CalvinDude.com

First of all, let me say that I now despise these stupid keyboards with the “sleep” key.  Especially since my computer, when it goes to sleep, never wakes up!  That’s right, I have to turn it off and turn it back on…so when I try to prop a book up on my keyboard to try to type in a quote…BAM.  There goes all my work.

GRRRRR!

With that out of the way, I have an article on this site called Logic Proves The Existence of God: Part II.  Using the Wayback Machine (internet archives), I found that the first time I had this put on-line that I can prove was back on January 30, 2003 on my old domain, DebateAtheism.org.  Back then it was called “Why Logic Proves the Existence of God” and was the main article on the January 30 page.

The date is important.  After all, when I wrote this essay, it was around the time I first heard about Greg Bahnsen and started to get into presuppositionalism in more detail.  And while that certainly influenced me, the conclusions I came to in my article were things I came up with independently.  That is, I didn’t read anywhere in any book where anyone tried to link the laws of logic to the attributes of God.  It just made sense to me, however, that it should be so.

As such, I was thrilled when I read this last night:

[W]ithin the very concept of [scientific] law lies the expectation that we included all times and all places.  That is to say, the law, if it really is a law and is correctly formulated and qualified, holds for all times and all places.  The classic terms are omnipresence (all places) and eternity (all times).  Law has these two attributes that are classically attributed to God.

Poythress, Vern S. (2006).  Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach, Wheaton: Good News Publishers (p. 17)

That’s right!  Someone else came to the same conclusions I did!  Granted, Poythress is speaking specifically of scientific law here, but it applies to logical laws too.

But there’s more!

The attributesof omnipresence and eternity are only the beginning.  On close examination, other divine attributes seem to belong to scientific laws.  Consider.  If a law holds for all times, we presuppose that it is the same law through all times.  The law does not change within time.  It is immutable.  A supposed “law” that did change with time would not really be “the law,” but one temporal phase in a higher or broader regularity that would account for the lower-level change.  The higher, universal regularity is the law.  The very concept of scientific law presupposes immutability.

Next, laws are at bottom ideational in character.  We do not literally see a law, but only the effects of the law on the material world.  The law is essentially immaterial and invisible, but is known through effects.  Likewise, God is essentially immaterial and invisible, but is known through his acts in the world.

Real laws, as opposed to scientists’ approximations of them, are also absolutely, infallibly true.  Truthfulness is also an attribute of God.

Next, consider the attribute of power.  Scientists formulate laws as descriptions of regularities they observe.  The regularities are there in the world first, before the scientists make their formulations.  The human scientific formulation follows the facts, and is dependent on them.  But the facts must conform to a regularity even before the scientist formulates a description.  A law or regularity must hold for a whole series of cases.  The scientist cannot force the issue by inventing a law and then forcing the universe to conform to the law.  The universe rather conforms to laws already there, laws that are discovered rather than invented.  The laws must already be there.  They must actually hold.  They must “have teeth.”  If they are truly universal, they are not violated.  No event escapes their “hold” or dominion.  The power of the real laws is absolute, in fact, infinite.  In classical language, the law is omnipotent (”all powerful”).

…

The law is both transcendent and immanent.  It transcends the creatures of the world by exercising power over them, conforming them to its dictates.  It is immanent in that it touches and holds in its dominion even the smallest bits in the world.  Law transcends the galactic clusters and is immanently present in the chromodynamic dance of quarks and gluons in the bosom of a single proton.  Transcendence and immance are characteristics of God.

…

Law implies a law-giver.  Someone must think the law and enforce it, if it is to be effective.  But if some people resist this direct move to personality, we may move more indirectly.

Scientists in practice believe passionately in the rationality of scientific law.  We are not dealing with an irrational, totally unaccountable and unanalyzable surd, but with lawfulness that in some sense is accessible to human understanding.  Rationality is a sine qua non for scientific law.  But, as we know, rationality belongs to persons, not to rocks, trees, and subpersonal creatures.  If the law is rational, which scientists assume it is, then it is also personal.

…

In addition, law is both knowable and incomprehensible in the theological sense.  That is, we know scientific truths, but in the midst of this knowledge there remain unfathomed depths and unanswered questions about the very areas where we know the most.

The knowability of laws is closely related to their rationality and their immanence, displayed in the accessibility of effects.  We experience incomprehensibility in the fact that the increase of scientific understanding only leads to ever deeper questions: “How can this be?” and “Why this law rather han many other ways that the human mind can imagine?”  The profundity and mystery in scientific discoveries can only produce awe–yes, worship–if we have not blunted our perception with hubris (Isa. 6:9-10).

(ibid, 17-21)

Yes!  Someone else has come to the same conclusions I did :-)  Naturally, I highly doubt that Poythress has ever read my website, and that makes the fact that we’ve both come to the same conclusions even more exciting for me.  It shows the consistency in presuppositional beliefs even when not explicitly stated.  I never read anyone before who had done this kind of work explictly like this; which isn’t to say that it isn’t out there either, of course as it may very well be.

In any case, it’s nice to see someone write in 2006 what I wrote in 2003 (albeit he wrote much better than I did). ;-)

“He’s [Jim Webb] not a typical politician. He really has deep convictions,” said Schumer, who headed the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.  (source).

Yes, Virginia, Schumer has admitted that the typical politician has no deep convictions.  Not that anyone is surprised to hear that…

Lewis Carroll wrote a dialogue called “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.”  I first saw mention of this when I read Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.  It’s also been brought up a few times by James F. Harris in Against Relativism.  Interestingly enough, the section I just finished reading, Harris critiques two relativists for using that very dialogue as a way of establishing that the laws of logic cannot be proven.  After doing so, he falls into the very thing he criticized.

To demonstrate this, first a quick overview of the dialogue is necessary.  Basically put, Achilles is attempting to convince Tortoise of the following logic:

A) Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other (or, mathematically put,: a = c; b = c; Therefore, a = b).

B) The two sides of a specific triangle are things that are equal to the same thing.

Z) Therefore the two sides of the triangle are equal to each other.

The last clause is put as Z) for a reason.  This is because Tortoise responded to Achilles by saying that this modus ponens requires a reason for why he must accept Z), so Achilles gave the only option he could:

C) If A) and B) are true, then Z) must be true.

Tortoise then asks Achilles to prove that, so Achilles says:

D) If A) and B) and C) are true, then Z) must be true.

As you can see, this continues forever.  When Harris first examed this dialogue, he concluded by saying:

Carroll’s point is clear: Unless one is willing to accept some logical rule or law and treat it on a different logical level from the infrences it generates, no justification is possible; and no actual inference can ever take place.

Harris, James F. (1992).  Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method, LaSalle: Open Court (p. 39)

It is ironic then that we see Harris make the following statements in disagreeing with David Bloor and Barry Barnes and their use of the dialogue:

Consider any person S who holds any belief B as the result of whatever method or upon whatever grounds one might choose–science, oracle, witchcraft, or voodoo.  Let us call the method which produces B, M.  Now suppose we ask how it is that S comes to believe that B is the result of M.  If B is to be a belief upon which this person predicates any behavior whatsoever, then, as I have argued, both B and not-B cannot both follow from M (at the same time, under the same conditions, and so forth).  Consequently, there must be some mechanism, some warrant, some criterion c by which S determines that B follows from M.  Perhaps c is simply the recognition and implicit acknowledgment of an authority, or perhaps it is a certain ritual or procedure, or perhaps it is the application of a particular method to certain data.  But whatever c is, S must be able to reason, ‘If c, then B follows from M and if not-c, then B does not follow from M’.  This is the force of Wittgenstein’s famed call for the necessity of a criterion or rules.

(ibid, 105)

Does this not fall right back into the same infinite regress that the Tortoise moved Achilles into?  After all, would there not need to be some meta-c to demonstrate why c is nessary in the first place?

In other words, there must be some criterion meta-c by which S determines that B follows from M due to c. And there must be some criterion meta-meta-c by which S determines that B follows from M due to c due to meta-c….etc.

In this instance, Harris falls into the very trap he was seeking to defuse in Bloor & Barnes.  Ultimately, this is because the entire example is self-referential.  That is, a person’s belief (B) in a method (M) is validated by that very method itself especially on properly basic philosophical levels.  In other words, one asks: how do we know what criteria establishes a claim in the first place?  Answer: by the method we employ.  In other words, c presupposes M to be valid.

This is the only way to avoid falling into the Tortoise error.

The infant baptism debate between James White (Reformed Baptist) and Bill Shishko (OPC) is now available for free download!  This is one of the few issues I disagree with White on :-)

I’m continuing to read James F. Harris’s Against Relativism.  One of the interesting things about this book is that Harris looks at several relativistic philosophers and critiques them in various chapters.  One such critique comes against Nelson Goodman in Chapter 3 of Against Relativism.

Goodman’s relativism is based on an attack on induction; one that is a result of the thoughts of David Hume.  Induction, for those who are not aware, is basically how science works, by infering from the observed to the unobserved.  (For more, check out this wiki article.)

The problem with induction is that one must be able to justify one’s inductions.  As Harris explains:

The difficulty is one of supplying a rationale or justification for the claim that reports of observations concerning known or observed cases provide some logical basis for making judgments about unobserved cases.  Induction is the process of inference whereby one concludes that unobserved cases will resemble observed cases in some crucial respect.  But, as Hume’s question goes, why would one ever be justified in believing this to be so?  The question is neither simply why one believes that it is so nor simply why one trusts in or uses induction, but rather why such beliefs are epistemologically justified.

Harris, James F. (1992).  Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method, LaSalle: Open Court (pp. 51-52), emphasis in original

One example of this problem is found in a quote of Charles Sanders Peirce in the book:

A chemist notices a surprising phenomenon.  Now if he has a high admiration of Mill’s Logic, as many chemists have, he will remember that Mill tells him that he must work on the principle that, under precisely the same circumstances, like phenomena are produced.  Why does he then not note that this phenomena was produced on such a day of the week the planets presenting a certain configuration, his daughter having on a blue dress, the milkman being late that morning and so on? (6.413)

(ibid, 62)

In short, induction is not a clear-cut thing.  And this brings up Goodman’s “Grue Paradox.”  The Grue Paradox can be framed in the following manner.

First, we have the usual predicate: All emeralds that have been observed before a specific time t (ie. “now”) are green.  Therefore, we generalize: “All emeralds are green.”

However, Goodman stipulated a second predicate: “All emeralds observed before a specific time t are green, but after t they will be blue.”  Thus, we generalize that “All emeralds are grue.”

As Harris states:

Exactly the same evidence which confrims ‘all emeralds are green’ also confirms ‘all emeralds are grue’.  That is, for each observation of an emerald which is described by the true observation ‘a is green’, ‘b is green’, and so forth, there is a corresponding true obeservation statement ‘a is grue’, ‘b is grue,’ and so on.  Consequently, the two generalizations, ‘all emeralds are green’ and ‘all emeralds are grue’ are each equally confirmed by any and all of exactly the same observations (before t).

Having two different hypotheses confirmed by exactly the same data may not be troubling in some circumstances; however, in the present case the situation becomes particularly intolerable given the mutual inconsistency of the two hypotheses.  A green emerald will be green after t, but a grue emerald will be blue after t given the definition of ‘grue’.  Whichever of the two hypotheses we might regard as confirmed, the other is equally confirmed, and hence, we are left in the very unenviable position of being unable to give an evidential reason for choosing one hypothesis and rejecting the other since, to emphasize the point, there is absolutely no evidence which confirms one which does not also confirm the other.

(Ibid, 55)

This highlights the problem with induction quite nicely.  Harris, following Peirce, tries to solve this by appealing to abduction.  In this case, however, it appears that Harris surrenders the ability to affirm the truth-detecting ability of science.  That is, in separating abduction from induction, induction loses its ability to actually declare which hypothesis ought to be considered and which ought not be.

This is a problem for Harris because he writes: “Briefly, I will suggest a way of understanding Goodman’s new riddle of induction…such that none of the threatening relativistic consequences for science follow” (ibid 59-60).  If Harris’s solution does not remove the “threatening relativistic consequences” then either relativism is true (which I, personally, disagree with of course) or else Harris’s solution has a problem.

So what is his solution?

It appears that Goodman’s new riddle of induction results from…the “failure to distinguish the essentially different characters of different elements of scientific reasoning.”  The new riddle of induction–whether it is a riddle at all or not–is not, in any case, a riddle of induction.  Goodman obviously treats abudction and induction as “a single argument” and conflates abduction and induction.  If we adopt Peirce’s distinction, then the new riddle of induction is properly viewed as a riddle of abduction, a meta-scientific riddle. …For Hume’s problem to arise, the hypothesis must already be in place.  Goodman’s new riddle of induction is clearly a problem concerning how a hypothesis gets selected for confirmation.  Will we select ‘all emeralds are green’ or ‘all emeralds are grue’?  This question is an issue of abduction, not induction.

(ibid, 60-61)

Everything Harris said here is accurate.  Goodman’s argument does not deal so much with the method of induction itself as it does with which hypotheses should we use?  This is, indeed, a meta-scientific question.  As Harris continues:

Goodman tells us that is is because ‘all emeralds are green’ and ‘all emeralds are grue’ are equally “confirmed by evidence statements describing the same observations.”  now how is it that the two competing hypotheses get confirmed in order to generate the paradox unless induction is being used with each hypothesis?  In other words, the new riddle of induction becomes a riddle only if induction itself is used since both hypotheses must be confirmed (by induction) in order for Goodman’s paradox to arise.  This is clear evidence that the problem raised by Goodman’s new riddle of induction is on the meta-scientific level involving the selection of hypotheses rather than on the level of confirmation of hypotheses by induction.

(ibid 61)

Again, Harris is correct.  And in being correct, he seals off the ability for science (which he equates with induction) to determine which hypothesis is correct in a given system.  In other words, the results of induction are relative to the hypthesis that one begins with.

This relativism is one that Harris acknowledges:

So far as raising serious questions of relativism for induction is concerned, the new riddle of induction is a sheep in wolf’s clothing because the alleged pernicious, relativistic consequences of the grue paradox for induction do not follow.  The scientific method which uses induction in the process of confirmation for providing epistemological warrant for a hypothesis must be presupposed by the grue paradox since, in order for the paradox to be generated, conflicting projections must be equally confirmed.  Seen in this manner, the new problem of induction is neither new nor a problem of induction.  It is the old problem of theory formation, Peirce’s process of abduction, and induction is not threatened by new charges of relativism.  Surely, induction is relative to a particular theory, but this simply amounts to saying that confirmation is relative to a particular hypothesis.

(ibid, 62)

Under these circumstances, however, I fail to see how the charge of relativism is defused.  It is moved to a different position to be sure; but it remains there.  Now if all that Harris wishes to accomplish is to say that induction as a method itself is not relative, then that is fine…but with the above he is acknowledging that induction as a method is insufficient to give us any actual knowledge.  That is, it is the hypotheses that are chosen and then put into the inductive method that determine what the results would be.  And that seems, at least based on the summary view that Harris provides of Goodman (I confess I have not read Goodman myself yet), that this is exactly what Goodman was arguing in the first place.

In any case, I do wish there were more folks like Harris who would acknowledge the meta-scientific aspect to scientific theory.  If there is one thing the discussion regarding Goodman can teach us, it’s that scientific theory (induction) alone cannot provide any knowledge and that science is only as good as the controlling philosophy it has.  After all, induction can prove two sides of a contradiction if it is thought to be an actual epistemological end point.

Thanksgiving is a great holiday, but one that throws off my schedule in a myriad number of ways!  Before the holiday, I spoke with a co-worker about my previous blog entry about free will.  In that post, I raised a question about if it were even possible for God, in the Arminian system, to create a being with free will who would not sin.

Unfortunately, the holiday kept me from actually writing on that until now!  And since we’ll most certainly be doing overtime at work to make up for all the work we missed over the holiday weekend, I figured I’d better get this in before work :-)

In any case, to offer a clarification of my position and to restate it in a way that will hopefully make a bit more sense.  Unfortunately, it is impossible to write 100% clearly on the issue since we are going to have to discuss the issue of what “before” means to a timeless Being.   In other words, when Ephesians 1:4 says, “…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world…” we have to understand what the “before” means.

I will delve into that more in the future (unless I go completely insane with all the overtime).  For now, I will just mention that my belief is that the “before” mentioned in Ephesians 1 refers not to time but to a logical order.  We can view that as the logical order of the decrees of God.  Because God is timeless, there is no “before” or “after” inherent in Him; yet He is also aware of the passage of time in His creation.  That is, God knows that yesterday happened before today, even though he doesn’t experience time in the sense that we do.  God knows that He created the world before the world fell, but this knowledge is not experientially gained as it is in our case.  (In other words, we know the passage of time because we experience it; God knows it because He decreed it.)

Thus, we can look at the order of the decrees of God.  By this, we are speaking of a logical order not a temporal order.  When we look at Ephesians 1 again, we see that before the foundation of the world, God had already decreed that there were certain people (the Elect) who were chosen in Him unto salvation.  Regardless of whether we hold to the “foundation of the world” as being temporal (that is, the actual creation and starting point of time) or the decree that there would be creation, the logical order is still the same: Election precedes creation.

After all, what the decree that occurs before the foundation of the world says is: “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”  Thus, at the very least what we see is that in the logical order of things God has decreed:

A. There would be some who must be holy and blameless before him.

B. Then God created those very people.

As we move to Revelation 13:8, we see the same theme.  To see the relevant portion in a few versions:

everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain. (ESV)

whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  (KJV)

all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world (NIV)

everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. (NASB)

As you can see, the Greek refers to either Christ’s being slain before the foundation of the world, or else there are certain people whose names have been written in the book of life before the foundation of the world.  Ultimately, both of these are taught in Scripture.  Once again, we see that before the actual creation of the world, God had logically decreed certain things to occur; namely, that there would be some who are saved.

This is epitomized in 1 Peter 1:20, which says of Christ: “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake.”  This passage is especially fruitful for our discussion because it speaks about God’s eternality (in having Christ foreknown before the foundation of the world) yet also about His acting within time (in having Him become “manifest in the last times”).  Thus, we see Scriptural warrant for the previously mentioned idea that God is atemporal and yet still knows what goes on within time.

Now, all these things culminate to show something specific as relates to the act of Creation.  Before God created anything, He already had in mind both that there would be a savior and that there would be some who are saved.  But in order to save anyone, there must be a reason for the salvation.

This is key to the discussion with the Arminian.  We know that when God created Adam in the Garden, Adam was created good.  Yet these passages also indicate that despite the fact that Adam had been created good, God had already decreed that there would be sinners and that He would save some.

The Arminian seeks refuge in the foreknowledge of God.  He might even take comfort from the passage in 1 Peter which specifically uses that term of Christ.  However, what the Arminian gains in “warm fuzzy feelings” he loses in the matter of consistency.  For if it is the case that God foreknew that Adam would sin, then the question must be: Why did God create Adam?

In other words, even if we suppose that God’s decree was based on God’s foreknowledge this doesn’t solve anything for the Arminian.  God created Adam knowing full well that Adam would sin.  God decreed that He would save some through the death of Christ, but at the point of Creation Adam could not have done anything but fall because God had already decreed it.

In other words, the Arminian cannot rescue freedom here.  Adam was just as bound to sin as he is for the Calvinist, because God’s plan at the point of creation included Adam’s fall.

This brought us to the point I made in the previous post that my co-worker asked for clarification on.  The Roman Catholic I spoke with last week argued that God’s primary goal was to create actually free creatures (as argued above, this still doesn’t work even granting Arminians their entire presupposition).  But let us throw a wrench into the system.

God’s omniscience includes not only all actual events, but all potential events too.  A quick Biblical proof of this is found in the condemnation of Chorazin and Bethsaida in Matthew 11:21: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”  Thus, Christ knew not only the actual events (that Tyre and Sidon had not repented) but the possibilities too (that if the works done in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done there, they would have repented).  So we know that God knows the possibiles and not just the actuals.

This brings me to my question.  If God knows all possible actions that Adam could have done, then either God intentionally did not choose the universe or universes in which Adam did obey Him, or else there were no such universes in which that could have happened.

Naturally, this gets a little sticky for us since we only live in the “actual” universe and not in potential or possible ones.  But if God’s decree is based on His foreknowledge, as the Arminian declares, then God is free to act before the fact to ensure which possibility occurs.  Consider, for example, if you foreknew what tomorrow’s lottery numbers would be.  You could then act in such a way that you will win the lottery, if that is what you desire; or you can act in a manner in which you will not win.  This is completely up to you to do.  All you have to do is choose which path you want.

In any case, the Arminian is stuck with a huge problem.  Either God is too incompetant to create a man who can freely choose to obey Him, or else God intentionally chose to create a universe in which sinful man would of necessity exist.  The only way to avoid this dilemma is to either accept Open Theism (in believing that God cannot see a free choice, and thus one denies His omniscience) or else to accept Calvinism (that God sovereignly decreed what would happen).

Given the numerous Biblical passages that demonstrate both that God is in fact omniscient even over free choices, and the abundant Biblical evidence that God has in fact decreed whatsoever comes to pass, we know that the Biblical response is Calvinism, not Open Theism.

UPDATE:  By the way, I would also add this point.  When the Arminian speaks of God’s foreknowledge, he speaks of it as if it would be a one-shot event for God.  That is, God is “trapped” by what He knows will happen. 

It’s like God knows the outcome of what would happen if He rolls a pair of dice, but is powerless to change that outcome.  He has freedom to roll the dice, but not freedom to determine how they’ll land.  And if they land poorly, He can’t just pick them up and re-do it.  He’s stuck with the result. 

In other words, God knows the future but is powerless to change anything about it.

Ultimately, this relies on a misunderstanding of how God knows something.  We, as humans, deal with odds and probabilities.  There is a chance of something happening.  God doesn’t deal with chance though.

Going back to the dice metaphor; God created the dice.  He designed them in the first place.  The laws of physics are based on His very nature and the way He designed the universe.  If God drops the dice, He’ll know exactly what needs to occur for them to come up in a specific way.  In short, God can’t help but determine the outcome.  His foreknowledge is based on His determination of what will happen.  He knows because He decrees.

God cannot “learn” anything.  He cannot gain knowledge.  He cannot be surprised.  This is only possible if there is no such thing as chance for God.  There can only be chance if there is ignorance.  If there is no chance, there must be determination.

I finally have a moment to explain the background to my previous post on Freedom while I have a moment at lunch!  (That’s right, we’re working overtime again…unfortunately, since we’ll have Thursday and Friday off this week for Thanksgiving, we won’t get overtime pay…which kinda makes it hard to be motivated to work overtime sometimes….)

Anyway, on Sundays I get together with some friends for a theological/philosophical discussion at a local coffee shop.  The coffee shop is called Agia Sophia, which is Greek for “Holy Wisdom.”  As one might guess from the name, it’s also run by people who are Greek Orthodox (I’m making the distinction for my parent’s sake, who get to deal with the Russian Orthodox believers in Ukraine–but from now on, I’ll just call it Orthodox for short!).

Ironically, this Sunday we had five people there.  The names: Peter, Andrew, Joshua, Joseph, and John.  Yes, we could practically write our own gospels :-D  In any case, the make-up of the group consisted of myself (PCA Presbyterian) and my brother (Reformed, but non-denominational at the moment), a Roman Catholic, an Orthodox, and a person who is coming out of the general Evangelical church who is now looking intently into Catholicism.

In any case, one of the people whom I had not met before gave the presentation Sunday.  This is before I knew what his background was.  It began as a look at when the New Testament Church began.  Eventually, we morphed into a discussion as to what the intent of Genesis 1:1 was.  That is, what is the reason God created anything in the first place?

This person presented the “freedom” argument that I mentioned briefly in that Pensèe previously linked.  This was in response to my pointing out that given Ephesians 1 and the fact that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world and also Revelation 13:8 which speaks either of people’s names being written in the book of Life before the foundation of the world or that it was the Lamb (Christ) who was slain before the foundation of the world (depending on how one translates the Greek) then it would certainly be the case that before Creation, God had already intended to save some and for Christ to be the means by which this salvation would occur (this is also demonstrated in 1 Peter 1:20, which speaks of Christ in the following manner: “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world”).

In other words, my argument was that the purpose of Creation was primarily soteriological.  That is, Creation occured so that God could demonstrate the depths of His love in saving those who are sinners (Romans 5:6-8).  This required there be sin first, and thus part of the intent of Creation included the fact that there would be sin.  This is obviously a hard saying, yet one that is inescapable based on the Scriptures I’ve alluded to here.

Naturally, there was some disagreement from the guy who was presenting the talk.  He gave the freedom argument.  That is, God wanted to create people who were able to either accept or reject Him.  He didn’t want to create automatons.

Yet this doesn’t solve the fact that Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world, and it doesn’t solve the fact that we who are saved are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.  Both of these things occured before God created anything.

Thus, we are left with a problem for Arminianism.  Either we must stipulate that God intentionally created people so that they would sin, or else we must argue that it is impossible for God to actually create anyone who would not sin.  You see, if God did not want them to sin, yet He knew that they would sin and He created them anyway, then this means that God is not able to create people who could freely refrain from sinning–for if He could, would He not have done so?

In short, the Arminian must argue that free will necessitates sin!  This is an even stronger version of total depravity than the Calvinist holds to, for indeed the Calvinist argues that it is not man’s freedom that is the problem but it is his nature.  Thus, in heaven, Christians will have freewill but their natures will be sanctified and thus they will continually choose good; but for the Arminian, the nature isn’t the problem–freedom itself is, and therefore there can be no guarantee of salvation even in heaven!  What is to stop the Christian from freely sinning from heaven in such a scenario?

Since my lunch break is over I’ll have to stop here for now :-)  However, a quick question:  Do you know which theological background the presenter had?

That’s right: he was Roman Catholic.  Which only goes to show that when it comes to the mechanics of soteriology, there is very little difference between Arminians and Catholics.

I’m reading through Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method by James F. Harris.  It’s rather interesting because Harris is a secular author and considers himself a champion of scientific inquery.  In any case, he said the following which, in my opinion, is one of the clearest demonstrations of how science is itself a philosophy:

As every schoolchild learns, the two primary purposes of science are explanation and prediction. … Explanation and prediction are activities which naturally arouse interest in and questions about numerous related issues and notions which quickly lead to metascientific, epistemological inquriy.  “Explanation of what?” we might ask.  And, “Prediction of what?”  “Explanation as opposed to what, and prediction as opposed to what?”  Are some explanations preferred to others?  Why?  Does this not mean that there are “good” explanations and “bad” ones?  Why?  And are some explanations “scientific” while others are not?  Again, why?  And similarly with predictions, why is it that some predictions command our assent or belief in preference to others?  On what evidence? How do we gather the evidence?  How do we come to accept and believe certain evidence?  Answering such questions presupposes a fundamental, meta-scientific, epistemological inquiry into the nature of “reality”, facts, truth, reasons, evidence, belief, and knowledge.  Such an inquiry creates the domain of the philosophy of science.

Harris, James F. (1992).  Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method, LaSalle: Open Court (pp. 13-14)

My father forwarded me this link to an article reposted on Richard Dawkins’ website. (The original article can be found here, as well as a follow-up article here.)

The articles are great, but even more interesting are the responses by the atheists on Dawkin’s site.  I think they merely serve to prove Steve Hays right.  Atheists do function more as a suicide cult than as rational thinkers.

I had a discussion yesterday (more on that on a later post) with a person leaning semi-Pelagian (aka: Arminian) on the question of why God created the world.  His response was basically that God’s intention was for man to be free to either choose or deny Him.

In short, Freedom for the creature is the ultimate Good.

But if this is the case, then I merely ask: is God free to not love all?  If God is, then what problem does the semi-Pelagian/Arminian have with Calvinism?  If He is not, then would that not mean that God Himself can grant what He Himself cannot do; that God’s creation, in other words, usurps Him in the very thing defined as the highest good?