Podcasts

MUST-HEAR: James White debates Michael Brown on Calvinism vs Foreknowledge

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This is the first of a two-debate series. (Part two is here)

The MP3 file is here.

Participants:

Format: (from James White’s blog)

For those interested, we will be covering three texts of Scripture on Thursday: John 6, Romans 8/9, and Ephesians 1. Each will have 8 minutes to provide their exegesis of the text; then we will have four minutes of cross-ex each, then three minute conclusions before moving on to the next text. I know, not a lot of time, but that still covers 90 full minutes (we will not be taking any breaks at all).

The following Thursday we will repeat the process, but this time covering Michael’s chosen texts, Luke 13:34-35 (Deuteronomy 5:28-29) Ezekiel 18:21-32 (Jeremiah 3:19-20; Ezekiel 22:30-31) I John 2:1-2 (2 Pet 2:1).

Michael Brown basically represents my view on these issues. This is a perfect debate – it’s 100% time well spent.

I blogged about their previous debate here. I highly, highly recommend this debate.

My thoughts

My own reservation about Calvinism is that it requires that God create people who go to Hell. They go to Hell only because God chooses not to draw them to him. So there are people pre-destined to Hell for eternity who are not responsible since it’s God’s choice where they are saved or not. Basically Calvinism has God creating some creatures, say, sheep, who have a predisposition to wander into lakes. These sheep then wander into a lake. He then picks some of them out who are no different than the others, and lets the rest drown. Then God turns to the ones he saved and says “aren’t I great for having saved you and not them?”, when he could have saved all of them. That’s not love.

I think a much better view, a more Biblical view, is that although all the sheep are initially rebelling against God, he still foreknows which will respond to his rescuing efforts. The sheep all want to try swimming to safety by themselves – none of them wants God’s help. So they are all doomed to death, unless God acts to save them. God can see which sheep will respond to his rescuing activities, so he reaches out to those sheep and they respond and they are saved. The rest die swimming away from him. That’s love. Love respects the free will of the beloved to resist, even if it means letting them choose their own destruction. And this view is different from Calvinism, because in this view God is all-loving and all-merciful. He is not willing that any sheep should perish, but that all the sheep would be saved. If all are not saved, then it is not God’s fault. He allows the sheep to choose to resist him.

I totally agree with Romans 9, where it says that God creates some people for destruction, and that those people cannot resist God’s will that they be created for destruction. But on my view, those people are people who would resist him in any time, in any place, even if he tried to save them. They cannot demand to be saved even though they resist God. They cannot say to their maker that they should not be created only to be damned, either, because being damned is their own fault. They don’t have a right to demand that they be saved because they would freely choose not to respond to God in any set of circumstances that God might try to place them in in order to save them. So God is permitted to create vessels of wrath for his own glory – but it’s their fault, not God’s.

I agree with Brown that vessels of wrath are free to repent and become part of the elect if they choose to respond to God’s drawing them towards him. Where does it say in the text that the vessels cannot change their destination by repentance? It doesn’t. People choose to respond to God or not, and that determines what kind of vessel they are going to be. God knows in advance what kind they are going to be and creates the vessels of wrath anyway.

My specific views are spelled out more here: What are the differences between Wesleyan Arminianism and Calvinism?

News

Liberal MSNBC says that more legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates

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Story here from ULTRA-leftist MSNBC. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

Read more at CNS News and Newsbusters.

UPDATE: ECM commands me to update the post to recommend the book “More Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott, (University of Chicago Press, 2000). But a much easier book to read is “The Bias Against Guns” (Regnery, 2003).

Related posts

News

Der Spiegel reports that just 42% of Germans believe in global warming

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Fox News reports. (H/T Dad)

Excerpt:

Germans citizens are rapidly losing faith in global warming following the Climate-gate scandals, according to a new report in Der Spiegel.

The report indicates that just 42 percent of Germans are worried about global warming, down substantially from the 62 percent that expressed concern with the state of the environment in 2006.

German news site The Local analyzed the results from the poll, conducted by polling company Infratest for the German newsmagazine. Many people have little faith in the information and prognosis of climate researchers, The Local explained, with a third questioned in the survey not giving them much credence.

This is thought to be largely due to mistakes and exaggerations recently discovered in a report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the site.

Der Spiegel is the New York Times of Germany, except further to the left, if that’s possible.

Meanwhile, the left-wing Guardian reports. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists’ emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

It’s all about controlling other people.