The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Salvation during "famines"/distortions of the Word

Evangelical Universalism Arguments for Evangelical Universalism
#29

Hello all

A common rock that Arms throw at us URs is ‘what’s the point of evangelism if everyone is going to get saved in the end?’. (To which, of course, we reply that true salvation only comes from knowing God, through Christ, hence it is imperative that we all get to hear - and freely accept - the Gospel, either in this life or the next.)

But if Craig’s particular brand of ECT Arminian Molinism is true, soteriologically, then *all *attempts at evangelism are fundamentally unnecessary. Indeed, the Great Commission itself becomes redundant. If God knows in advance who will accept the Gospel and who won’t, and makes eschatological decisions on the unevangelised on this basis, then - despite Craig’s insistence that the evangelised must make a decision for Christ *before * death, and if they don’t, they’re damned eternally - evangelisation is, in fact, unnecessary for salvation. All those Arminian missionaries forging trails into the remote parts of the world to bring Christianity and a shot at salvation to the heathen are wasting their time (the Calvinist missionaries were *always *wasting their time regardless :laughing: ).

Taking this line of argument to its absurd, but logically consistent conclusion, most people would be better off *not *being evangelised: if they’ve never heard the Gospel, they can’t be damned for rejecting it, and will instead be judged on their *potential *for accepting it - and surely a just, righteous and loving God will give them plenty of leeway in this area. In other words, the only non-evangelised damned souls are those who God knows, through his middle knowledge, would *definitely *have rejected the Gospel.

Whither, then, Christianity, Dr Craig?

Cheers

Johnny

#30

Excellent point, Johnny.
In a way, Arminianism crosses over and enters Calvinist territory there. Predestination becomes true.
Doesn’t sound like my God, and doesn’t sound like the freedom we do have.
I can see us being judged by the measure of freedom we have, and i can see freedom being given and taken like the talents in that parable.
but i still don’t see it being forever, and i don’t see it being hopeless.

#31

Good point, Johnny! (And very good to see you :smiley: ) You’re right – Arminianism does so easily cross over into Calvinistic territory, and vice versa, I think. It doesn’t seem to me that it works – if you think it through – but it’s necessary because neither camp is really coherent on its own. The Arms have a weak God with no elements of Calv, and the Calvs have a monster God without the influence of Arm. We on the other hand (preen, preen) have Baby Bear’s God – He’s j.u.s.t r.i.g.h.t! That sounds like we’ve refined Him to fit our preferences, but I don’t think it really works that way. He is what He is, but scripture testifies He is both all powerful and all loving and that His justice is a corollary of His essence – which is love and light.

Myshkin,

I was thinking about your post as I was resisting getting up this morning. It occurs to me I didn’t do a very good job of answering it. You (and Craig) probably do have a point about the native perversity and unwillingness to bend one’s will to another. I think maybe you and WLC see this as a battle of wills. I’m not sure Father sees it that way. I don’t think He’s like that – to roughly insist on imposing his will on another. He’s our Father. He wants to build us up. If we perversely insist on opposing His desires for us simply for the sake of willfulness even though it hurts us horribly, that’s probably immaturity, but it could go to the level of madness in extremes. That’s my opinion – I suspect Talbott shares it in at least some degree or form.

The concept of cutting in line because one can or cutting someone off in traffic doesn’t resonate with me. I’ve known people who brag about similar things and I just don’t get it – because these are people I know – people whom I know to be otherwise quite acceptable people. Why do they think this is fun or gratifying? It’s a mystery to me. They’re all male, so maybe it has something to do with that, although I’m sure there are females with similar tendencies. Is it nature? Nurture? I have no idea. My besetting sins fall more in the realm of “niceness” as you so gently put it. Hypocrisy, for fear of giving offense even where offense would be the greater kindness. Always wanting people to think well of me. People pleasing. It’s hard to resist that because I do have a strong need for acceptance and people seem less likely to accept you if you offend them. Yet sometimes you MUST offend others, or by refusing to do so, sin against them and God. If they reject you because of it, well that’s the price you pay. You have no choice. The bewildering part for me is to know where to draw the line. Since I’m a moderator here I’ve had a chance to practice this at a distance (safer?) but I still struggle with knowing when to move in, when to ignore, and when to back down.

That said, I agree that none of us know the depth of depravity to which we might go, given the opportunity, power, motivation, etc. We might well do it for the sake of what we see as righteousness as I expect Calvin and Luther and others – probably some of the papacy as well – have done. Or it might be we would even do it for ourselves without needing to disguise our selfish ambitions even for our own personal consumption. Some people do horrible things for “love” of their children. How many of us could slot right in beside Hitler, given the opportunity? If we have that inside us, it has to be destroyed for our good and the good of others. No root of evil can remain buried in a child of heaven – like some hideous amoeba waiting to overtake us, causing destruction and pain and displaying what we’re really capable of. If I’m not envious or jealous (and I hope I’m not – perhaps I would be so in the wrong situation) it’s only because, being old, I’ve had time for Father to purge most of that out of me. :unamused: At least I hope so. It’s painful getting rid of that sort of thing.

I think you’re right about the reaction of the prideful person to God’s presence. I guess that would be the shame He speaks of in Isaiah “You will bear your shame” at things we’ve done, at our own minuteness, dinginess, not even spectacular wickedness but only mediocre, petty badness, perhaps. The thing is, we’re sort of His project (though it takes humility to appreciate that as a good thing) and we’re to be conformed to the image of Jesus – who is the exact image of God. He desires to make us glorious and He’s up to the job. So the person who attempts to run isn’t quite grasping the humility and the goodness of God. What’s more, I kind of think that God hides Himself for the present, but that at some point in the future He’s going to stop doing that. The wicked are tormented in the presence of God and His holy angels. Is it His presence that IS the torment? His holiness meeting our remaining filth? Jesus said we would all be salted with fire – is this part of what He meant by that?

Anyway – sorry for writing you another book, Myshkin. I hope I’ve done a bit better than I did at first. :slight_smile:

Love, Cindy

#32

Cindy S:

I think you’re arguing that universal happiness is a greater good than libertarian free will (and even doubting that, given our creaturely condition and God’s omnipotence, that libertarian free will is possible). I am inclined to agree with you; I want everybody to be happy and reconciled to God and, clearly, we aren’t free in the way God is free. I want to be fair Craig’s position. It is not implausible. Though “free will” has been debated throughout the two millienia of christian thought (think of Luther-Erasmus exchange, or Augustine and Pelagius), I think most, to some degree, think that human freedom is a great gift of God, perhaps the best gift. Craig’s modern appropriation of Molinism is actually quite an interesting solution (or attempted solution) to the predestination-free will dilemma.

Rejecting God, as Talbott argues, is a special case, for if we understand that God has our best interest’s at heart, then rejection of God is akin to self-destruction. But isn’t it still possible for a fully rational person to say “No”? What if that person is like many atheists, who reject God b/c they think God has allowed too much suffering. What if the person rejects God precisely b/c they can’t stand that God is God? Do you buy Sartrean despair, in that everybody fundamentally wants to be God and can’t be? If Sartre is right, then fully rational people might permanently resent not being God, even though God loves them. I hope and want to Talbott to be right that eventually all will see that resentment of God is futile, but I don’t know if Talbott has proved that people won’t react negatively to God’s greatness. I studied theology in a milieu that was somewhat dismissive of the classical attributes of God, and many had adopted process theology, and I think process theology is a popular move borne of out of a resentment of a being having so much power over us. But despite my disagreement with process theology, I wouldn’t be prepared to say that process theologians are irrational, they just think that for the world to be fair, God shouldn’t be “above” (though I think their apprehension of the classical God is due to a pessimism that even God can be corrupted by absolute power).

Peter Kreeft has argued that different religions and philosophies all point to the T, but are incomplete next to Christianity. Pertinent to this discussion, Kreeft said that Socrates, only having a Deistic notion of God, argued that ignorance was the greatest sin, but Christ came along four hundred years later and defined sin as not a deficit of the intellect or knowledge but as an act of the will. Would you say Talbott is more Socratic in his notion of sin as being due to irrationality? If sin is fundamentally willful, then would full rationality make a difference to our acceptance of salvation?

(BTW, I am curious to read Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God, but it is not in any of my local libraries, nor can I find it even used for much less than $20-25. Yes, I am a cheapskate :smiley: , but it is hard to justify $25, when most books are $10-$15 on Kindle. I am aware that maybe universalism, being an unpopular idea, costs a little more to publish, so maybe I should consider as a donation to the cause, but any ideas on where to find it cheaper?)

Johnny:

It is hypocritical for non-universalists to accuse universalists alone of making evangelism moot. Craig is aware that Arm. Molinism might be perceived as vulnerable on this point and has written on the subject. reasonablefaith.org/molinism-and-evangelism. I can’t say that I buy the reasoning totally, but he has interesting ideas, such as the tendency to confuse indicative and subjunctive conditionals (e.g. Craig says it is fallacious to think we know what God would do providentially based on what we actually do.)

#33

Hey Johnny,

I’ve decided I’m going to be both a Calvinist and a Universalist. Reality is a paradox. Paradoxes are both/and. When I transcend the rational mind of either/or thinking into the both/and all opposites hold together. The rational unites with the heart as it becomes both either/or and both/and. I love good and hate evil. God is both in control and we are responsible. Christ commands obedience from the heart so that we don’t feel obligated. God both loves and hates His enemies. He both punishes and purifies. This is what we see at the cross. As we enter into a faith union with Christ the old self is destroyed by God’s wrath as grace brings to life a new self. This is what happens to those in the lake of fire. They are both punished and purified. The old self is destroyed as a new self is created. The elect for whom Christ died are the few who find life in this lifetime. The second fruits are those who will be baptized in the Lake of Fire. Both God’s chosen and the reprobate will be purified as all is reconciled to God. The first will be last and the last will be first. This is why I’m both a Calvinist and a universalist.

#34

It is possibly possible, Myshkin. For whatever reason, a rational person may say “no.” He may be angry – incensed – that God’s allowed so much suffering in the world. The thing is, this rational person is lacking information. He doesn’t fully know and understand that God is good (unless of course God ISN’T good, in which case we’re all in a lot of trouble!) He may say “NO!!! I want nothing to do with a God who would allow X to happen!” But then, on seeing that the victims of X are now filled with joy, no longer suffering even in recall, reconciled with their former oppressors (or healed from any emotional/mental/physical trauma from a natural disaster, etc., and even made richer by the experience, all out of proportion to the suffering they endured) and that X or the possibility of things of X’s sort were always necessary in order to preserve freedom – once he’s truly seen this to the point that he’s satisfied it’s true, the rational thing would be to relent. Maybe he would refuse at first, but for him to continue to refuse for all eternity would seriously be irrational.

Wanting to be God is possibly a large chunk of the theme of the Garden narrative, but this is sin that Christ died to set us free from. God’s presence alone should purge away that residual – probably faster if the person willingly lets it go. If he’s unwilling, then I think it has to be taken anyway, just as you’d pull your little boy out of the ring at the local drag races if he somehow managed to get in there. He might be rebelling, kicking, screaming, but out he would go, quite completely contrary to his little willfulness. As he matures, he’ll no longer desire to enter that ring (except maybe as a bonafide participant), but if he does continue to try to enter the ring unauthorized, during races, then adult authorities (and possibly mental health professionals) will continue to keep him out of there whether he wills it or not. We don’t always get what we want. Sometimes we don’t even get to continue to want it, if wanting it is irrational and/or harmful.

I’m not sure disagreeing with process theologians, yet still considering that thy are rational is quite the same as what we’re talking about. They’re not holding their theology out of petty willfulness, but because they think they’re right. (Or I hope that’s the case – I guess it isn’t always.) They’re holding their beliefs because that’s how they interpret the scriptures or evidences of their preference. Theoretically, they should be willing to come to a different conclusion based on additional information that would prompt such a change.

But even if a sane and fully informed person does have the capacity to hold on to his willfulness, and Father knows that this will continue forever, I think He’s obligated out of love to heal that person. We are what we are, and that is not necessarily a choice we’re able to make. If it’s possible to continue, being of sound mind, etc., to resist God’s gracious will for our lives, then there’s something very wrong in the spirit of us – something evil – and the something evil has to go. Whether or not your child agrees to go to surgery to have a malignant tumor removed, it’s your duty as the parent of a minor child to do what seems the best thing for her even if that means going against her will, even in this extreme and intimate a situation. You are forcing her to submit to her body being sliced open to remove a toxic presence that is in fact a native part of her own body – a procedure not even guaranteed to succeed. Most children probably trust their parents enough to willingly allow this even though they’re afraid, but if your child is unwilling, it’s still your duty to do your best for her with or without her blessing.

We’re made in the image of God, and God submits. He’s humble. He listens to His creatures, and if we can take it literally, allows them to change His mind – Abraham, Moses, David – these men all begged God to change His mind, and God submitted to their pleas. Jesus submitted to the Father, and I think it’s likely that (given He’s willing to submit at least in some way to His creatures) God the Father also submits to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, and the same all round. Granted this is a limited submission – a submission that doesn’t contradict His will and that probably is fully within what He wanted in the first place – nevertheless, would He have changed if they hadn’t asked Him to? If God asks a man to submit to what is in service of that man’s natural will – to be free and happy – and that man refuses, well, there’s something wrong with that boy! And if there’s something wrong, and God is who we believe Him to be, then He will have to fix it. No one else can, after all, and if the man’s broken, it’s not because he sat down one day (sound of spirit and mind and body) and said to himself, “What I really want to be when I grow up is a sorry, miserable, tormented, twisted SOB.”

I don’t agree with Socrates, but I’m not sure Jesus defined sin as an act of the will. I’m open to it – it’s just that I’ve never heard that and it seems to contradict what Paul said in Romans about our being slaves to sin, and doing the thing he hated – therefore it was no longer he who did it but sin that dwelt within. Jesus obviously expected His followers to exercise their wills to obey Him, but is sin an act of the will? It’s an interesting question. Sometimes it is, but whether that defines sin – or all sin – I’m not sure that’s true. In your example of jealousy – is that an act of the will, or does it rather take an act of the will to stop it? I suspect that much of the sin we commit is more an act of the flesh in general than of the will specifically (though you might justifiably include the will in the flesh). Jesus died to set us free from sin and its consequent death. We can now (in His strength) will not to sin. It still needs working out, but it’s possible. We can also yield our members as servants of sin whether because we so choose, or because we aren’t paying attention and end up back in the old rut by default. That said, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Talbott’s view of sin. Mine is closer to the idea of it being an act of will. If we do things in ignorance, then do they bring guilt? I think probably not – where there is no law, sin is not imputed. If we have an intrinsic knowledge that what we’re doing is wrong, then that’s a law of sorts, but if we’re truly ignorant, I think that scripturally, it isn’t charged. Just glancing through Talbott’s book, he also seems closer to Keeft.

I understand your reluctance to pay so much for a book. I found this link while trying to find out when the new revision is due out – sometime this year, I think. I was trying to find out and came across this little website: thomastalbott.com/index.html . Some of the chapters are available for free pdf download on the front page, and he has a link to a pdf copy of the book which he says will be $6, but when you get to the page is $24, so I’m not sure what that’s about. They’ll let you have the first 25 pages free, so that’s worth something. I suspect Talbott doesn’t update this site very often. Anyway, you can get part of the book free. And if you decide you want the whole thing, let me know. I have an extra copy somewhere but I dread trying to find it! :laughing:

Love, Cindy

#35

Hi Prince

I’ve read Craig’s arguments at the link you posted, and find them pretty feeble. He starts off by trying to dodge the question with some diversionary spin about a positive impetus for evangelisation (“I can bring souls to Christ”) being preferable to a negative impetus (“I’d better evangelise because if I don’t some souls might end up in hell”) - to which I say a resounding ‘so what’? While this may be perfectly true, it isn’t germane to the question at hand.

He then continues to drop a trail of chaff in dodging the real question - the redundancy of evangelism, given God’s middle knowledge. It may well be true that some of us, me included :smiley: , confuse our indicative conditionals with our subjunctive conditionals, but this - once again - has no bearing on that real question.

If you ask me, the whole concept of God’s middle knowledge is incoherent - at least when welded to an Arminian theology. As both James and Cindy (hi guys :smiley: ) have pointed out, Craig’s brand of Arminianism is, viewed through his Molinist lens, well nigh indistinguishable from Calvinist determinism.

Consider Craig’s attempt to refute the assertion that a Christian shouldn’t feel bad for failing to evangelise a particular individual:

There are a myriad of problems and contradictions within this short paragraph extract. For example:

“God may have arranged for”? Doesn’t sound very Arminian to me. And even if it were, why should God not have “arranged for” the non-evangelistic Christian to do the evangelising?

" … it may be that had he been obedient and gone, then God would have used him to bring them to salvation". Of course. But the fact that he was disobedient and didn’t go is irrelevant, because if, under his middle knowledge, God knows that the person *would have *responded positively to being evangelised, then the person will not be lost regardless.

" … [if he had been obedient and evangelised, God] would have created other, different people who would have been even more responsive to his message, so that even more people would have been saved!" This statement is meaningless, nonsensical. How can it be that God’s creating a particular person or persons is contingent on the actions of any pre-existing individual?

Craig continues in this nonsensical vein by trying to convince us that evangelism is actually worthwhile, because the very existence of the people we fail to evangelise might be dependent on our evangelising them. In other words, something we don’t do might lead to the person we don’t do it to not existing in the first place! That sort of contradictory metaphysical sleight of hand would be laughed off screen in an episode of Dr Who. And in any case, has Craig forgotten in the space of two lines that just because we don’t evangelise a particular person it’s a simple matter for God to “arrange for” somebody else to do the evangelising, so our lethargy is of no ultimate import.

And still the original question - what’s the point of evangelising real people (not imaginary might-have-beens) if God has middle knowledge? - remains unanswered.

Craig is a brilliant apologist, and I admire him in many ways. But on this subject he flaps around like a drunken seagull and then disappears up his own backside, methinks. And he does so because he is trying to do the impossible, to square a philosophical circle, to have his doctrinal cake and eat it. If he were honest he would either admit he cannot justify the necessity of evangelism, given the reality of God’s middle knowledge, or give up the idea of God’s middle knowledge. But if he did that he’d be stuck with the deeply unpalatable fact that God damns millions of people eternally simply because they were unlucky enough not to have heard the Gospel. Of course, if he gave up the idea that God damns people eternally at all, his problems would vanish at a stroke. And then he could join our forum :laughing: .

All the best

Johnny

#36

I admit i’m speeding through a bit at this point, but wanted to echo what you say in response to the statement that Jesus defines sin as an act of will.
I feel that Jesus defines sin as something we do by default. He points out sin that we commit that we either think is fine (in our thoughts), or in ways we may not have thought of sin before. For example, the Pharisees thought they kept ALL the law and were far from being sinners. Jesus said they sinned in their hearts and that they were hypocrites…possibly a totally new sin to them. Furthermore, He “sinned” by healing on the Sabbath.
Jesus to me redefined sin, not as doing something on a tick list of “bad things”, but as a default way of being. He told us we are evil, but have enough good in us and enough knowledge not to give our children bad things when asked for good things (undermining Total Depravity as a doctrine, i might add…we are clearly capable of recognising good in His own words). However, we sin by default, in all aspects of our being. Paul (as Cindy says) shows that we are slaves to it. We are thus NOT free.
I would say that future happiness and reconciliation = total true libertarian freedom. We are not free now, but the truth will set us free, and one day we shall know the truth (even as we are known). Who could possibly hold onto some grudge or even their pride in the face of that? Some for a bit, maybe…but God knows how to get them. God is infinitely wise, and the best debate opponent in the universe.
Whatever measure of freedom we have now will respond in joy to His persuasiveness, and we will become even more free: free to know and do all that is good, and free to escape from all the evil we could not even perceive before.

#37

Cindy:

Oh, that is tragic, I don’t think anybody wants, in their heart-of-hearts, to be unfaithful, unloving, destitute of God, etc. I think a big part of the pain that hurting people have is the comparison they inevitably make to the better person they could be. And sometimes they (or we, b/c I think even faithful people have had this exp, but again, perhaps you’ve haven’t had this sort of experience :smiley: ) just cannot see how to get there from where they are. Maybe they are dogged by insecurity and defeatism. Maybe they are too “scientific” or “commonsensical” to believe in the supernatural. Maybe they are resentful.

Hmm… it is circular… we are accountable for sin (and this accountability would seem to put us on a relatively high level with respect to God, though far from equal); yet, we are also in bondage to sin, so that we are far more immature than God.
And Jesus compared Himself to a physician. O.K. You are winning me to your view :smiley: … but I think we have to be careful, b/c we have to ask the following ?s if we throw away, or mostly sweep aside, freedom:

  1. If we aren’t free, then why would God subject us to the “veil of tears”? Why not Heaven immediately?
  2. If we aren’t free, then why are their many Biblical references to our responsibility for sin?
  3. If we aren’t free, then what sense does it make to evangelize (I’ll borrow this from JohnnyP)?

I guess for me, if we through out (or significantly discard free will), and arrive at deterministic universalism, I am utterly stumped by #1. If God loves us all unconditionally and God will guarantee our salvation, what reason would God have to allow anybody, esp. sometimes the best of people, to doubt that love or to just be soaked with pain their entire lives? That seems unnecessarily cruel. We have, I assume (please forgive me if I am wrong), relatively comfortable lives, with time to meditate on God. Yet, we know that millions and billions strive and have striven and often die b4 having time to reflect on the meaning of their pain. Why, then, if God is a universalist and a determinist, would God allow many lives to be full of gratuitous pain? Now, I realize that Paul wrote about our earthly suffering not meaning anything in the joy of eternity, that all our Earthly pain will be retroactively cancelled or transmuted. That is a beautiful and hopeful teaching. Yet, I also believe, just as Christ experienced the totality of Hell in a finite period, so also can human beings have tremendous despair - a whole eternity of Hell, in finite moments, so intensely that it seems impossible to cancel or transmute. We talked about Craig being silly or wrong to argue that the Beatific vision would remove our memories of loved ones, but should we be hypocritical and say that it will nevertheless remove memories of all earthly sufferings?

Johnny:

I share your perplexity with Craig’s Molinism (though I am very intrigued about his, or Molina’s, of God’s providence encompassing His knowledge of the counterfactuals of our freedom), but, I think we should be charitable to him, for he is trying to square the circle, or reconcile something that does appear irreconcilable in our binary logic: determinism and free will. It may be a hopeless task, but it is also wrong IMO to deny that both determinism and free will seem true. Are you a 100% believer in determinism, or 100% believer in free will?

#38

First, I really think the veil of tears is part of becoming. That’s a very long topic and I posted recently on the problem of evil or pain or something similar, so I’ll try to find that and post the link. Not that I could ever have the definitive answer. As you know, many long books have been written to address that topic and I wouldn’t even think of classing myself with the scholars who’ve written them (especially since I haven’t even read most of them!)

Second, I wouldn’t say we aren’t free at all – just that we aren’t free enough. Even a slave has some responsibility for his actions. I do think the responsibility for sin is limited though. To whom much is given, of that one much is required. Father wants us free from sin. That requires a fundamental change in our very persons. I think the help for this has always been available. Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Moses was the friend of God. Tamar was faithful to her relationship, desiring to produce an heir for her husband who was dead and Judah said she was more righteous than he. Was she? Maybe – even despite her dubious methods. Rahab believed and hid the spies who came to her and became an ancestress to Jesus. David was a man after God’s own heart. Elijah ascended in a chariot of fire. These people were all BC, but they had a measure of freedom from sin – some more than others. I think what Father wants from us is that we grow and develop and strive toward the truth. If we do that, He can and will help us.

Because of the systemic disease of Adam’s race though, none of us can achieve satisfactory headway against unrighteousness. We’re swimming upriver and we haven’t the strength for it. We’re responsible to give it our best effort, but Father understands we won’t make a lot of progress. Maybe part of the point is that we see how much progress we can’t make. Since Jesus came to set us free, I think we’re responsible to follow Him. If we don’t, and we’ve had the opportunity but refused it out of willfulness, we’re going to smart for it. That might be a chastisement or simply the natural result of our actions. Either way, it’s bound to be unpleasant.

Third, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. He sent His Word and healed them of all their diseases. His Word will not return to Him empty but will accomplish all that He sent it out to do. The word and the Word have power. People encounter the Word mostly through the word in our mouths or from our pens or keyboards or whatever means of communication we use. Evangelism is planting the word. It helps to start the process of making people free.

So . . . I’m off to try and find my last theodicy post . . . :slight_smile:

#39

I think this may be what I was looking for:

This one might also be interesting:

Let me know if either of these help at all, or if you have some other question that I didn’t cover. :slight_smile:

#40

Hello Prince, Cindy, James

You guys are chipping away admirably at an immensely profound and difficult subject - one many of us here have debated before, as have far greater minds than ours for millennia (or mine, at least :smiley:). I think you all make excellent points, and ask excellent, challenging questions. And my honest belief is that some of those questions are, quite simply, unanswerable - this side of the veil. In much the same way as I think a full explanation for the so-called ‘problem of evil’ is beyond our finite minds, I think a full understanding of the necessary corollaries of a truly free creation is beyond us also.

(One of my favourite observations on this subject is Bob Dylan’s song Tempest, about the tragedy of the Titanic. Dylan pictures the anxious relatives waiting for news of their loved ones, trying to make sense of the disaster: “They waited at the landing / and they tried to understand / but there is no understanding / for the judgement of God’s hand”.)

And vitally, I do think we inhabit a truly free creation. If creation is not free, then, as you imply in your first question to Cindy, Prince, what’s the point of this vale of tears, what’s the point of existence full stop? None that I can see. If strict determinism is true, then God is a moral monster, and a twistedly sadistic one at that - or at least he would be, were such a being even possible, which it isn’t, in my opinion. Hence my contempt for, and dismissal of, the doctrines of hard-core Calvinism. No, freedom is essential to theodicy.

I would go so far as to say that a truly free creation is both the only one worth living in, and the only one worthy of our magnificent, righteous and loving God. By which I mean a creation in which everything - people, animals, viruses, cancer cells, plants, rocks, rivers, oceans, hurricanes, comets, stars, everything - is free to act according to its created nature. From the macro to the micro, from a supernova or a volcano to a subatomic quark or lepton, every non-living thing is free to be itself, to do what it does in its own nature - hence the sometimes deadly destructiveness of the natural world.

Things start to get very problematic once we talk about living things, animals who are able to make decisions about their behaviour, and hence about the destruction they cause. And of course they get even more problematic when we talk about moral animals, ie us. Our moral freedom is a wonderful gift from God, and an essential attribute of our privileged status in creation. But oh it is a terrible, terrible burden, and more dangerous than any earthquake. Was God right to give us that freedom, you ask, given the terrible things we have done in abusing it? My answer is yes. But I confess I speak it through lips quivering with doubt.

Of course, as your question to me implies, Prince, there is no such thing as 100% freedom. The Bible holds in tension the concepts of God’s sovereignty over events and our powerlessness to save ourselves, and our responsibility in our actions, our culpability for our sins. Determinism and freedom, they are there in the Bible, and surely they are there in nature too:

While I consider myself ‘free’ to act as I wish, I do not believe in strong libertarian freedom, because I am predisposed, preconditioned if you like, to act in a certain way, to make the choices I do, by all sorts of factors over which I have little or no control - my genes, my upbringing, my environment, my life circumstances. And of course my conscience.

Consider this question: am I free to torture and murder a child? In a very important sense I am. If nobody else intervenes to stop me, I am free to do that heinous thing, as long as I am prepared to accept the consequences if I am caught (imprisonment and the utter opprobrium of society). But in another very important sense I am not, because my conscience forbids it. For me, it is inconceivable that I could or would ever do such a thing. Obviously there is no reason for me to want to do so, but to take an absurd hypothetical example, if a philosopher challenged me to do it to ‘prove’ that I had strong libertarian free will, with a cast iron guarantee that nobody else would ever find out about it, and I would suffer no repercussions whatsoever, I still wouldn’t be able to do it. Neither, I suspect, would he.

And lest we forget, that freedom - the freedom to torture and kill children - is the freedom God gives us. For me, there is no understanding of that.

Two more thoughts and I am done, for now. James, you say that “future happiness and reconciliation = total true libertarian freedom. We are not free now, but the truth will set us free, and one day we shall know the truth (even as we are known).” I would question that. I have come to believe that the sort of freedom we will have in the eschaton is freedom from the burden of moral choice. I’m not sure, but I think it was Jurgen Moltmann who articulated this concept, that as long as we have to make moral choices we are not truly free. This doesn’t mean that we will become moral robots in heaven, but that once having truly and freely embraced God in all his benevolent omnipotence we will effectively hand over that burden of moral choice to Him, and give up the power to sin (a power which was an essential component of our getting to that point of free acceptance in the first place).

And lastly, on Prince’s point that rational people may choose to reject God eternally, out of some sort of Sartrean despair, Thomas Talbott makes the point that what God wants for us is, at bottom, what we also want for ourselves - ie our own complete, total happiness. Surely anyone who does not desire her own happiness is not truly rational, is still in bondage to sin, or illness, or whatever, and hence still in need of God’s grace, or more of God’s grace? That’s how I see it anyway.

All the best

Johnny

#41

Cindy:

I haven’t heard a theodicy for suffering in a determined universe b4 (most involve Free Will Defence); except the Calvinist justification that since God is just, holy, omniscient, God couldn’t in principle do anything wrong, no matter how we judge things. I think, to use your example of God as the artist slowly creating a work, we would have to know if this is a choice of God to create slowly, and indirectly inflicting pain on God’s “unwilling” (I see ur problem having only anthropomorphisms to describe this) raw material or if God is constrained. I understand you arguing for the latter and though we are not in an epistemic position to know the metaphysical necessity of that slow creating involving pain, it is at least conceivable that God could have avoided this, for the more we move away from freedom as being necessary or as the greatest good (or equally good compared to universal happiness), then the less likely the “unwillingness” of the raw material/nothingness (or that with the tendency to “chaos”) is due to any entity but God.

Jesus Christ, however, is an (the) answer: if suffering is unavoidable (or a method of creating that God prefers), then at least God is fair and inflicts it on Himself, though maybe if this creation method is just one of preference, it would be better of God to spare everybody including Godself as Jesus.

I got the .pdf copy of The Inescapable Love of God and will read it this weekend between rounds of shovelling out of the polar vortex :smiley: .

Johnny:

What do you think of Craig’s retort to Talbott that freedom being only a “fully informed decision” is question-begging, since that would make rejection under any kind of “normal” circumstances impossible (though Talbott is referring to having a fully-informed freedom in the afterlife, where presumably our illusions are shattered, and Craig thinks that afterlife conversions are unBiblical)? Similarly, if knowledge lessens the probability of rejecting the good or right thing, then how do we explain rejection on behalf of people who are by all accounts very knowledgeable (though not absolutely) and good (from a humanitarian standpoint) and reject God? Though this is perhaps a fanciful example, Lucifer (if you believe in his existence), is the most knowledgeable created being and he rejected God. Whether that is Biblical or more an idea of Milton I suppose is an open question. (Craig and Talbott also wrote about “Miltonic” rejection - I can’t remember their full comments).

I think you present a challenging question. “Freedom” certainly involves determinism at some level, or at least rational explicability (i.e. the reason most people don’t do heinous things is because they know they are evil, not b/c they choose to be good on a whim as true indeterminists might have to hold). Craig gave some examples of his notion of freedom, in a recent debate he had with Paul Helm, a Calvinist, and thinks that God’s knowledge of counterfactuals or what we would in any given situation doesn’t preclude our freedom to choose. Craig cites 1 Corinthians 10:13* No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it*.; Helm and Craig debated whether Romans 8:28-30 jived with Molinism or Calvinism, esp. Romans 8:29, how strongly to interpret “foreknew” or προγινώσκω (Strong’s g4267).

#42

Myshkin,

My “understanding” is always evolving. I pretty much agree with what Johnny has said about free will – what Dave would call “free will enough.” :laughing: Only I’m not sure if I understand what Johnny means by his explanation of the form of free will in the age to come. I think that then, freedom having been made complete, we will always do the good things we want to do and never find ourselves having done the evil things we hate. We will have learned to reject the bitter and choose the sweet.

I do think that free will has an essential part in our development and in the development of others. “Soul-building,” I’m told, is the label for what I describe as my beliefs.

Can truly free and truly noble souls be built without suffering? I’m not sure how that could happen – whether the suffering results from sin or (if we had chosen the ToL instead of the TOKOGE) perhaps from voluntary self-sacrifice. Honestly I can’t see any way possible to develop moral strength without suffering playing some part. Of course we don’t want to impose suffering on one another and especially on those we love. If we can prevent suffering we do the best we can, even sometimes in situations where we shouldn’t attempt to prevent it. For example, it may be a good thing for our children to suffer from some things, but how HARD is it to allow them to do that, even for small things and even as a result of their own bad actions? We want to take it all on ourselves to spare them, but if we do that, we hurt them badly. Later they WILL suffer greater things from their poor decisions, and we won’t be able to prevent it. (Not that there’s any guarantee that won’t happen anyway.)

People we admire and praise have often suffered great things and persevered in the face of huge difficulties – say Martin Luther King Jr. for example, or Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela, Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, the apostle Paul and the other apostles as well, Perpetua & Felicity, Stephen, Jeremiah, and so many more. What sort of character does one develop in a life of ease and prosperity? I’m not sure it would be possible to bring sons and daughters worthy of the House of YHWH out of a world with no sorrows and no suffering. Maybe I’m wrong about that and I kind of hope I am because it creates problems for me – for my theodicy – but as of now, that’s what I see.

About the weather – yes, I hear you! We’re supposed to get a couple more inches of snow tonight; it was -22 when we got up around 6:00 am day before yesterday (no idea what it got down to through the night) but it’s s-l-o-w-l-y been warming since then. :frowning: Our average this time of year is in the low to mid 40s according to the radio weather man. What’s with that!? I have to stay home just to keep pushing wood into the firebox so the pipes don’t freeze. The electric co-op has instituted a peak demand charge that’s just way more than we want to pay – but with temps far south of zero, we can’t have the house unheated during the peak periods, so someone literally has to be here. It’s been a notable winter to say the least. I’m beginning to think somewhat agnostically about the possibility of the existence of spring. :laughing:

Love, Cindy

#43

Hi Prince

I think you’ve kind of answered your own - or Craig’s - question already. The way I see it, many - most? - people reject God in this life because they don’t have all the facts, either about God or about the world he has made. They find the ‘evidence’ for God unpersuasive, or at least not persuasive enough for them to commit to belief in him. Or they find the ‘evidence’ against God - the problem of evil, pluralism etc - negatively persuasive.

Now of course, it may well be that some people find the existence of God plausible - or at least possible - on a prima facie level, but deliberately choose not to investigate whether he really exists or not because they don’t want to believe in him. American philosopher Thomas Nagel is one famous example: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.”

But surely these people are in the same boat as those who find the evidence insufficient? They have an inadequate picture of God, who - as I mentioned in my earlier post, and according to Talbott - at bottom wants for them precisely what they really want for themselves.

At some point in their lives, in some future, non-earthly - purgatorial? - existence, God will, I believe, somehow bring all these people to a full enough understanding of the truth that they will all freely come to embrace that truth, and hence be ‘saved’. (By which I mean enter into a full enjoyment of the salvation they already had in Christ.) And perhaps these people will, as the Bible implies, ‘miss out’ on certain blessings, certain privileges afforded to those who believe this side of the veil - and it is this latter group (“blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”) who are what the Bible calls ‘elect’.

I would argue that all humans who don’t yet believe - including those who are very knowledgeable and very good, as you suggest - fall into one of the above categories. I would say that Craig’s problem is that because he rejects the possibility of post mortem conversion, he cannot deal with such people justly. And presumptuous as it sounds, I think he is quite simply wrong about that :smiley: .

I don’t know about Lucifer. I am very strongly agnostic on the existence of ‘personal’ demons. But even if the devil, as commonly thought of in orthodoxy, really does exist, my supposition would be that he too was not in possession of the full facts about creation when he rebelled against God. (Does anyone really want to claim omniscience for Mephistopheles :smiley: ?)

Great to debate with you, sir.

All the best

Johnny

PS Tell me more about ‘Miltonic rejection’; I know zilch about Milton, having ducked reading him at University :smiley:

#44

Cindy

Do you have Robin Parry’s book All Shall Be Well: Explorations in Universal Salvation and Christian Theology, from Origen to Moltmann? The final essay in that excellent volume, Nik Ansell’s ‘The Annihilation of Hell and the Perfection of Freedom: Universal Salvation in the Theology of Jürgen Moltmann’ goes into some detail about Moltmann’s Reformed theology of freedom. There is a section on the concept of our eschatological freedom to no longer have to choose between good and evil. If you don’t, you can download it from Amazon for Kindle. It’s quite pricey, but well worth it. All the essays are good, and some (eg Tom Talbott’s on George MacDonald’s Universalism) are brilliant.

If you don’t have the book, and you’re not planning on getting it anytime soon, let me know and I’ll try and summarise Moltmann’s thinking on this subject here. Although I have to say it’s an element of his thinking that probably only makes proper sense within the context of his theology as a whole - hence I’m not sure how easily it will ‘precis’, if you get my drift - especially with a dummy like me doing it :smiley: .

Cheers

Johnny

#45

Hi Cole

I like what you say here. I think Universalism is, like reality itself, as you say, a paradoxical, a both/and belief system. Universalism holds the Calvinist view of God’s sovereignty in tension with the Arminian view of human freedom, gives due weight to both.

While I agree that those in the Lake of Fire may well undergo some form of punishment during their purification - if God deems it necessary for their ultimate salvation - I don’t agree that God both loves and hates. God is love, and he only loves. Every other attribute or action of his is an expression of his love - including his wrath, and his punishment of sin. He punishes us because he loves us, and he wants to set us free from sin - and in my opinion his punishments are usually ‘passive’, inasumuch as all he does is allow us to experience the painful consequences of our sinful actions, sin being its own punishment, as the saying goes.

And also, I respect what you’re saying here, but I don’t think you’re a Calvinist at heart, not a real, hardcore, five point Calvinist at least. If you were, you’d be parcelling the reprobate off to eternal damnation, and you’re not doing that, are you? :smiley:

All the best

Johnny

#46

I do have it, Johnny – but I don’t think I ever got to the last couple of essays. At first I wasn’t all that impressed (it was quite a while back that I read most of it), but I think it was kind of like eating vegetables. Kids like sweets and fruits (well most of them) and don’t particularly care for veggies. But if they eat their veggies I presume it will still do them good. I think I absorbed more than I could have imagined from the parts I did read. I’ll try to get back in there and read the parts I missed. :slight_smile:

#47

Johnny,

“Miltonic” rejection is a reference to Paradise Lost, where Satan rages against God. I know the Bible is sketchy about Satan/Lucifer, so most of our ideas about Satan probably come from works like Paradise Lost and The Inferno, though there must enough of the Bible in Milton for Craig and Talbott to use a few quotes from Paradise Lost (I think) as an example in their exchange.

I think Craig and Talbott were debating what it would take for God to convince a person who was rejecting Him to want to be reconciled. Talbott argued, as you detailed, that a person, clear of all illusions, would be utterly, spiritually insane to deny God, who wills the best for them. However, Craig retorted that such insane rejections have precedents in literature (e.g. Paradise Lost) and in real life. Maybe this is up on the thread, or on another one, but Kierkegaard argued in The Sickness Unto The Death (I think) that some despair is simply willful, just b/c a person can, no matter what the consequences. Then, Cindy and I were debating whether sin is primarily willful or due to ignorance, a pt on which I think the whole Craig/Talbott debate turns.

Do you think God could convert somebody’s heart if it wasn’t a matter of ignorance but just, as we sight say, “demonic” or “Miltonic” despair, that they were rejecting God just b/c they could (or just b/c God is God)? I don’t think Craig thought that God could freely do this, but Talbott had argued that, at that point, freedom is becomes less valuable and God would be obliged to determine the person’s choice (I think this pt is also being argued on the “Cals, Arms and Univs Need a Robot” post under Biblical Theology).

Pax

#48

Hi Prince

I think your point about Satan / Lucifer and Milton is very well made. The Biblical ‘evidence’ really is so very sketchy, when you come to examine it. And given that Satan means “accuser” or “adversary” in Hebrew, I wonder whether he was ever intended to be the huge, looming, personal figure he has become in orthodox Christian thought.

I understand what you’re saying about Miltonic despair and rejection of God. I guess my answer would be that such a response to God’s offer of complete, eternal and perfect happiness falls into the ‘totally irrational’ category - hence the need for further revelation, further application of God’s grace. But if someone should use their freedom to continue to resist to the utmost, in the teeth of God’s best efforts to ‘turn them’ to him, then along with Eric Reitan (who I think has written some brilliant stuff on this subject) I would say that I’d rather not possess that kind of freedom, and would be glad if God would take it away from me. But personally I don’t think this situation very likely. I reckon we’ll all come around, in the end.

Cheers

Johnny

PS Cindy - yes, you *should *eat your veggies :laughing: