Causal vs Social CenteredPart IV: Depravity

• Part I: Glory
• Part II: Election
• Part III: Atonement
• Part IV: Depravity
• Part V: Grace
• Part VI: Security

The differences in Depravity are perhaps the most interesting for our topic since both Calvinists and Arminians agree on the basic concept. However, I do think we think about Total Depravity a bit differently, in that it plays a slightly different role. And this can be seen the most clearly in how we interpret the Biblical phrase of being "dead in sin".

Emphasis

Both of us understand Total Depravity to mean that we are incapable of doing any true good apart from the grace of God, including having saving faith. However, the Calvinist stresses this incapacity idea. To the Calvinist it is our lack of power that is the ultimate issue.To the Arminian, Total Depravity isn't as (ironically enough) human focused. Rather for us, the point of the doctrine is to stress our need for God. It is much more about that brokenness between the human and God.

To put it more simply, the Calvinist is saying that we can't do it, and the Arminian is saying that we need help. Now one implies the other, and I want to stress that there is no difference of actual doctrine here. Arminians admit that we can't save ourselves; that's why we need help! Likewise the Calvinist will admit that we need help; after all, we can't do it! But while the Arminian is more concerned with what it means for our relationship for God, and explaining the need for prevenient grace, the Calvinist is more concerned about ensuring that humanity doesn't get credit for salvation and that the power ultimately comes from God Himself. Same belief, but we think about it differently, and the role it plays in our theology is a bit different.

Dead Men Can't Do Nothing Right

Probably the most interesting difference is the way we interpret the "dead in sin" phrase in Scripture. Calvinists compare a human in the the depraved state as being dead: unable to act. They stress the complete immobility of a corpse. Now I don't necessarily have a problem with this analogy, seeing how I believe in human inability, but it's not what the Scripture means. This is apparent in two ways. First, Jesus uses this same term in the parable of the Prodigal Son, and there is no way it could mean that in that context. Second, in Romans, which really stresses the relationship between death and sin, in chapter six it describes us as being dead to sin, and yet no Calvinists believes this means that Christians are unable to sin.

It is more accurate to think about this relationally. When your grandfather dies, you generally don't interact with him much anymore. You relationship with him is severed. This is where the expression "you're dead to me" comes from, and it seems to be how Scripture is using the term as well. To be dead in sin is to be cut off from God because of your sin. There is no relationship there to work with. This is more consistent with the Prodigal Son text and Romans 6:11, and also perfectly consistent with all other texts where the imagery is used. To be spiritually dead is to be cut off from God. And this is of course why we need God.

Next we'll be talking about the most complicated topic of this series: grace.

Causal vs Social CenteredPart III: Atonement

• Part I: Glory
• Part II: Election
• Part III: Atonement
• Part IV: Depravity
• Part V: Grace
• Part VI: Security

The atonement debate is really interesting to me because to some degree it is a red herring. Both sides seem to think that the issue has to do with the nature of the Atonement. However it doesn't. Consider the following:

1. Both agree that a person is not born justified
2. Both sides agree that a person becomes justified when they have faith
3. Both sides agree that a person is completely justified once the atonement is applied to them
   • So we agree on efficacy
4. Both sides agree that Christ's atonement was substitutionary
5. Both sides agree that Christ's atonement of infinite in power
   • So no difference in "spilt blood"
6. Both sides agree that it is particular in application

So... what's the actual difference? The difference has to do with the texts in Scripture that teach that Christ died for all. We have to deal with the fact that Christ died to save all, yet not all are saved. We differ in how we deal with this discrepancy.

Limited Atonement

When talking about being casually centered, what we are talking about is a concern a about cause and effect relationships. There are two aspects of casual centeredness that come into play with the issue of the atonement. One is a concern for power. Since power is the ability to cause things, naturally power is a casual  concern. More on this later. The second issue is a tendency to describe things in mechanical ways. In a machine, this gear causes that gear to move, which causes that doohickey to do the thing, and voila, the clock works. We can certainly see this in the way they describe the will.

We see this clearly in the way they often handle the Scriptural passages regarding the universality of the atonement. For their view to be correct, they must somehow qualify the statements that God wanted to save everyone to affirm the Scripture. Historically they've done this in a couple of ways¹, but for our purposes of displaying the mechanical nature of their thought, we are going to focus on the most popular approach today: the two-will theory.

The two-will theory is the idea that God's will is complicated. There is a part of His will that really does want to save everyone, but there is another part of His will that only wants to save the elect. Therefore, it is fine for God to express that first desire, even if it is the second desire that He desires more. So it is true that God wants to save the whole world, but He wants to save only the elect even more.

Now look at the way in which the will of God is treated. It is segmented, and the question of which segment brings about action is emphasized. Now mostly I see this as a theological trick to get around a hermeneutical problem, but the intriguing thing to me is that it treats God's will kind of like a machine with parts that have different functions.

Before we move one, I do want to make an apologetic point. First I don't think this idea is as mysterious as the Calvinist makes it out to be. We experience this kind of thing all the time. It's called ambivalence: the wanting of two contradictory things at the same time. It's not really a more "complex" will than ours². It's just ambivalence. 

Now if you remember at the top of this section I said that there were two issues, and one was a concern about power. Here I am going to get back to that. While the above is an explanation of how they justify Limited Atonement with Scripture, it isn't why Calvinists think Limited Atonement is important. That is the power concern. This has to do with whether or not God can be defeated.

Now for most of us, I don't see why there is a problem, but I think we need to hear what the Calvinist is thinking here. If God is acting with the intention of accomplish something, and what He wants doesn't happen, it appears that He has been overpowered. If God is overpowered, than He is not omnipotent. Now, Calvinists don't frame it this way, but this is the legitimate concern behind their thinking, and I think we need to answer it. So how?

Well, I think the Calvinists are on the right track when it comes to the notion of a complex desire, but I don't think ambivalence is the correct kind of complexity. A better way to think about it is a contextualized desire. This is when you want something, but you want it in a certain way and under certain conditions.

So, for instance, Lebron James may want to put the basketball through the hoop. However, he doesn't use his full range of power to try to achieve this goal. He doesn't punch the other players, knock the hoop down to reach it better, or get a ladder, or anything else like this which is clearly within his physical abilities. Rather he chooses to try and put the ball in the hoop under certain constraints. Why? Because he isn't just interested in putting the ball through the hoop. He is interested in playing a basketball game and "putting a ball in the hoop" falls into the context of that game, but with certain parameters.

Now the above analogy isn't really designed to explain what is going on with the atonement, since someone stuffing James's shot would be him being defeated.."³ The analogy is simply designed to explain what is meant by a contextualized desire in a causal manner. The way that Arminians actually understand this is much more, well, social.

The key here is love. God doesn't simply want to save us. He wants us to love Him. Here I'm going to used a tired Arminian analogy, but it is tired for a reason. This is the fact that when you fall in love with someone, you don't really want to force that person to love you back. You want them to love you back on their own. Even if you had access to some kind of pill that could make them believe that they loved you, it wouldn't be true love. If God desires us to truly love Him as He loves us, it makes sense that He doesn't simply want to save all, but to save those who return His love. And someone refusing to love Him isn't Him being defeated; it is simply them choosing their own way. As Paul says in Romans 1, God gives them over to their desires, even though they are destructive.
So defeat isn't the right way of looking at it. It is that God wants to save within a particular context which includes free will. This makes it a contextualized desire.

Unlimited Atonement

Being socially centered, Arminians are more focused on personal attributes, and one of those is God's character. God's character is consistently good. When it comes to the atonement, as I said before, the difference here isn't really on the nature of the atonement. Rather the difference is God's intention and His honesty. For the Arminian, principle concern is the authenticity of God's offer of salvation. Limited Atonement seems to make God a liar.

Often the Calvinist would counter that they don't know who the elect are, so therefore it isn't inauthentic. Well, it is true that it doesn't make them a liar. But it would make God a liar when Scripture says things like "We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men and especially of those who believe" or "So by the grace of God He might taste death for each one" or "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance"... etc. These texts are not contextualized with His will to display justice or whatever purpose the Calvinist proposes He has for allowing some to be damned.

When it is contextualized, it is contextualized with the condition of faith, not God's greater desire. We would expect it to be contextualized by God's greater desire if these are examples of ambivolence. For instance, let's say I really want to eat some pizza. However, I also really want to lose weight. So I have to decide which is more important. Afterwards, if I were to express regret at not eating the pizza, I'll say, "Oh, I really wish I had that pizza. But I'm glad I won't have the extra calories." It is the other option that qualified the choice.

This is what we would expect in the text if these expressions were out of ambivalence. But we don't receive this. Rather we receive an open invitation to any who would believe. If Calvinism were true, this just strikes us as deceptive. Now God has the sovereign right to be deceptive if He wants, but it wouldn't be good of Him. It seems clear to us that God truly does want to save every single person, and He acts towards the salvation of all, even those who ultimately are damned. Now, this means that He must be acting in a way that allows them the ability to resist Him, for He is powerful enough to cause them to comply if need be. But their damnation is on their own shoulders, not God's.

Unfortunately, I don't know too well how a Calvinist would really respond to this. I usually get an answer back in the fashion of "who are you oh man to challenge God" or "that is a man-centered concerned", so I cant really show how Calvinists would approach this from a causal-centered direction. Rather, it seems to me that Calvinists have trouble recognizing that there is a problem. This doesn't show causal-centeredness, but it does show that we think about things very differently.

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¹ One is to quibble on the meaning of terms like 'world' and 'all'. Another is to take Calvin's route, and not understand these terms literally, but rather as God accommodating to our language and limited understanding. I find these mostly to be hermeneutical tricks and rather unconvincing, and they don't really show the causal-centeredness of Calvinist thought anyway.
²Now I do think that God's will is different than ours. God is eternal and doesn't deliberate like we do. Likewise, He is taking more into account for His choices than we do. I just don't think that this two-will theory constitutes a difference.
³Mutumbo's smiling right now.

Causal vs Social CenteredPart II: Election

• Part I: Glory
• Part II: Election
• Part III: Atonement
• Part IV: Depravity
• Part V: Grace
• Part VI: Security

The question of election isn't whether or not God chooses who to save, but whether or not He does so unconditionally. The question is whether or not our differences on this question are grounded in a causal vs social dynamic.

Unconditional Election

The Calvinist thrust on the question of election is the fact that it is entirely unconditional. This means that there is no quality or action which distinguishes the elect from the non-elect save election itself. So why is this so important to the Calvinists.

The answer has to do with who causes election. The Calvinist feels that if there is a condition for election, than obtaining that condition causes God to elect the person. This would mean that the human causes God's election. Therefore, since God's glory should be grounded on Him having power over things, this would certainly apply to His own choices.

Arminians of course don't see it that way. First of all, I don't see why obtaining a condition for election would cause election if A)God still has to actually make the choice and isn't forced to and B)God is sovereign over what conditions He cares about. My preference of sausage over pepperoni doesn't mean that sausage pizza has control over me. However, notice the social dynamic of my point. The Calvinist view sees conditionality as a cause; I see it as a reason. Causes are physical concepts, while reasons are personal concepts. Saul was the cause of the spear being thrown, but jealousy was the reason. If faith caused God to choose us, then the Calvinist would have a point. Rather faith is the reason why God chooses us, and that is an entirely different matter.

Second of all, the principle issue that we have with unconditionality is that it makes God's choice arbitrary. Now most Calvinists object to this, but to me unconditional and arbitrary are synonyms. The second simply sounds worse. I don't mind the idea of God having no particular reason to save me, but I do have issue with God having no particular reason to not save someone else. Yes, He doesn't have to save anyone, but then I'm not claiming He has to. That's a causal concern. My issue is one of character. If He loves them, why would He abandon them without a reason? That simply isn't love, which is a social issue.

Conditional Election

Arminians believe that God chooses who to save based on faith. He does this because He wants to establish relationship with us, and faith is something that He values in His friends. It is also important to note that Arminians tend to be very insistent that faith is not intellectual assent to a set of beliefs. Rather faith is trust in Jesus Christ saving us. Faith is a social rather than epistemic term.¹ This is why faith prevents one from boasting; if you trust in your faith then you aren't trusting in Jesus Himself. To boast about it is to prove that you don't have it.²

The Calvinist concern here is basically what I said above about why they believe unconditional election. However, let me run their most common argument here so I can give them some space. They often argue that if you have faith, and someone else doesn't, then there must be some cause for you having faith that the other person doesn't have. Either you are smarter, or nicer, or something else. Therefore there is something making you superior, and that is what is really causing God to choose you.

Well... This ignores the social aspect of faith. The idea behind this is that faith requires a cause, but while it is true that there may have been some reason why a person comes to faith, that reason may vary dramatically. Sure John may have faith in Christ because he is simply a trusting sort, but Paul believes in Him because of an over-whelming experience, and Peter by intellectual reasoning. It doesn't matter how faith came about; merely its presence matters. Because of this, the reason for one's faith isn't actually a factor in God's election at all. Just faith is.

And so what if God chooses the faithful. He chooses them because He wants us to be faithful. He didn't have to choose the faithful. Nothing is forcing His hand here. Indeed, if I have all the faith I have right now, and God still chooses to condemn me, He would do me no wrong. Ultimately my assurance isn't grounded in my faith, but in God's promises. I struggle to even appreciate the concern here. But then, I don't think like a Calvinist does.

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¹I have not provided a causal-centered definition of faith here because, to be honest, I'm not sure how to. Ultimately, I don't think that Calvinism needs to be committed to a particular definition of faith since their concern would remain for any condition.

²Like humility.

Causal vs Social CenteredPart I: Glory

• Part I: Glory
• Part II: Election
• Part III: Atonement
• Part IV: Depravity
• Part V: Grace
• Part VI: Security

What Is Centeredness

I have often heard it said by Calvinists that they are God centered while we are man centered. Now as far as I have seen, they've never really given a definition about what it means for a theology to be "centered" on something. This has left us to guess what it is that they mean, which makes it very difficult to counter the accusation.¹ Now I have attempted to guess what they mean by this in the past, but after much analysis I think I now have a really good idea what they mean, and how the two theologies are truly centered.

I think my first mistake was that centering involved a central doctrine; that is some kind of central belief. However, I think that Calvinists mean more of a central theme. Also I don't think that centeredness necessarily has to be something that is consciously at the heart of someone's theology. Rather, I think it has to do with how a theology is developed or constructed. So let me give this basic definition:

Centeredness refers to the controlling theme or idea that shapes the way someone thinks about a particular topic.

So, what do they mean by God-centered and man-centered? Well here I think they are intentionally vague because I doubt that they are really that consistent on it. I do think that by "God-centered" they basically mean Soli Deo Gloria: that every aspect of their theology is designed to give God glory. Likewise, "man-centered" must mean the opposite.

However, if this is true, both of us are God-centered. This is because I think one of the central differences between us is what we think gives God glory. Both of us are equally focused on Soli Deo Gloria. After all, Calvinists are most concerned with God's sovereignty while we are most concerned with God's character. But both traits have God as their subject.² So I think this scheme is seriously lacking.

I propose then a different scheme: causal centered vs socially centered.

What is Causally-centered?

To be causally centered is to be concerned with questions of causation and power. By 'power' I don't mean anything pejorative: I don't mean power hungry or anything else like that. Rather power is simply defined as the ability to get things done. Calvinists, in my estimation, are principally focused on how things in salvation are caused. Therefore we can think of power or causal-centeredness as when someone defines terms or weighs doctrine on questions of cause and effect.

Therefore it is little wonder that the Calvinist would understand 'glory' in terms of sovereignty and determinism. If their greatest concern is how things are accomplished, then it stands to reason that giving God the credit for everything that happens would give Him the most glory.

It also makes some sense that they would think that LFW gives human's glory. We don't think about it in that way, but to the Calvinist LFW means that you get to be the cause of what happens in the world. That is a little taste of glory to them. Therefore since humans have more power in Arminianism than they do in Calvinism, Arminianism would be more "man-centered". However, this is a causally-centered analysis, and has nothing to do with how Arminians think or even develop their theology. Because it doesn't represent how Arminians actually think, it can't be accurate. Rather it is Calvinists reading their own interests into Arminian theology.

What is Socially-centered?

By social, what I mean is that we ask questions about how God has relationships with other things. This also includes Himself within the Trinity. Having relationships is what defines a being as being personal. So it is more these personal ideas that drives our thinking. This is why our core ideas are God's personal attributes such as love and goodness.

Therefore, it is of little wonder that we would understand 'glory' in terms of goodness. To us, it is declaring God as good which gives him the most honor and glory. Indeed, power based glory strikes me as cheap and human. When the Jews expected to see the glory of the Messiah, they expected Him to come in power and defeat Rome. Rather He died on the cross out of love for the world. (I Corinthians 1:18-31)

In fact, determinism strikes me as dishonoring to God. I think that humans do tend to define glory in terms of power, and us expecting God to do the same is thinking of God like He's a human. Now I wouldn't call this "man-centered", but I do think that it dishonors Him, making Him more like us, rather than us trying to be more like His Son.

Subsequent posts

My next few posts will be taking us through the 5 points in the order of the Articles to see how my theory may help clarify our differences. While I will be arguing for Arminianism in these posts though, I don't really think of this as exposing the underbelly of Calvinism. Calvinists can embrace this distinction and argue that we should be more causal-centered. My actual hope is to develop a more helpful distinction that will facilitate communication between. A foghorn so we don't merely pass each other in the night.

So Calvinists, please don't take this distinction as criticism, but an attempt at understanding each other. We are brothers, and it is my greatest hope that this sibling rivalry would stop distracting us with the mission for the kingdom.
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¹Note how it isn't difficult to counter due to any merits of the argument. It is simply ambiguous.

²A Calvinist may argue that being focused on God's character is still man-centered because it has to do with how God treats man. Man is the object of God's love ("God loves man": God-subject; love-verb; man-object). However, the same can be said about sovereignty since it is man that God is sovereign over ("God rules man": God-subject; rule-verb; man-object). And as an Arminian, I'm not just concerned with His love for us, but also about His love for Himself within the Godhead. Now it is true that this doesn't come up that much within soteriology, but that is because man is the object of salvation ("God saves man": God-subject; save-verb; man-object).This really makes it impossible to avoid.

Kevin Scharp's Divine Psychology Critique

So recently William Lane Craig participated in a "debate"¹ with one Keven Scharp on the question of the existence of God. Scharp was one of the more solid opponents that I've seen Craig have. One, while his argument for Atheism wasn't an argument for God's non-existence, it wasn't just the standard Atheist special pleading either. Rather He made an argument for the rationality of the belief in the non-existence of God that reminds me somewhat of Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, though I don't think as robust. Truly very engaging.

However, he also makes a rather interesting new counter-argument² against the arguments for God's existence. This had to do with what he called "divine psychology". In this, he says that any argument that relies on our understanding or predicting God's reasons for doing something is inherently flawed because there is no way for us to know that. This is why, according to him, POE fails to critique theism. While I agree with him on POE anyway, he attempts to expand this same problem to the cosmological, teological, resurrection, and transcendental³ arguments.

However, I think this obviously fails. Well, I'm not sure if it is generally obvious, but it is obvious to me anyway. This is because the arguments do not assume that we know God's motives. Rather they argue back to certain attributes that a creator must have, and those attributes sound an awful lot like God. But we don't need to argue that God must have wanted to create the universe for such and such a reason in order for the argument to be successful. I remember Scharp once asked Craig, "Well, what evidence do we have that this God would even want to create the universe." I wanted to respond, "The fact that the universe exists!" I mean, seriously!

Here's an analogy for anyone who thinks that Scharp's argument is any good⁴: We all are aware that Stonehenge was made by people. We know this because of the clear signs of shaping of the rocks, their unnatural arrangement, and the design of the surrounding region. However, we have no clue as to their psychology. We don't know why they created Stonehenge, or even how it was used. But this doesn't prevent us from inferring that it had to have been made by some cause, or that it was designed. Indeed, how could it be anything else.

The same goes for these similar arguments for God. There is no appeal to God's plans or God's psychology in the arguments⁵. They don't conclude to Him due to His reasons, but due to His attributes. He may have created the world to have a relationship with humans. He may have created it to play skeetball. Who cares. That doesn't change the fact that the universe needed to have a creator who is an incorporeal, eternal, intelligent, transcendent, morally foundational, and personal being. The cause of the universe must have those attributes regardless of what His reasons were for creating the universe.
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¹ I say debate loosely here. There were no rebuttals or anything else like that. Simply two speeches, some clarifying questions for each other, and then a Q&A. There wasn't really any engagement with each others' arguments.

² Not the weakness argument. That wasn't particularly interesting since it doesn't show an inherent weakness in the arguments themselves. It was more a criticism of Craig's description of how deductive arguments work. But that doesn't change the fact that if the premises are true, the conclusion necessarily follows.

³ The family of arguments to which the Moral Argument belongs. Though, ironically, he doesn't apply it to the Moral Argument.

⁴This technically only applies to the teological and transcendental argument, but the flaw it exposes protects the other arguments too if you think it through.


⁵ This also includes the resurrection argument, since we don't need to know why God would raise Christ from the dead to conclude that the historical evidence suggests that He was raised from the dead. However, with this argument we DO have sufficient reason to know God's psychology on the matter because Jesus TOLD us why, and self-disclosure is the basis of all psychology.

Outline For Studying the Abortion Debate

Introduction

I've been thinking a lot about the abortion debate lately. As with most debates there is a lot of talking past each other, and someone who is really interested in how things are communicated, I figured that there was a lot from the other side I was probably missing with all of the heavy-handed emotional rhetoric. So in an attempt to get past this, and think about the issue thoroughly, I've developed an outline about how to approach the subject. The levels should be thought about in order, since the upper levels inform the conversation on the lower levels.

One section that I did leave out is a section on ethical grounding. This is because it is such a big issue that if that is where the issue really lies, we really need to have a different conversation first. But for the sake of the discussion, I've assumed an ethical position that is grounded on innate human dignity and worth.

Please notice that I have not stated any conclusions below. This is just an outline about how to talk about the issue. For any comments, please keep it to that subject instead of taking stances on any particular section.

The Outline

Level O: Ethical Theory
While this isn't technically part of the abortion debate (hence 0), often the differences of our conclusions are caused by the differences of our ethical theories.

1. Objective vs Subjective
    Is morality determined by human societies, personal opinion, or is it grounded outside of human beliefs?
2. Moral Grounding
   What standards should we use to come to our ethical conclusions?

Level 1: Identity
Different referents have different moral relevance. Shooting a tree is different than shooting a dog which is different than shooting a person. The question here is whether or not there is anything that distinguishes the mother from the fetus that makes one of them more morally relevant than the other.

1. Adult vs. child
   We usually believe that it is more important to protect a child over an adult. Also, we consider it more tragic when a child dies. So is a child more morally relevant than an adult?
2. Human or not human
   Classic question of when a fetus is a human person.

Level 2: Rights
Here we are talking about natural inalienable rights, not constitutional or international human rights which are merely based off of them. This is still a ethical question, not a legal one.

1. Identification
   The rights I believe are at play
1. Mother

   α: Self-autonomy
   Every person has the right to make their own choices in life. Forcing a woman to have a child would be a violation of this.
   β: Privacy/Property
   While the fetus's body is not part of the woman's property, the fetus is within the woman's body which is her property. Like with one's home, a right to property extends to what can be called the right to privacy, protecting not just one's right to house itself, but also what goes on within it. This would also extend to one's body, and what happens within that body.

2. Fetus

   γ: recognition of humanity
   A fetus has the right to be seen and therefore treated with human dignity. This refers to how the fetus is talked about, and even treated when deceased.
   δ: Life
   A person has the right to be given a chance of life, and to defend their own life.

2. Supersession
   Since both parties have rights which are at risk, the question here is not the protection of certain rights, but supersession. When two sets of rights are in conflict, either one set of rights supersede the rights of the other, or we are at an ethical impasse. So under what conditions can each of these rights be superseded (if they can)

   α: Self-autonomy
   β: Privacy/Property
   γ: recognition of humanity
   δ: Life

3. C. General Case
   At this point, we can come to a conclusion about whether or not abortion is generally right or wrong apart from other factors.
   1. Definition
      Defining what is meant by the general case.
   2. Verdict

Level 3- Situational Ethics

1. A. Counter Anti Abortion
   Given a anti-abortion conclusion for the general case, these are some situations under which abortion might still be justified
   1. Danger for Mother
   2. Danger for Child
   3. Euthanasia
   4. forced pregancy
      1. rape
   5. poverty
   6. societal stigma
2. B Counter Pro Abortion
   Given a pro-abortion conclusion for the general case, these are some situations under which denying an abortion might still be justified
   1. i Population Loss
   2. ii Psychological distress
   3. iii Possible Prodigy

Level 4- Legal
Everything up until this point has been about ethics, not legality. What is moral does not always perfectly transfer over to what should be legal. So the question remains how do we ethically interact with the law given our conclusions.

1. Relationship between ethics and law
2. What can be enforced
3. Prohibition effects
4. Implementation of Situational Ethics
   Simply because we reach a moral conclusion in these situations doesn't mean that it'll necessarily extend the same legally each time. So the question needs to be addressed of whether our ethical conclusions are influenced by jurisdiction concerns of the state when it comes to legal implementation.
5. Ramifications on other laws
   
   1. i fetal abuse laws
      This is where a person can be charged with endangering a fetus by their actions. This includes the mother who drinks or smokes while pregnant.

Response to Richard Bushey's "Critique of Arminianism"

Hello, it's been awhile. I don't have the internet right now, so maintaining the blog has been basically impossible. I'm hoping to get my internet back eventually, but I have no idea when.

That said, I am still on facebook, and I made a friend recently by the name of Richard Bushey who is a "Reformed Molinist". Basically someone who takes a Calvinist view on salvation, but a Molinist view on providence and free will. Anyway, he's written a post critiquing Arminianism, and I promised him that I would respond to it. But it's been awhile since then, and I wanted to provide a full critique of his post. So I am writing this. Because he objects to the term "Calvinist", and I reserve the term "Reformed" to refer to an ecclesial tradition rather than a soteriological position, I'll be referring to his position as Dortian, meaning an adherence to the five points of Dort often popularized as TULIP.

Now, to Richard in particular, some of my critique in what follows is rather strong. I have no intention of attacking you personally, for I have great respect for you. But I do go after your thinking on some of these points, and I hope you take my words as criticism and not insults.

I would rather honor God too much than honor man too much.

I would rather get theology right than get theology wrong. This little meme above is just silly, and I have no patience for it even from a friend. I want to glorify God to the highest degree that is possible, which is WHY I'm an Arminian. I want to get God right, and I assume that the truth will glorify God greater than my most brilliant theological imagination. To choose a theological system based off of one's perception of glory misses the whole point of theology: to know who God truly is. There is no greater glory than that for God.

Personally, I don't care about giving honor to man or taking it away. Why? Because I don't care about man. God's glory is at the center of my theology, and man falls where he will. And then there is this bizarre idea that somehow God's glory and man's glory are inversely related. Why is that? God created man for His glory. If man is properly understood, than God's glory will be maximized. Certainly if we glorify man beyond his due, than there is some sense where man will not be glorifying God correctly. It is that incorrect feature though that diminishes the glory, not the oppulance. Indeed, if we lower man to an ant, we do damage to His glory as well for we are made in His image. We trample on something that God has done. Should we agree with the Muslims, than man is a mere dog? I don't think any Dortian wants to go there. In fact, even when we consider the giving of man excessive glory, the problem lies in man being in God's image. Again we would be misrepresenting Him, and any misrepresentation of God is less glorious than His true nature. So again, we should be focused on getting it right. In the end, this is simply hedging your bets, a tactic which I take to be a fallacious and lazy way of thinking in general.

What is also bizarre about this meme is that Arminians believe in Total Depravity, which Richard talks about later. We believe in the human need for God, and our complete insufficiency. Indeed, the only honor I give man is that He is God's instrument in the world, but Dortians don't even disagree with that. We ascribe no higher honor to man in soteriology, so what is the complaint even about?

Well it seems to be connected to power. There is no question that Arminian theology ascribes more power to man than Dortian theology does. Indeed Richard comments that Arminians teach that man is a least able to "grab the rope". While I personally reject the analogy, I don't really object to its use here since it helps us see what Richard is concerned about. He is concerned about the human's ability to affect the outcome of their own salvation. However, the concern here is NOT honor; it's power. Power does not necessarily translate to honor. I don't want to say that there is no relationship, but one does not necessarily entail the other. For instance, if a general gives an order to take a bunker, how much honor does the courier receive for relaying that instruction? Yet the courier has the power to change the order, or simply not relay it if he so chose. Yet no one in their right mind would ever say that the bunker was taken due to the work of the courier. It was the general who gets the credit and rightly so.

In Arminianism, we may say that a person can resist God's actions, but not a single Arminian would ever say that a person should receive some kind of credit for that submission. We do not ascribe honor to them. Therefore, it is not that Arminians have a higher view of man, but that we have a different view of power.

Arminian soteriology is the foundation for sacramental soteriology

So Richard certainly gets points here on originaliality. However, I am not very moved by the argument. First of all, this is another example of bet hedging, so I'm already not very impressed. However, I'm not sure if sacramentology constitutes a proper attack anyway because I'm don't really agree with his analysis of sacraments or its relationship to Arminianism.

Now first off, I am both a Zwinglian and a credobaptist, so I'm not too keen on defending sacraments. As such it is difficult for me to decide how to approach this. However, for Richard's argument to go through, it requires three components: A) sacraments are bad, B) There is a real connection between Arminianism and sacraments and C) Calvinism protects from it. I don't think Richard has given a sufficient argument for A, B, or C. However, I have no real desire to defend sacraments, so I'll grant him A for the sack of the argument.

B. So, what is the connection between Arminianism and sacramentism that Richard proposes? We might be able to consider that he is making some kind of historical argument that all sacramental systems also hold to Arminian theology, but considering that sacraments only came into existance once, and that this connection has more to do with the early church than anything elsewe must consider that this historical argument is, at best, nothing more than mere correlation (and not enough data), which is insufficent to demonstrate causation. So I don't really believe Richard is trying to make this argument. So does he ever really make an argument?

"For if man is capable of turning to God in faith, and that action is necessary to salvation, we may easily understand why the Papists or the Campbellists would think to add other elements to this formula." This is really it. In fact, we just have this one sentence. First of all, to say that man is capable of turning to God is to misunderstand Arminian theology. We merely say that we are capable of turning away from Him, not toward Him. Nothing but God's grace can bring us toward Him. So this link is grounded in straw man. This is not a very good start.

Worst yet, that papists ground their sacramentology on their ecclesiology, not their soteriology. They view it has the function of the church to dispense God's grace. So while this argument may sound plausible, it doesn't take catholic theology for its own word. As for the Campbellites, I cannot speak much on the movement. While aware of it, I have not studied the matter historically. I would be interested whether their commentment to sacramentialism though was grounded more in privitism rather than their libertarianism. Also, I do not know if they are even Arminian in their theology (Catholics certainly aren't). Here I would simply wonder what historical evidence Richard has that sacramentology formed the way he claims here.

C. Here it is even harder to tell how he is trying to justify this (that is that Calvinism protects against sacraments). It is difficult to determine whether or not a general dismissal of sacramentalism by Dortists has to do with Dortism or their rejection of Catholicism (and devotion to Sola Scriptura). I suspect the latter. And many Arminians feel likewise. Sure, the Methodists tend to have sacraments, but that is because of their historical ties to Anglicanism, not their soteriology. But classicly Martin Luther and Augustine had similar soteriological views, and yet were passionate sacramentalists. Augustine was a major shaper of Catholic sacramentology. Even Calvin and Presbyrterians still hold to a sacramental view (though admittely weaker than other sacramental traditions). So this also strikes me as incredibly weak.

In summary, I would say that this argument simply doesn't have any historical evidence, and doesn't seem to take seriously the actual theological positions that it is dealing with. Now possibly he has a point, but at this stage significantly more research is required for this argument to even have a prima facie case.

Does Jesus save or make men saveable?

We hear this argument A LOT, and it is a terrible argument. First of all, when assessing the efficaciousness of the cross, there are two ways to approach it: a divine perspective, and a human perspective. The trick with this argument is to assess Dort from a divine perspective and Arminianism from a human perspective, which is exactly what I said it was: a trick. Now I am not saying that Richard is trying to trick anyone. This argument is so common that I'm sure he is repeating it because it was convinced by it. But at its heart, it is a rhetorical trick to turn Dort's biblically weakest link into something good and important.

So since I like saving my more important points for last, let's look at both positions from a human perspective first. In both systems no one is born justified. So we start out unredeemed. In both systems, when we come to have faith in order to have Christ's atonement applied to us. In both systems, once the atonement is applied to us, we are completely justified. So the difference in the person's life is not the efficaiousness of the atonement, which does the same thing with the same power (and is considered infinite in both systems), but simply in the order with which things happen (regeneration->faith->justification vs faith->justification->regeneration).

Now let's look at it from a divine perspective. Now here things are a bit tricky since there are two theories of election within Armianianism, but for the sake of simplicity I'm going to look at the traditional view held by Arminius. In both Classic Arminianism and Dortism, God knows exactly who He is going to save when Jesus is at the cross, and those exact persons' sins are atoned for at the moment. So again, no difference in terms of efficaciousness.

So what's the real difference? The real difference is in election. In both systems justification comes by faith, but how faith comes about is different. And from the Arminian perspective, the issue is that anyone could be saved. Not everyone is, and God knows who will be because He is omniscient. So who is saved is certain. But it is not necessitated, and thus the offer of salvation to everyone is geniune. At least that's our issue anyway.

The Bible favors the doctrine of Unconditional Election.

There is no way I can adequately respond to this here, but to some degree, I think this section is the most important. What really matters IS what does the Bible actually teach. Now, I don't think the Bible teaches unconditional election. Romans 9 is about God's soveriegnty over the conditions of election, not unconditionality (verse 20 is anticipating a Jew who is angry that God is saving Gentiles, not Arminianism). Ephesians 1 is saying that God has chosen to save us, but doesn't stipulate how He does so; so one has to read the rest of the book for that. John 6 is about how only those who were already believers amoung the Jews could recognize what God was revealing in Jesus, not about unconditional election. In fact, here are my links dealing with those subjects: proof-texts, biblical arguments, and SEA on election.

However, all that said, attempting to settle the matter here will not do the conversation justice. My only real critique of this section then is the fact that Richard does nothing to engage with the Arminian responses to his incredibly common arguments. An issue I also have with the next section.

The doctrine of total depravity causes problems for Arminian soteriology

First of all, a point about the rhetoric here. He says that Armians "often" or "usually" believe in Total Depravity. This is untrue. Arminians always believe in Total Depravity, though sometimes reject the language. The third article of the Remonstrance is quite clear on this. If you don't believe at least in what he describes here, that humanity "is unable to turn to God in and of himself", then you are not an Arminian. Additionally, to say that Arminians "just" employ prevenient grace is to say that Dortians "just" employ unconditional election. It's the defining doctrine of the entire position!

Anyway, how does this cause a problem? He makes three arguments. The first is that it is ad hoc. Well, sorta. The theology is designed to balance the theological tensions that are in Scripture, and it does so well. But this is no less true than the Trinity. While the doctrine of prevenient grace is designed to pull together all of what Scripture says, it still is the best explanation of the evidence that we have. And it isn't really that ad hoc. It is a rather reasonable conclusion to what we know about God's character. Afterall, prevenient grace is nothing more than saying that God actively drawing people to Him from birth. It isn't really that complex.

Second point is that what I typically call the technical argument. In this argument, the Total Depravity of man is never really experienced because God is always at work, so TD is merely "technical". However, I don't see this as a weakness, but as a strength. When we look around us, don't we see people trying to be good? Don't we see people being drawn to conviction and righteousness? In fact Reformed circles refer to this as "common grace", that is grace extended to the reprobate to hold back their sinful natures. And what is the problem with the understanding that God is always at work? Are we seriously suggesting here that the problem with Arminian theology is the ubiquity of God's providence? Um, darn?

Third point is the "why does one person choose and another doesn't" argument. This confuses merit with condition, a point which I flesh out in more detail here. To sum up quickly, while merit implies conditionality, conditionality doesn't imply merit, and the question is merely a question of conditionality. Indeed, we could say, "Well if the condition is faith, then faith itself must be caused by a 'something'. What is that 'something'". Well, it varies from person to person. Indeed, as a Molinist, Richard should recognize that such a question actually assumes compatiblism, and thus doesn't really work with his own belief in libertarian free will.

Evangelical Arminianism borrows from Calvinism

Well, this is a textbook genetic fallacy. However, even if we considered genetic fallacies legit, it still doesn't work considering historical details. First of all, yes Luther was a staunch Augustian, and certainly Arminians being Protestant inherit a good deal from him. However, Luther's successor, Philip Melchathon, held to a Semiaugustian position, and Luther stilll blessed him.

What is Semiaugustianism you ask? Good question. Semiaugustinianism is basicly pre-reformation Arminianism, and what is important to note about this is that is was accepted over Augustianism at the Council of Orange (not one of the big 7 of course, but much more influential in its day than Dort). However, aren't we still in the same place since Semiaugustinianism is clearly based off of Augustinianism? Well, no, because Semiaugustinianism was reconciling Augustine with the church fathers that came before him. It is precisely in those areas that Dort is so proud of that put Augustine in conflict with every theologian prior. Now I don't want to say that this makes Augustine and therefore Dort wrong or unworthy. That would be a genetic fallacy. But my point is that Arminianism has a very good historical pedigree.

Conclusion

So where do we stand? Section 1 is bet hedging, which is bad argumentation. Section 2 is also bet hedging and underdevelopped. Section 3 is just sophistry in my opinion. Section 4 is underdevelopped, but that might just be due to the nature of the article. Section 5 is simply unconvincing to me, but probably his best section apart from a bit of straw man. And finally section 6 is a genetic fallacy. Overall, I'm not very challenged in my Arminian faith, though I do thank Richard for sharing his thoughts and perspective on the issue.