of Southern Christians would have thought this. Was Nazi Germany established by God? Do we have to take statements like this as universal? That is absolutely horrifying. Does the Old Testament teach it:
Amos 3:6: “Does disaster befall a city, unless the LORD has done it?”
Does this mean every disaster that has ever befallen any city is of God’s doing? God caused the tsunami and flooding in Sri Lanka? God causes genocide? Or is the prophet, who can be charismatic, simply trying to convince Israel that God is against them here and we shouldn’t make this statement a universal proclamation? In context Israel didn’t think their own sin brought God’s judgment and hand upon them (Amos 4:1-6; 9:10) but it sure looks like a universal proclamation upon a cursory glance.
If Amos 3:6 is universally true, then why does God in Amos 1:13 say he will punish the Ammonites who ripped open the wombs of pregnant women in attempts at territorial expansion? Why is God punishing them when God himself is the author of that sin per Amos 3:6? He caused them to do that. Who ripped the babies from the wombs of pregnant women? God apparently did that. Likewise, Amos 3:7: “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.”
Surely this is not a universal decree even though it looks like one? Do we always have advance notice of every calamity from God? I don’t think we do. If God foreordains and brings about everything then it also makes no sense ever for an author to single something out as if it comes from God. Everything does (pharaoh can’t harden his own heart, that’s absurd!). It is also odd that if God brings about all disasters and things as some of these texts seem to imply, that the state of affairs seems so contrary to his will at times. God desires all to be saved by condemns most (broad is the way?) to everlasting torment? Is our Ventriloquist schizophrenic?
There are passages that look like universal decrees about God controlling all details of the universe. Personally I would call them errors. They are incompatible with free will and the bigger picture of scripture. I am sure the Chicago Statement has a fancy of way of making them convention and not error. Either way, the overall trend of scripture clearly points to free will and human responsibility. I’d say these other universal statements are best understood as primitive over-statements, maybe hyperbole, or charismatic prophecy. It is true that most of them actually pertain to very specific situations as does Paul’s in Romans 11 which his concluding the argument about Israel started in chapter 9. If we asked Paul if he meant God was actually responsible for everyone’s sin he may or may not have laughed at us or he may or may not have bopped us on the head with a club. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary interprets Romans 11:32 as follows: “All, Jews and Greeks, have as groups been unfaithful to God, who makes use of such infidelity to manifest to all of them his bounty and mercy—to reveal just what kind of God he really is (see 3:21-26; Gal 3:22)
Calvinism loses the forest for the trees. Inerrancy (along with Greek philosophy I’d guess) is to blame for this ideology from Augustine to Calvin and modern reformed Christians. Is logically untenable.
Since I seem to post them almost daily, I don’t know how you could have avoided my references to to Maggie’s sequence and to the evidence from George Müller’s life. Who was manipulated or had their free will suspended to set up the myriad of precursor events required for those realities to play out?
I read Maggie’s sequence. I thought it was a very uplifting read. We have been discussing a lot of issues in here so my apologies, what specific point were you making about it? God intervening when he sees fit is not an issue for me. Are you going beyond this?
This is where we would part ways, then, and so not much point i’m afraid in trying to clarify and unpack the specifically Calvinist understanding on these things… as you would presumably take issue with the most anti-Calvinistic Arminian’s perspective if he similarly held the traditional view of God’s judgment. It doesn’t sound like your are taking issue with something specifically Calvinist, or the idea that God has predestined someone for judgment, rather sounds like you are taking issue with the idea that God would punish anyone in judgement (i.e., non-“restorative” justice) in any wya whatsoever, regardless if it were predestined or not,
I think I may start a new thread in this specific topic, so as not to detail this one too far… but this perspective doesn’t seem to me to be a reasonable reinterpretation, of one limited element of theology or some extraneous teaching, or something we can excise even by cutting out particular parts like the Ood Testament… like we are discussing a limited or particular topic like women’s ordination, speaking in tongues, or predestination… we are talking about a concept that is pervasive, emphasized, central, and ubiquitous throughout both testaments, taught and emphasized by both Gods words and actions and endorsed and embraced by every single author of the a bible.
Trying to excise God’s punishment in judgment from Scripture doesn’t seem to me even so difficult as trying to remove a gangrenous growth or cancerous tumor, as much it is like trying to remove a pound of flesh without a drop of blood. But I’ll save more for another thread.
Moses didn’t write anything in my view. Luke as the author of Luke-Acts is highly questionable. Which of the two (or three?) authors of Isaiah over a few centuries are you referring to? Paul is fine as long as you stick to the letters he actually wrote and form a theology based on all his writings rather than proof-text hunting a verse here or there.
It has to do with predestination and the usurping of our free will. God’s providence provided for my salvation as he did for Maggie’s needs. People’s free wills were involved. Were they overrun?
God intervening is not the same thing as controlling every aspect of our lives or electing and ordaining some to salvation and others to eternal torment despite desiring that all should be saved. It is not the same as God forcing everyone into disobedience so that he can show mercy to them. These are different issues in my book.
Are you trying to say God took the nurses free will away and forced her to take Maggie in? I am not seeing an argument for Calvinism yet.
God’s providence provided for all our salvation. Isn’t that tautological?
No? What was not under his control in setting up all those scenarios? Multiple people’s wills – their thinking and decisions, what they did and where and when they did it were all involved in setting up all the events that led to the timing and placing of providential results. The point is yes, God was in control of every detail, but paradoxically, no one’s free will was violated. Just like ‘predestination’ and election.
Yes. There are too many directly contradicting passages to hold to inerrancy.
I also agree that ensuring that someone sins in such a way so as to direct those affected by it, or how it is done, does not equal causing someone to sin. Yet, what we are discussing in Romans is whether God actually causes someone to sin, I think. That would be anathema.
I do not believe in eternal punishment. It is impossible to imagine God causing eternal torture for a short term decision made by a finite being… I do not believe God can, or chooses to, know all the future. I do not believe that God chooses (or is) all powerful–at least, not in the way that we think.
I do agree that like a good parent, a good God punishes for our betterment, not for vindictiveness.
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
97
As is demonstrated for many pages above, if one lives static in the pre-Enlightenment and not in eternity, then one is lost in the woods of false dichotomies.
God has always set us up to transcend.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
98
No. God is not an arbitrary psychopath. And it wouldn’t be some if He were, it would be an infinity.
No. Omniscience of the infinite past to now is rationally impossible, let alone of the unhappened, non-existent, unpredictable future.
Yes. The means is incarnation and transcendence.
“The City on the Edge of Forever” also from Daniel. One of my favourite Star Trek’s that. Utter nonsense of course. Picked up in King’s excellent The Dead Zone. And God - beyond even Ian M. Banks’ Culture - has no such dilemma. He Zens it all. He never intervenes beyond incarnating and yearning back. We cold read intervention in to our perfectly natural interior - including our stories of Him - and exterior insignificant little lives.
I’m astounded at our hubris in oh so very 'umble clothing.
Natural evil is not evil. It is the logical result of finitude.
When God decided to create the universe, God might have created it as perfect, as infinite like Godself. But, of what purpose are two identical perfect Gods?
So God chose to create an imperfect finite universe with hot and cold, life and death, cooperation and conflict. Perfection is not seen in the individual entity, but in the totality. Each part working together with the rest to make a harmonious whole, although because they are finite imbalances take place that must be adjusted at times violently. This is called ecology.
Humans are different in that they are created in the Image of God. .In some sense humans do not have to be interdependent, even though they were created to exist in this manner. Of course there is a price to pay and that is sin.
So we are all sinners, because we all try to go our own way and fail. That does not make us damned to hell, because we can always learn from our mistakes. When we chose not to learn, but justify our selfishness that is when we have serious problems, as when Adam and Eve blamed others including God for their eating of the fruit.
God does not set us up to fail, but God does not make it easy to succeed. God gives us life. God gives us a home and resources, but there are limits, which we need to observe. When we don’t there are problems that we can address or allow to fester. Today our bills are coming due, but the Evangelical church. does not want to take responsibility, which is evil.
The Father loves the Son through the Spirit of Love.
