In The Making of an Atheist (2010. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers), James S. Spiegel engages in a task that is well-defined and focused, and perhaps maybe too focused. As a result, the book gave me mixed feelings, yet I cannot fault Dr. Spiegel as his book does exactly what he set out to accomplish. It is rather like being handed a scalpel: it’s the perfect instrument for surgery, but you wouldn’t want to carve a sculpture with one.

Thus, Spiegel’s book is very audience relative. There are certain books where I can give a blanket recommendation to everyone, as there will be “something for all types” in it. This book, however, requires one to know exactly who the audience is.

If that sounds harsh, don’t take it that way. Books that have “something for everyone” also have portions that everyone will dislike. On the other hand, with the proper context Spiegel’s book shines and I have read none better. As you can tell from that depiction, many of the things that I look at will have a relativistic factor to them: for some people they will be beneficial, for others not so much. Let me look at those first, and then get into the meat of the work.

The first “relative” factor in determining whether this book is good for you or not is the length. It’s only 130 pages long, plus some end notes after that. This makes it a fast read. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you want. If you’re like me and you’ve bought Calvin’s Commentaries, Luther’s Sermons, and the 2-volume works of Jonathan Edwards (you know the one I’m talking about—double columns filled with 6-point font text) then the shortness of this book is unappealing. But given that most of America today thinks that The Shack is a wonderful expression of theological thinking, this may end up being more of a benefit than a detriment to Christians as a whole.

The second “relative” factor is that, for those who have studied the issues, there was not much new information present in this book. This is related to its shortness, since Spiegel was forced to keep to the main points he tried to make without extraneous texts on rich alternate “bunny trails.” Again, this could be good or bad depending on what you expect from a book. It is good in the sense that Spiegel’s main points are very well defended and argued; it is bad if you think outside the box and want him to dig deeper into some of the implications, especially since his writing is so well done on his main points that you know he has the ability to treat those other issues quite well.

In any case, while there was little new information presented, if someone has never looked into Plantinga’s Reformed apologetics, or into modern presuppositional arguments, Spiegel is the perfect place to start. Indeed, Spiegel’s debt to Plantinga is acknowledged through the work, including the dedication page. And, having read both Plantinga and Spiegel, I can attest that Spiegel is much easier to follow. So once again, for the average reader, Spiegel’s book is going to be very beneficial.

Now let’s get into some of the details. As I said at the top, Spiegel has a very specific goal for this book:

…[M]y aim here is not to defend the Christian worldview nor even theism, for that matter. Rather, my purpose is to present a Christian account of atheism—an account that draws from the Bible, as any Christian doctrine properly does (p. 14)

The result is that this book is not a list of “arguments against atheists” but is instead an examination of what the Bible says about atheism. Spiegel does this by providing many proof-texts about unbelief from Scripture. The result is that whether you accept the validity of Scripture or not, if you read this book you will see that the Bible does make specific claims about unbelief.

Aside from the arguments of Scripture, Spiegel does have one interesting aspect to add. In his third chapter, he deals with the causes of atheism. This steps away from Scripture a bit and deals with some psychological reasons, the most common of which is the absence of a father-figure. As Spiegel says:

Is there any relevance to the fact that these two atheists grew up without a father? Some recent research strongly suggests that there is. In this chapter we will look at evidence for the claim that broken father relationships are a contributing cause of atheism. We will also consider evidence that immoral behavior plays a significant role in motivating views on ethics and religion (p. 63).

This is probably Spiegel’s weakest part of the book, as it relies heavily on anecdotal evidence. However, that said, it is a very strong “weak” point. In fact, while I read this chapter I was reminded of the line from the movie Fight Club where Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) says: “Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?” So that movie provided another bit of anecdotal evidence to the rest of Spiegel’s argumentation.

One must be careful with this sort of argument and Spiegel does take great pains to assure us that lacking a proper father-relationship does not guarantee atheism (p. 67). It does, however, seem to be very well correlated. This implies the question: why?

Spiegel answers:

Human beings were made in God’s image, and the father-child relationship mirrors that of humans as God’s “offspring.” We unconsciously (and often consciously, depending on one’s worldview) conceive of God after the pattern of our earthly father…. When one has a healthy father relationship and a father who is a decent moral model, then this metaphor and the psychological patterns it inspires are welcome. However, when one’s earthly father is defective, whether because of death, abandonment, or abuse, this necessarily impacts one’s thinking about God. Whether we call it psychological projection, transfer, or displacement, the lack of a good father is a handicap when it comes to faith (pp. 69-70).

This is one of those areas where I wish Spiegel could have spent more time. He did do a great job of giving background on several historical atheists, as well as many of the New Atheists, to illustrate this point (and I think those are worthwhile), but I would have liked to have seen more of the psychological science fleshed out. This is not because I think Spiegel might be wrong here. Rather, it’s because he’s right that I would have liked to see this point vigorously defended and expanded upon.

So, in the end, what are my final thoughts on this book? I think it’s a great book to give to anyone who wonders what the Bible says about atheism. Despite not directly attempting a rebuttal of atheism, I think atheists who read this book will be challenged by it too. One great thing about the book is that Spiegel is both faithful to Scripture and irenic toward atheists, and any offense that atheists might take would be the result of their dislike of what Scripture says rather than their dislike of Spiegel’s arguments.

Furthermore, since Spiegel largely pins his arguments directly on the text of Scripture, and uses Scripture that is both plain and non-contentious to orthodox Christian believers, this book ought to be acceptable to any mainstream Christian view. (Despite the use of the word “Reformed” in “Reformed apologetics,” Plantinga’s views are not synonymous with Calvinism, and thus one need not be a Calvinist to see the truth presented in Spiegel’s book. All Bible-believing Christians ought to agree with the conclusions presented, even if they disagree on other theological points.)

I also think this is a good book for anyone who has pondered reading Plantinga, Bahsen, or vanTil yet who is not studied in philosophy. This book gives a solid foundation to the basics of positions held by those three gentlemen in terms that most laymen can understand. It’s not in-depth enough to give anyone a full understanding of presuppositional and Reformed apologetics, but it will definitely get you a start in the right direction.

Unfortunately, for those who already do read Plantinga et al, you may not find much use for this book personally. But I also think that Spiegel didn’t intend to replace Plantinga, but rather to make Plantinga understandable to more people. And in that regard, I think he succeeds.

Many of our Arminian friends make the claim that Calvinism is not found in the Bible, but it instead eisegeted in by the Calvinist. I would humbly ask a question of any Arminian who believes this:

From whence did the belief of Calvinism originate?

That is, suppose for argument that you are correct and that the Bible does not teach Calvinism. Why, then, would anyone who reads Scripture come to a Calvinist understanding of those passages? If Arminianism is true, then why would any man read Scripture and believe Calvinism to be true? What worldly system proffers a view like Calvinism such that a Calvinist believes this false philosophy and imputes it into the text of Scripture? What is that false philosophy? Name it and trace the path between it and the Reformed view. Or barring any actual existent philosophy, name the error of thought that would render a man incapable of reading Arminianism in Scripture and instead coming to the opposite conclusion.

Because the Calvinist can answer this question in reverse. For even Arminians ought to be able to see that if you assume Calvinism is true (for the sake of argument), then we know that man is depraved and wishes to think more importantly of himself than is his due. This will immediately tend to make a person believe he has more power in determining his salvation than he actually does. Hence, if Calvinism is true, Arminians are to be expected.

But how does that work for the Arminian? Even if man is depraved, God supposedly gives grace that makes it possible for all to believe—at least all who hear the Gospel. Why, then, in the presence of this grace, would any man believe Calvinism instead of Arminianism? What are the steps there, Arminian brothers? How does this follow? Have you thought it out at all? Does this not interest you in the least?

In many recent blog exchanges, I’ve engaged Victor Reppert on the question of Calvinism and the problem of evil. During these exchanges, I have pointed out several times that Reppert never bothers to define what “good” or “evil” is, and I’ve also pointed out that there’s really no purpose in discussing “the problem of evil” if one does not define “evil” in the first place.

I would have thought that this would be sort of obvious, especially for Reppert who is a professional philosopher. Apparently, however, Reppert feels no need to actually define his terms—making it very easy for him to engage in sloppy thinking without even realizing it. After all, part of the reason we define terms is so we can spot ambiguity. If you work with an undefined “evil” then it can morph depending on how you feel, such that an opening paragraph and a closing paragraph in a philosophical argument use completely different meanings of the term “evil” and yet seek to come to a logical conclusion. Not defining the terms is, obviously, poor argumentation.

Since Reppert posted another article about Calvinism and the problem of evil without defining his terms, I pointed out once again that he had not bothered to define his terms. In this case we might give him some leeway since he merely reposted an older blog post; however, given the fact that I have asked for his definition several times, I think such leeway is ultimately unjustified. Since his lack of defining terms has been shown many times, he ought to define his terms before posting another thing on the problem of evil from any perspective.

Reppert decided to respond to my request that he define his terms. He decided to first attack my definition of “good” before attempting what he claims is a definition. Unfortunately, rather than actually interact with my entire argument, presented for instance when I examined the Euthyphro Dilemma or my post on the definition of evil, Reppert decided to use quotes from one comment made on this post.

Sadly, Reppert didn’t seem to read his own post, for his first question in response to what I had written was:

At the risk of becoming tiresome, I would have to ask what definition of God we are working with here?

The post I responded to was entitled: “Is there a moral obligation to worship a Calvinistic God? Or any other God for that matter?” Apparently, Reppert didn’t think that maybe I was responding to his first question.

But it’s actually even worse than that, for in that post in response to my previous comments Reppert had already said:

Of course the divine command theory has the problem of identifying God. The standard philosophical definition of God is a being who is worthy of worship in virtue of being omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. But if “good” means “commanded by God” and “God” means a being who is, among other things, perfectly good, it looks like you’ve got vicious circularity here.

I note in passing that this paragraph is basically the entirety of Reppert’s current response to me too.

If Reppert had bothered to actually read my arguments that I had linked in my comments before the one Reppert pulled out to respond to now, he would have seen that I already addressed the issue of identifying who God is. In my Euthyphro post, I said:

Now one could argue, as the Moral Philosophy site did, that that means that God could command slavery, genocide, holocausts or any number of such things. However, God could not have done so, for then God would have a different nature then the one He has. A different God could have commanded those things and been morally good in doing so; this God (Who happens to be the real God) cannot do so.

Apparently Reppert thinks that when Christians talk about God, they might mean Moloch or Vishnu.

In any case, the God of the Divine Command Theory is pretty obvious to spot. He’s the God who gives the commands. I would have thought that to be self-evident.

Reppert then moves on to the only thing that resembles a definition (and sadly, he does think it is a definition). He writes:

In my view moral obligation is created by the fact that God creates us with an intended purpose which is identical to our good, in that we as humans flourish if we fulfill that purpose.

But this simply fails as a definition of good. This definition would not enable one to examine whether God Himself is good, for good apparently is fulfillment of the purpose for which God created us. Since God did not create Himself, nor did He have a creator, then under such a definition God cannot be good.

Secondly, such a definition of “good” is not equivalent to moral goodness. It is good of me to eat food when I am hungry, but it’s hardly righteous of me to do so. If this is what Reppert implies by the moral obligation portion, then this definition remains unsatisfactory, for it is certain that God designed people needing food, yet who would consider eating breakfast to be morally good? If, on the other hand, Reppert only intends to define only what moral obligation is here, then he’s got the cart before the horse for he is using the term “good” without defining it once again.

Thirdly, and quite damaging to Reppert, in order for us to use “good” in the above, we would have to know for what purpose God designed us. How would we know what that is…without God’s commands? But wouldn’t that make Reppert a closet Divine Command Theorist?

Fourth, and most damaging to Reppert, if God designed someone to be a vessel of wrath, then by the above definition Reppert has said such an intended purpose “is identical to our good,” in which case there is absolutely no reason at all for Reppert to disagree with double-predestination on the grounds that it’s evil. Even by his own (weak) definition above, fulfilling the purpose God intends for us is the definition of good. So when a reprobate fulfills his purpose and burns in hell, that’s good by Reppert’s above definition.

Note that at this point Reppert will be required to insert a qualifier. That qualifier will be: “No, it must be a good intention.” At which point it will be demonstrated that the “fulfilling one’s purpose” definition above does NOT define “good” at all because it already presupposes some other definition of good in “fulfilling one’s good purpose.”

Reppert continues:

Further, God acts in a way that is consistent with the pursuit of that good for all his creatures.

I shudder to think that Reppert seriously is asserting that if God does not act in a way that is beneficial toward man then God is committing evil (see next blockquote too). This is so obviously anti-Christian that I would think it absurd for a professing Christian like Reppert to think that God failing to live up to our goodness is what constitutes evil, rather than us failing to live up to His goodness. But sadly Reppert doesn’t give me confidence that he sees this problem, so I mention it here.

Continuing:

Our good is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, evil is what gets in the way of that.

But again, under such a view, good or evil is meaningless of God. At best, Reppert can only use this to try to establish relative good and evil amongst mankind, but he can never examine the problem of evil for none of his “definitions” of good and evil extend to anything that God can do.

Reppert says:

On Calvinist theory there is a large gap between what makes God’s character good, and what makes us good, a gap that cannot be explained in terms of a difference in God’s wisdom or knowledge.

Well, yes there is a gap because men are sinners and God is not, and therefore what “makes us good” is Christ’s righteousness imputed to us and our unrighteousness imputed to Him, which God does not need to be good.

But more specific to our current discussion, God is the standard of goodness; we are not. Yes, that makes a wide gap. But so what?

Reppert continues:

A native may believe that men in white coats bearing long needles are mean to little kids because he lacks knowledge that the men in the white coats possess, but the standard of goodness for natives and for missionary doctors is the same.

That is because both are human. Apparently, Reppert would put God under the Law, which was implemented as a tutor to bring us to Christ, as if God needed to be brought to Christ.

Reppert continues:

Piper seems concerned to respond to the charge that God’s interest in his glory makes him selfish, since selfishness is a vice amongst humans.

There’s a difference between the one who claims something as his own having not earned it and the one who claims something as his own after having earned it. As a liberal, Reppert will never grasp this. But to help others, the next time Reppert says, “I wrote C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason” I will point out that that’s a pretty selfish thing to say. Who cares if Reppert deserves the title of “the author of the book C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason“? It would be selfish to attribute it to him and not also to me.

Reppert said:

If I were to read on someone’s tombstone “He pursued his own glory single-mindedly throughout his life” I don’t think I would think I was looking at the grave of someone I wish I had known. Glory hogs in basketball don’t help the team win.

But once again Reppert reduces God to a mere man. He never considers that the reason God can be selfish for His glory is because God deserves glory for who He is, and because we are not God we do not have the same right to pursue our own glory.

But even worse, this trivializes what God does for us in the pursuit of His glory. He demonstrates greater love than we ever could by sending His Son to die for us while we are yet sinners; He shows mercy, justice, wrath, and love; He sends rain to the just and unjust alike. And Reppert is upset that God would do this for us with His own glorification—the very thing He most deserves—in mind?

Reppert says:

It seems to me that when you say God gives commands based on his nature, it is pretty clear that we don’t have obligations to reflect all aspects of God’s moral nature in our own conduct.

How could we? It’s pretty clear that no matter how much you love someone, you will never die a substitutionary death for them, imputing their unrighteousness to yourself while imputing your righteousness to them, so that you take upon yourself the sins of another so that they might live. Maybe that’s why God didn’t command it of us, but He did ask it of His Son.

Reppert continued:

We might be rightly wrathful when someone we love is raped, but we aren’t supposed to be looking for or artifically creating opportunities for us to exercise our attribute of being wrathful at evil…

Why look for artificial opportunities when natural occurrences abound? Secondly, so what? Again, we have already established that God’s nature is not ours and that He can do things that we cannot. Why insist that God must be a man rather than God?

Reppert said:

So while divine commands are supposed to be based on the divine nature, the kind of people we are commanded to be fails to fully reflect the character of God, and there are actions on the part of God which are deemed right which, if parallel actions are performed by humans, they would contravene the commands of God.

But this last clause is true no matter what position you take. God does do things that He has commanded us not to do. And the first clause is only a problem if God has commanded us to fully reflect His character. He has not done so. He has given us the commands which we are to follow, and we do not have any right to add to them. For an easy example, God doesn’t command us to take vengeance—He claims that as His own right. Engaging in vengeance surely is an aspect of character, isn’t it?

Since the Arminian blogosphere’s argument du jour happens to be “Calvinism makes God the author of evil” I thought I would come at it at a slightly different angle then the one that Steve has already taken. The problem with throwing around a phrase like “author of evil” is that it’s kind of important that two words (”author” and “evil”) get defined, yet Arminians seem to think such a step is too burdensome to enact. Steve has recently focused a great deal on what “author” means, so I want to look at the other term. This also ties in to my recent posts on Divine Command Theory, and I must point out in passing that for some strange reason we never see Arminians attempt to ground morality in a like manner to how I have argued for it in DCT.

With that said, what do we mean by evil when we ask if God is the author of evil?

Well, evil could mean simply those things as natural disasters—hurricanes, famines, floods, etc. Indeed, these are often called “natural evils” for that very reason. But most Christians would have no problem saying that God is the “author” of natural evils given the myriad examples of God causing/sending/creating disasters. A few specifics from Scripture will suffice to validate this point:

“For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground” (Genesis 7:4).

“And I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend my arrows on them; they shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the venom of things that crawl in the dust” (Deuteronomy 32:23-24).

“Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the LORD has brought all this disaster on them’” (1 Kings 9:9).

“I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

Because of how plentiful such descriptions are in Scripture, most people who contend that God is not the author of evil ought not mean evil in the sense of natural disasters (although given the state of inconsistency that plagues a certain branch of theology, I am hesitant to be dogmatic). Instead, they should mean it in the sense of immorality, unrighteousness, sinfulness.

When we are talking about moral evils—sins—then we have to have some kind of moral framework in place. That is, we have to have a proper frame of reference to determine whether something is good or evil in the first place before the question “Is God the author of evil?” is even meaningful.

Now as I’ve argued before, since I am a Divine Command Theorist, God is the standard of good. There is nothing else that God can point to other than Himself to say “This is what the definition of good is.” As such, anything God does will be, by definition, good. That means that it is ruled out by definition that God could ever do anything evil Himself.

But saying that God is good isn’t the whole picture, for that does not tell us how we ought to behave in order for us to be good too. Thankfully, there is something that tells us what the standard of behavior we ought to uphold are: God’s commands (i.e., laws).

Now of God’s commands, the apostle Paul writes:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good (Romans 7:7-12).

Now there is a lot to this passage that addresses the issue we are looking at. First, Paul states that “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” Indeed, he insists “apart from the law, sin lies dead.” Therefore there is no sin if there is not first a commandment from God. That means that if we are to look at evil as a function of immorality instead of natural evil, then evil can only exists because a commandment first exists. Consequently, Paul says “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’”

The logical conclusion of this must therefore be that it is impossible for any immorality to come about if God does not issue any commands. Yet despite this, Paul maintains “the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” We can ask rhetorically: How can it be anything but good? God is, after all, the definition of good, and His commands must be good too even if evil cannot come about unless they exist. This doesn’t mean the commands are sufficient for evil to occur, but it does mean that the commands are necessary for evil to occur.

Let us then examine the scope of the commandments. It is one thing to say that men are under the commands of God; but is God bound by those same commands? I merely point back to the above natural evils that God authors and ask, “If you did that would you be doing evil?” If you flooded the Earth and killed all but 8 people, would such genocide by considered good or evil? If you sent famines and plagues on people, would you be good or evil? Obviously you would be considered evil, yet God is not evil for doing so.

That’s because God is not under His commands but rather He issues those commands. This is why James says: “There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:12). God has the right to judge while you do not. That is why along a similar vein Paul writes: “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls” (Romans 14:4). We who have been created by God do not have the same rights as He who created us. God does not have to obey the commands that He gives us, and therefore even if we think we have seen a conflict between what we are not allowed to do and what God is allowed to do, that is not grounds for us to say that God has committed evil.

Finally, God can also use instruments of evil without Himself being evil. We read, for instance: “Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you” (1 Kings 22:23). We see that God is the one who “put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these…prophets.” We read Jeremiah’s words: “Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord GOD, surely you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, “It shall be well with you,” whereas the sword has reached their very life’” (Jeremiah 4:10). And if it weren’t enough for Jeremiah to say God deceived fallen Israel, he also says: “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived” (Jeremiah 20:7).

While this last passage is part of a lament of Jeremiah, it is nevertheless evidence that Jeremiah didn’t have any problem with the concept of God deceiving people for His own reasons. Yet Hebrews 6:18 says that it is impossible for God to lie. How would it be possible for God to deceive someone without lying? One way would be by putting “a lying spirit in the mouth of [false] prophets.” For in that case, God is not the one who lies (the lying spirit lies), but God does put the lying spirit in the position where it will be believed. We see this again when Paul asserts “Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:11). The thrust of the passage cannot be ignored: God is the one who sends the delusion so that sinners believe what is false even though God Himself does not lie.

In other words, when God uses evil instruments that does not mean ipso facto that God Himself is evil. If God uses evil people with their penchant to lie in order to deceive other evil people that does not mean God is evil. And just as God can use a liar to establish His purposes without being evil, so too can He use other types of sinners for the same reason.

So let us take stock of where we are. Is God the author of evil? Well, He is obviously the author of natural evils, and He gave the commands without which there could be no evil at all. So yes, He is the author of evil (when the term is properly defined). The reason why so many hesitate to accept this is because they believe it would make God evil, but I have shown that despite God being the author of evil (again, as properly defined) He is not evil, for 1) God is good by definition; 2) God’s commands are for us and not for Him; and 3) we have Biblical examples when God used evil instruments that increased sin without being evil Himself.

Given this, it is improper for Arminians to claim that “God is the author of evil” is a defect of Calvinism. They must show how God’s authoring of evil actually makes God evil, and that requires them to A) ground morality somewhere and, B) deal with the Scripture I have presented above showing God using evil to increase sin without being culpable.

While I often joke and use satire as a rhetorical device against Arminians, one charge that Arminians make that I do take umbrage with is the claim that Calvinists are not interested in evangelism. This has been seen in the comments features of several blogs recently, such as Walter’s claim on Reppert’s blog that “I read somewhere that a Calvinist would rather cross the country to debate their theological system than cross the street to witness to someone” or Johnny Dialetic’s claim on Birch’s blog “We all know it [Calvinism] dampens evangelism and chills churches.”

The reason I take umbrage is because not only do I know more Calvinists than Arminians who are missionaries, but I know I evangelize to atheists far more than these “fine” Arminian representatives do.

In point of fact, my personal blog keeps statistics on the posts that I do. Since most of my main blog articles are cross posted on Triablogue as well (I only keep personal stuff on just my personal blog), a glimpse over them will show a fairly accurate representation of the spread of posts that I write and who the audience is.

Thus, I’ve written a total of 30 articles on Arminianism and 35 on Calvinism (and there are some posts that are archived under both, of course). In contrast, I’ve got 157 on Atheism, including 84 on presuppositionalism alone. There are another 144 on science, 45 on math, and 52 on evolution, but these don’t all fit as apologetics against Atheism. Still, 137 articles on Atheism is more than 5x the number of articles I’ve written about Arminians.

For someone who would rather cross the country to debate Calvinism than witness to someone across the street, I sure engage a lot of atheists.

So I could simply ask, how many atheists have our Arminian detractors engaged? How many people have they witnessed to, those who say that Calvinists are not interested in evangelism? And what are the odds that someone who’s writing a blog called “Classical Arminianism: A FORMER CALVINIST’S CENSURE AGAINST CALVINISM AND PROMOTION OF 5-POINT ARMINIANISM” is going to dedicate five times the volume of posts against Calvinists to posts against atheism? Or even Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, or New Agers?

Inasmuch as it has become apparent that style trumps substance in the eyes of the world Arminians who hate us with such passion, I offer evidence that the cold-blooded Triabloggers could, if need be, surrender substance for the sake of style. Thus I extend my hand toward all who were ever offended by anything I ever said by showing you this picture again:

Yes, you evil, hypocritical pseudo-Christian scum bags who have nothing better to do than denigrate Triabloggers—I love you. How much do I love you? Imagine someone who loves you as much as I do. I love you more than that, you spiteful rash-prone troglodytes.

True, it is mainly because I am such a better Christian than you that I can love someone as lowly as you are and keep this discussion so irenic; surely, all must be impressed with my awesome display of Christ’s infinite love. For, as a Calvinist, I would not be above burning you at the stake for the simple reason that you are a heretic causing harm to God’s people, but instead I find myself full of warm fuzzy feelings and cannot but admit that I love obnoxious fools who kick against the goads. Almost against my will do I love thee.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that not every single Arminian is a backstabbing strumpet posing her wares on the side of the road like the wild donkeys of old; some are high class debutants fully capable of earning a livable wage plying their trade. But they are admittedly few and far between—a natural psychological response to those who would succumb to the doctrines of Arminius is a lack of temperance in such urges.

Despite all that, nary a day goes by when I do not wake and thank God He has enabled me to love such as these. For truly, I do not think I would know how to act in public were it not for their constant barrage of meaningless ad hominem disguised as a concern that others not be offended. It is astonishing how far out of the way people will travel in order to ensure they’ve been slighted by the most trivial comment. Indeed, it is obvious they have no need for a savior; their indignation at perceived slight is so righteous it merits salvation for them!

However, none of them has ever posted an I-love-you bear like I have. My love is manifestly evident to all whereas all they can do is claim to love others. This is the most loving post they’ve ever read, and a real Christian would hang his head in shame that he didn’t think of it first.

P.S. I love you, Arminians.

Signs is one of my favorite movies, largely because of the philosophical issues raised in the film. Since I’ll be addressing them, I should warn everyone right now:

Major Spoiler Alert!

In fact, if you haven’t seen the film (it came out in 2002, so there’s no excuse for you!) and wish to do so, then don’t read anything that follows.

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan (before he lost his talent), Signs tells the story of an Episcopalian minister, Rev. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) who has a crisis of faith after losing his wife Colleen (Patricia Kalember) in a tragic accident. Graham’s brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) moves in to help Graham raise his two children, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin). But all this happens chronologically before the opening scene of the movie.

The Hess family was excellently developed by Shyamalan. In addition to Graham’s struggles with having lost his faith, Merrill is the story of a great baseball player who could have been. He has the record for the longest home run (and the bat is proudly displayed in the Hess house), but also held the record for most strike-outs. As a result, he’s going through life as a sort of drifter, and in one scene he’s flipping through brochures for the Army.

Bo has an odd phobia of water—she takes two sips and says, “This water is contaminated” and puts the glass down. In one scene, Graham finds two glasses of water and picks them up to return them to the kitchen when he finds several other glasses on another cabinet. In frustration, he gives up and leaves all the glasses where Bo puts them.

Morgan is the closest person resembling a “normal” boy, but he has asthma, which makes him somewhat physically weak—a failing he makes up for with his intelligence.

With this backdrop, the story unfolds. The movie opens with children’s screams of terror. Graham and Merrill rush out to find Graham’s children, and discover a crop circle in their farm. This unnatural phenomenon sets the stage for the action of the movie.

The title Signs obviously refers first to the crop circles; they are signs used by aliens to navigate on Earth for a hostile takeover. If that was all the movie depicted, it would be little better than an expensive B-movie. But they are much more than that, as viewers discover. Indeed, while it is almost certainly not M. Night Shyamalan’s intention, Signs eventually becomes one of the greatest illustrations of deterministic compatibalism ever released in Hollywood. The question was first raised in an interaction between Graham and Merrill after alien lights are seen in the sky. Graham says:

People break down into two groups when they experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence.
They see it as a sign…evidence that there is someone up there watching out for them.

Group number two sees it as just pure luck, a happy turn of chance. I’m sure the people in group number two are looking at those lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation isn’t clear. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them with fear.

Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in the group number one. When they see those lights, they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there’ll be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.

So, what you have to ask yourself is, what kind of person are you? Are you the kind who sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or look at the question this way…is it possible that there are no coincidences?

After Merrill assures us “I’m a miracle man” he asks Graham where Graham stands. After trying to avoid the question, Graham finally responds:

There is no one watching out for us, Merrill. We are all on our own.

After this exchange, the aliens turn hostile. The Hess family boards up their home and is eventually forced into their basement. While there, Morgan has an asthma attack and Graham realizes in horror that Morgan’s medication is in the kitchen, unavailable. Graham stays with Morgan through the night, trying to calm his son. It brings him to his breaking point. Graham, in the basement, is as low as he can go physically, spiritually, and emotionally. He looks up to heaven, thoughts of his wife clearly on his mind, and says:

Don’t do this to me again. Not again. I hate you! I hate you!

But after venting his anger at God, Graham continues, trying to soothe his son:

Don’t be afraid of what’s happening. Believe it’s going to pass. Believe it. Just wait. Don’t be afraid. The air is coming. Believe. We don’t have to be afraid. It’s about to pass. Here it comes. Don’t be afraid. Here comes the air. Don’t be afraid, Morgan. Feel my chest. Breathe with me. Together. The air is going in our lungs. Together. We’re the same. We’re the same.

And Morgan stabilizes through the act of belief. Then morning comes.

The family has a radio and learns that the attack is over. Humans have found a way to defeat the aliens, but the news doesn’t know what it is.

Morgan is still in trouble from his asthma as the Hess family come out of the basement. And as Merrill goes to get his medication, Graham retrieves the TV so they can watch the news, when a remaining alien captures Morgan. As Graham stares at the alien, he has a flashback to the night his wife died, and everything clicks into place:

And here, literally in the last ten minutes of the film, comes the payoff. All the things that occurred beforehand have explanations. Why did Colleen die? So that Merrill would move in with his brother. Why was Merrill able to do so? Because he held the strikeout record and couldn’t make it in baseball. Why did Bo have her strange water phobia? So water would be all over the house in the time of need. Why did Morgan have asthma? So that he never inhaled the poison the aliens secreted. And why did Graham go through his crisis of faith? So that in the end he could “see.” When Morgan asks if someone saved him, Graham responds: “Yes, I think someone did” (a definite reference to God).

The movie then wraps up after some amount of time has passed. Children’s screams are heard again, but this time they’re screams of joy. And Graham leaves the bathroom wearing his priest’s collar, his faith restored.

Within the context of the story, all the events are determined. By this I don’t mean that M. Night scripted the events—obviously that’s true, but irrelevant to our discussion. Instead, if you consider the story as if it were true, the end is still deterministic. It all served a purpose, and there were no coincidences.

More importantly, however, and what sets this movie apart from others such as Final Destination is that this determinism is not fatalistic. That is, the characters are not trapped by fate and unable to alter their final destination no matter how hard they strive. Instead, every single member of the Hess family behaved exactly as they would have under those circumstances. Indeed, they acted freely and were never coerced.

Yet they did exactly what was determined that they must do.

As the characters proceed through the story, there is no indication that they feel that they are being manipulated by some higher power or purpose. Bo’s water phobia, for instance, is never perceived as being intended for some end result; it’s just a “weird tick” that she has. It is only in the end, looking back, that the hand of God can be seen working through all the events that occurred.

As a result, Signs exemplifies the Christian concepts of predestination, foreordination, and compatablistic free will.

When dealing with Arminians, it is helpful to demonstrate the passages of Scripture detailing God’s sovereignty. It is not enough to simply say, “God is sovereign” for Arminians will agree with that statement; one must also show what it means for God to be sovereign, for it is plain that Arminians do not agree that God is sovereign in the same scope that Calvinists believe God is sovereign.

So allow me to just post some of the myriad number of verses detailing just what things God causes. As a result, these are just passages that use the English word “cause.” (As these passages are all (save one) from the Old Testament, you should bear in mind that one cannot do a search for the Hebrew word for “cause” since Hebrew verbs indicate causality by inflection, and such verbs are known as hiphil verbs, which means there will be many more hiphil verbs than are represented by the verses below since translators can use a different word than “cause” if the context warrants.) Many of these verses actually fit more than one of the categories that I’ve got them listed in. Furthermore, some of the selections may be disputed, and I will draw special attention to those (and to why I believe the dispute is moot) after the list.

Weather/natural processes:
Genesis 2:5-7
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Exodus 9:18
Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.

Job 37:10-15
By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast. He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning. They turn around and around by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen. Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God. Do you know how God lays his command upon them and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine?

Job 38:12
Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place;

Psalm 78:16
He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

Psalm 78:26
He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind;

Psalm 104:14
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth

Psalm 105:29
He turned their waters into blood and caused their fish to die.

Birth:
Isaiah 66:9
“Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth?” says the Lord; “shall I, who cause to bring forth, shut the womb?” says your God.

Sleep:
Genesis 2:21
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

Wandering:
Genesis 20:13
And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, “This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.”

2 Kings 21:8
And I will not cause the feet of Israel to wander anymore out of the land that I gave to their fathers, if only they will be careful to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the Law that my servant Moses commanded them.

Success:
Genesis 39:3
His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands.

Isaiah 63:11-13
Where is he who put in the midst of them his Holy Spirit, who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the depths?

Victory in War:
Deuteronomy 28:7
The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.

Defeat in War:
Deuteronomy 28:25
The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

Jeremiah 19:7
And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth.

Jeremiah 49:2
Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will cause the battle cry to be heard against Rabbah of the Ammonites; it shall become a desolate mound, and its villages shall be burned with fire; then Israel shall dispossess those who dispossessed him, says the Lord.

Lamentations 2:8
The Lord determined to lay in ruins the wall of the daughter of Zion; he stretched out the measuring line; he did not restrain his hand from destroying; he caused rampart and wall to lament; they languished together.

Ezekiel 32:12
I will cause your multitude to fall by the swords of mighty ones, all of them most ruthless of nations. “They shall bring to ruin the pride of Egypt, and all its multitude shall perish.”

Zechariah 11:6
For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares the Lord. Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbor, and each into the hand of his king, and they shall crush the land, and I will deliver none from their hand.

Prosperity:
2 Samuel 23:5
For does not my house stand so with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure. For will he not cause to prosper all my help and my desire?

Psalm 106:46
He caused them to be pitied by all those who held them captive.

Ezekiel 32:14
Then I will make their waters clear, and cause their rivers to run like oil, declares the Lord God.

Ezekiel 36:11
And I will multiply on you man and beast, and they shall multiply and be fruitful. And I will cause you to be inhabited as in your former times, and will do more good to you than ever before. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

Ezekiel 36:33
Thus says the Lord God: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt.

Zechariah 8:12
For there shall be a sowing of peace. The vine shall give its fruit, and the ground shall give its produce, and the heavens shall give their dew. And I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things.

Calamity:
Psalm 88:8
You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape;

Psalm 88:18
You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness

Isaiah 30:30
And the Lord will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and storm and hailstones.

Lamentations 1:14
My transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together; they were set upon my neck; he caused my strength to fail; the Lord gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.

Lamentations 3:32
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love;

Ezekiel 31:15
Thus says the Lord God: On the day the cedar went down to Sheol I caused mourning; I closed the deep over it, and restrained its rivers, and many waters were stopped. I clothed Lebanon in gloom for it, and all the trees of the field fainted because of it.

Ezekiel 32:4
And I will cast you on the ground; on the open field I will fling you, and will cause all the birds of the heavens to settle on you, and I will gorge the beasts of the whole earth with you.

His name to be remembered:
Exodus 20:24
In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.

Ezra 6:12
May the God who has caused his name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who shall put out a hand to alter this, or to destroy this house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Psalm 111:4
He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and merciful.

Righteousness:
Isaiah 61:11
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

Jeremiah 33:15
In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Ezekiel 29:21
On that day I will cause a horn to spring up for the house of Israel, and I will open your lips among them. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

Regeneration:
Ezekiel 36:27
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Ezekiel 37:5-6
Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

1 Peter 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

The first possible objection to the above list that I can foresee is the inclusion of Job 37:10-15. This passage was not spoken by Job, and therefore one could think it was spoken by one of his detractors, whom we all know were just a bunch of scumbags who wouldn’t have gotten anything right if their lives depended on it, etc. etc. etc. In reality, however, this was said by Elihu, the one who gave good advice to Job. Furthermore, the sentiment is confirmed by other passages showing God’s control over the weather, and indeed by God Himself in the very next chapter. That verse, too, may be “challenged” because God is asking Job if Job causes the dawn; but the nature of the question includes the obvious “like me” assumed by God.

The next thing that might be disputable is the inclusion of Deuteronomy 28. Here, God promises that He will cause both victory in battle and defeat in battle. But Deuteronomy 28 is actually showing the difference between what will happen to Israel if they keep His commands or if they disobey His commands. Therefore, one could say that obviously God cannot cause both victory and defeat because Israel will only be either righteous or unrighteous at any one point in time. However, should this sentiment be given, it is enough to affirm that God claims the ability to instantiate either of the two options, which means that He can indeed cause either victory or defeat in battle.

Finally, some may object to my putting Ezekiel 37:5-6 in, since it is the vision of dry bones that Ezekiel had. Of course, when one realizes that I have this put under “regeneration” instead of, say, a category like “resurrection” then you’ll see that I’ve already taken the “vision” aspect into account. Ezekiel 37 identifies the bones: “Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off’” (verse 11); and it also identifies what God has done: “And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord” (verse 14). Thus, this putting in of the Spirit seems to be equivalent to regeneration and new life.

Regardless, even with the removal of these “questionable” passages, it is clear that God causes, or at least can cause if He so desires, the weather and other natural events (including sleep and birth), success, prosperity, calamity, the outcome of warfare, His continual worship, righteousness, and regeneration. Furthermore, some of what God causes is done in such a manner that Libertarian Free Willers would insist is nothing short of coercion. For example, why did God cause the largest hail storm ever to appear in Egypt? It was part of His continual plan to destroy Egypt so that they would release the Israelites and know that He was God. Note that God did not simply allow Pharaoh to exercise his free will; He forced Pharaoh to conform to His will.

Furthermore, it is difficult to see how God could cause the outcome of battles to be determined without violating Libertarian concepts. Battles are determined mainly by who lives and who dies, and thus when God determines the outcome, He must ensure who lives and who dies, and death would be a fairly radical violation of free will!

More important, however, this means that the commander God didn’t pick could not possibly make a choice that would enable his victory; nor could the chosen commander make a choice that would cause his own defeat. To picture why this would be difficult to allow in Libertarian terms, think of what would happen if God said, “I am going to cause black to win this chess game.” If this is true, then it is impossible for white to play a winning game, and it is impossible for black to play a losing game. But assuming both are competent players, such an outcome cannot be guaranteed unless God “disables” white from picking a winning strategy and “disables” black from picking a losing strategy. This means not just that all options are no longer available, but in fact that the only options that are left inevitably lead to the same end result! Besides this, even if we say that black is just a superior player, then that doesn’t get us off the hook—for if black wins simply because he is the superior player, God cannot in any way claim He caused the outcome.

Dan asked:

Peter: re: Regeneration prior to faith
Titus 3:5 5(A)He saved us, (B)not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but (C)according to His mercy, by the (D)washing of regeneration and (E)renewing by the Holy Spirit..” We are saved by the washing of regeneration. That, in my opinion, occurs when we receive Christ as articulated in JN. 1:12 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become (A)children of God, even (B)to those who believe in His name…” I don’t see regeneration as occuring prior to faith. I understand why Calvinism believes this; I just don’t think the Bible teaches it. Can you point me to some explicit texts that clearly teach it? Thanks.

First, you could start by dealing with what’s already been mentioned about 1 John 5:1. ;-) Never mind, I’ll deal with it again below.

As for your quote of Titus 3:5, you are committing a category error. Paul is mentioning specific steps toward a general outcome.

If it helps you to think about it, suppose you have a computer that will transport a signal to launch a rocket when it receives a command to do so. Further suppose that you have a button that instructs the computer to send such a message when it is pressed.

At time (t), you press the button. This causes the computer to send a signal to the rocket. That signal causes the rocket to launch. Which of these following statements is true:

1) The rocket launched because the button was pressed.
2) The rocket launched because the computer sent a signal to launch.
3) The rocket launched because the button sent a signal to a computer.
4) The rocket launched because Dan implemented the launch sequence.

The answer, of course, is that all of them are true. Yet none of them give the same information. However, if we stipulate all of the above four statements are true (and if we further restrict it by saying that there are safeguards in place to guarantee there can be no accidental launches), we can reconstruct the logical order of events. Namely: The rocket launched because Dan pushed a button that sent a signal to a computer that sent a signal to launch. Indeed, using logic like this, you can easily answer the following (assume all statements are true, and that the end result is always produced the same way so you can’t have more than one possible path):

1) All Lumin is an effect of Beezles.
2) All Pilter cause Lumin.
3) All Lumin cause Refrax.
4) All Beezles is an effect of Pilter.

What is the logical order of the above?

Obviously we know from the first two points that both Beezles and Pilter precede Lumin. From the third point, we know that Refrax goes after Lumin, so it must also go after Beezles and Pilter. Finally, the fourth row tells us that Beezles comes after Pilter. Thus, the order is Pilter -> Beezles -> Lumin -> Refrax.

You can verify this easily enough.

1) Is Lumin an effect of Beezles in the above chain? Yes.
2) Does Pilter cause Lumin in the above chain? Yes.
3) Does Lumin cause Refrax in the above chain? Yes.
4) Is Beezles an effect of Pilter in the above chain? Yes.

So we know this chain is right.

Now, given that we all agree that the Bible contains true statements about salvation, let us examine them. Obviously, the roughest sketch of salvation would be:

Sinners -> some salvation process -> Christians

But what are the ingredients in that salvation process? Let’s toss in all the passages I used in my previous post (which included Titus 3:5 too):

1) He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:5-7).

2) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God (1 John 5:1)

3) No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit (John 3:5)

4) If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9)

5) No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3)

6) The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).

These are merely the passages I quoted before. There are more passages that deal with salvation, but most of them will repeat the above. If Dan thinks there’s another relevant passage, he is certainly free to post it and we can examine it too.

Now let’s try to summarize them a bit to make it easier to compare the concepts. I assume that Dan agrees that regeneration = new birth/rebirth = renewal by the Holy Spirit. So we have:

1) Salvation comes through regeneration.
2) Those who have faith have been regenerated.
3) No one can be saved unless he is regenerated.
4) You must confess Christ as Lord and have faith to be saved.
5) No one can say Christ is Lord except if he has the Spirit.
6) The man without the Spirit thinks spiritual things are foolish.

Now given all these statements are true, what must the logical order be? I will show you without even using the 1 John 1:5 passage (# 2 above)!

We see that 1 and 3 say pretty much the same thing; salvation requires regeneration. So we know that regeneration precedes salvation.

Regeneration -> Salvation

4 tells us that we must confess Christ is Lord and also have faith before we can be saved. So confession and faith precede salvation.

Confession/Faith/Regeneration -> Salvation

5 Tells us that one must have the Spirit before one can confess Christ is lord, so having the Spirit precedes the confession of Christ.

Faith/Regeneration -> Confession -> Salvation

6 Tells us that the man without the Spirit thinks spiritual things are foolish. If one accepts that faith is a spiritual activity, then the man without the Spirit cannot engage in faith. (And really, how can one believe in what one considers foolishness?)

Regeneration -> Faith -> Confession -> Salvation

So now we apply the method back. If Regeneration -> Faith -> Confession -> Salvation is true, let us evaluate the 6 expressions and see if the 6 expression remain true:

1) Salvation comes through regeneration.

This is true in the above. Salvation comes through Regeneration because as soon as Regeneration occurs, the rest inevitably follow.

2) Those who have faith have been regenerated.

True.

3) No one can be saved unless he is regenerated.

True.

4) You must confess Christ as Lord and have faith to be saved.

True.

5) No one can say Christ is Lord except if he has the Spirit.

True.

6) The man without the Spirit thinks spiritual things are foolish.

True.

So Regeneration precedes Faith. But just for fun, what happens if we flip Regeneration and Faith?

Faith -> Regeneration -> Confession -> Salvation

1) Salvation comes through regeneration.

True.

2) Those who have faith have been regenerated.

Potentially False! One has faith first, so one can potentially believe without having been regenerated, which means that it would be FALSE that “Those who have faith have been regenerated.” The only way to try to “save” this chain is to say that faith and regeneration coincide temporally. Thus, the instant one has faith, one is regenerated. If there is any time delay at all, 2 is false and that means the Arminian chain is false.

3) No one can be saved unless he is regenerated.

True.

4) You must confess Christ as Lord and have faith to be saved.

True.

5) No one can say Christ is Lord except if he has the Spirit.

True (because the confession comes after regeneration even in the above).

6) The man without the Spirit thinks spiritual things are foolish.

False. The man without the Spirit somehow believes in spiritual truth because faith causes regeneration in the above chain.

So we see that the Arminian is required to hold that faith and regeneration are simultaneous events (something that is not too controversial to hold in and of itself…yet danger lurks!); but also that someone who is without the Spirit can still have faith. 6 is a major weakness to the Arminian position, and unfortunately for the Arminian, we can pile on more proof texts that would agree with 6:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:5-8).

We see that non-believers cannot please God, nor can they submit to His law. Since it certainly pleases God for someone to exercise faith, then we see once again that faith cannot come before regeneration. It is only the mind already set on the Spirit who can discern spiritual things.

Naturally, with all the texts such as the above, point 6 is a really tempting point to emphasize for the Calvinist. And really, it is sufficient. But more important than that, the Arminian position on point 2 is also in danger. We’ve already seen that it is potentially false as is; and when we examine the implications of 1 John further, we see that the Arminian position that faith can be temporally simultaneous with regeneration such that faith can logically precede regeneration is fatally flawed.

Though I already pointed this out in my previous post, I will run the following three passages through the logic:

1) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God (1 John 1:5).

2) If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him (1 John 2:29).

3) No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God (1 John 3:9).

Now again, we see the construct of these passages as follows. Each uses the perfect tense of “born”. Each also has an active verb dealing with a present action. The Arminian claim MUST BE that when Paul uses this construct, the active, on-going verb must begin simultaneous to the perfect verb, and also be the cause of that completed verb. So we have the following:

1) Those who have faith have been regenerated.
2) Those who practice righteousness have been regenerated.
3) Those who avoid sin have been regenerated.

For the Arminian, all of these must take place simultaneously with faith. Just as regeneration must be simultaneous (temporally) with faith or else the Arminian has errors, so too must righteousness and avoidance of sin be simultaneous with faith. But not only that, if faith logically causes regeneration, then so too must righteousness and avoidance of sin logically cause regeneration. For faith, righteousness, and avoidance of sin are all treated identically by John in those statements. If something is true for one, it is true for all three.

Brennan Hartshorn (affectionately known as BSman) has attempted a response to my post about how resistible grace logically leads Arminians to a position where they must give up resistible grace. Unfortunately, he managed to miss the heart of the argument completely and, to remain complete, seeks to change the subject completely.

So let me put him back on track to the main point yet again, which is this:

If grace is resistible, then we must ask what kind of person would resist it? This question is all the more important given Brennan’s strong statement:

The reason we call the grace of God resistible is because it must be actively resisted to not be effectual.

(Bold in original)

So again I ask: What kind of person would reject the grace of God? What kind of person resists the Holy Spirit? Brennan avoids this by changing the question to:

Why do some repent and others not?

But I’m not asking why some repent and others do not. I’m asking, What kind of person would reject the grace of God?

It’s a simple answer (one I gave already). But let us look at some examples of other behavior to draw some conclusions:

Suppose that we came upon an individual who is presented with an option. He can either have a bottle of vodka, or a million dollars with the stipulation that if he takes the money he can never have alcohol again in his life. What kind of man would take the bottle of vodka instead of the money? An alcoholic, that’s who.

Suppose that we came upon an individual who is presented with a different option. He can either have a free membership to an internet porn site for the rest of his life, or he can have the same million dollars the alcoholic turned down, provided he never visits a porn website for the rest of his life. What kind of man would take the free membership to the porn site? A porn addict, that’s who.

So when we come upon the person who is given the best possible gift whatsoever, the grace of God, and he is given an option to either go with the flow or to actively resist that grace, what kind of man would actively resist that grace? Only the most depraved sinner would rather resist that grace than submit to it.

Here’s the problem. Brennan agrees that we are all born depraved. He even goes so far as to say that Christians remain depraved (for some reason I don’t think he read Romans 6 when I cited it). So the problem that Brennan must address is why depraved people would ever NOT resist the grace of God.

The simple fact of the matter is that for all of Brennan’s confession that he believes in depravity, he has not once actually thought through what that depravity entails. His version of depravity is a strange one indeed.

Now since Brennan believes that only some individuals are saved, then if we stipulate that the grace is the same for all men, we must say that some men are simply more depraved than others. But if we are all depraved to begin with, why couldn’t God bring us all to the point where we would not make those depraved decisions—especially since He obviously does do just that for those who do believe? The Christian was once depraved, but reached the point where he chose not to resist God. Why can’t God do the same for the sinner who is so depraved that he would actively resist God?

I’ll let him chew on that. In any case, since Brennan doesn’t believe that the grace of God actually changes people, I will provide a few proof texts for that position, along with how the irresistible grace of regeneration most certainly precedes faith.

First, grace was promised to be effective in the new covenant that Jeremiah mentions. We read:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jeremiah 31:33).

Note that God is active here, ensuring that His law is on the hearts of His people. Indeed, the next verse shows that this comes from God, not from other people, for: “no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me.” God actively writes the law on the hearts of His people, and it is for that reason that they will be His people.

This is echoed in Ezekiel 36:24-27:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Note the emphasized portion. God will cause His people to walk in His statutes.

Furthermore, we see it emphasized in the New Testament. In my previous post, I mentioned how Christ said that by our fruits we evidence what our nature is. Good fruit cannot be produced by bad trees. In addition to that, we also read:

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:17).

Note that this obedience is “from the heart”, which is exactly where God promised He would write His law. And the result is that we “become slaves of righteousness” because God does, indeed, “cause [us] to walk in [His] statutes.”

Indeed, our entire salvation is caused by God, as Peter says:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5).

God caused us to be born again. Further, we see that this being born of God occurs prior to regeneration faith [Updated typo]:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God (1 John 5:1).

Note that the tense of the word “born” is past tense (perfect), which denotes a completed action, contrasting that with the “believes” which is an ongoing present action. Thus, it is not too far of a stretch to suggest the verse implies “Everyone who currently believes that Jesus is the Christ has already been born of God.” (More on this in a bit.)

About this second birth John tells us (John 3:5-7):

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’”

Further, we read:

He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:5-7).

Paul obviously links the “rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” to “washing,” a reference to John 3’s statement that one must be “born of water and the Spirit”, which is itself a reference to the previously quoted Ezekiel 36 “I will sprinkle clean water on you” etc.

Thus, the regeneration of the Holy Spirit is a past action that precedes the ongoing present action of faith.

Lest someone think I’m hanging too much of the tenses of 1 John 5:1, consider a few other times the word “born” is used in the perfect tense. Namely:

“If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him” (1 John 2:29). “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:9).

Since Brennan is not a Roman Catholic, I can be confident that he would agree that we do not have to cease practicing sin before we can be saved, nor that we must do righteous acts before we can be saved, for that would be to say our salvation is by works. Yet if you look at this construct, it is exactly the same as 1 John 5:1! Namely, “born” is in the perfect tense, and the rest of the actions are present and on-going. 1 John 2:29 has the present practices righteousness; 1 John 3:9 has the present keep on sinning. These are ongoing actions, exactly equivalent to the structure of “believes” in 1 John 5:1. So Brennan should accept that 1 John 5:1 explicitly teaches regeneration precedes faith, or else convert to Roman Catholicism.

A few further passages should suffice. 1 Corinthians 12:3 states “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Yet this same Paul also wrote: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). That means that the Holy Spirit must enable one to say “Jesus is Lord” before salvation occurs; yet the Holy Spirit only comes at regeneration. “That which is born of Spirit is spirit.”

Indeed, it is impossible for someone to come to God without the Spirit because:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).

More could be said, but it is late and I have work in the morning.

“Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts!” Psalm 65:4