Tag Archives: Salvation

Polemics

William Lane Craig answers questions from an arrogant atheist

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Mary sent me this question and answer from William Lane Craig’s Question of the Week.

Here are the questions:

Hi there, I’m writting in regards to your “Q&A 170: So many athiests, so little time” answer. First of all, your two simple questions have very simple answers, and an athiest who can’t answer them isn’t a true athiest.

1)
Q. What do you mean by (you don’t believe in God)
A. I mean that I have a lack of belief the the existance of a deity, your christian God or any other.

2)
Q. What reasons do you have to think that (there is no God)
A. The Earth shows no proof of creation, every single thing on this Earth has a natural explanation, simply becasue modern science has not yet solved every problem, does not mean it never will. I’d go in to detail, but no need to bore you with the science of it all.
So, I’ve given my proof and will give far more if you ask it of me, and any wel linformed athiest will be able to answer those questions in a flash and have the burden of proof back in your hands.
In regards to scholarly work, may I point out Charles Darwin’s “The Origins of Species”, the works of Gregor Mendel, father of Genetics, William “Strata” Smith, father of Geology, Alfred Wegener “The Origin of Continents and Oceans”, Issac Newton, Galileo, On and on I go, where I stop, nobody knows!
Now, if I may turn to the real point of this e-mail besides to point out that you havent really told anyone how to argue christianity other than asking easy questions and throwing names at them. Your God is Omnicient so you say, operating on this assumption, here is how morality plays out in the bible…
1) God creates heaven and Earth and then he creates Humans.
2) God KNOWS that humans will sin
3) God puts the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden KNOWING it will drive Adam to sin.
4) God Determines that Adams sin is transmutable down to every single person that will ever exist. (Moral objection 1: The sins of the father are logically not related to the son in any way shape or form)
5) God decides that to punish people for this one sin they had nothing to do with or anything else he deams bad, they shall be sentenced to an eternity of burning hellfire. Infinite punishment for a finite crime? That sounds like Moral objection #2 to me!
6) When God sees that his creations have really gone bad, he drowns the world, killing millions of innocent people.
7) only 1600 years after the mass murder of his creations(following biblical chronology) they’ve already fallen back in to sin. So God, in his infinite wisdom, determines the best course of action, is to sacrafice his Son, who is part of himself, TO HIMSELF, to make up for the sins of the creations he made knowing they would sin!

How in the world do you rectify this!?

Cheers,

Luke

I think that Bill is doing a great thing to come down to the level of village atheist once in a while and reply, and if you read his answer, he’s actually pretty mean. And it’s a good thing, in this case, because the worldview of village atheists is a lot like the worldview of Islamic terrorists. They are so insulated from outside criticism that you really have to thrash them around a little bit in order to get them to see that they have been involved with a cult their whole lives. That’s not going to be the case with some of the better atheists like Austin Dacey and Paul Draper, but it is going to be the case with many rank and file atheists, and we need to know how to answer them, too.

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Jeffrey Simon on Calvinism, free will and moral responsibility

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I spent some time last night chatting with some of my readers on Facebook, and Jeffrey Simon was one. He wrote this essay on Calvinism versus Molinism which I thought was good enough to post. I am in agreement with Jeffrey on this issue, BUT I did include some debates featuring Calvinist James White at the bottom of the post. I just wanted to present an excerpt from his essay that makes a point that I thought would get lots of responses from Calvinists. Jeffrey is quite aggressive.

The essay is here, but you have to be his friend in order to see it.

Excerpt:

When harmonizing man’s perspective and God’s perspective, the Calvinist embraces what is known as theological fatalism.  They redefine free will and embrace compatibilism.  Essentially compatibilism says that determinism and free will are compatible, hence the name compatibilism.  In the same way that the wind blowing causes the trees to move, our desires and environment produce an effect which would be our action.  When we make a decision, we could not have chosen otherwise.  The Calvinist likes to say that we choose according to our greatest desire.  This would explain how God is in control of everything and more specifically our salvation.  How does God ensure the salvation of certain individuals? He changes their desires so they will freely choose Him.  This brings up an objection though.  If God desires that all are saved (1 Tim 2.4) and does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze. 33.11) and God “can save all whom He chooses to save”, then why are not all saved?  The Calvinist responds by making a distinction in God’s will.  While it is God’s revealed will and desire [thelo] that all men are saved, it is not His decreed will [boulomai] that all will be saved.  Essentially, God desires that all are saved and has a general love for the reprobate, but He has predestined them to Hell because His will [boulomai] trumps His desires [thelo].  Within Calvinism, there is a smaller section that claims regeneration logically precedes faith.  Because we are “dead” in our sin, we must be made alive or regenerated before believing.  How can a dead man believe and make himself alive?  In the same way that Lazarus was commanded to be raised from physical death, we are commanded to be made alive (through regeneration) from our spiritual death.

In my estimation, the main problem with Calvinism is that it embraces a causally deterministic system.  How can we freely make decisions yet God determined them for us?  It is not a mystery, but rather a contradiction.  In fact, at this point Calvinists are in agreement with naturalists because nearly all naturalists embrace compatibilism or determinism due to the fact that naturalism implies physicalism or materialism.  Now, imagine reading through the Bible with the idea that free will does not exist.  It is rather dizzying to imagine such a thing!  Dr.  William Lane Craig sums it up nicely when he says,

”Universal, divine, causal determinism cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture. The classical Reformed divines recognized this. They acknowledge that the reconciliation of Scriptural texts affirming human freedom and contingency with Scriptural texts affirming divine sovereignty is inscrutable. D. A. Carson identifies nine streams of texts affirming human freedom: (1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands, (2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God, (3) people sin and rebel against God, (4) people’s sins are judged by God, (5) people are tested by God, (6) people receive divine rewards, (7) the elect are responsible to respond to God’s initiative, (8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and (9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, pp. 18-22). These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which would preclude human freedom” (The Only Wise God).

If God has determined our every thought and action, yet those nine things hold true, then it turns the Bible into a charade.  How can anything be expected of us if we can’t make decisions?  In response to this, the Calvinist may say “so what”.  It may violate our fallen sense of justice, but God can do as “He pleases and no one can hold back His hand or say to Him: ‘What have You done?’” (Dan 4.35).  God can determine us to do immoral things and hold us responsible because He is God.  In fact, in the Book of Acts when Peter and John are talking about Christ’s crucifixion, they say that God “anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever His hand and His purpose predestined to occur.” Even though God predestined them to crucify Christ, they were held responsible.  While this is possible it surely does not seem plausible.  Turning to the book of Judges, for example, we would find ourselves asking why God determined Israel’s rebellion so many times.  One only has to retort, so God is the author of evil, then?  If I were to pick up a stick and use it to move a rock, what moved the rock? Technically the stick moved the rock; however, no one would say that.  I moved the rock by picking up the stick and using it.  It is no different with God.  Surely those men crucified Christ, but it was really God behind the scenes.  This intrudes upon the holiness of God because He cannot stand sin (Psalm 5.4) and cannot even tempt man (Jas 1.13) yet alone causally determine evil.  Continuing, let’s take this causally deterministic system and God’s will as described by Calvinists to its logical conclusion.  First of all, as I just mentioned, the biggest problem is that God becomes the author of evil.  Second of all, there can be no “well-meant offer” of the Gospel to all persons if God has determined their destruction in hell.  In regards to God’s will, a better way, I think, to understand it would be that while God desires all men to be saved, His will is to save those who believe.  This does well with texts that say that God desires that all men are saved (1 Timothy 2:4) and does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11) (and it also does not make God look hypocritical).  There are numerous texts where God exhorts people to believe, yet they reject Him.  For example, in Isaiah 5 God is disappointed with Israel because of their continuous sin and He asks what more could He have done for them.  God had provided all the means for godly living, yet Israel rejected Him.  Why would God waste His time with people whom He predestined to Hell and had no chance of salvation?  Also, if it’s God’s “secret” will to save some and damn some, then how can anyone know about it?

Is there anyone on the Calvinist side reading this who can explain how people can be responsible for sinning if they have no way to avoid it? I am not sure if a person can be responsible in that case because the only way that they can not sin is if God does something, and he chooses not to do it. It’s like giving a person a final exam but locking them out of the classroom all semester long.

Actually, I can see how that might actually be offensive to atheists, as in this debate between William Lane Craig and Edwin Curley of U of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Probably the best way to settle this is with debates. But I think that the only Calvinist who has debated on this issue is James White. So I put his debates below. I don’t think that famous Calvinists like Mark Dricoll and even Wayne Grudem defend Calvinism in formal public debates. Can anyone point out any debates that I may have missed? I want formal debates with good scholars on either side so I can make sure that my mind was made up based on evidence.

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Greg Koukl lists 6 things you have to believe to be a Christian

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Here is the article on the Stand to Reason web site.

Excerpt:

The six essential doctrines would be: the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, man’s fallenness and guilt, salvation by grace through faith by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief that Jesus is the Messiah. And you have a seventh doctrine that strikes me as a functional necessity, that is the ultimate authority of Scripture without which none of the other truths can be affirmed or asserted with confidence.

By the way, it’s really important that people know these doctrines because many Christians are quite kind-hearted and they end up not being very careful about drawing distinctions between truth and falsity because they don’t want to disagree. I understand that. But if you were really kind-hearted then you would be honest and straight-forward with people about the demands of the gospel on their lives. The demand of the gospel is that you believe particular things to be true. It’s not just a matter of mere belief, as if these are just some incidental details of theology that you might happen to be mistaken about. And if you just happen to be mistaken, why should you go to hell because of that?

You don’t go to hell because you just happen to mistake a doctrine. You go to hell because you have broken God’s law. It is very critical to understand that. God only judges guilty people. People get judged by God not because they mess up on their theology but because they are guilty. People who are guilty get condemned. That’s it. There is a way to get around that but you’ve to know a couple of particular things that are true before you can take advantage of the forgiveness God offers. That’s where the essential doctrines come in.

He’s writing from a Calvinist perspective, which I don’t entirely agree with. But I don’t see anything wrong in that minimal list. I get very annoyed with theologians who are not philosophically trained and good at apologetics. You can trust Greg, he has to argue about these things all the time, so he isn’t stuck in a bubble like most pastors and ministers.

By the way, I’ve met him several times, and I’ve chastised him about his Calvinism all the way through the standard rebuttals and objections, so don’t e-mail him and chastise him again, because I’ve already done it, and thoroughly.