Episode 41- Welcome back Potter! is now up

[Dee Dee Warren]

In this episode I outline my reasons for embracing a Calvinistic soteriology. I include a brief explanation of the pertinent views and terms. Brief guest appearance by Her Highness, Olivia Claudia.

[Rational Gaze]

How does God choose who to save and who to damn?

[Dee Dee Warren]

I don't know. That is His business, and I am content to leave it that way.

I just finished listening to The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. She related this incident when she was a young girl. She was on a train with her father and had a question that all adults seemed to want to avoid but she heard the term in school and wanted to know what it meant. "Father, what does "sex-thoughts" mean?" Her father looked at her quite soberly and said, "Corrie, please pick up my briefcase." She tried but it was loaded down with watch parts and heavy equipment. She said, "I can't, its too heavy." He said, "That's right, and what kind of a father would I be if I expected you to carry that? It is the same way with your question. Right now, that is too heavy for you, so let me carry it until you are able."

I know God is carrying the things that are too heavy for me, and I am content.

[Rational Gaze]

Having looked into it, again, I find your argument unreasonable. For one thing, it can be directed against Calvinism. Now, your analogy of 8 out of 10 people being saved and 2 not can be used. You say that if the reason for this is because of their choice, then it counts as a "good work", thus implying they have a better moral character than those who did not choose, and that this somehow contradicts sola fide. Now, according to Calvinism, the reason why they are saved is because God chose them and their salvation is thus pre-determined. Of course, I can just turn around and say that God's choosing someone implies something about their moral character that is better than the person He does not choose to save. If not, then you would need to find an alternative basis, that is more plausible. God could choose people with a bad moral character, but then what of the people with good moral characters? You could say, but they are not good enough, but that is the case with every human being, and thus would be forced to assume God choose everybody, which leads to the heresy of universalism. If people are truly morally good, but God does not choose them, then one option is they do not need saving, but that runs contrary to the Biblical statement that all men are fallen. Or maybe they are truly morally good and God just chooses to damn them, which would make God seem capricious. Of course, being truly morally good is impossible for humans anyway, so I guess none of this really matters, it is not by our moral characters by which God chooses, with which you would presumably agree. Given that all are fallen and in need saving, why does God choose some, but not all? Unless God chooses all, which would lead to Universalism (which is a heretical view) or none, which is even more absurd. Perhaps the answer could be, God chooses those who choose Him?

This raises the bigger problem, if God chooses some and not all, and it is not by moral character, and is not a case of His choosing those who choose Him, then it would thus seem that God's choice is thus completely arbitrary and thus meaningless. Furthermore, by eliminating human free will, Calvinism renders God omniderigent, with us being rendered nothing more than mere puppets, which would thus make salvation and our relationship even more absurd and meaningless. God would be nothing more than a capricious and malevolent puppet master, and would actually validate Richard Dawkins' description in The God Delusion. Thus, Calvinism stands in contradiction with God's loving nature. In order to have a meaningful relationship with God, we would need to choose Him, and in order for our choice to be meaningful we would need the option of not choosing Him, and we would need to be able to make the decision of our own Free Will. The only valid counter to the free will type soteriologies is that this denies the role of the Holy Spirit, yet this is not the case. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we come to truly know God. However, it is possible to deny this conviction of the Holy Spirit, which would be the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (and this is only if you carry on disbelieving until your death.)

Of course, I offer the usual disclaimer that what I write is merely the random scribblings of a retard, and you are thus free to make of it what you will.

[alone]

As one retard to another, this will be subject to another podcast perhaps. Soteriology is not my desire to debate, you thought about it, and that is all that I asked. I find your logic very flawed, but you did what I asked. People wanted to know why I switched, so I told them. Perhaps all the futurists are just tired of me but it has been surprising to me what upset this has caused in people who get all frothy. It really isn't something I have too much of a desire to debate, just as when I was an Arminian, I never debated that much either. If I do end up debating this a bit, it will be to ensure I *can* answer to sharpen my own view, but I am not right now going to be any kind of Calvinist propogator. I can say though that only in the short time since I made the podcast, I am even more struck about how "theology matters" and find many Arminian answers to be patently sub-biblical.

[Rational Gaze]

What a coincidence, I'm not an Armenian.

[justgin]

Having looked into it, again, I find your argument unreasonable. For one thing, it can be directed against Calvinism. Now, your analogy of 8 out of 10 people being saved and 2 not can be used. You say that if the reason for this is because of their choice, then it counts as a "good work", thus implying they have a better moral character than those who did not choose, and that this somehow contradicts sola fide....

What? Since when is 'choosing' a work? Does that mean we aren't to choose anything, for fear we might be relying on works?

[Manwë Súlimo]

Interesting podcast, I'll have to give it some thought.

[Kenny]

I thought it was a good podcast. And I agree with the central line of argument. Especially nice, I thought, was the point about how it doesn’t help to say that to receive salvation is merely to freely receive a free gift. As you pointed out, how stubborn and pigheaded must one be to refuse such a wonderful, free gift! How much worse our unsaved neighbors must be than ourselves if that is so! But it is not so! We were no better than they. It’s a nice point that I hadn’t thought of before.

One quibble I had was that (while you affirmed that Molinism is not a soteriology) you took Molinists to have certain soteriological commitments that are at odds with a Calvinist soteriology. But Molinists qua Molinists have no such commitments. One can be a Molinist and hold to a Calvinist soteriology (though not to a traditional Calvinist view of providence).

In fact, if one is a Molinist, there is a way to have one’s cake and eat it too here. As I explained here, someone with a Molinist view of providence can consistently evade your argument while affirming that God saves everyone he can (and the Molinist can do all this without being a universalist). I don’t endorse this view, but I don’t deny it either.

[Dee Dee Warren]

Oops, I see I posted under the wrong account. I used that account years ago to blog without my now ex husband knowing as my marriage was becoming very abusive, I need to delete it.

Kenny I believe one can be a monergst and hold to middle knowledge.

Just gin that comment made no sense.

The more I see people try to avoid the conclusion the more obvious it is. Either God does it all or He doesn't. What is the third option?

[Dee Dee Warren]

What a coincidence, I'm not an Armenian.

you are a synergist

[One Bad Pig]

dizzle,

You may want to update your Tweb profile.

[Dee Dee Warren]

Done.

[Darfius]

Oops, I see I posted under the wrong account. I used that account years ago to blog without my now ex husband knowing as my marriage was becoming very abusive, I need to delete it.

Kenny I believe one can be a monergst and hold to middle knowledge.

Just gin that comment made no sense.

The more I see people try to avoid the conclusion the more obvious it is. Either God does it all or He doesn't. What is the third option?

He doesn't. No third option necessary. When God gave us free will, that is, consciousness, He chose to place a certain limit on Himself. Because the limit is self-imposed, it in no way poses a logical problem to His omnipotence or His sovereignty. The Bible is full of praise for righteousness and condemnation for the wicked, rewards for good behavior and punishment for bad, the presentation of choices that would be entirely illusory if you Calvinists had it right. I suspect that your misunderstanding in this matter springs from the same root as your preterism nonsense. In your rush to categorize and understand before you pray and obey, your eyes are straining to see with very little light showing which way to go.

[Kenny]

In your rush to categorize and understand before you pray and obey, your eyes are straining to see with very little light showing which way to go.

You are dripping with pride. This no doubt has to do with all that synergism nonsense of yours. You are too blinkered by your own sense of self-righteousness to even countenance the possibility that you may be mistaken in those beliefs that stroke your own ego instead of glorifying God.

See how easy it is to play this game?