Is Tom Talbott right?

John 6:44 "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day."

John 12:32 "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself."

A Calvinist Dictionary

HT: Arminian Perspectives

Why the Calvinist treatment of John 3:16 won't wash

Looking at the Calvinist exegetical response to John 3: 16, I find it less than adequate. The significance of God's love for the world may be in virtue of its wickedness, but if there is to be a restriction on the persons that fall under God's love according to this passage, it is a restriction to the class of persons alienated from God.

Hence, I would read the passage "God so loved the all of those persons alienated from God that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

If this is genuine love for all those persons, then it must open the way of salvation to all of those person alienated from God, such that it is causally possible for all to be saved.

Therefore John 3:16 refutes Calvinism. Or rather, the most natural, least forced reading of the passage undermines the claims of Calvinism.

Richard Carrier has an update of his paper

But the updates are about ancient science. He told me once that he would try to deal with my objection that his analysis of intentionality uses intentional concepts. He doesn't do that here.

Moreland's brief defense of libertarian free will

I didn't say that

I didn't say that if Calvinism were to turn out to be true I would call God a fiend. What I did was generate a hypothetical scenario according to which I would say that, a scenario in which my factual beliefs about what the Omnipotent One is really like were to include Calvinism but there were no changes in my present moral beliefs. I said I could imagine a scenario in which my moral values didn't change but I were to discover that this omnipotent being was not good. If that were to happen, then the only morally right thing to do would be to call that being a Fiend. The phrase Omnipotent Fiend comes straight from Lewis's The Problem of Pain, in his discussion of theological voluntarism.

If Calvinism is true then I'm wrong on about 10 fronts: my theory of free will is wrong, my view of moral responsiblity is wrong, my view of the atonement is wrong, my interpretations of Scripture are wrong, my concept of what is good is wrong. Why in the world God would predestine me to have so much screwed up is beyond my comprehension, but then a whole lot of other things are beyond my comprehension as well if Calvinism is true.

Why didn't God just predestine all Christians to be Calvinists, if Calvinism is true? It would have made life a whole lot easier!

Exegete this!

How do Calvinists analyze John 3: 16?

Examining Calvinism on Is God the Author of Sin

I like this site, which seems pretty careful in examining the claims of Calvinism. I think it comes to pretty much the right conclusion on this. I would explain it this way. If Calvinism is true humans are the proximate cause of sin, God is the remote or originating cause of sin. If Calvinism is true, we can nonetheless act with compatibilist freedom and therefore be responsible for our actions. God, for reasons mostly unknown to human beings, is justified in his action of ordaining and decreeing the relevant sins.

Some notes on the exchange

I am wondering if the following type of analysis might be helpful. 

Suppose I were to argue as follows. 

1. Given the fact that Calvinism violates my conception of what it is for God to be good, I ought to accept it only if it can be established biblically beyond a reasonable doubt. 

2. Probably, Calvinism cannot be established biblically beyond a reasonable doubt. 

3. Therefore, probably, I should not accept Calvinism. 

1 can be objected to by saying that my belief concerning what it is for God to be good is based on a mere "intuition" or gut feeling. But of course, to my mind, it is central to retaining a reasonably strong analogy between divine goodness and human goodness. I think Calvinists leave the analogy far too weak.  Some allowances for the creator-creature distinction, and, more importantly, a difference in knowledge and wisdom must be considered. But there are limits on how far that goes. 

Consider the fact, for example, that Allah of the Muslims is a creator-God. We are, if Islam is true, the creatures of Allah. But one of the main reasons I have for accepting Christianity and not Islam is the moral superiority of the God of Christianity to Allah. A God who does the sort of things Allah is said to have done is, in my view, not a good God. A good Muslim would probably say "Who are you, o Victor Reppert, to answer back to Allah?" but it seems to me that the moral failings of Allah represent a good reason to reject Islam in favor of an alternative view of God. I would be answering back to a God that, in my view, does not exist, or if he did, would not qualify as possessing the three characteristic of God: Omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness. 

Now my definition of beyond reasonable doubt is evidence sufficiently strong to justify and execution. Scripture teaches plenty of things beyond reasonable doubt: God's creation of the world, Jesus' resurrection, human sin, Jesus' crucifixion, the Ten Commandments, etc. But predestination? That strikes me as a judgment call at best. 

But notice that in this argument all I am doing is using my conception of divine goodness to impose a strong burden of proof on theologies that undermine it. In doing so I am certainly not rejecting inerrancy. It seems that some people are suggesting that in order to be a good Christian I have to commit myself not  only to Scripture's inerrancy, but to its counterfactual inerrancy.  "What if you were to discover that Scripture teaches Calvinism?" Well, I could ask "What if you were to discover that Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus predicted his own return within the lifetimes of the disciples. Would you still be a Bible-believing Christian?" 

I don't think I'm going to dedicate my life to examining this question biblically. It seem highly unlikely antecedently that it is the case. I am interested in Scripture study and in seeing how people from different theologies react to different passages. I'd like to know, for example, how a God who controls all things can sorrow over what humans have done. How he can seek lost sinners when all he has to do is bestow irresistible grace and guarantee their return to the fold. But for the most part, this is probably not the best use of my talents. Am I sticking my head in the sand? No, I am adjusting my belief system as evidence comes in, like a good Bayesian. I could be mistaken about all sorts of things. 

Am I not open to the teaching of Scripture? Do I have no clue what it means to be a Christian?The argument doesn't show that. As I indicated, Scripture teaches a lot of things beyond a reasonable doubt. It could have taught Calvinism beyond a reasonable doubt. It doesn't.  

Did C S Lewis Go to Heaven?

I am redating this post from a couple of years ago. The first five comments are from 2006.

This is an essay by a Calvinist alleging that Lewis was not a Christian. This is where certain people's position leads. And I know they don't want to go there, as you can see from the combox replies from two years ago.

And no, it's not a question of whether Lewis's authority is greater that Jesus' or Paul's. My claim is that it is sometimes reasonable and faithful as a Christian to take your belief in divine goodness over your belief in biblical inerrancy. Steve said someone who says this has no clue what it means to be a Christian. My response is if that's the charge you want to make, then you have to make it against Wesley and Lewis as well as myself. I quoted these passages not to attack Calvinism or to use their authority but to show that these people were prepared to use their conception of divine goodness as a constraint on what conclusions they drew from Scripture.

You see, what Steve keeps forgetting is that he made a charge that goes well beyond the charge of committing an error. Steve had said that in making the move I make I go so far wrong as to not even know what it means to be a Christian. In other words, to not be a Christian. If someone doesn't know what it is to be a Christian, then that person can't possibly be one, just as if I have no idea what it means to be a Democrat, then I can't be a Democrat.

I am asking Steve to accept the logical conclusions of his statements or to withdraw them.

Reply to Steve--Probably My Last Post on the Moral Argument against Calvnism

This is getting silly. These quotes were not designed to show who is right in the debate. They were not appeals to authority at all. They were designed to show that persons who allow a conception of divine goodness to govern their reading of Scripture and even to affect their acceptance of the doctrine of inerrancy can be serious and dedicated Christians, who have a clue as to what it means to be a Christian. I'm sure Calvnists think the Lewis passage and the Wesley passage were wrong. Wesley does engage in inflammatory anti-Calvinist rhetoric. But with him you suggest that he had a bad day, and is a better Christian than that most of the time. My point was not to agree with Wesley's rhetoric but to insist that you can't draw conclusions about someone's understanding of what it is to be a Christian on that basis. Unless you want to go the route of Calvinists who say that, for example, Lewis wasn't a real Christian.

Does Scripture actually teach not only that predestination is true, but also that those who use their conception of God's goodness to influence their theology and their reading of Scripture have no idea what it means to be a Christian?? Are all Christians inerrantists?

There are a lot of people like me. They love God, they are evangelicals, they may be inerrantists. They are energized first and foremost by a vision of God who loves everyone, and by everyone they mean simply everyone. You see, every time I get into an exegetical argument about Calvinism I usually end up saying "All means all," and the Calvinist says "well, it means from all groups, not all persons." To people like us, Calvinists are saying "OK you signed onto following Jesus and you think He loves everybody. But read the fine print." Shoot, a Calvinist can't even walk up to someone and say Jesus loves you and He died for you, because for any random individual person it is more probable that both those statements are false for them. For people like me, we look to Scripture to show us more deeply the loving God who sent Jesus. Believing Scripture isn't an end in itself, it is a means, a means to knowing this kind of a God. To be told that God is running an enormous puppet show with living breathing puppets who are going to be tortured forever at the end of he show, however "just" that may be in some sense, is, for people like me, horrifying. (I know this is not how Calvinists would put it, but that is how the picture appears to me to be, however it might be dressed up theologically). Further, it undermines the very reason we came to Scripture for guidance in the first place.

What you denigrate as mere "intuition" is based on a picture of God that is built up by what appears to be the teaching of numerous passages of Scripture. It also leaves us with a picture of God that resembles to a large extent the way humans ought to treat others. It doesn't use the creator-creature distinction to justify all sorts of conduct on God's part that in human contexts would be considered reprehensible.

If the vision of God's universal love is an illusion, it's nevertheless one that is undergirded, at least on the face of things, by many Scriptures. Just off the top of my head John 3:16 and the Prodigal Son come to my mind. But perhaps, we have been led up the garden path. We didn't do the exegesis, we didn't read the fine print on the Publisher's Clearinghouse letter that said God loves you and everyone else.

I have heard defending this vision of God of God'a universal love ridiculed as "just a gut feeling", as even immature and childish. But God's love, on this vision, is anything but soft. It's tough as nails. But it's one thing to believe in tough love, it's another to believe in selective and apparently arbitrary love. I could fear and perhaps obey a Calvinistic God, but without brain surgery, I don't think I could love Him. For me. God's love for all human creatures and his earnest pursuit of their salvation is what inspires my devotion to Him.

This isn't a point-scoring contest. Although there are some issues related to Calvinism that interest me, (like Frankfurt arguments for compatibilism, and some exegetial matter as well), I am getting tired of this controversy. There are people who like to argue about Calvinism non-stop, on both sides. It's hard to back out and walk away once you start something, but I think maybe other people are better for this debate than me.

I simply think that Calvinists have a mistaken understanding of God. I would never say that Calvinists have no understanding of what it is to be a Christian.

C. S. Lewis rejected inerrancy, did not defend the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement (which, by the way, is hardly the majority view through most of the Church's history), and was certainly no Calvinist. His picture of hell certainly would not pass muster with Jonathan Edwards. It is certainly possible to go beyond just differing with him on these theological points to actually questioning his faith as a Christian.