There are a few aspects of Calvinist justifications for the doctrine of hell that deserve to be elaborated. First, Calvinists think we need to kneel before our creator and submit out moral judgments, or, as they like to say, intuitions, to Scripture. Scripture, they claim, is inerrant, and teaches both predestination and the doctrine of hell. There's an exegetical catfight involved in the Calvinist debate. They offer exegeses if 2 Pet 3:9, John 3:16, and a host of other verses which are consistent with Calvinism. Opponents of Calvinism offer explanations of Eph 1:12, Romans 9, etc.
By they way, I do not think universalism is a nonstarter from a biblical perspective. I think Tom Talbott and other evangelical universalists have a case. Maybe not a winning case, but a case.
But a mere appeal to Scripture will not provide us with elucidation or explanation as to why God might do this. Lewis's Great Divorce defense of hell makes hell at least somewhat understandable, but it requires us to have libertarian free will that God must eternally respect.
Calvinists will readily admit that God could save everyone but chooses not to.
Calvinists, so far as I can see, make three moves in defense of reprobation:
1) Hell is what everyone deserves. In fact in federal theology, we can retributively deserve hell because of the actions of Adam. But, setting that aside, we perform sinful actions which fail to give God the glory he merits by being God, and we perform these actions with compatibilist free will. We aren't forced to do them, we want to do them, therefore we do them. OK, we want to do them because God predestined that we should want to do them, but that doesn't matter, we're still guilty and deserving of punishment.
I don't think compatibilist free will is sufficient for retributive punishment, and retributive punishment by the person whose actions guaranteed that the action being punished was performed in the first place strikes me as morally perverse in the extreme. So this response doesn't make hell at all understandable to me, and I don't think my intuitions are idiosyncratic here. So, even if true, this defense doesn't provide any comprehensibility to divine reprobation.
Second, Calvinists argue that the good is ultimately God's glory, and what that amounts to is God's expression of all of his attributes. He has the attribute of lovingness, which he expresses toward the elect, and he has the attribute of wrath, which he exercises toward the lost. If God were to decree universal salvation, he would be impoverishing his own glory, since he would be exercising fewer of his attributes.
But I don't see that it gives God any glory to give him a split personality. When you love, there are certain circumstances under which wrath is an appropriate expression of love. Every parent knows that. Making wrath a separate attribute that requires "expression" in order for God to receive sufficient "glory" makes absolutely no sense to me.
Third, Calvinists argue, using the "vessels of wrath" passage in Romans 9, that God creates reprobates so that the elect can appreciate the graciousness of their own salvation. It's a little bit like the story of young John Wesley's rescue from a burning house. His mother said he was a brand plucked from the burning, and he saw himself as someone with a special mission because of that. But again, I don't see that people who have face-to-face knowledge of God would need eternally suffering object lessons. How this increases the total balance of pleasure over pain in the universe strikes me as completely unclear, and why that would be justified even if we set utiltarianism aside is also completely obscure to me. It is hard to me to think that I am any less of a Christian if, in imagining myself perceiving the sufferings of the predestined reprobate, my first response is "Why couldn't God's grace have been extended to them?" as opposed to "Praise God. There but for the grace of God go I."
Yes, yes I know. Calvinists have responded to these points. Obviously their explanations make sense to them. They make absolutely no sense to me.
So, there is no basis that I can see that makes hell at all understandable, if God could have chosen a universalist world, but didn't.
A final response I have heard is the fact that God could have a reason for reprobating people that as a human I don't understand. After all, any theist has to accept the existence of apparently unredeemed evils. But with temporal evils, we can at least conceive of a future story that redeems those evils. In the case of reprobates, the evils are irreversible. They won't be redeemed in the future history of the world.
Karl Barth once said "Belief cannot argue with non-belief, it can only preach to it." Maybe that's the situation with Calvinism and their opponents.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query reprobation. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query reprobation. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, April 09, 2010
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
More discussion with Manata on Calvinism
Hi Victor,
As I can’t get into an extended back-n-forth at the current time, I’ll offer a final response to this current issue. Before I begin, let me state that my liberal comment was meant more to portray the point that you don’t post blog entries indicting the “morally repugnant” nature of some liberal issues when juxtaposed against Kantian maxims. I understand your position on abortion and euthanasia and didn’t mean to imply that you were lock-step liberal on those matters. However, I do wonder why you don’t come out with a post entitled “Euthanists and Immanuel Kant,” concluding that euthanists need to say, “So much the worse for Kant.” That you don’t do this, and even seem to afford their arguments respect, always making sure their place is set at the table of rational discourse, strikes me as wondering if you really believe this Kantian argument you’re offering.
I don't think I would want to deprive Calvinism of a place at the table of rational discourse.
I take your current argument to be that Calvinism is morally repugnant according to your pre-argumentative moral intuitions. To flesh out what is pre-argumentative, you appeal to Kant’s Humanity Principle, HP. That is, "Treat humanity in yourself and in others as an end, but never as a means." You then claim that the Calvinist idea where God “guarantees a final outcome of [the reprobates] existence” is a violation of this principle because this makes these humans’ purpose to be “either for the glory of God or the edification of the blessed.” And so you say, “It is for that reason that I see reprobates as a mere means in the Calvinistic scheme.” That Calvinism violates Kant’s HP maxim, and so helps in substantiating your pre-argumentative intuitions, is because this violation shows that a “large chunk of moral thought common to various ethical traditions has to be set aside for the Calvinistic God.” Implicit here is that a “large chunk” of moral thought holds to the HP.
I take it that I have stated your argument correctly.
So here’s some problems I see for you. First, I disagree with your understanding of Kant. I do not see how the HP is doing the work you want it to here. As virtually all ethicists have pointed out, Kant’s position here is helpless to help us apply it to any concrete cases. You claimed that it was only helpless in “borderline” cases. However, as I read them, this is not what the ethicists tell us. This is not what the two ethicists I quoted, Timmons and Griffin, tell us. But agreement with my claim seems far and wide.
For example, Pojman points out that “Even if we should respect [other rational beings] and treat them as ends, this does not tell us very much.” I certainly doubt it tells a divine being what to do when looking over a mass of sinful humanity all deserving of punishment! Pojman says that at best it tells us not to treat others cruelly; and that without a good reason (Pojman, Ethics, 147)!
On the Calvinistic view, God is in a position such that he can bring it about that no one needs to be reprobated. God can do that by decreeing that they not sin or by decreeing that they receive redemption.
Wood claims that what constitutes respect for other persons always involves a need to combine that principle with contentious claims. He thinks that no criterion for deciding when someone is being treated as a mere means that comes out of HP (Wood, Kant, 150-155). Kant scholar Richard Dean admits that “it is far from clear what precisely the humanity formulation demands” (Dean, Humanity, 4).
When you rather confidently claim that, “the instantiation of a reprobate world seems to be a clear case of using the reprobates as a means to an end,” this strikes me as not just a free lunch you want, but also a lifetime supply of Big Mac burgers! Even setting aside worries about whether treating someone as a mere means is immoral, of if God has indeed treated the reprobate as *mere* means, the problem you have is that you apparently see farther than all of those who specialize not only in ethical theory in general, but Kant in particular.
Second, speaking of Kant experts, we have some general ideas of what it means to “treat humanity as a mere means and not an end.” For example, Kosrsgaard takes Kant’s treatment of the lying promisor, i.e., “you treat someone as a mere means whenever you treat him in a way to which he could not possibly consent (G 430)” as a hermeneutical light to shine on one of the most obscure ethical claims. Others claim, in similar fashion, and based off the role rationality plays in all of this for Kant, that if we have treated some agent, S, in a certain respect R, then we have made S a mere means *iff* S would not have agreed with R *given S was fully rational*. Rachels makes a similar argument (Rachels, Elements, 132). All that is required not to treat a person as an ends is “to respect their rationality.” Obviously none of this poses a problem for the Calvinist in that we claim no forcing is going on, and we would claim that if any agent were fully rational they would agree with all of God’s decisions. Indeed, in none of Kant’s specific examples, which many claim are unclear (Dean, Humanity, 4), is there something analogous to reprobation.
I didn't really intend for my claim to rest on the fine points of Kantian ethical theory. The Second Formulation has an intuitive appeal, why? The idea of someone being simply exploited is obnoxious to us.
I thought I provided a common-sense account of what it is for someone to be treated as a mere means. If another person's interests are completely set aside so that one's own goals can be accomplished, this is using a person as a mere means. Slavery and seduction would be paradigm cases of using persons as a means. Here interests need not be given any especially hedonistic definition. I take it that Calvinists agree that the interests of a created person are served when that person can "glorify God and enjoy him forever." Whether using violence to their will or not, the Calvinistic God guarantees that reprobates act in such a way that they spoil their chance at permanent happiness, and exist in irretrievable misery. No interest of these persons is taken seriously, these are all completely frustrated in the interests of fulfilling God's purpose either for himself (glory) or for the blessed (object lessons showing them he graciousness of their salvation). In ordinary contexts this would be a paradigmatic case of exploitation.
I think Kant would say that if a reprobate person were to see the true nature of his actions, he would not do them. He can only act in a reprobate way by being irrational. The fact that God can, without violence to their will, bring it about that people act irrationally and undermine their own best interests does not mean that they are not being exploited, any more than someone who plays on the irrational greed of someone in order to bilk them out of their money is exploiting them, even though they are not committing violence to their will.
But matters don’t get any easier. Next up is the notion of ‘humanity’. You seem to read this phrase as “actual persons.” However Kant scholar Richard Dean claims that figuring this out is even harder than the above questions posed, as it is “deceptively obscure” (Dean, Humanity, 4). In fact, and contrary to you Dr. Reppert, Dean claims that viewing ‘humanity’ as a “general noun to identify all members of the human species” is “not what Kant means by humanity,” according to “contemporary commentators” (Dean, Humanity, 5). Dean claims that ‘humanity’ is a property “in” a person, and that not all humans have this. In fact, some, like Singer, would argue that some animals and no human infants have this property! So to not treat cows as mere means I had better take back those free Big Macs you asked for above! And, if this were not enough, Dean points out that there is even disagreement on what this property is supposed to be. Not all agree it is the rational nature (Dean, Humanity, 5). Indeed, on Korsgaard, Wood, and Hill’s analysis infants do not come into the picture too! Dean has to admit that “there is no perfectly consistent and univocal sense that attaches to Kant's uses of the word ‘humanity’” (Dean, Humanity, 65).
Is it right to sacrifice the interests of a rational creature for the accomplishment of one's own goals? Is it right to raise rational creatures as food? For the purpose of doing slave labor? If we could create conscious androids with the kind of rich inner life as we have, would we be justified in treating them the worst plantation owners treated Negro slaves? After all we created them, so we can use the "potter argument" from Romans 9 to justify doing whatever the hell we want with them?
At this point things look dreary for your argument.
Only if you think the argument depends upon the fine points of Kantian theory.
Third, more problems can be seen, however, in that Kant’s argument *depends on* the idea that ‘humanity’ (whatever that is) is of the *highest* worth. But if the glory of God, or the benefit of the elect, are of higher worth, than the argument falls flat. And certainly, this is quite possible; indeed, most Christians admit it as pertains to God. But we don’t even need to go there at this point.
Well, here is where the real conflict lies. Does God's glory justify all of this, or the benefit of the blessed. My first question has to be "What glory does God get, and what benefit to the blessed get?" I don't see any. But if you can accept a "divine glory" theory of the good, and then be persuaded that reprobation maximizes that good, then you can get around my argument.
I am in agreement with philosophers Rhoda, Hasker, Swinburne, Widerker, Fischer, and Helm, to name but a few, in denying that omniscience is compatible with knowledge of the future indeterministically free actions of human agents. I am in agreement with other libertarians, like Hunt and Zagzebski, that foreknowledge renders all your actions settled, accidentally necessary. I have not seen a “way out” for those who are compatibilists about libertarian freedom and God’s exhaustive, meticulous foreknowledge of all things. Your claim that God “guarantees” certain outcomes is one that is had on more systems than just Calvinism. So you must find them morally repugnant too (unless you want to shore up the language used, but even so, I still would see no “way out” for Classical theisms). But an argument from a Christian that consigns all of historic, classical Christianity to the flames of the “morally repugnant,” is an argument that just tossed all its persuasive value into the same fire. All classical models have the fate of sinners “guaranteed.”
It is one thing to make the case that a position is itself morally repugnant. It is another thing to hold that a position has logical entailments not recognized by adherents of the position lead to morally repugnant conclusions. You have suspected that I have open theist leanings, and I do. Bill Hasker is both one of the founding fathers of the AFR, and the chief philosophical defender of open theism. I think Bill's arguments (and those of others on this score) may well be right. However, C. S. Lewis, for example, thought he could escape the implications of exhaustive foreknowledge by appealing to God's transcendence of time. Bill Craig thinks middle knowledge is the way out. They don't think they have to justify unconditional reprobation. They are certainly not philosophically omniscient, and they are not embracing reprobation in the way that a Calvinist does. The fact that many people, even conservative Christians, are willing to take the step of going to open theism instead of to Calvinism when they become persuaded that reconciliations of foreknowledge and freedom don't work is ample evidence that there is something repugnant, at least to them, about Calvinism.
Fourth, I still cannot figure out what your objection to God’s punishing criminals who deserve punishment is? Your claim is that he could have saved them all. But considered as sinners qua guilty criminals, he did not have to save even one. I once asked you if God was morally obligated to save anyone. You said “No.” This takes the teeth out of your argument. If you asked why he passed over Sam and not Jim, I cannot tell you, that belongs to the hidden things. If you asked why he made a world determined to fall over a world where no one ever fell, I respond by claiming that a redeemed world is better than an unredeemed world.
There is nothing in the character of sinners that merits salvation for them. However, the character of God is such that He will save anyone who can possibly be saved. And is a redeemed world better than an unfallen world? Do you have a model of each in a petri dish so we can compare? In C. S. Lewis's Perelandra the Un-man uses the Fortunate Fall argument to try to seduce the Green Lady of Venus to fall. I don't see why failure to fall should have cost the world the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity.
Fifth, I still did not see an *argument* for how these people were treated as *mere* means. I’m not even sure I understand the relevant difference between treating one as a means and one as a mere means. According to many popular understandings of Kant, Calvinism is not treating them as mere means.
The total frustration of all their interests for the sake of the ends of others strikes me as treating them as mere means.
Sixth, you claim that Calvinism is at odds with a major chunk of moral thought. Above I showed this to be false. What I will demonstrate here is that if you accept classical theism then you hold a view that is at odds with a chunk of moral thought. Take this moral claim:
[MC] If someone, S, knows the proposition {S* will kill and rape S** at t unless I, S, intervene, and I, S, have the power to intervene} then if S failed to stop S* from killing and raping S** at t, S would be immoral.
It's easy to see that if people are given a free will, God cannot be systematically insulating the world from its effects without in effect taking that free will away. If a billy-club turns into nerf every time I try to hit someone over the head, or if I start to throw up every time I lust, I am effectively unfree. Welcome to the world of Clockwork Orange.
I take it that almost all people would agree with [MC]. Now, one might *add* to [MC], say, claim that S had a *good reason* for allowing S* to kill and rape S**. But when you make *that move* I simply say, “Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” If you claim I must know the reason, I deny this premise, appeal to skeptical theist arguments, and show that I am still untouched. BTW, this answer wouldn’t work on many interpretations of Kant!
Lastly, by way of closing I would like to say that I argued that your *Kantian* argument goes nowhere. I argued that you would have to condemn all of classical Christianity. I argued that you have yet to spell out what the problem with Calvinism WRT God passing over some sinners who deserve hell while saving some others is, exactly. I have argued that you hold a premise that conflicts with a major chunk or moral thought, and to the extent that you make it palpable, you also free Calvinism from your clutches. Furthermore, to the extent you can appeal to some kind of greater good, you still would have to say, “So much the worse for Kant;” or, perhaps, “So much the worse for traditional conceptions of omniscience.” So I hope this brief response shows why the Calvinist does not find your argument cogent (i.e., persuasive in the right kind of way). But perhaps the most damaging things I have done is shown that what you initially took to be an *explanation* of your intuition posits *more* things to explain! There is more now to explain at the level of the explanans than the explanandum.
Please take note of my analysis of exploitation above. No doubt Calvinists will say that this "exploitation" must be justified since, based on Scripture, this is just what God has done, and who are we to answer back. I am not here claiming that these considerations trump all other theological considerations. But I hope I have come a tad closer to giving you a sense of what makes Calvinism seem morally outrageous to many people, including Christians.
As I can’t get into an extended back-n-forth at the current time, I’ll offer a final response to this current issue. Before I begin, let me state that my liberal comment was meant more to portray the point that you don’t post blog entries indicting the “morally repugnant” nature of some liberal issues when juxtaposed against Kantian maxims. I understand your position on abortion and euthanasia and didn’t mean to imply that you were lock-step liberal on those matters. However, I do wonder why you don’t come out with a post entitled “Euthanists and Immanuel Kant,” concluding that euthanists need to say, “So much the worse for Kant.” That you don’t do this, and even seem to afford their arguments respect, always making sure their place is set at the table of rational discourse, strikes me as wondering if you really believe this Kantian argument you’re offering.
I don't think I would want to deprive Calvinism of a place at the table of rational discourse.
I take your current argument to be that Calvinism is morally repugnant according to your pre-argumentative moral intuitions. To flesh out what is pre-argumentative, you appeal to Kant’s Humanity Principle, HP. That is, "Treat humanity in yourself and in others as an end, but never as a means." You then claim that the Calvinist idea where God “guarantees a final outcome of [the reprobates] existence” is a violation of this principle because this makes these humans’ purpose to be “either for the glory of God or the edification of the blessed.” And so you say, “It is for that reason that I see reprobates as a mere means in the Calvinistic scheme.” That Calvinism violates Kant’s HP maxim, and so helps in substantiating your pre-argumentative intuitions, is because this violation shows that a “large chunk of moral thought common to various ethical traditions has to be set aside for the Calvinistic God.” Implicit here is that a “large chunk” of moral thought holds to the HP.
I take it that I have stated your argument correctly.
So here’s some problems I see for you. First, I disagree with your understanding of Kant. I do not see how the HP is doing the work you want it to here. As virtually all ethicists have pointed out, Kant’s position here is helpless to help us apply it to any concrete cases. You claimed that it was only helpless in “borderline” cases. However, as I read them, this is not what the ethicists tell us. This is not what the two ethicists I quoted, Timmons and Griffin, tell us. But agreement with my claim seems far and wide.
For example, Pojman points out that “Even if we should respect [other rational beings] and treat them as ends, this does not tell us very much.” I certainly doubt it tells a divine being what to do when looking over a mass of sinful humanity all deserving of punishment! Pojman says that at best it tells us not to treat others cruelly; and that without a good reason (Pojman, Ethics, 147)!
On the Calvinistic view, God is in a position such that he can bring it about that no one needs to be reprobated. God can do that by decreeing that they not sin or by decreeing that they receive redemption.
Wood claims that what constitutes respect for other persons always involves a need to combine that principle with contentious claims. He thinks that no criterion for deciding when someone is being treated as a mere means that comes out of HP (Wood, Kant, 150-155). Kant scholar Richard Dean admits that “it is far from clear what precisely the humanity formulation demands” (Dean, Humanity, 4).
When you rather confidently claim that, “the instantiation of a reprobate world seems to be a clear case of using the reprobates as a means to an end,” this strikes me as not just a free lunch you want, but also a lifetime supply of Big Mac burgers! Even setting aside worries about whether treating someone as a mere means is immoral, of if God has indeed treated the reprobate as *mere* means, the problem you have is that you apparently see farther than all of those who specialize not only in ethical theory in general, but Kant in particular.
Second, speaking of Kant experts, we have some general ideas of what it means to “treat humanity as a mere means and not an end.” For example, Kosrsgaard takes Kant’s treatment of the lying promisor, i.e., “you treat someone as a mere means whenever you treat him in a way to which he could not possibly consent (G 430)” as a hermeneutical light to shine on one of the most obscure ethical claims. Others claim, in similar fashion, and based off the role rationality plays in all of this for Kant, that if we have treated some agent, S, in a certain respect R, then we have made S a mere means *iff* S would not have agreed with R *given S was fully rational*. Rachels makes a similar argument (Rachels, Elements, 132). All that is required not to treat a person as an ends is “to respect their rationality.” Obviously none of this poses a problem for the Calvinist in that we claim no forcing is going on, and we would claim that if any agent were fully rational they would agree with all of God’s decisions. Indeed, in none of Kant’s specific examples, which many claim are unclear (Dean, Humanity, 4), is there something analogous to reprobation.
I didn't really intend for my claim to rest on the fine points of Kantian ethical theory. The Second Formulation has an intuitive appeal, why? The idea of someone being simply exploited is obnoxious to us.
I thought I provided a common-sense account of what it is for someone to be treated as a mere means. If another person's interests are completely set aside so that one's own goals can be accomplished, this is using a person as a mere means. Slavery and seduction would be paradigm cases of using persons as a means. Here interests need not be given any especially hedonistic definition. I take it that Calvinists agree that the interests of a created person are served when that person can "glorify God and enjoy him forever." Whether using violence to their will or not, the Calvinistic God guarantees that reprobates act in such a way that they spoil their chance at permanent happiness, and exist in irretrievable misery. No interest of these persons is taken seriously, these are all completely frustrated in the interests of fulfilling God's purpose either for himself (glory) or for the blessed (object lessons showing them he graciousness of their salvation). In ordinary contexts this would be a paradigmatic case of exploitation.
I think Kant would say that if a reprobate person were to see the true nature of his actions, he would not do them. He can only act in a reprobate way by being irrational. The fact that God can, without violence to their will, bring it about that people act irrationally and undermine their own best interests does not mean that they are not being exploited, any more than someone who plays on the irrational greed of someone in order to bilk them out of their money is exploiting them, even though they are not committing violence to their will.
But matters don’t get any easier. Next up is the notion of ‘humanity’. You seem to read this phrase as “actual persons.” However Kant scholar Richard Dean claims that figuring this out is even harder than the above questions posed, as it is “deceptively obscure” (Dean, Humanity, 4). In fact, and contrary to you Dr. Reppert, Dean claims that viewing ‘humanity’ as a “general noun to identify all members of the human species” is “not what Kant means by humanity,” according to “contemporary commentators” (Dean, Humanity, 5). Dean claims that ‘humanity’ is a property “in” a person, and that not all humans have this. In fact, some, like Singer, would argue that some animals and no human infants have this property! So to not treat cows as mere means I had better take back those free Big Macs you asked for above! And, if this were not enough, Dean points out that there is even disagreement on what this property is supposed to be. Not all agree it is the rational nature (Dean, Humanity, 5). Indeed, on Korsgaard, Wood, and Hill’s analysis infants do not come into the picture too! Dean has to admit that “there is no perfectly consistent and univocal sense that attaches to Kant's uses of the word ‘humanity’” (Dean, Humanity, 65).
Is it right to sacrifice the interests of a rational creature for the accomplishment of one's own goals? Is it right to raise rational creatures as food? For the purpose of doing slave labor? If we could create conscious androids with the kind of rich inner life as we have, would we be justified in treating them the worst plantation owners treated Negro slaves? After all we created them, so we can use the "potter argument" from Romans 9 to justify doing whatever the hell we want with them?
At this point things look dreary for your argument.
Only if you think the argument depends upon the fine points of Kantian theory.
Third, more problems can be seen, however, in that Kant’s argument *depends on* the idea that ‘humanity’ (whatever that is) is of the *highest* worth. But if the glory of God, or the benefit of the elect, are of higher worth, than the argument falls flat. And certainly, this is quite possible; indeed, most Christians admit it as pertains to God. But we don’t even need to go there at this point.
Well, here is where the real conflict lies. Does God's glory justify all of this, or the benefit of the blessed. My first question has to be "What glory does God get, and what benefit to the blessed get?" I don't see any. But if you can accept a "divine glory" theory of the good, and then be persuaded that reprobation maximizes that good, then you can get around my argument.
I am in agreement with philosophers Rhoda, Hasker, Swinburne, Widerker, Fischer, and Helm, to name but a few, in denying that omniscience is compatible with knowledge of the future indeterministically free actions of human agents. I am in agreement with other libertarians, like Hunt and Zagzebski, that foreknowledge renders all your actions settled, accidentally necessary. I have not seen a “way out” for those who are compatibilists about libertarian freedom and God’s exhaustive, meticulous foreknowledge of all things. Your claim that God “guarantees” certain outcomes is one that is had on more systems than just Calvinism. So you must find them morally repugnant too (unless you want to shore up the language used, but even so, I still would see no “way out” for Classical theisms). But an argument from a Christian that consigns all of historic, classical Christianity to the flames of the “morally repugnant,” is an argument that just tossed all its persuasive value into the same fire. All classical models have the fate of sinners “guaranteed.”
It is one thing to make the case that a position is itself morally repugnant. It is another thing to hold that a position has logical entailments not recognized by adherents of the position lead to morally repugnant conclusions. You have suspected that I have open theist leanings, and I do. Bill Hasker is both one of the founding fathers of the AFR, and the chief philosophical defender of open theism. I think Bill's arguments (and those of others on this score) may well be right. However, C. S. Lewis, for example, thought he could escape the implications of exhaustive foreknowledge by appealing to God's transcendence of time. Bill Craig thinks middle knowledge is the way out. They don't think they have to justify unconditional reprobation. They are certainly not philosophically omniscient, and they are not embracing reprobation in the way that a Calvinist does. The fact that many people, even conservative Christians, are willing to take the step of going to open theism instead of to Calvinism when they become persuaded that reconciliations of foreknowledge and freedom don't work is ample evidence that there is something repugnant, at least to them, about Calvinism.
Fourth, I still cannot figure out what your objection to God’s punishing criminals who deserve punishment is? Your claim is that he could have saved them all. But considered as sinners qua guilty criminals, he did not have to save even one. I once asked you if God was morally obligated to save anyone. You said “No.” This takes the teeth out of your argument. If you asked why he passed over Sam and not Jim, I cannot tell you, that belongs to the hidden things. If you asked why he made a world determined to fall over a world where no one ever fell, I respond by claiming that a redeemed world is better than an unredeemed world.
There is nothing in the character of sinners that merits salvation for them. However, the character of God is such that He will save anyone who can possibly be saved. And is a redeemed world better than an unfallen world? Do you have a model of each in a petri dish so we can compare? In C. S. Lewis's Perelandra the Un-man uses the Fortunate Fall argument to try to seduce the Green Lady of Venus to fall. I don't see why failure to fall should have cost the world the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity.
Fifth, I still did not see an *argument* for how these people were treated as *mere* means. I’m not even sure I understand the relevant difference between treating one as a means and one as a mere means. According to many popular understandings of Kant, Calvinism is not treating them as mere means.
The total frustration of all their interests for the sake of the ends of others strikes me as treating them as mere means.
Sixth, you claim that Calvinism is at odds with a major chunk of moral thought. Above I showed this to be false. What I will demonstrate here is that if you accept classical theism then you hold a view that is at odds with a chunk of moral thought. Take this moral claim:
[MC] If someone, S, knows the proposition {S* will kill and rape S** at t unless I, S, intervene, and I, S, have the power to intervene} then if S failed to stop S* from killing and raping S** at t, S would be immoral.
It's easy to see that if people are given a free will, God cannot be systematically insulating the world from its effects without in effect taking that free will away. If a billy-club turns into nerf every time I try to hit someone over the head, or if I start to throw up every time I lust, I am effectively unfree. Welcome to the world of Clockwork Orange.
I take it that almost all people would agree with [MC]. Now, one might *add* to [MC], say, claim that S had a *good reason* for allowing S* to kill and rape S**. But when you make *that move* I simply say, “Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” If you claim I must know the reason, I deny this premise, appeal to skeptical theist arguments, and show that I am still untouched. BTW, this answer wouldn’t work on many interpretations of Kant!
Lastly, by way of closing I would like to say that I argued that your *Kantian* argument goes nowhere. I argued that you would have to condemn all of classical Christianity. I argued that you have yet to spell out what the problem with Calvinism WRT God passing over some sinners who deserve hell while saving some others is, exactly. I have argued that you hold a premise that conflicts with a major chunk or moral thought, and to the extent that you make it palpable, you also free Calvinism from your clutches. Furthermore, to the extent you can appeal to some kind of greater good, you still would have to say, “So much the worse for Kant;” or, perhaps, “So much the worse for traditional conceptions of omniscience.” So I hope this brief response shows why the Calvinist does not find your argument cogent (i.e., persuasive in the right kind of way). But perhaps the most damaging things I have done is shown that what you initially took to be an *explanation* of your intuition posits *more* things to explain! There is more now to explain at the level of the explanans than the explanandum.
Please take note of my analysis of exploitation above. No doubt Calvinists will say that this "exploitation" must be justified since, based on Scripture, this is just what God has done, and who are we to answer back. I am not here claiming that these considerations trump all other theological considerations. But I hope I have come a tad closer to giving you a sense of what makes Calvinism seem morally outrageous to many people, including Christians.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Calvinism, Infant Damnation, and the Problem of Evil as a pseudoproblem
The question has to do with whether we have an understanding of goodness that allows us to view suffering as a problem. Of course, infants are deemed innocent, then God doesn't have an moral motive to inflict suffering as well as a moral motive to alleviate suffering. However, if federal theory is accepted, along with a Reformed understanding of God's moral motivation to punish sin, then even an infant is under the federal headship of Adam and therefore God has a moral motivation to inflict suffering on the infant based on his justice, just as he has a moral motivation to alleviate suffering based on his mercy, and it's up for grabs whether he is just or merciful. Exactly the same situation obtains with infant reprobation as adult reprobation, and the only difference is that in the case of adult reproations, we have people who are visibly sinful, while in the case of infant reprobations, there is an appearance of the innocence of the victims. However, on the assumption that we can deserve punishment in virtue of our descent from Adam, this appearance is illusory, and there is no relevant difference between the two cases.
In ordinary human contexts, moral goodness/righteousness/holiness is centered around, among other things, the minimization of the suffering of others, or maximizing the benefit of others. This may not be all there is to morality (unless you're a utilitarian), but it's an important part of it at least. On the Reformed conception of goodness, this is a contingent fact about human beings in virtue of the kinds of social relations in which we find outselves. The Calvinistic response to the problem of evil maintains that this requirement for God to minimize suffering, either in the short run or in the long run, is a function of extrapolating the conception of human goodness, which is defined in terms of God's commands to us, to God himself, thus collapsing the creator-creature distinction and requiring God to minimize suffering.
That is why I have been arguing that the Calvinistic claim with respect to the problem of evil is to eliminate it, and this is done by rendering it a pseudoproblem. What the Calvinist claims is that God has a moral reason to inflict suffering as well as to alleviate it, therefore the amount and distribution of suffering does not count against theism one iota.
If this all seems counterintuitive to you, well, (and it seems counterintuitive on top of counterintuitive on top of counterintuitive to me) that's just a sign of how depraved you are, and how much you want to avoid God's justice, and how much you need to submit your intuitions to God's Holy Word. Or so I'm being told.
In ordinary human contexts, moral goodness/righteousness/holiness is centered around, among other things, the minimization of the suffering of others, or maximizing the benefit of others. This may not be all there is to morality (unless you're a utilitarian), but it's an important part of it at least. On the Reformed conception of goodness, this is a contingent fact about human beings in virtue of the kinds of social relations in which we find outselves. The Calvinistic response to the problem of evil maintains that this requirement for God to minimize suffering, either in the short run or in the long run, is a function of extrapolating the conception of human goodness, which is defined in terms of God's commands to us, to God himself, thus collapsing the creator-creature distinction and requiring God to minimize suffering.
That is why I have been arguing that the Calvinistic claim with respect to the problem of evil is to eliminate it, and this is done by rendering it a pseudoproblem. What the Calvinist claims is that God has a moral reason to inflict suffering as well as to alleviate it, therefore the amount and distribution of suffering does not count against theism one iota.
If this all seems counterintuitive to you, well, (and it seems counterintuitive on top of counterintuitive on top of counterintuitive to me) that's just a sign of how depraved you are, and how much you want to avoid God's justice, and how much you need to submit your intuitions to God's Holy Word. Or so I'm being told.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Some clarifications on the authorship of sin
OK, let me make a clarification. Indeed, the phrase "author of sin" does really need clarification. This is one way of clarifying the idea, by pointing out that on a Calvinist view the difference between a world in which I sin and one in which I don't is the result of action by God, while on an Arminian view, it looks like a world in which I don't sin is not a world that God has the power to actualize. I mean here a world identical to this one up to t. God may know this by consulting his middle knowledge, he may know it by simple foreknowledge, or he may not find out about it until it happens (open theism).
On some libertarian views, my decision today affects God's decision to instantiate the world, even though that took place before the foundation of the world. George Mavrodes, for example, is a defender of backwards causation. But all these views make my choice the deciding factor in whether I sin or not.
I take it that when the Calvinistic God is called the author of sin, however, the intent is either to argue either that God is morally blameworthy for sin, or that humans are not blameworthy for sin. The second of these claims requires an incompatibilist account of blameworthiness and, in particular, fitness for retribution.
I think a lot of secular compatibilists, such as Dennett or Schlick, see retribution as a barbarous notion, and think that holding a person morally responsible is a matter of behavior modification. In fact, my master's thesis in philosophy at Arizona State developed that idea. A person could accept some forms of compatibilism while being a cheerful incompatibilist (or incoherentist--the idea of retribution makes no sense) about retribution. A Calvinist doesn't have those options open to him. He is committed to the idea that compatibilist freedom is sufficient to make a sinner fit for retribution.
The first of these claims is that God being the author of sin in the sense described makes him blameworthy for sin. Now the point made by then-atheist/compatibilist Flew would hold if compatibilism were true, namely, that God could have created the world in such a way that everyone freely does what is right. That Calvinist will have to argue that could have does not mean should have, and that God has a reason for creating a world with sinners and even reprobates as opposed to the world of Mr. Rogers, where everyone freely does what is right.
The Calvinist response is typically that God decrees sin so that the sacrifice of Christ can be possible, and God decrees reprobation because the existence of reprobates gives God the opportunity to glorify himself through his wrath against unrepentant sin. This glorification is explained either by saying that it makes the blessed in heaven more grateful for their salvation, or by saying that it is intrinsically good for God to display his wrath as well as his mercy. I find both of these responses perverse in the extreme. But maybe that's just because I suffer from a bad case of Calvin Derangement Syndrome.
Of course, the Calvinist can also say that this is all part of God's secret will, so of course we have no idea why He does it.
On some libertarian views, my decision today affects God's decision to instantiate the world, even though that took place before the foundation of the world. George Mavrodes, for example, is a defender of backwards causation. But all these views make my choice the deciding factor in whether I sin or not.
I take it that when the Calvinistic God is called the author of sin, however, the intent is either to argue either that God is morally blameworthy for sin, or that humans are not blameworthy for sin. The second of these claims requires an incompatibilist account of blameworthiness and, in particular, fitness for retribution.
I think a lot of secular compatibilists, such as Dennett or Schlick, see retribution as a barbarous notion, and think that holding a person morally responsible is a matter of behavior modification. In fact, my master's thesis in philosophy at Arizona State developed that idea. A person could accept some forms of compatibilism while being a cheerful incompatibilist (or incoherentist--the idea of retribution makes no sense) about retribution. A Calvinist doesn't have those options open to him. He is committed to the idea that compatibilist freedom is sufficient to make a sinner fit for retribution.
The first of these claims is that God being the author of sin in the sense described makes him blameworthy for sin. Now the point made by then-atheist/compatibilist Flew would hold if compatibilism were true, namely, that God could have created the world in such a way that everyone freely does what is right. That Calvinist will have to argue that could have does not mean should have, and that God has a reason for creating a world with sinners and even reprobates as opposed to the world of Mr. Rogers, where everyone freely does what is right.
The Calvinist response is typically that God decrees sin so that the sacrifice of Christ can be possible, and God decrees reprobation because the existence of reprobates gives God the opportunity to glorify himself through his wrath against unrepentant sin. This glorification is explained either by saying that it makes the blessed in heaven more grateful for their salvation, or by saying that it is intrinsically good for God to display his wrath as well as his mercy. I find both of these responses perverse in the extreme. But maybe that's just because I suffer from a bad case of Calvin Derangement Syndrome.
Of course, the Calvinist can also say that this is all part of God's secret will, so of course we have no idea why He does it.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Calvinism and Immanuel Kant
Kant's second formulation of the Categorical Imperative says "Treat humanity in yourself and in others as an end, but never as a means." Does it bother Calvinists at all that reprobates are, according to their theology, a mere means and not an end in themselves? Thus, heaven is not a kingdom of ends, there are people who interests are completely sacrificed to the interests of others?
I raised this issue parenthetically in one of my posts last year, and I was reading over a response by Paul Manata where he answers it, and I link to that answer here.
ii) Kant justified punishment by the categorical imperative by arguing that if someone S, say, killed someone, then S is acting as if this were a universal law, and thereby agrees with his punishment; agrees it is just. So, if S sinned against God, and knew this deserved death (cf. Romans 1), whence ariseth the Kantian problem?
The question here, though, is why such a sinner exists, and it is the second formulation of the Imperative, not the first, that we are concerned with. The only way this could work would be if you said that it served the true ends of the sinner to bring it about both that he sins and is punished. And I think what you have to say is that the sinner's interests are sacrificed completely for the glory of God.
The Calvinist response, I supposed, has to be "So much the worse for Kant." Which is surely a possible answer. However, I am attempting to cash out the intuitions that underlie the negative reaction that many of us have with respect to Calvinism. Is it mere emotion or sentimentality? Or is it something else? If the Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative is a rational moral principle, then isn't there a rational difficulty with Calvinism?
The Westminister Shorter Catechism was, I take it, not written by an Arminian, and it says the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. I don't think reprobates glorify God (this is different from claiming that God is glorified in their reprobation, which Calvinists do claim) and they surely don't enjoy him forever. So apparently, if Calvinism is true, God creates creatures with a true end which they do not achieve, in spite of being in complete control of them.
I raised this issue parenthetically in one of my posts last year, and I was reading over a response by Paul Manata where he answers it, and I link to that answer here.
ii) Kant justified punishment by the categorical imperative by arguing that if someone S, say, killed someone, then S is acting as if this were a universal law, and thereby agrees with his punishment; agrees it is just. So, if S sinned against God, and knew this deserved death (cf. Romans 1), whence ariseth the Kantian problem?
The question here, though, is why such a sinner exists, and it is the second formulation of the Imperative, not the first, that we are concerned with. The only way this could work would be if you said that it served the true ends of the sinner to bring it about both that he sins and is punished. And I think what you have to say is that the sinner's interests are sacrificed completely for the glory of God.
The Calvinist response, I supposed, has to be "So much the worse for Kant." Which is surely a possible answer. However, I am attempting to cash out the intuitions that underlie the negative reaction that many of us have with respect to Calvinism. Is it mere emotion or sentimentality? Or is it something else? If the Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative is a rational moral principle, then isn't there a rational difficulty with Calvinism?
The Westminister Shorter Catechism was, I take it, not written by an Arminian, and it says the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. I don't think reprobates glorify God (this is different from claiming that God is glorified in their reprobation, which Calvinists do claim) and they surely don't enjoy him forever. So apparently, if Calvinism is true, God creates creatures with a true end which they do not achieve, in spite of being in complete control of them.
Monday, December 05, 2016
C. S. Lewis on homosexuality and the Special Sin Heresy
In taking what we can from C. S. Lewis with respect to the current issues concerning homosexuality and marriage equality, I think there are two points that are raise caution flags for the traditionalist, and one that I think benefit the traditionalist. Here is one of the caution flags:
Here’s a fellow, you say, who used to come before us as a moral and religious writer, and now, if you please, he’s written a whole chapter describing his old school as a very furnace of impure loves without one word on the heinousness of the sin. But there are two reasons. One you shall hear before this chapter ends. The other is that, as I have said, the sin in question is one of the two (gambling is the other) which I have never been tempted to commit. I will not indulge in futile philippics against enemies I never met in battle.
(“This means, then, that all the other vices you have so largely written about…” Well, yes, it does, and more’s the pity; but it’s nothing to our purpose at the moment.)
Many Christians commit the mistake I like to call the Special Sin thesis, that homosexuality, as opposed to other sins like carelessness in divorce, pornography, or even greed and exploitation of the poor, is a sin in its own special category of wickedness, which, unlike other sins, brings down the wrath of God. I think this is heretical. There are no special sins.
Lewis goes on:
The Wyvernians seem to me in retrospect to have been the least spontaneous, in that sense the least boyish, society I have ever known. It would perhaps not be too much to say that in some boys’ lives everything was calculated to the great end of advancement. For this games were played; for this clothes, friends, amusements, and vices were chosen.
And that is why I cannot give pederasty anything like a first place among the evils of the Coll. There is much hypocrisy on this theme. People commonly talk as if every other evil were more tolerable than this. But why? Because those of us who do not share the vice feel for it a certain nausea, as we do, say, for necrophily? I think that of very little relevance to moral judgment. Because it produces permanent perversion? But there is very little evidence that it does. The Bloods would have preferred girls to boys if they could have come by them; when, at a later age, girls were obtainable, they probably took them. Is it then on Christian grounds? But how many of those who fulminate on the matter are in fact Christians? And what Christian, in a society as worldly and cruel as that of Wyvern, would pick out the carnal sins for special reprobation? Cruelty is surely more evil than lust and the World at least as dangerous as the Flesh. The real reason for all the pother is, in my opinion, neither Christian nor ethical. We attack this vice not because it is the worst but because it is, by adult standards, the most disreputable and unmentionable, and happens also to be a crime in English law. The world may lead you only to Hell; but sodomy may lead you to jail and create a scandal, and lose you your job. The World, to do it justice, seldom does that.
If those of us who have known a school like Wyvern dared to speak the truth, we should have to say that pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things. It was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with fetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition. In his unnatural love affairs, and perhaps only there, the Blood went a little out of himself, forgot for a few hours that he was One of the Most Important People There Are. It softens the picture. A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in. Plato was right after all. Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore the traces of his divinity.
Long before the days of the marriage equality movement, I taught Contemporary Moral Issues courses at Northern Illinois University. I had students there with Catholic backgrounds, who had largely abandoned their Catholic beliefs, at least where sexual issues were concerned, except when it came to homosexuality. They hoped to hold on to some semblance of righteousness because, while they certainly weren't good Catholics in their conduct, at least they weren't homosexuals.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Helm's Deep: Analysis 11: The will of Calvin's God - Can God be trusted?
Helm's Deep: Analysis 11: The will of Calvin's God - Can God be trusted?:
This is Paul Helm's analysis of the issue of Calvinism and theological volutarism.
"For God's will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why he so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God's will, which cannot be found. Let men's rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what does not exist. (Inst. III. 23. 2 Italics added)."
Helm claims that this is consistent with denying that Calvin is a voluntarist. His view, which is picked up by the Triabloggers and also defended in a paper by Sudduth, suggests that Calvin is saying that God's reason for reprobation isn't nonexistent, but rather opaque to humans. There is a reason in the order of being, but it cannot be brought into the order of knowing by human beings.
The question I have is why Calvin uses the language that he uses. He says that there is nothing higher than God's will and that if we ask for God's reason we are asking for something that does not exist. The plain sense of the text seems to be not that we don't know what the reason is, but rather, that there just is no reason, that God's willing it is reason enough. To be consistent with Helm's interpretation, shouldn't Calvin have said "Let man's rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what we cannot know?"
This is Paul Helm's analysis of the issue of Calvinism and theological volutarism.
"For God's will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why he so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God's will, which cannot be found. Let men's rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what does not exist. (Inst. III. 23. 2 Italics added)."
Helm claims that this is consistent with denying that Calvin is a voluntarist. His view, which is picked up by the Triabloggers and also defended in a paper by Sudduth, suggests that Calvin is saying that God's reason for reprobation isn't nonexistent, but rather opaque to humans. There is a reason in the order of being, but it cannot be brought into the order of knowing by human beings.
The question I have is why Calvin uses the language that he uses. He says that there is nothing higher than God's will and that if we ask for God's reason we are asking for something that does not exist. The plain sense of the text seems to be not that we don't know what the reason is, but rather, that there just is no reason, that God's willing it is reason enough. To be consistent with Helm's interpretation, shouldn't Calvin have said "Let man's rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what we cannot know?"
Friday, October 20, 2017
C. S. Lewis on homosexuality at his public school
It is interesting that Lewis doesn't think that the main source of what would now be called homophobia is Christian at all.
The Wyvernians seem to me in retrospect to have been the least spontaneous, in that sense the least boyish, society I have ever known. It would perhaps not be too much to say that in some boys’ lives everything was calculated to the great end of advancement. For this games were played; for this clothes, friends, amusements, and vices were chosen.
And that is why I cannot give pederasty anything like a first place among the evils of the Coll. There is much hypocrisy on this theme. People commonly talk as if every other evil were more tolerable than this. But why? Because those of us who do not share the vice feel for it a certain nausea, as we do, say, for necrophily? I think that of very little relevance to moral judgment. Because it produces permanent perversion? But there is very little evidence that it does. The Bloods would have preferred girls to boys if they could have come by them; when, at a later age, girls were obtainable, they probably took them. Is it then on Christian grounds? But how many of those who fulminate on the matter are in fact Christians? And what Christian, in a society as worldly and cruel as that of Wyvern, would pick out the carnal sins for special reprobation? Cruelty is surely more evil than lust and the World at least as dangerous as the Flesh. The real reason for all the pother is, in my opinion, neither Christian nor ethical. We attack this vice not because it is the worst but because it is, by adult standards, the most disreputable and unmentionable, and happens also to be a crime in English law. The world may lead you only to Hell; but sodomy may lead you to jail and creat a scandal, and lose you your job. The World, to do it justice, seldom does that.
If those of us who have known a school like Wyvern dared to speak the truth, we should have to say that pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things. It was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with fetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition. In his unnatural love affairs, and perhaps only there, the Blood went a little out of himself, forgot for a few hours that he was One of the Most Important People There Are. It softens the picture. A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in. Plato was right after all. Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore the traces of his divinity.
Thursday, April 21, 2022
C. S. Lewis on homosexuality
C. S. Lewis never abandoned the belief that homosexual conduct was wrong from a Christian standpoint. But he also never accepted the idea that there is something particularly bad about homosexuality as opposed to other kinds of sin. To hear many Christians talk, this is the one sin that makes God really angry, so angry that he sent down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah.
A lot of people see the entire source of opposition to homosexuality as coming from Christian conservatives. Yet Lewis thinks that the really virulent opposition to homosexuality comes from other sources.
This is from Surprised by Joy.
And that is why I cannot give pederasty anything like a first place among the evils of the Coll. There is much hypocrisy on this theme. People commonly talk as if every other evil were more tolerable than this. But why? Because those of us who do not share the vice feel for it a certain nausea, as we do, say, for necrophily? I think that of very little relevance to moral judgment. Because it produces permanent perversion? But there is very little evidence that it does. The Bloods would have preferred girls to boys if they could have come by them; when, at a later age, girls were obtainable, they probably took them. Is it then on Christian grounds? But how many of those who fulminate on the matter are in fact Christians? And what Christian, in a society as worldly and cruel as that of Wyvern, would pick out the carnal sins for special reprobation? Cruelty is surely more evil than lust and the World at least as dangerous as the Flesh. The real reason for all the pother is, in my opinion, neither Christian nor ethical. We attack this vice not because it is the worst but because it is, by adult standards, the most disreputable and unmentionable, and happens also to be a crime in English law. The world may lead you only to Hell; but sodomy may lead you to jail and create a scandal, and lose you your job. The World, to do it justice, seldom does that.
For a discussion of this, see here.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Lydia McGrew on Animal Salvation
HT; Steve Hays. But if animals can be saved, can they also be lost? If you are a Calvinist, does animal reprobation become a possibility.
In The Problem of Pain, Lewis answered the question "Where would you put all the mosquitoes?" by pointing out that a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could effectively be combined.
In The Problem of Pain, Lewis answered the question "Where would you put all the mosquitoes?" by pointing out that a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could effectively be combined.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Scripture, Intuitions, and Calvinism
There is no conflict between believing that Scripture is inerrant, and believing that if one came to believe Scripture taught something that one in fact now believes that Scripture in fact *does not teach*, that that would be reason to doubt inerrancy.
Consider the following.
S believes in inerrancy.
S believes that biblical inerrancy is compatible with an ancient earth.
If S were to come to believe that no interpretation of Scripture consistent with an ancient earth were consistent with the literal acceptance of the Genesis text, then S would cease to believe in inerrancy.
All these can be true together. If we are assessing whether someone believes in inerrancy or not, we have to assess this relative to what the person thinks that Scripture actually teaches, rather than assessing it relative to what they say they might do if they were do discover that Scripture teaching something else.
How a Calvinistic God would reconcile me to the idea of reprobation in such a way as to permit me to worship him is difficult for me to comprehend. I sympathize with Talbott's statement 'I will not worship such a God, and if such a God can send me to hell for not so worshipping him, then to hell I will go'.
But let's put it this way. Suppose I became convinced that I couldn't deny Calvinism without denying inerrancy, and also that I couldn't reject inerrancy without undermining Christianity. (This is a real hypothetical scenario, but let's go there for a minute). Then I would be left with my intuition that this sort of God was acting wrongly, and what would I do with that? Could my intuitions be in error? I think I would pose the question as follows. Can Calvinism offer any reason for worshipping their God that is not a dressed-up version of the might-makes-right argument? If no, then I'm with Tom Talbott. I won't worship on the basis of mere power alone. If yes, then I can imagine questioning my intuitions. There are plenty of possible all-powerful beings who deserve to be answered back to and not worshipped. Is there something better than a might-makes-right argument that can be made on behalf of a Calvinistic God? That would be the question.
But we are a long way from this situation. I will repeat that the closest I ever came to atheism was when I started reading the Bible Calvinistically at the age of 19. However, I don't see any superiority in Calvinist interpretations of Romans 9, John 6:44, Ephesians 1:14, or whatever the other Calvinist proof-texts are, to anti-Calvinist interpretations (Hamilton on Romans 9 looks pretty good to me), and since I agree with Steve that a consistent Calvinist has to deny that God loves the reprobate, and I find the attempt to reconcile this denial with John 3:16 and verses like it to be strained. So I'm not, at the moment, faced with the hypothetical problem I posed for myself above.
Consider the following.
S believes in inerrancy.
S believes that biblical inerrancy is compatible with an ancient earth.
If S were to come to believe that no interpretation of Scripture consistent with an ancient earth were consistent with the literal acceptance of the Genesis text, then S would cease to believe in inerrancy.
All these can be true together. If we are assessing whether someone believes in inerrancy or not, we have to assess this relative to what the person thinks that Scripture actually teaches, rather than assessing it relative to what they say they might do if they were do discover that Scripture teaching something else.
How a Calvinistic God would reconcile me to the idea of reprobation in such a way as to permit me to worship him is difficult for me to comprehend. I sympathize with Talbott's statement 'I will not worship such a God, and if such a God can send me to hell for not so worshipping him, then to hell I will go'.
But let's put it this way. Suppose I became convinced that I couldn't deny Calvinism without denying inerrancy, and also that I couldn't reject inerrancy without undermining Christianity. (This is a real hypothetical scenario, but let's go there for a minute). Then I would be left with my intuition that this sort of God was acting wrongly, and what would I do with that? Could my intuitions be in error? I think I would pose the question as follows. Can Calvinism offer any reason for worshipping their God that is not a dressed-up version of the might-makes-right argument? If no, then I'm with Tom Talbott. I won't worship on the basis of mere power alone. If yes, then I can imagine questioning my intuitions. There are plenty of possible all-powerful beings who deserve to be answered back to and not worshipped. Is there something better than a might-makes-right argument that can be made on behalf of a Calvinistic God? That would be the question.
But we are a long way from this situation. I will repeat that the closest I ever came to atheism was when I started reading the Bible Calvinistically at the age of 19. However, I don't see any superiority in Calvinist interpretations of Romans 9, John 6:44, Ephesians 1:14, or whatever the other Calvinist proof-texts are, to anti-Calvinist interpretations (Hamilton on Romans 9 looks pretty good to me), and since I agree with Steve that a consistent Calvinist has to deny that God loves the reprobate, and I find the attempt to reconcile this denial with John 3:16 and verses like it to be strained. So I'm not, at the moment, faced with the hypothetical problem I posed for myself above.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Hays on love and reprobation
I paged through a few old posts and got this straight answer about God's love for the non-elect.
SH: With respect to Todd, if Todd is one of the elect, then God loves him and desires his salvation. Indeed, if Todd is one of the elect, then God will regenerate Todd at some future date. But if Todd is a reprobate, then God does not love him or desire his salvation.
This is pretty straightforward. The love in John 3:16 is for the elect, even though it is the expression of God love for the Kosmos or world.
I think this is the only way for a Calvinist to go to avoid logical incoherence, and I am prepared to defend Steve's position against fellow Calvinists who wish to take a different position.
SH: With respect to Todd, if Todd is one of the elect, then God loves him and desires his salvation. Indeed, if Todd is one of the elect, then God will regenerate Todd at some future date. But if Todd is a reprobate, then God does not love him or desire his salvation.
This is pretty straightforward. The love in John 3:16 is for the elect, even though it is the expression of God love for the Kosmos or world.
I think this is the only way for a Calvinist to go to avoid logical incoherence, and I am prepared to defend Steve's position against fellow Calvinists who wish to take a different position.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Some Further Clarification for Paul M
I haven't confessed anything or conceded anything, except for the sake of argument. My argument is this. On the hypothesis that what God is after is His own glory, then he should save all of us. Why? Because we're only going to praise him forever if he saves us. It isn't unjust for him to save us, since he does save at least some of us. The more people in the heavenly choir, the more laudits of glory (like turps of evil) he gets. If he sends those people to hell, he doesn't get the laudits of glory from those people since those people aren't praising him.
This arguments isn't saying God wouldn't be nice if he damned people, it is saying that God's interests, *as defined by Calvinist theology* are not served by reprobation. In other words, God shouldn't condemn people to hell because it doesn't serve his own professed interests to do so. It's not that I object to the Calvinistic God's actions on moral grounds (I do of course, but I'm not discussing that here), but rather, I am arguing that even after all sorts of Calvinistic theological points are conceded, points that I am in real life not about to concede, you still don't get to Calvinism. A theology that says that God is out to maximize His own glory is a theology that heads straight for universalism more surely than a theology that says that what He is out to do is love his creatures. If love is the goal, then he might have to give them LFW, and then who knows what the hell will happen. If he's just going for glory, he can get more of that my saving everyone than by reprobating anyone. My claim here isn't that God's actions wouldn't be morally acceptable, my claim is that God's actions make no sense even if they were morally permissible.
There is a difference between defense responses to the problem of evil and theodicy responses. Theodicies attempt to provide likley explanations for evils. The general consensus in the problem of evil literature seems to be that you should try to explain what you can, and then minimize the weight of what you can't explain by appealing to an expectation that we don't know all the reasons in play. As I see it, there is an epistemic cost involved in appealing to mystery and unknown or unknowable reasons, and so you want to bring that pitcher in as late in the game as possible. When I read books like Lewis's The Problem of Pain, I get the sense that I can understand why a lot of evils occur, including virtually all of them in my own life, but certainly not all evils. (The suffering of small children is one Lewis doesn't deal with, for example). When I look at it from a Calvinist perspective, it looks to me as if I have no clue why suffering exists, in this life and certainly not in the next life. The proffered explanations fail even on their own terms to make the ways of God intelligible. Is it possible to believe without understanding? Of course. But faith seeks understanding, and prefers theologies that hold out the most hope of providing some explanations.
This arguments isn't saying God wouldn't be nice if he damned people, it is saying that God's interests, *as defined by Calvinist theology* are not served by reprobation. In other words, God shouldn't condemn people to hell because it doesn't serve his own professed interests to do so. It's not that I object to the Calvinistic God's actions on moral grounds (I do of course, but I'm not discussing that here), but rather, I am arguing that even after all sorts of Calvinistic theological points are conceded, points that I am in real life not about to concede, you still don't get to Calvinism. A theology that says that God is out to maximize His own glory is a theology that heads straight for universalism more surely than a theology that says that what He is out to do is love his creatures. If love is the goal, then he might have to give them LFW, and then who knows what the hell will happen. If he's just going for glory, he can get more of that my saving everyone than by reprobating anyone. My claim here isn't that God's actions wouldn't be morally acceptable, my claim is that God's actions make no sense even if they were morally permissible.
There is a difference between defense responses to the problem of evil and theodicy responses. Theodicies attempt to provide likley explanations for evils. The general consensus in the problem of evil literature seems to be that you should try to explain what you can, and then minimize the weight of what you can't explain by appealing to an expectation that we don't know all the reasons in play. As I see it, there is an epistemic cost involved in appealing to mystery and unknown or unknowable reasons, and so you want to bring that pitcher in as late in the game as possible. When I read books like Lewis's The Problem of Pain, I get the sense that I can understand why a lot of evils occur, including virtually all of them in my own life, but certainly not all evils. (The suffering of small children is one Lewis doesn't deal with, for example). When I look at it from a Calvinist perspective, it looks to me as if I have no clue why suffering exists, in this life and certainly not in the next life. The proffered explanations fail even on their own terms to make the ways of God intelligible. Is it possible to believe without understanding? Of course. But faith seeks understanding, and prefers theologies that hold out the most hope of providing some explanations.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Answering back to God, or is it Fred?
God could want there to be wicked creatures for his own good purpose???
Which purpose? So that others might be saved. We can imagine the following scenario: Smith and Jones are members of the Crips, Jones dies is a drive-by shooting and Smith has a vision of Jones in hell. Smith repents of his sin, accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior, becomes an inner-city minister who brings thousands of kids otherwise headed for a life of gang violence to Jesus.
Except for one one thing. Smith, and every one of those gang kids could have been saved by God's sovereign decree if he had chosen to give it. Jones' eternal damnation could have been avoided without any further loss of souls.
It is easier to make these "hidden good" arguments where the hidden good might become evident once if we knew what free choices other people might have made, or where we don't know the final outcome of everything. Hurricane Katrina, for all its horror, could end up resulting in more people going to heaven than would otherwise have gone to heaven. But for every soul which suffers eternal punishment. we know that that sould could have been saved, and that that person's being saved would not have resulted in any other person's being lost. The final result is known, to suggest that some other final result would not have been better would be to violate every moral intuition I have.
But shouldn't I nevertheless accept it because it is taught in God's word? God, by definition, is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. A being who predestines people for everlasting punishment doesn't meet the third requirement, and therefore isn't God. So if the Bible teaches predestination and reprobation, it is not God's word, but only the Word of an omnipotent Fred.
Who are you O man, to answer back to Fred? Not such a show-stopper, is it?
Which purpose? So that others might be saved. We can imagine the following scenario: Smith and Jones are members of the Crips, Jones dies is a drive-by shooting and Smith has a vision of Jones in hell. Smith repents of his sin, accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior, becomes an inner-city minister who brings thousands of kids otherwise headed for a life of gang violence to Jesus.
Except for one one thing. Smith, and every one of those gang kids could have been saved by God's sovereign decree if he had chosen to give it. Jones' eternal damnation could have been avoided without any further loss of souls.
It is easier to make these "hidden good" arguments where the hidden good might become evident once if we knew what free choices other people might have made, or where we don't know the final outcome of everything. Hurricane Katrina, for all its horror, could end up resulting in more people going to heaven than would otherwise have gone to heaven. But for every soul which suffers eternal punishment. we know that that sould could have been saved, and that that person's being saved would not have resulted in any other person's being lost. The final result is known, to suggest that some other final result would not have been better would be to violate every moral intuition I have.
But shouldn't I nevertheless accept it because it is taught in God's word? God, by definition, is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. A being who predestines people for everlasting punishment doesn't meet the third requirement, and therefore isn't God. So if the Bible teaches predestination and reprobation, it is not God's word, but only the Word of an omnipotent Fred.
Who are you O man, to answer back to Fred? Not such a show-stopper, is it?
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Purpose for Reprobation? Not this one
“Victor Reppert said...
“Do we really need reprobates over in hell so that the blessed can appreciate the graciousness of their salvation? God can't impress it on them any other way? You've got to be kidding me.””
Hays then writes:
“Which is exactly what the Bible says.”
VR: I hope that we can avoid interpreting the Bible as saying something that absurd. Are we being told that Almighty God, in dealing with those who have voluntarily submitted their wills to Him, has to have damned souls in existence so that the blessed can appreciate the graciousness of their salvation? These are people, presumably, who in the course of being saved, have recognized their need for, and have received, the Redemption of Christ. People whose arms are open to receive whatever God has for them. But, if universalism turns out to be true, they're all going to think they earned their way into heaven even though God has explicitly told them otherwise???
If such a claim were biblical, it would be a case against inerrancy. Fortunately I think we can interpret the relevant passages differently.
“Do we really need reprobates over in hell so that the blessed can appreciate the graciousness of their salvation? God can't impress it on them any other way? You've got to be kidding me.””
Hays then writes:
“Which is exactly what the Bible says.”
VR: I hope that we can avoid interpreting the Bible as saying something that absurd. Are we being told that Almighty God, in dealing with those who have voluntarily submitted their wills to Him, has to have damned souls in existence so that the blessed can appreciate the graciousness of their salvation? These are people, presumably, who in the course of being saved, have recognized their need for, and have received, the Redemption of Christ. People whose arms are open to receive whatever God has for them. But, if universalism turns out to be true, they're all going to think they earned their way into heaven even though God has explicitly told them otherwise???
If such a claim were biblical, it would be a case against inerrancy. Fortunately I think we can interpret the relevant passages differently.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Reply to the Calvinists
In the course of our previous discussion on Calvinism, there are several lines of argument that need attention. I think the Calvinists have taken somewhat divergent lines in defending their position. Bnonn seems inclined to be critical of my claim the conception of goodness that we apply to God needs to be continuous with the concept that we apply to human beings. He seems, much more that Paul, to want to push in the general direction of theological voluntarism. He maintains that while we do, and must come to Christ and to Scripture with a conception of what goodness is, we must be prepared to allow our conception of goodness to be corrected by Scripture. There are two problems with his suggestion.
First, while I admit that Scripture can correct my conception of goodness, accepting reprobation would, on my view, not be a correction, but an out and out reversal, of what goodness seems to me to be. If Hitler was wrong to send people to Auschwitz, could it be OK for God to send people to an everlasting Auschwitz, when he could have chosen eternal bliss for them?
Second, it’s the very influence of Scripture on my character that makes Calvinism a problem. Scripture teaches that I should love my neighbor as myself and undermines the idea, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that there are people outside the pale of being my neighbor. If I think about the people whom I come the closest to loving as I do myself, I don’t find that there are two good options, either an eternal bliss in relation to God, or eternal justified punishment forever and ever separated from God. The more I love someone, the less acceptable the second option is.
Finally, the summum bonum that God pursues in saving and damning is supposed to be his own glory. How in the world does damning someone eternally glorify God. How does taking voices out of the heavenly choir glorify God? Sending people to hell by a decree before the foundation of the world deprives God of glory.
Paul Manata does not think that Calvinism relies on theological voluntarism, and does therefore think that God’s goodness, even on a Calvinistic view, is in some way commensurable with goodness as human beings ordinarily understand it. He claims Sudduth blows the idea that Calvin is a theological voluntarist. He quotes a passage with suggests otherwise, but I wonder how he would interpret the following statement form the Institutes
The will of God is the highest rule of justice, so that what He wills must be considered just…for this very reason, because he wills it. (Institutes, vol ii, chap 3, trans. John Allen. Philadephia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, p. 23) quoted in John Beversluis’ C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion p. 230.
Now, as I see it not much turns on whether Calvin was a voluntarist (or, to use Beversluis’ terminology, and Ockhamist) or not. I suspect that a textual case could be made on both sides of the issue. I am more interested in Manata’s suggesting that, for the most part, you can use many of the same defensive responses to the problem of evil if you are a Calvinist. Of course you can’t use the free will defense, but there are other considerations used by people like Plantinga, Alston, Adams, etc, that a Calvinst can still use.
In particular, most responses to the problem of evil make use of some sort of argument from human epistemic limitations. In response to, say, Loftus’ argument that a good God would have given us wings, theists point out that while this looks like an improvement to someone like Loftus, it is fairly easy to see that if we were to consider all the effects of giving us wings, it might not be an improvement.
In many cases, we find that some things that seem to be gratuitously evil turn out to have good sides we couldn’t see. The wicked act of selling Joseph to the slavers resulted, after a long chain of events, in Jacob’s family being able to settle in Egypt and to avoid the ill effects of the famine. So if something appears evil, it may not be because
1) We don’t see all the causes and effects that will result for this so-called evil.
2) We don’t see the long-term consequences of the evil.
3) We don’t see the eternal consequences of the evil.
4) We don’t see the possible bad consequences of eliminating the evil.
Now if someone went to hell as a result of divine decree who could have been saved, and I say that isn’t something a good God could permit, which one of these mistakes could I be making? It’s a final result for someone’s soul. We see all the causes and effects, at least so far is this particular life is concerned. The long-term consequences are known, even the eternal consequences are known, and the alternative possibility of God’s saving that person is also known. So my error can’t be traced to any of these four sources. So where did I go wrong if I thought this would be wrong for God to do, but it really isn’t? It must be that my conception of goodness is dead wrong. That’s all that’s left.
First, while I admit that Scripture can correct my conception of goodness, accepting reprobation would, on my view, not be a correction, but an out and out reversal, of what goodness seems to me to be. If Hitler was wrong to send people to Auschwitz, could it be OK for God to send people to an everlasting Auschwitz, when he could have chosen eternal bliss for them?
Second, it’s the very influence of Scripture on my character that makes Calvinism a problem. Scripture teaches that I should love my neighbor as myself and undermines the idea, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that there are people outside the pale of being my neighbor. If I think about the people whom I come the closest to loving as I do myself, I don’t find that there are two good options, either an eternal bliss in relation to God, or eternal justified punishment forever and ever separated from God. The more I love someone, the less acceptable the second option is.
Finally, the summum bonum that God pursues in saving and damning is supposed to be his own glory. How in the world does damning someone eternally glorify God. How does taking voices out of the heavenly choir glorify God? Sending people to hell by a decree before the foundation of the world deprives God of glory.
Paul Manata does not think that Calvinism relies on theological voluntarism, and does therefore think that God’s goodness, even on a Calvinistic view, is in some way commensurable with goodness as human beings ordinarily understand it. He claims Sudduth blows the idea that Calvin is a theological voluntarist. He quotes a passage with suggests otherwise, but I wonder how he would interpret the following statement form the Institutes
The will of God is the highest rule of justice, so that what He wills must be considered just…for this very reason, because he wills it. (Institutes, vol ii, chap 3, trans. John Allen. Philadephia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, p. 23) quoted in John Beversluis’ C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion p. 230.
Now, as I see it not much turns on whether Calvin was a voluntarist (or, to use Beversluis’ terminology, and Ockhamist) or not. I suspect that a textual case could be made on both sides of the issue. I am more interested in Manata’s suggesting that, for the most part, you can use many of the same defensive responses to the problem of evil if you are a Calvinist. Of course you can’t use the free will defense, but there are other considerations used by people like Plantinga, Alston, Adams, etc, that a Calvinst can still use.
In particular, most responses to the problem of evil make use of some sort of argument from human epistemic limitations. In response to, say, Loftus’ argument that a good God would have given us wings, theists point out that while this looks like an improvement to someone like Loftus, it is fairly easy to see that if we were to consider all the effects of giving us wings, it might not be an improvement.
In many cases, we find that some things that seem to be gratuitously evil turn out to have good sides we couldn’t see. The wicked act of selling Joseph to the slavers resulted, after a long chain of events, in Jacob’s family being able to settle in Egypt and to avoid the ill effects of the famine. So if something appears evil, it may not be because
1) We don’t see all the causes and effects that will result for this so-called evil.
2) We don’t see the long-term consequences of the evil.
3) We don’t see the eternal consequences of the evil.
4) We don’t see the possible bad consequences of eliminating the evil.
Now if someone went to hell as a result of divine decree who could have been saved, and I say that isn’t something a good God could permit, which one of these mistakes could I be making? It’s a final result for someone’s soul. We see all the causes and effects, at least so far is this particular life is concerned. The long-term consequences are known, even the eternal consequences are known, and the alternative possibility of God’s saving that person is also known. So my error can’t be traced to any of these four sources. So where did I go wrong if I thought this would be wrong for God to do, but it really isn’t? It must be that my conception of goodness is dead wrong. That’s all that’s left.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Does damnation promote the glory of God
If you go over to Triablogue, you will find all sorts of dismal remarks about how poorly I have made the case for the critics of Calvinism. In the process I do think I have learned a good deal about who Calvinists think about the relevant issues. With respect to some issues, related to biblical interpretation, I don't think I have anything to add to the discussion that has not already been brought up in other discussions of the subject.
What maybe I have come up with, however, is an argument concerning the concept of glory that I don't think has been satisfactorily answered.
To do this I need to narrow my claims a little bit. Initially, when I blogged on this 3 years ago, I said that Calvinists can't solve the problem of evil. But, very quickly, I had to acknowledge that "solving" the problem of evil is a tall order and that it may be difficult to anyone to solve it.
Most study of the problem of evil suggests that with respect to a portion of human suffering, we can come up with possible scenarios according to which we can see why God would permit it. With other suffering, we aren't in a position to see why it occurs, but we are nevertheless entitle to believe that there is an answer even if we can't see it.
With respect to some evils, it seems possible and in some cases easy to see why God permits them. With others, there is considerably more mystery.
Let's take the evil of everlasting suffering in hell. On a free will view I can see how someone might end up permanently in rebellion against God and unable (because they are unwilling to serve) to receive the joys of heaven. Read The Great Divorce for how that goes. But why, on a Calvinist view would anyone end up in hell?
The first answer for the Calvinists has to be that they are sinners and deserve it. This assumes a couple of things, first that a temporal sin can deserve an infinite amount and duration of punishment, and second that humans can deserve retributive punishment for actions that they are determined by another to perform. (This is a strong form of compatibilism. Many compatibilists are not retributivists about punishment. They argue, for instance, that even if determinism is true, you can still deter crime by punishing criminals.) But let's grant these highly counterintuitive claims for the sake of argument. We still need to explain why God would create a permanently unrepentant sinner, when he could preordain them not to sin or preordain them to receive God's irresistible grace and save them.
The unanimous answer in Calvinist theology seems to be that God does it for his own glory. This seems as little counterintuitive as well--people who cause others to suffer for their own glory here on earth are considered bad, not good. But let's grant that counterintuitive claim also. Glory, it seems to me, analytically requires that it be glory in the eyes of someone. (Is there any Scripture verse that suggests a different conception of glory?) On the face of things, the way a God pursuing his own glory to achieve that goal would be to save everyone so that there could be as many people as possible praising Him forever. But no, Calvinists say that God can demonstrate his wrath against sin by having some lost people (lots and lots of lost people, actually). The idea, I take it, is that the saved will praise God more because they recognize God's holiness and absolute opposition to sin by seeing people in hell. And my response is that God, as an omnipotent and completely sovereign being can decree into place any state of mind that he wants without having to use the means of damned souls to create this glory for himself. (Let's also put to the side any Kantian worries about using people as a mere means). So the instantiation of damned essences doesn't serve any conceivable greater good, because that good could be accomplished without the damnations.
I read the Walls passage that Paul referenced about God's glory in damnations, according to which people in heaven see that God has done everything possible to save someone but respects their freedom. Even there I don't think Walls holds that the ultimate purpose of all God's actions is to glorify himself.
Now, the Calvinist can respond by saying that there is a purpose for reprobations, even though we have no clue as to what it is. In fact, Paul constantly reminds me that I said that there have to be possibilities for God that we are not in a position to consider. However, unlike Paul, I am kind of agnostic about what will transpire eschatologically, or how it works. Calvinists claim that they know that there will be some people in hell and that God's predestination, through the means of their own sin, puts them there. The agnosticism the Calvinist at this point can insist upon concerns why.
My conclusion is if people are reprobated there is no understandable reason why this is so. It is completely and totally beyond my comprehension. I can't even see through a glass darkly how this could possibly be justified. The reasons that are offered for reprobating people don't work even on their own terms. That doesn't make the position impossible to hold, just, at least to my mind, a whole lot more difficult. Everyone uses mystery maneuvers at some point (even materialists!) but the less you use them, the more epistemically adequate your position.
What I have shown here is that Calvinists cannot solve the problem of the evil of eternal suffering in hell, in the sense that they can't provide any understandable reason for it. This is a narrower claim than what I began with, but it is still not completely without significance for the credibility of Calvinism.
I'm not appealing to intuition here. Calvinism is counterintuitive in many ways, but I am simply arguing that whatever glory God wants or needs he can accomplish without inflicting eternal punishment on anyone. Therefore, even granting several Calvinistic assumptions, eternal damnation remains an apparently gratuitous evil.
Arminians can "solve" the problem of reprobation in the sense that considerations from their own theology make it somewhat understandable, though hardly problem-free.
It's my contention, however, that the more you appeal to mystery, the worse it is for you epistemically. The more of an explanation you can have for suffering, the better your theology is, all things being equal.
What maybe I have come up with, however, is an argument concerning the concept of glory that I don't think has been satisfactorily answered.
To do this I need to narrow my claims a little bit. Initially, when I blogged on this 3 years ago, I said that Calvinists can't solve the problem of evil. But, very quickly, I had to acknowledge that "solving" the problem of evil is a tall order and that it may be difficult to anyone to solve it.
Most study of the problem of evil suggests that with respect to a portion of human suffering, we can come up with possible scenarios according to which we can see why God would permit it. With other suffering, we aren't in a position to see why it occurs, but we are nevertheless entitle to believe that there is an answer even if we can't see it.
With respect to some evils, it seems possible and in some cases easy to see why God permits them. With others, there is considerably more mystery.
Let's take the evil of everlasting suffering in hell. On a free will view I can see how someone might end up permanently in rebellion against God and unable (because they are unwilling to serve) to receive the joys of heaven. Read The Great Divorce for how that goes. But why, on a Calvinist view would anyone end up in hell?
The first answer for the Calvinists has to be that they are sinners and deserve it. This assumes a couple of things, first that a temporal sin can deserve an infinite amount and duration of punishment, and second that humans can deserve retributive punishment for actions that they are determined by another to perform. (This is a strong form of compatibilism. Many compatibilists are not retributivists about punishment. They argue, for instance, that even if determinism is true, you can still deter crime by punishing criminals.) But let's grant these highly counterintuitive claims for the sake of argument. We still need to explain why God would create a permanently unrepentant sinner, when he could preordain them not to sin or preordain them to receive God's irresistible grace and save them.
The unanimous answer in Calvinist theology seems to be that God does it for his own glory. This seems as little counterintuitive as well--people who cause others to suffer for their own glory here on earth are considered bad, not good. But let's grant that counterintuitive claim also. Glory, it seems to me, analytically requires that it be glory in the eyes of someone. (Is there any Scripture verse that suggests a different conception of glory?) On the face of things, the way a God pursuing his own glory to achieve that goal would be to save everyone so that there could be as many people as possible praising Him forever. But no, Calvinists say that God can demonstrate his wrath against sin by having some lost people (lots and lots of lost people, actually). The idea, I take it, is that the saved will praise God more because they recognize God's holiness and absolute opposition to sin by seeing people in hell. And my response is that God, as an omnipotent and completely sovereign being can decree into place any state of mind that he wants without having to use the means of damned souls to create this glory for himself. (Let's also put to the side any Kantian worries about using people as a mere means). So the instantiation of damned essences doesn't serve any conceivable greater good, because that good could be accomplished without the damnations.
I read the Walls passage that Paul referenced about God's glory in damnations, according to which people in heaven see that God has done everything possible to save someone but respects their freedom. Even there I don't think Walls holds that the ultimate purpose of all God's actions is to glorify himself.
Now, the Calvinist can respond by saying that there is a purpose for reprobations, even though we have no clue as to what it is. In fact, Paul constantly reminds me that I said that there have to be possibilities for God that we are not in a position to consider. However, unlike Paul, I am kind of agnostic about what will transpire eschatologically, or how it works. Calvinists claim that they know that there will be some people in hell and that God's predestination, through the means of their own sin, puts them there. The agnosticism the Calvinist at this point can insist upon concerns why.
My conclusion is if people are reprobated there is no understandable reason why this is so. It is completely and totally beyond my comprehension. I can't even see through a glass darkly how this could possibly be justified. The reasons that are offered for reprobating people don't work even on their own terms. That doesn't make the position impossible to hold, just, at least to my mind, a whole lot more difficult. Everyone uses mystery maneuvers at some point (even materialists!) but the less you use them, the more epistemically adequate your position.
What I have shown here is that Calvinists cannot solve the problem of the evil of eternal suffering in hell, in the sense that they can't provide any understandable reason for it. This is a narrower claim than what I began with, but it is still not completely without significance for the credibility of Calvinism.
I'm not appealing to intuition here. Calvinism is counterintuitive in many ways, but I am simply arguing that whatever glory God wants or needs he can accomplish without inflicting eternal punishment on anyone. Therefore, even granting several Calvinistic assumptions, eternal damnation remains an apparently gratuitous evil.
Arminians can "solve" the problem of reprobation in the sense that considerations from their own theology make it somewhat understandable, though hardly problem-free.
It's my contention, however, that the more you appeal to mystery, the worse it is for you epistemically. The more of an explanation you can have for suffering, the better your theology is, all things being equal.
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