Battle Royale X: Openness Theology, Enyart's Post 5B
Battle Royale X: Openness Theology, Enyart's Post 5B
In this post, the unmovable stone wall (of the Settled View) meets the unstoppable force (of Relationship). One of the forces that threatens both the doctrine of Simple Foreknowledge and Calvinism, is: Google! This post will demonstrate that as the web delivers the world’s knowledge to each student, immutability’s origins in pagan Greek philosophy will be increasingly recognized, and Christians who have read for themselves the original source documents referenced below will be liberated to look anew at what the Bible says for itself!
Sam, you just called this a Red Herring! Years ago I read a college textbook on logical fallacies, so I am glad you’re trying to call me on any inappropriate argumentation, because if I am guilty of any, I will not be able to claim ignorance. In 1B, I asked rhetorically, “has pagan philosophy colored the Christian doctrine of God? The evidence that this has happened is startling, compelling, and requires a reconsideration of the Scripture after consciously rejecting all Greek influence.” In 2A you complained, not that this was irrelevant, but on the contrary, that Bob “offers no evidence,” and said that this claim “scream out for evidence and argument.” You would have made neither remark had I just introduced an irrelevant topic (say, that our murder rate was much lower a century ago when Coloradoans owned more guns per capita). In 3A, you did not judge this irrelevant, but: “It is not that I am unfamiliar with the work of those who make this claim (Boyd, Sanders, Pinnock, Rice, and others) it is that I am unconvinced by them.” Now I go to work.
My Assessment of the First Half of Battle Royale X
Rather than opening by framing the debate or providing a foundation for the Settled View, Dr. Lamerson stepped somewhere into the middle of the issue and presented three lines of evidence for exhaustive foreknowledge (one irrelevant, and two fascinating arguments regarding Peter and Judas). In post 1B, I selected the one thing from Sam’s first post that gave me anything to be responsive to and at the same time present my own opening statement providing the debate’s bigger picture. By replying to Sam’s official SLQ2 which asked how do we interpret biblical figures of speech about God, I also answered his first unofficial question from his introduction as to what hermeneutic will be used to resolve the entire Openness issue. Sam has provided no specific hermeneutic. I have answered that we must interpret all Scripture through a proper understanding of the divine hierarchy of God’s attributes, giving precedence to relationship and goodness over the OMNIs and the IMs.
By the fourth round, Sam had already violated the only hermeneutical direction he had provided. Earlier he had written that, “the study of the historical Jesus can be of help here,” yet if he is willing to discount Christ’s direct statement that “no one knows, not even… the Son,” showing that Jesus, as the Son, lacked omniscience, then Sam has surrendered any appeal to the historical Jesus. Sam has demonstrated the claim from my first post’s introduction, that the Settled View’s commitment to Greek philosophical concepts take precedence over Scripture’s clear statements.
Sam wrote, “If the exegete can determine the view of Jesus on divine foreknowledge, she may then have strong warrant for her hermeneutical decisions…” (By the way… well… oh… on second thought, never mind…) There is nothing more explicit regarding Christ’s view of His own knowledge than the Lord’s remarks about His Second Coming, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). I have irrefragably argued that the proper interpretation of all Scripture must submit itself to a right understanding of God’s attributes, and that very idea also provides the most precise focus conceivable for assessing Openness theology. But why does Sam say that this plainly worded and extraordinary statement by Jesus does not provide reliable guidance on the Son’s foreknowledge? He can see the writing on the manger. He resists acknowledging the divine hierarchy of God’s attributes, because he intuitively realizes that if true, the Settled View crumbles, taking Calvin with it. So even against clear Scripture, with countless Settled Viewers, Sam now must argue the immutability of the Baby in Bethlehem.
Exhaustive Foreknowledge comes from Greek Philosophy
Plato and Aristotle, with neo-platonists after them, presented to the world the classic arguments for immutability. Saint Augustine’s extraordinary commitment to pagan Greek philosophy survived his conversion with only some repositioning. As the most influential Christian theologian, Augustine based much of his theology on his commitment to the pagan doctrine of immutability and he bragged about this in his writings, and refers to the arguments of Plato and neo-platonic philosophers explicitly in defense of immutability and a Settled Future (which the Greeks referred to as fate and sometimes as providence). Scholars credit Augustine with preventing Christianity from being “cut off from the Classics.” Christian monks and theologians through the Middle Ages gave enormous priority to the study of Greek classics, and Christianity even fiercely maintained a Greek cosmology, all of this directly following Augustine. Like their leader, Monks would sanitize Greek ideas by twisting a few verses into proof-texts, as quoting that the sun rises and sets in defense of Aristotle. (Incidentally, ascetic monasticism itself was an eastern pagan influence on the church, with no scriptural support for monasteries, and Greek thought erased any biblical balance to denying one’s self, for “Plato viewed asceticism as a means of… conditioning the body… to a point at which the soul… could be free.”) Overcoming extraordinary intellectual repression, Christians like Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton were more committed to Scripture than to the Greeks, and as Galileo’s character Simplicio (Simpleton) played the Aristotelian, they consciously broke with Aristotle’s stifling defense of geo-centrism. And Christian theology will be as muddled as our dark-ages cosmology had been, until our ministers likewise deliver themselves from the bondage of pagan humanism. The Reformation broke with Rome, but not from Greece. The lead Reformer, Augustinian monk Martin Luther, was annoyed with Kepler’s scientifically liberating laws of planetary motion, preferring to ignore the proof because Aristotle’s circular orbits had a single divine center, while Kepler’s elliptical orbits had two centers; and evidence or not, passionate Greek commitment does not die readily. The Reformation was tainted with neoplatonism from the start. The great educational establishment of the Reformation was built by neo-platonists, who of course taught Scripture and Greek philosophy together, confidently writing and teaching from textbooks on the Classics. At the time, the study of Greek philosophy was fondly, but properly, called humanism. Reformation theologians and ministers were trained in their own colleges, which were established to teach Scripture as Augustine taught it, by defending their theology with Greek philosophy, and by promoting significant neo-platonic influence on Christianity.
Sam denies this.
My Settled View opponent has yet to identify his hermeneutic for interpreting everything consistent with exhaustive foreknowledge, so until he provides one, I will do so for him to the best of my ability. The Settled View Hermeneutic is Commitment to Augustinian Tradition. And continuing, the following quotes and summaries are not taken out of context, but come from passages regarding God’s fundamental nature.
Divine Immutability
Plato: “The gods are themselves unchangeable;” “he changes not.”
Aristotle: “it is impassive and unalterable;” The divine mind “does not change”
Plotinus (father of neoplatonism): “knowing nothing of change;” “that Being… neither in process of change nor having ever changed;” “never varying”
Augustine: “absolute unchangeableness”
Aquinas: “God alone is altogether immutable;” “God is supremely immutable”
Luther: Immutablity” is the core of his entire Bondage of the Will
Calvin: “God, it is certain, is absolutely immutable;” “God remains unchangeably the same”
Scripture: A thousand verses, corroborated by the Incarnation, prove that God changes. We should trust Christ because of God’s commitment to righteousness, not because immutability makes it impossible for Him to turn against us.
Divine Immobility
Plato: the Creator is “immovably the same.”
Aristotle: “there is something which moves without being moved;” [God] “does not change, for change would be… a movement.”
Plotinus: “Life [i.e., God is] changelessly motionless;” “nothing in it ever knows development”
Augustine: God is “without movement;” “Neither is there any growth;” “without any movement”
Aquinas: “God cannot be moved”
Luther: “Immovable Thyself”
Calvin: “he remains unmoved;” He “is incapable of every feeling”
Scripture: The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. God the Son came down from heaven. We have emotion because God is passionate. He experiences love and anger, grief and joy.
Remember, the Greeks were talking about a pagan deity, but for these Christians, it seems like I lifted these excerpts from their descriptions of a stone idol, but I have not misquoted them.
Divine Timelessness
Plotinus (father of Augustine’s neoplatonism): “What future… could bring to that Being anything… that standing present… it cannot include any past… Futurity, similarly, is banned”
Augustine: “whereas no time is all at once present” “not in our fashion does He look forward to what is future… nor back upon what is past”
Aquinas: “The idea of eternity follows immutability” “eternity is simultaneously whole”
Scripture: God’s “years” (Ps. 102:27; Heb. 1:12) never end. Jesus is waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. God is not co-eternal with creation, but made heaven and earth, which are not eternal. He created in the past, somberly looked forward to the crucifixion, endured the cross, which He suffered once for all time and does not continually hang on the cross, and now looks forward to Judgment Day.
Implications
Aristotle: The divine mind “does not change, for change would be for the worse…”
Augustine: He “beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness” “nor does His present knowledge differ from that which it ever was or shall be”
Aquinas: “just as His substance is altogether immutable… so His knowledge likewise must be altogether invariable”
Luther: “the immutably of His foreknowledge;” “God foreknows nothing contingently”
Scripture: In Scripture God presents Himself as making creatures that can be creative and themselves bring brand new thoughts and actions into existence.
The Incarnation shatters all this Greek philosophy.
Only time and space limits kept me from adding so many more quotes. The closest concept scripturally to the philosophic perversion of immutability is the eternal steadfastness of the Living God (Dan. 6:26). Period. No twisted metaphysical contortions are required. Biblical immutability speaks of the God’s commitment of God’s will to righteousness (Heb. 6:17-18), His eternal existence (Ps. 102:27); His faithfulness to Abraham (Mal. 3:6); His resolute commitment to truth (Heb. 13:8-9); and His trustworthiness to do only good (Jam. 1:17). And unlike Sam’s typical Settled View rational in Post 2B, none of this is because God can not but because He will not do evil. But when Sam denies the very Strength of Israel, which is God’s will to do right, reducing Him to a being who simply has no choice in the matter, no wonder Sam now thinks that every filthy perversion flows as a command from the mind of God (resisting Jer. 19:5; 32:35). Rather, God provides our salvation in righteousness, which He maintains immutably only by the commitment of His will, thus, “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,” (Heb. 6:19).
This frees the student of God’s Word to begin again at Genesis, and read through, seeing the glory of a relational God, actually uncompromised by evil, fully engaged and greatly affected by our love and hurt by our disobedience. Now, let’s fill in some particulars.
Plato (B.C. 427–347)
Plato had a high IQ, as do many who hate God and righteousness, and yet the Open View does not say that unbelievers are always wrong. Hollywood ends their blockbuster movies with the wicked punished, and the righteous vindicated, even though they hate themselves for it. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So we can take an occasional illustration from Hollywood, and benefit from the scientific observations of atheists, but for Christians to allow Plato to influence their doctrine, as otherwise insightful Arminian Settled Viewers do, is downright foolishness. But what can it be called, other than the irony of the ages, when Sam with all five-point Calvinists who say they believe in Total Depravity, conform God’s Word to the influence of pagan Greek philosophy?
Plato by his darkened mind, gave the classic argument for immutability, arguing that God cannot change at all because God must be perfect, and any change could only be “for the worse [thus…] it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change…”
But he forgot to consider acorns. And perfect oceans, and perfect stars, and perfect newborn babies. For the Living God mirrored His own vitality in His creation. However by Augustine’s lifetime commitment to philosophy, he imposed Plato’s perspective on Christianity. But Augustine loved the guy, so perhaps he’s not so bad? Well, he will remind us why God despises paganism, by this glimpse into his Greek mind, from Plato’s Republic, Book VI. For Plato recommended a utopian state in which he would require for the philosophers and the soldiers:
Aristotle (B.C. 384-322)
Neoplatonism won the theologian’s popularity contest over Aristotle, but he still left his mark. He is famous for the unmovable mover, the Source of all is that which is eternal and unmovable and so our theological giants in unison chant: God is unmovable. Aristotle was against divine change (which is required for Life), and he described four species of movement: change in location, alteration, diminution, and growth. And thus to classical and reformed theology, the enemy of God’s glory is not—ordaining evil—it’s change!
Plotinus (A.D. 204-270)
The father of Augustine’s beloved neoplatonism, Plotinus wrote in Enneads III, Ch. 7, sec. 3:
Augustine (A.D. 354-430)
As God made the heavens and the earth, He “saw that it was good,” and immediately after the great sixth day of creation, God rejoiced at the work of His hands, for “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good!” But the cold pagan Greek conception of God could allow the deity no such enjoyment, or enrichment, or appreciation, or increase, by His becoming the Creator. But if the Son could become flesh (one of the greatest conceivable changes), then surely God could become the Creator, and He did, and He enjoyed it! But for centuries, Christian theology could not allow that such to be said of God, because Plato once uttered a similar sentiment, but Augustine was wise enough to know his true meaning, that God’s immutability would not allow Him even to be blessed by the work of His hands, and so interpreting Moses by Plato’s principles, Augustine, City of God, Book XI, Ch. 21:
And finally, in City of God, Book V, Ch. 9:
Martin Luther (A.D. 1483-1546)
The Reformation’s theology and education was co-mingled with neoplatonism. Martin Luther, himself an Augustinian monk, worked to bring Humanism (Greek philosophy), into the service of the Gospel. He wrote of his primary ally, Philip Melanchthon, “This little Greek even surpasses me in theology”, for Melanchthon took a Greek name for himself as part of his studies in Humanism. Melanchthon, sometimes called the “father of evangelical theology,” wrote the first great confession of the Reformation, Confessio Augustana, and the first summary of Reformed theology. Also influenced by Aquinas, Melanchthon developed the concept of the modern high school, and wrote many “textbooks and founded schools” all influenced by Greek philosophy, and once planned, but never produce, a “genuine text of Aristotle,” although throughout his life was identified with Humanism.
Calvin (A.D. 1509-1564)
Writing about God’s eternal foreordination of the elect and the damned, Calvin quoted Augustine and then summed up his influence from, and personal allegiance to, Augustine:
Neoplatonism disallows God changing, moving, emoting, knowing something different, etc., therefore when the Bible says that God repents, Calvin insists that is only a figure of speech meaning that He does not repent, and here he offers the rationale that since there is no “emotion in him” and yet the Bible says often God exhibits emotion, thus we should interpret all such passages as mere figures of speech:
Calvin used not a biblical but a neo-platonic hermeneutic. Thus:
The historical context shows that God actually did repent of offering Saul a perpetual dynasty, and God will not “repent” of having actually repented concerning His offer to Saul. Calvin can ignore the historical context because he prioritizes neo-platonic immutability above all.
Secondary Sources
Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia entry for Philosophy, Western, Medieval:
Clement (d. 215), head of the Christian Catechetical seminary in Alexandria, extolled “the divine character of the philosophy of Plato.”
Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274), the father of Christianity’s enormously influential scholastic movement, which was a renewed effort to merge Greek philosophy with Christian theology. Aquinas was “emphatically Aristotelian” with neo-platonic influence having written many volumes on philosophy, including thirteen “commentaries on Aristotle.”
The scholarly textbook you teach from, Sam, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, written by your former professor, Dr. Reymond, has a section about those who deny either Christ’s deity or His humanity, so it is not indexed or directly related to this topic of Greek philosophy, but thankfully, in a 1,200 page book, I happened upon it. Covering A.D. 325-451 on the controversy among church fathers about who Christ is, Reymond writes:
While Reymond treats the historical development of theology at length including positive and negative influences, of the major Greek thinkers his Index of Persons has only a single, solitary entry under just one philosopher, Plato, pointing to a positive influence. His Index of Subjects makes no mention of any related topic such as Aristoteleanism, Platonism, neoplatonism, etc. And in his section on the teachings of Christ from the apostolic fathers, Reymond writes (p. 585), “we find nothing doctrinally definite, (that is, definitive) in regard to… the relationship of the divine and human in his person.” And later he writes about Origen (d. 254 A.D.):
World Book Encyclopedia 1986, Reformation Schools, "Protestant leaders… promoted literacy, an educational curriculum based on ancient Greek and Roman literature…"
When I call Augustine the most influential Christian theologian, that is true even if you include the prophets and the apostles who wrote the Bible, because Christianity filters biblical truth through his platonic commitments. However, if we broaden the potential candidate list to include pagans, then indisputably Plato, the pagan Greek philosopher, is the most influential Christian theologian.
Summation
So, how do we sum this up? Oh yeah, Settled Viewers deny there is a problem here.
Right now, I happen to be debating a Calvinist, but for the Settled View Arminian reader, please take to heart the pagan source of immutability and exhaustive foreknowledge. I am glad that Scripture teaches that God can change the future! It’s liberating to trust Him! Arminius did well fighting to recover God’s righteousness, human responsibility and true relationship, but his reforms, like Luther’s, failed to break with Greek philosophy.
Let me illustrate Sam’s contradictions, whose philosophical loyalty has sacrificed the ability to apply Judaeo-Christian reason and biblical truth (lower case t, as in non-contradictory logic), such that he claims (in my words, not his) that:
Further, Sam has a will, and so he gets to exercise it by determining which text he will use to interpret the other: Calvin’s, or God’s? John Calvin who wrote, “God in his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom… it was his pleasure to doom to destruction,” (Calvin’s Institutes, Book III, Ch. 21, vii). Yet all along, before neoplatonism, God declared, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (-God, Ezek. 33:11). So honoring his neo-platonist commitment, Sam takes Calvin’s passage literally, and the inspired passage as figurative.
Sam, you wrote that you believe in free will. But you didn’t volunteer to the reader what that means to a Calvinist. Here is an example of what you call free will: God unalterably and irresistibly ordained that a certain man will murder an Idaho mother, kidnap her children, torment and kill the son, molest and then rape the little girl, orchestrating this to the number of penetrations, and the man has no ability to desire otherwise, or to do otherwise, or to resist this causal predestination in anyway whatsoever, and you call that free will. As you wrote in Post 1A:
In fairness I will state that I believe free will indicates that an agent will always be free to do what he or she chooses. -A Calvinist[/INDENT]
Fairness? Sam, the more committed you are to fundamentally irrational Greek philosophical ideas, the more discernment you lose concerning related matters, such that you think it glorifies and brings God pleasure to have men sodomize children, and you attribute wickedness to His foreordination, thereby embracing the greatest contradictions the mind can conceive of. Why would you think that God would want you to be fair? You think God ordained David’s adultery and murder which destroyed his family and even his nation. Perhaps God will ordain you to murder one of your unsaved loved ones? And you think that would bring Him pleasure. So if God could ordain His servants to murder and rape, then duplicity in debate could glorify Him too! No? Especially in defense of changelessness! Fairness? Fair to the naïve reader who thought he was reading your actual definition of free will? Fair?
Jesus warned:
Sam, this is going to be strong. Please brace yourself. I think you’ve used a ploy in your latest round. To minimize attention to, and even justify, your own unresponsiveness, you’ve decided to claim that I’m simply not answering your questions, let alone addressing your arguments. I make a promise to the readers: I will directly reply to any part of my rebuttals that Sam specifically challenges. On the other hand, I’d rather not burn words explaining my explanations unless Sam specifically challenges a point with something other than that he disagrees. And Sam, if you can be thankful for a tanker taking out your house, a bit of gratitude for my debate style must not be too much to ask
. After all, we’ve trained signed, notarized Assignments of Copyright so that both sides have the right to publish the debate. And my trademark argument as to who wins a debate has long been, dating from before Battle Royale VII, that whoever promotes the finished debate may not have won, but at least he thinks he won! And whoever forgets about the debate, thinks he lost. So, since I’m planning on promoting the living daylights out of this thing, Sam, I’m hoping you can argue hard to help me find any errors in my position so that I can correct them before Round Ten!
Sam’s Questions Answered
Sam, please ask more specific questions. I have to guess what among hundreds of words you want addressed, and then repeat your argument so that the reader knows what we’re talking about. Also, if you are going to change or add to a question, please use a new number. You ask general questions, and I answer yours. I ask specific questions, and you don’t answer mine.
SLQ8- Bob would you please respond specifically to the exegesis of Matthew 6:8, in particular my claim and arguments that this passage does not only speak of present knowledge?
BEA-SLQ8-B: BEA-SLQ8 addressed all your arguments except for the future aspects of Lord’s Prayer, to which I reply that God can answer, “Thy will be done,” without violating human will because He wills to reward those who repent, and punish those who do not. That requires neither exhaustive foreknowledge, nor violation of human will.
SLQ9-B- Would you please respond specifically to my exegesis of the prediction of Peter’s denial taking into account the points that I have made in this as well as the first post?
BEA-SLQ9-B: I’ll reply to the only new issue you raise, that my verse list from Luke’s books failed to make my point. I showed that ??? does not always mean had to, as in divine destiny or fate, but it also means had to, as in what is fitting, what behooves, what ought to be done, etc., as in, “we had to throw a party, it was his birthday!” For this extremely common word, you said since I only quoted Luke’s uses, and not Peter’s, my argument failed (since Peter is the one Luke quoted in Acts 1:16). Sam, I did list a verse that Peter spoke, Acts 5:29, and his use of ??? there also doesn’t mean fate or divine destiny, it means that we Christians should obey God, which often we do not. By the way, toward the “all things work together for good,” goal, perhaps the elders of DenverBibleChurch.org will authorize the purchase of a new BGDA lexicon (it’s $125 on Amazon) since you dissed my old one .
SLQ-11- Would you please respond specifically to the exegesis showing that Jesus based proof of his deity on the correct prediction about Judas?
BEA-SLQ11-B: Regarding your claim that John 13:19 is a deity verse, I answered BEA-SQ11. I’m surprised that you, being a Greek teacher, are trying to justify your translation with the claim that to be the Christ is de facto “a claim to Deity.” I already had said, “you can take it that way interpretatively,” (which is what you are doing). But you were claiming grammatical justification, and you just made a non-grammatical argument, and Sam then you used the “trust me” defense because you’ve been published (which I respect). But an expert with an answer would have responded to my two substantive rebuttals, that (1) the KJV/NKJV/NIV translators are not “certain” as you are but render as I’ve defended; and (2) “we’d have various gods running around the New Testament” if we translated the word GOD, per your predicate nominative “rule.” Finally, you would mark as incorrect any student’s translation of ??????? (Christ) as God, rebutting your own latest argument.
SLQ12-B- Would you please respond specifically to the exegesis showing that Judas did not have the ability to choose otherwise, particularly the exegesis found in this post as well as post III.
BEA-SLQ12-B: In addition to BEA-SLQ11 and BEA-SLQ12, I add BEA-SLQ11-B, and finally… I bring to bear the honest [BEA-]SLQ4! There! Oh, and to that I might as well add the venerable BEA-SLQ2 and the vigorous [BEA-]SLQ7! Sam, I’ve already asked you not to request that I explain my explanations without you specifically rebutting SOMETHING. I challenge your answers specifically, perhaps you can try doing likewise. It’s fun! It shows me whether or not I actually have an answer, which self-evaluation I find rewarding, and also, the readers will enjoy a more robust debate!
SLQ13- Would you agree that if Peter and/or Judas did not have the ability to choose otherwise then your definition of free will (or will as you put it) is flawed? If not, why not?
SLQ14- Would you explain (given your response in Post II) how it is possible for Jesus (whom we both agree is God) to be wrong and yet for God to hold no false beliefs?
SLQ15- Would you be willing to pick out three passages or pericopes as I have done above and let the debate center on the word of God and what the word tells us about God?
BEA-SLQ15: Not at this time. You stated in round one that we can both list our own verses as proof texts, but the question of Openness “centers upon hermeneutics,” for “the question, of course, is which set of passages will be used to interpret the other.” -Sam 1A.
Sam, your “question” has not become less central since you put it into the introduction of your first post. However, the Settled View’s general discomfort with such fundamental matters is illustrated by your avoiding what matters most. Sure we can get racquets and bat around a few verses, but by me pressing toward the heart of the matter, the readers will learn which position has biblical answers and which avoids questions as we probe and defend our underlying principles.
Questions for Sam
Sam, I’m asking this question again, because from my understanding, it goes to the heart of the debate. I am NOT asking if God is timeless. I am NOT asking if God can have relationships. I am asking whether God is able to change, such that He can have relationships. This really is a yes or no question. Also, an “I don’t know,” or “I don’t want to answer because I’m not sure where that will lead us,” would also be truthful. So please, if only to humor me, please Sam, could you answer?
BEQ27: In the tradition of BEQ1, BEQ7, BEQ9, and BEQ17, I ask: Sam, is God able to change such that He can have true relationship:
A: within the Trinity? and,
B: with His creatures?
Next, I wrote that your quote from the Westminster Confession proved it was confused, and you objected that “Enyart does not tell us why.” But you missed my evidence, I said that it was “self-contradictory,” meaning that it was contradictory on the face of it. In your quote from debate authority Dr. Zarefsky, you indicated that when something “is self-defeating on its face,” no burden of disproof exists. I count nine contradictions in this brief quote, and I’ll underline the words that illustrate only contradiction.
Calvinists commonly admit such contradictions by happily referring to them as antinomies, as did pastor Leonard Coppes, a member of the NKJV translation team, when I brought up God’s righteousness at a church picnic. After all, neo-platonic Augustine wrote, “we embrace both,” willing to undermine God’s evident goodness to uphold neo-platonic immutability.
So, toward all things working together for good, let’s try to further the debate even from my missing the humor in your Peter argument:
BEQ28: Sam, now that you have agreed that without exhaustive foreknowledge, God can make a rooster crow, then do you also agree that God could employ His abilities in various other ways toward fulfilling prophecies, similarly without relying upon exhaustive foreknowledge?
Sam, I can relate to your displeasure when one’s integrity is challenged for no good reason. Your taking offense alerted me to the way that BEQ26 could be easily misconstrued. I had a different reason for asking whether you could point to a previous public stand on the issue (on TV, in a paper, and I should have added: a lesson taught to your class, which would have shown that I was not distrusting your word, since that would not have been otherwise easily verifiable.) People who are forced by argument to change some position they hold typically don’t even admit to themselves that they have changed that position. To overcome that common human tendency, I was trying to push you to think hard about what you have said publicly about this issue, and not allow you to just assume my question merited only passing attention. I want to establish with certainty your current and previous positions on the attributes of the Incarnation. You know that I believe that this topic addresses the core issue in this debate. And since you found my ambiguous question “offensive,” that would make it all the more difficult to find the commitment to an introspective answer. I really hope to be assured in that, so while your answer indicates that you have always personally held this position, let me ask you:
BEQ29: Have you previously specifically taught others, your students, or your family, or your friends, that God the Son did not in any way give up in any degree any of the divine attributes?
BEQ30: Sam, do you agree that Christianity should make a conscious effort to identify pagan Greek influence on Augustine and other leading Christians, and if any is found, to re-evaluate related doctrines on strictly biblical grounds?
Battle Royale X: Openness Theology, Enyart's Post 5B
In this post, the unmovable stone wall (of the Settled View) meets the unstoppable force (of Relationship). One of the forces that threatens both the doctrine of Simple Foreknowledge and Calvinism, is: Google! This post will demonstrate that as the web delivers the world’s knowledge to each student, immutability’s origins in pagan Greek philosophy will be increasingly recognized, and Christians who have read for themselves the original source documents referenced below will be liberated to look anew at what the Bible says for itself!
Sam, you just called this a Red Herring! Years ago I read a college textbook on logical fallacies, so I am glad you’re trying to call me on any inappropriate argumentation, because if I am guilty of any, I will not be able to claim ignorance. In 1B, I asked rhetorically, “has pagan philosophy colored the Christian doctrine of God? The evidence that this has happened is startling, compelling, and requires a reconsideration of the Scripture after consciously rejecting all Greek influence.” In 2A you complained, not that this was irrelevant, but on the contrary, that Bob “offers no evidence,” and said that this claim “scream out for evidence and argument.” You would have made neither remark had I just introduced an irrelevant topic (say, that our murder rate was much lower a century ago when Coloradoans owned more guns per capita). In 3A, you did not judge this irrelevant, but: “It is not that I am unfamiliar with the work of those who make this claim (Boyd, Sanders, Pinnock, Rice, and others) it is that I am unconvinced by them.” Now I go to work.
My Assessment of the First Half of Battle Royale X
Rather than opening by framing the debate or providing a foundation for the Settled View, Dr. Lamerson stepped somewhere into the middle of the issue and presented three lines of evidence for exhaustive foreknowledge (one irrelevant, and two fascinating arguments regarding Peter and Judas). In post 1B, I selected the one thing from Sam’s first post that gave me anything to be responsive to and at the same time present my own opening statement providing the debate’s bigger picture. By replying to Sam’s official SLQ2 which asked how do we interpret biblical figures of speech about God, I also answered his first unofficial question from his introduction as to what hermeneutic will be used to resolve the entire Openness issue. Sam has provided no specific hermeneutic. I have answered that we must interpret all Scripture through a proper understanding of the divine hierarchy of God’s attributes, giving precedence to relationship and goodness over the OMNIs and the IMs.
By the fourth round, Sam had already violated the only hermeneutical direction he had provided. Earlier he had written that, “the study of the historical Jesus can be of help here,” yet if he is willing to discount Christ’s direct statement that “no one knows, not even… the Son,” showing that Jesus, as the Son, lacked omniscience, then Sam has surrendered any appeal to the historical Jesus. Sam has demonstrated the claim from my first post’s introduction, that the Settled View’s commitment to Greek philosophical concepts take precedence over Scripture’s clear statements.
Sam wrote, “If the exegete can determine the view of Jesus on divine foreknowledge, she may then have strong warrant for her hermeneutical decisions…” (By the way… well… oh… on second thought, never mind…) There is nothing more explicit regarding Christ’s view of His own knowledge than the Lord’s remarks about His Second Coming, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). I have irrefragably argued that the proper interpretation of all Scripture must submit itself to a right understanding of God’s attributes, and that very idea also provides the most precise focus conceivable for assessing Openness theology. But why does Sam say that this plainly worded and extraordinary statement by Jesus does not provide reliable guidance on the Son’s foreknowledge? He can see the writing on the manger. He resists acknowledging the divine hierarchy of God’s attributes, because he intuitively realizes that if true, the Settled View crumbles, taking Calvin with it. So even against clear Scripture, with countless Settled Viewers, Sam now must argue the immutability of the Baby in Bethlehem.
Exhaustive Foreknowledge comes from Greek Philosophy
Plato and Aristotle, with neo-platonists after them, presented to the world the classic arguments for immutability. Saint Augustine’s extraordinary commitment to pagan Greek philosophy survived his conversion with only some repositioning. As the most influential Christian theologian, Augustine based much of his theology on his commitment to the pagan doctrine of immutability and he bragged about this in his writings, and refers to the arguments of Plato and neo-platonic philosophers explicitly in defense of immutability and a Settled Future (which the Greeks referred to as fate and sometimes as providence). Scholars credit Augustine with preventing Christianity from being “cut off from the Classics.” Christian monks and theologians through the Middle Ages gave enormous priority to the study of Greek classics, and Christianity even fiercely maintained a Greek cosmology, all of this directly following Augustine. Like their leader, Monks would sanitize Greek ideas by twisting a few verses into proof-texts, as quoting that the sun rises and sets in defense of Aristotle. (Incidentally, ascetic monasticism itself was an eastern pagan influence on the church, with no scriptural support for monasteries, and Greek thought erased any biblical balance to denying one’s self, for “Plato viewed asceticism as a means of… conditioning the body… to a point at which the soul… could be free.”) Overcoming extraordinary intellectual repression, Christians like Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton were more committed to Scripture than to the Greeks, and as Galileo’s character Simplicio (Simpleton) played the Aristotelian, they consciously broke with Aristotle’s stifling defense of geo-centrism. And Christian theology will be as muddled as our dark-ages cosmology had been, until our ministers likewise deliver themselves from the bondage of pagan humanism. The Reformation broke with Rome, but not from Greece. The lead Reformer, Augustinian monk Martin Luther, was annoyed with Kepler’s scientifically liberating laws of planetary motion, preferring to ignore the proof because Aristotle’s circular orbits had a single divine center, while Kepler’s elliptical orbits had two centers; and evidence or not, passionate Greek commitment does not die readily. The Reformation was tainted with neoplatonism from the start. The great educational establishment of the Reformation was built by neo-platonists, who of course taught Scripture and Greek philosophy together, confidently writing and teaching from textbooks on the Classics. At the time, the study of Greek philosophy was fondly, but properly, called humanism. Reformation theologians and ministers were trained in their own colleges, which were established to teach Scripture as Augustine taught it, by defending their theology with Greek philosophy, and by promoting significant neo-platonic influence on Christianity.
Sam denies this.
My Settled View opponent has yet to identify his hermeneutic for interpreting everything consistent with exhaustive foreknowledge, so until he provides one, I will do so for him to the best of my ability. The Settled View Hermeneutic is Commitment to Augustinian Tradition. And continuing, the following quotes and summaries are not taken out of context, but come from passages regarding God’s fundamental nature.
Divine Immutability
Plato: “The gods are themselves unchangeable;” “he changes not.”
Aristotle: “it is impassive and unalterable;” The divine mind “does not change”
Plotinus (father of neoplatonism): “knowing nothing of change;” “that Being… neither in process of change nor having ever changed;” “never varying”
Augustine: “absolute unchangeableness”
Aquinas: “God alone is altogether immutable;” “God is supremely immutable”
Luther: Immutablity” is the core of his entire Bondage of the Will
Calvin: “God, it is certain, is absolutely immutable;” “God remains unchangeably the same”
Scripture: A thousand verses, corroborated by the Incarnation, prove that God changes. We should trust Christ because of God’s commitment to righteousness, not because immutability makes it impossible for Him to turn against us.
Divine Immobility
Plato: the Creator is “immovably the same.”
Aristotle: “there is something which moves without being moved;” [God] “does not change, for change would be… a movement.”
Plotinus: “Life [i.e., God is] changelessly motionless;” “nothing in it ever knows development”
Augustine: God is “without movement;” “Neither is there any growth;” “without any movement”
Aquinas: “God cannot be moved”
Luther: “Immovable Thyself”
Calvin: “he remains unmoved;” He “is incapable of every feeling”
Scripture: The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. God the Son came down from heaven. We have emotion because God is passionate. He experiences love and anger, grief and joy.
Remember, the Greeks were talking about a pagan deity, but for these Christians, it seems like I lifted these excerpts from their descriptions of a stone idol, but I have not misquoted them.
Divine Timelessness
Plotinus (father of Augustine’s neoplatonism): “What future… could bring to that Being anything… that standing present… it cannot include any past… Futurity, similarly, is banned”
Augustine: “whereas no time is all at once present” “not in our fashion does He look forward to what is future… nor back upon what is past”
Aquinas: “The idea of eternity follows immutability” “eternity is simultaneously whole”
Scripture: God’s “years” (Ps. 102:27; Heb. 1:12) never end. Jesus is waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. God is not co-eternal with creation, but made heaven and earth, which are not eternal. He created in the past, somberly looked forward to the crucifixion, endured the cross, which He suffered once for all time and does not continually hang on the cross, and now looks forward to Judgment Day.
Implications
Aristotle: The divine mind “does not change, for change would be for the worse…”
Augustine: He “beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness” “nor does His present knowledge differ from that which it ever was or shall be”
Aquinas: “just as His substance is altogether immutable… so His knowledge likewise must be altogether invariable”
Luther: “the immutably of His foreknowledge;” “God foreknows nothing contingently”
Scripture: In Scripture God presents Himself as making creatures that can be creative and themselves bring brand new thoughts and actions into existence.
The Incarnation shatters all this Greek philosophy.
Only time and space limits kept me from adding so many more quotes. The closest concept scripturally to the philosophic perversion of immutability is the eternal steadfastness of the Living God (Dan. 6:26). Period. No twisted metaphysical contortions are required. Biblical immutability speaks of the God’s commitment of God’s will to righteousness (Heb. 6:17-18), His eternal existence (Ps. 102:27); His faithfulness to Abraham (Mal. 3:6); His resolute commitment to truth (Heb. 13:8-9); and His trustworthiness to do only good (Jam. 1:17). And unlike Sam’s typical Settled View rational in Post 2B, none of this is because God can not but because He will not do evil. But when Sam denies the very Strength of Israel, which is God’s will to do right, reducing Him to a being who simply has no choice in the matter, no wonder Sam now thinks that every filthy perversion flows as a command from the mind of God (resisting Jer. 19:5; 32:35). Rather, God provides our salvation in righteousness, which He maintains immutably only by the commitment of His will, thus, “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,” (Heb. 6:19).
This frees the student of God’s Word to begin again at Genesis, and read through, seeing the glory of a relational God, actually uncompromised by evil, fully engaged and greatly affected by our love and hurt by our disobedience. Now, let’s fill in some particulars.
Plato (B.C. 427–347)
Plato had a high IQ, as do many who hate God and righteousness, and yet the Open View does not say that unbelievers are always wrong. Hollywood ends their blockbuster movies with the wicked punished, and the righteous vindicated, even though they hate themselves for it. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So we can take an occasional illustration from Hollywood, and benefit from the scientific observations of atheists, but for Christians to allow Plato to influence their doctrine, as otherwise insightful Arminian Settled Viewers do, is downright foolishness. But what can it be called, other than the irony of the ages, when Sam with all five-point Calvinists who say they believe in Total Depravity, conform God’s Word to the influence of pagan Greek philosophy?
Plato by his darkened mind, gave the classic argument for immutability, arguing that God cannot change at all because God must be perfect, and any change could only be “for the worse [thus…] it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change…”
But he forgot to consider acorns. And perfect oceans, and perfect stars, and perfect newborn babies. For the Living God mirrored His own vitality in His creation. However by Augustine’s lifetime commitment to philosophy, he imposed Plato’s perspective on Christianity. But Augustine loved the guy, so perhaps he’s not so bad? Well, he will remind us why God despises paganism, by this glimpse into his Greek mind, from Plato’s Republic, Book VI. For Plato recommended a utopian state in which he would require for the philosophers and the soldiers:
that the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent… [and] a woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty.”
But what if a teenager or a fortyish woman becomes pregnant? Plato has a delicate solution: just kill the baby. For if he became ruler (the wise philosopher king), Plato would allow childbirth:“only to those who are within the specified age [with] strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange [that is: kill it] accordingly.
It is this same Plato of whom we read, by Augustine, City of God, Book VIII, Ch. 4:But, among the disciples of Socrates, Plato was the one who shone with a glory which far excelled that of the others, and who not unjustly eclipsed them all… To Plato is given the praise of having perfected philosophy… We must, nevertheless, insert into our work certain of those opinions which he expresses in his writings, whether he himself uttered them, or narrates them as expressed by others, and seems himself to approve of,-opinions sometimes favorable to the true religion, which our faith takes up and defends, and sometimes contrary to it… Plato… is justly preferred to all the other philosophers of the Gentiles…
Sam, if the doctrine of exhaustive foreknowledge has developed directly from Christianity's mingling with pagan philosophy, then the force of the entire story of the Bible makes it abundantly clear that the future is open and both man and God change it continually.Aristotle (B.C. 384-322)
Neoplatonism won the theologian’s popularity contest over Aristotle, but he still left his mark. He is famous for the unmovable mover, the Source of all is that which is eternal and unmovable and so our theological giants in unison chant: God is unmovable. Aristotle was against divine change (which is required for Life), and he described four species of movement: change in location, alteration, diminution, and growth. And thus to classical and reformed theology, the enemy of God’s glory is not—ordaining evil—it’s change!
Plotinus (A.D. 204-270)
The father of Augustine’s beloved neoplatonism, Plotinus wrote in Enneads III, Ch. 7, sec. 3:
Then we reconstruct… a sole Life in the Supreme… a Life never varying, not becoming what previously it was not, the thing immutably itself… and knowing this, we know Eternity. We know it as a Life changelessly motionless…; not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one mode and now in another… nothing in it ever knows development: all remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now since nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever. … “…the Identity in the Divine… has no futurity… and could it come to be anything which it is not once for all? …it cannot include any past; … Futurity, similarly, is banned; … that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed- that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life- instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part- which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we were probing for- this is Eternity.”
All of Christianity went after pagan Plotinus, who declared, God as “that which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being,” whereas the true God reveals Himself as, “Him who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev. 1:4)!Augustine (A.D. 354-430)
As God made the heavens and the earth, He “saw that it was good,” and immediately after the great sixth day of creation, God rejoiced at the work of His hands, for “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good!” But the cold pagan Greek conception of God could allow the deity no such enjoyment, or enrichment, or appreciation, or increase, by His becoming the Creator. But if the Son could become flesh (one of the greatest conceivable changes), then surely God could become the Creator, and He did, and He enjoyed it! But for centuries, Christian theology could not allow that such to be said of God, because Plato once uttered a similar sentiment, but Augustine was wise enough to know his true meaning, that God’s immutability would not allow Him even to be blessed by the work of His hands, and so interpreting Moses by Plato’s principles, Augustine, City of God, Book XI, Ch. 21:
…when the universe was completed… Plato was not so foolish as to mean by this that God was rendered more blessed by the novelty of His creation… For He… beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness… -Saint Augustine
Absolute unchangeableness? Absolute unchangeableness? Sam, that sounds just like “utter immutability,” doesn’t it? (And by the way, below I’m finally going to quote Reymond, but about the Greeks.) So neo-platonic thought permeated Augustine’s hermeneutic, and those committed first to God will search for that intellectual virus and eradicate it and its symptoms from Christian theology.And finally, in City of God, Book V, Ch. 9:
Now the expression, "Once hath He spoken," is to be understood as meaning "immovably," that is, unchangeably hath He spoken, inasmuch as He knows unchangeably all things which shall be, and all things which He will do.
That means that? Sam, meet Sam. That means that only if you’re a neo-platonist. Yet in this chapter Augustine says, “to deny that He has foreknowledge of future things, is the most manifest folly.” This Greek philosopher is unqualified to make that judgment! He’s too biased.Martin Luther (A.D. 1483-1546)
The Reformation’s theology and education was co-mingled with neoplatonism. Martin Luther, himself an Augustinian monk, worked to bring Humanism (Greek philosophy), into the service of the Gospel. He wrote of his primary ally, Philip Melanchthon, “This little Greek even surpasses me in theology”, for Melanchthon took a Greek name for himself as part of his studies in Humanism. Melanchthon, sometimes called the “father of evangelical theology,” wrote the first great confession of the Reformation, Confessio Augustana, and the first summary of Reformed theology. Also influenced by Aquinas, Melanchthon developed the concept of the modern high school, and wrote many “textbooks and founded schools” all influenced by Greek philosophy, and once planned, but never produce, a “genuine text of Aristotle,” although throughout his life was identified with Humanism.
Calvin (A.D. 1509-1564)
Writing about God’s eternal foreordination of the elect and the damned, Calvin quoted Augustine and then summed up his influence from, and personal allegiance to, Augustine:
Were we disposed to frame an entire volume out of Augustine, it were easy to show the reader that I have no occasion to use any other words than his [than Augustine’s!]” -Calvin’s Institutes, Book 3, Chap 22, Sec 8
Neoplatonism disallows God changing, moving, emoting, knowing something different, etc., therefore when the Bible says that God repents, Calvin insists that is only a figure of speech meaning that He does not repent, and here he offers the rationale that since there is no “emotion in him” and yet the Bible says often God exhibits emotion, thus we should interpret all such passages as mere figures of speech:
God “is incapable of every feeling… when we hear that God is angry, we ought not to imagine that there is any emotion in him, but ought rather to consider the mode [figure] of speech…” -Calvin’s Institutes, Book 1, XVII, xiii
Calvin used not a biblical but a neo-platonic hermeneutic. Thus:
When it is said that God repented of having made Saul king, the term change is used figuratively. Shortly after, it is added, "The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent," (1 Sam. 15:29.) In these words, his immutability is plainly asserted without figure. -Calvin’s Institutes, Book I, Ch. 17
The historical context shows that God actually did repent of offering Saul a perpetual dynasty, and God will not “repent” of having actually repented concerning His offer to Saul. Calvin can ignore the historical context because he prioritizes neo-platonic immutability above all.
Secondary Sources
Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia entry for Philosophy, Western, Medieval:
The religious teachings of the Gospels were combined by the Fathers of the Church with many of the philosophical concepts of the Greek and Roman schools… which drew upon metaphysical ideas of Aristotle and Plotinus to establish important Christian doctrines…
Clement (d. 215), head of the Christian Catechetical seminary in Alexandria, extolled “the divine character of the philosophy of Plato.”
Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274), the father of Christianity’s enormously influential scholastic movement, which was a renewed effort to merge Greek philosophy with Christian theology. Aquinas was “emphatically Aristotelian” with neo-platonic influence having written many volumes on philosophy, including thirteen “commentaries on Aristotle.”
The scholarly textbook you teach from, Sam, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, written by your former professor, Dr. Reymond, has a section about those who deny either Christ’s deity or His humanity, so it is not indexed or directly related to this topic of Greek philosophy, but thankfully, in a 1,200 page book, I happened upon it. Covering A.D. 325-451 on the controversy among church fathers about who Christ is, Reymond writes:
…their creedal terms were sometimes the terms of earlier and current philosophy, those terms nonetheless served the church well… [and the terms included] “without change” (or [without] transmutation)… -Reymond, p. 1,096
And not speaking of himself, Reymond describes “a modern dissatisfaction with [these church father’s] usage of Greek philosophical terminology…” (ibid.). And Reymond describes that earlier church period, “A.D. 418,” as exhibiting the church’s “best creedal moments” (ibid. p. 468) for “every Christian should be in this sense ‘Augustinian’ in his soteric [salvation] beliefs.”While Reymond treats the historical development of theology at length including positive and negative influences, of the major Greek thinkers his Index of Persons has only a single, solitary entry under just one philosopher, Plato, pointing to a positive influence. His Index of Subjects makes no mention of any related topic such as Aristoteleanism, Platonism, neoplatonism, etc. And in his section on the teachings of Christ from the apostolic fathers, Reymond writes (p. 585), “we find nothing doctrinally definite, (that is, definitive) in regard to… the relationship of the divine and human in his person.” And later he writes about Origen (d. 254 A.D.):
Origen became the greatest biblical scholar… and philosopher-theologian (see his De principiis) of his day. But regrettably it must be acknowledged that Origen’s writings are seriously flawed due to his commitment to Platonism.
[And though] a Christian theologian… his depiction of God was in some significant respects more Greek than biblical.
[Yet] he continues to hold a place in the front ranks of early Christian theologians simply because he is so important to an understanding of the history of Christian doctrine that followed him. -Reymond, pp. 593, 595
Christian theology began amidst a crisis of pagan Greek influence, and that crisis entered Roman Catholicism unabated, and was welcomed into the Reformation. And if not for the Openness movement authors and unknown heroes, virtually all Christians today would still be completely unaware of the pagan Greek heritage preached from the pulpits.World Book Encyclopedia 1986, Reformation Schools, "Protestant leaders… promoted literacy, an educational curriculum based on ancient Greek and Roman literature…"
When I call Augustine the most influential Christian theologian, that is true even if you include the prophets and the apostles who wrote the Bible, because Christianity filters biblical truth through his platonic commitments. However, if we broaden the potential candidate list to include pagans, then indisputably Plato, the pagan Greek philosopher, is the most influential Christian theologian.
Summation
So, how do we sum this up? Oh yeah, Settled Viewers deny there is a problem here.
Right now, I happen to be debating a Calvinist, but for the Settled View Arminian reader, please take to heart the pagan source of immutability and exhaustive foreknowledge. I am glad that Scripture teaches that God can change the future! It’s liberating to trust Him! Arminius did well fighting to recover God’s righteousness, human responsibility and true relationship, but his reforms, like Luther’s, failed to break with Greek philosophy.
Let me illustrate Sam’s contradictions, whose philosophical loyalty has sacrificed the ability to apply Judaeo-Christian reason and biblical truth (lower case t, as in non-contradictory logic), such that he claims (in my words, not his) that:
God alone, originally, intentionally and specifically ordained all hatred, murder, filth, and adultery, yet He is not the author of sin.
What does it take to swallow that? Determined commitment to irrational Greek immutability!Further, Sam has a will, and so he gets to exercise it by determining which text he will use to interpret the other: Calvin’s, or God’s? John Calvin who wrote, “God in his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom… it was his pleasure to doom to destruction,” (Calvin’s Institutes, Book III, Ch. 21, vii). Yet all along, before neoplatonism, God declared, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (-God, Ezek. 33:11). So honoring his neo-platonist commitment, Sam takes Calvin’s passage literally, and the inspired passage as figurative.
Sam, you wrote that you believe in free will. But you didn’t volunteer to the reader what that means to a Calvinist. Here is an example of what you call free will: God unalterably and irresistibly ordained that a certain man will murder an Idaho mother, kidnap her children, torment and kill the son, molest and then rape the little girl, orchestrating this to the number of penetrations, and the man has no ability to desire otherwise, or to do otherwise, or to resist this causal predestination in anyway whatsoever, and you call that free will. As you wrote in Post 1A:
In fairness I will state that I believe free will indicates that an agent will always be free to do what he or she chooses. -A Calvinist[/INDENT]
Fairness? Sam, the more committed you are to fundamentally irrational Greek philosophical ideas, the more discernment you lose concerning related matters, such that you think it glorifies and brings God pleasure to have men sodomize children, and you attribute wickedness to His foreordination, thereby embracing the greatest contradictions the mind can conceive of. Why would you think that God would want you to be fair? You think God ordained David’s adultery and murder which destroyed his family and even his nation. Perhaps God will ordain you to murder one of your unsaved loved ones? And you think that would bring Him pleasure. So if God could ordain His servants to murder and rape, then duplicity in debate could glorify Him too! No? Especially in defense of changelessness! Fairness? Fair to the naïve reader who thought he was reading your actual definition of free will? Fair?
Jesus warned:
Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? … “Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” -Mat. 15:3, 9b
Last year, on our Bible Tour of Turkey, we went to Iznik, (Nicea, where Emperor Constantine possibly presided over the first draft of the Nicene Creed), but more excitedly, to a dozen biblical locations, including the city of the Colossians (on the road to Efes, the city of Ephesus, which anciently was their nearest metropolitan center of Greek culture). At the Hotel Colossae, a few of us from Denver Bible Church witnessed for ninety minutes to Professor Vishal Gujral, the son of the just-replaced Prime Minister of India, and when his world-class education and humanist beliefs left him unable to figure out why communist countries all turned their nations into prisons, with guards shooting those trying to escape, we left him with a Bible verse. Sam, I end with the same verse for you:Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. Colossians 2:8
Questions and AnswersSam, this is going to be strong. Please brace yourself. I think you’ve used a ploy in your latest round. To minimize attention to, and even justify, your own unresponsiveness, you’ve decided to claim that I’m simply not answering your questions, let alone addressing your arguments. I make a promise to the readers: I will directly reply to any part of my rebuttals that Sam specifically challenges. On the other hand, I’d rather not burn words explaining my explanations unless Sam specifically challenges a point with something other than that he disagrees. And Sam, if you can be thankful for a tanker taking out your house, a bit of gratitude for my debate style must not be too much to ask
. After all, we’ve trained signed, notarized Assignments of Copyright so that both sides have the right to publish the debate. And my trademark argument as to who wins a debate has long been, dating from before Battle Royale VII, that whoever promotes the finished debate may not have won, but at least he thinks he won! And whoever forgets about the debate, thinks he lost. So, since I’m planning on promoting the living daylights out of this thing, Sam, I’m hoping you can argue hard to help me find any errors in my position so that I can correct them before Round Ten!Sam’s Questions Answered
Sam, please ask more specific questions. I have to guess what among hundreds of words you want addressed, and then repeat your argument so that the reader knows what we’re talking about. Also, if you are going to change or add to a question, please use a new number. You ask general questions, and I answer yours. I ask specific questions, and you don’t answer mine.
SLQ8- Bob would you please respond specifically to the exegesis of Matthew 6:8, in particular my claim and arguments that this passage does not only speak of present knowledge?
BEA-SLQ8-B: BEA-SLQ8 addressed all your arguments except for the future aspects of Lord’s Prayer, to which I reply that God can answer, “Thy will be done,” without violating human will because He wills to reward those who repent, and punish those who do not. That requires neither exhaustive foreknowledge, nor violation of human will.
SLQ9-B- Would you please respond specifically to my exegesis of the prediction of Peter’s denial taking into account the points that I have made in this as well as the first post?
BEA-SLQ9-B: I’ll reply to the only new issue you raise, that my verse list from Luke’s books failed to make my point. I showed that ??? does not always mean had to, as in divine destiny or fate, but it also means had to, as in what is fitting, what behooves, what ought to be done, etc., as in, “we had to throw a party, it was his birthday!” For this extremely common word, you said since I only quoted Luke’s uses, and not Peter’s, my argument failed (since Peter is the one Luke quoted in Acts 1:16). Sam, I did list a verse that Peter spoke, Acts 5:29, and his use of ??? there also doesn’t mean fate or divine destiny, it means that we Christians should obey God, which often we do not. By the way, toward the “all things work together for good,” goal, perhaps the elders of DenverBibleChurch.org
will authorize the purchase of a new BGDA lexicon (it’s $125 on Amazon) since you dissed my old one .SLQ-11- Would you please respond specifically to the exegesis showing that Jesus based proof of his deity on the correct prediction about Judas?
BEA-SLQ11-B: Regarding your claim that John 13:19 is a deity verse, I answered BEA-SQ11. I’m surprised that you, being a Greek teacher, are trying to justify your translation with the claim that to be the Christ is de facto “a claim to Deity.” I already had said, “you can take it that way interpretatively,” (which is what you are doing). But you were claiming grammatical justification, and you just made a non-grammatical argument, and Sam then you used the “trust me” defense because you’ve been published (which I respect). But an expert with an answer would have responded to my two substantive rebuttals, that (1) the KJV/NKJV/NIV translators are not “certain” as you are but render as I’ve defended; and (2) “we’d have various gods running around the New Testament” if we translated the word GOD, per your predicate nominative “rule.” Finally, you would mark as incorrect any student’s translation of ??????? (Christ) as God, rebutting your own latest argument.
SLQ12-B- Would you please respond specifically to the exegesis showing that Judas did not have the ability to choose otherwise, particularly the exegesis found in this post as well as post III.
BEA-SLQ12-B: In addition to BEA-SLQ11 and BEA-SLQ12, I add BEA-SLQ11-B, and finally… I bring to bear the honest [BEA-]SLQ4! There! Oh, and to that I might as well add the venerable BEA-SLQ2 and the vigorous [BEA-]SLQ7! Sam, I’ve already asked you not to request that I explain my explanations without you specifically rebutting SOMETHING. I challenge your answers specifically, perhaps you can try doing likewise. It’s fun! It shows me whether or not I actually have an answer, which self-evaluation I find rewarding, and also, the readers will enjoy a more robust debate!
SLQ13- Would you agree that if Peter and/or Judas did not have the ability to choose otherwise then your definition of free will (or will as you put it) is flawed? If not, why not?
SLQ14- Would you explain (given your response in Post II) how it is possible for Jesus (whom we both agree is God) to be wrong and yet for God to hold no false beliefs?
SLQ15- Would you be willing to pick out three passages or pericopes as I have done above and let the debate center on the word of God and what the word tells us about God?
BEA-SLQ15: Not at this time. You stated in round one that we can both list our own verses as proof texts, but the question of Openness “centers upon hermeneutics,” for “the question, of course, is which set of passages will be used to interpret the other.” -Sam 1A.
Sam, your “question” has not become less central since you put it into the introduction of your first post. However, the Settled View’s general discomfort with such fundamental matters is illustrated by your avoiding what matters most. Sure we can get racquets and bat around a few verses, but by me pressing toward the heart of the matter, the readers will learn which position has biblical answers and which avoids questions as we probe and defend our underlying principles.
Questions for Sam
Sam, I’m asking this question again, because from my understanding, it goes to the heart of the debate. I am NOT asking if God is timeless. I am NOT asking if God can have relationships. I am asking whether God is able to change, such that He can have relationships. This really is a yes or no question. Also, an “I don’t know,” or “I don’t want to answer because I’m not sure where that will lead us,” would also be truthful. So please, if only to humor me, please Sam, could you answer?
BEQ27: In the tradition of BEQ1, BEQ7, BEQ9, and BEQ17, I ask: Sam, is God able to change such that He can have true relationship:
A: within the Trinity? and,
B: with His creatures?
Next, I wrote that your quote from the Westminster Confession proved it was confused, and you objected that “Enyart does not tell us why.” But you missed my evidence, I said that it was “self-contradictory,” meaning that it was contradictory on the face of it. In your quote from debate authority Dr. Zarefsky, you indicated that when something “is self-defeating on its face,” no burden of disproof exists. I count nine contradictions in this brief quote, and I’ll underline the words that illustrate only contradiction.
The Westminster Confession states it this way: III.1 “God, from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”
Calvinists commonly admit such contradictions by happily referring to them as antinomies, as did pastor Leonard Coppes, a member of the NKJV translation team, when I brought up God’s righteousness at a church picnic. After all, neo-platonic Augustine wrote, “we embrace both,” willing to undermine God’s evident goodness to uphold neo-platonic immutability.
So, toward all things working together for good, let’s try to further the debate even from my missing the humor in your Peter argument:
BEQ28: Sam, now that you have agreed that without exhaustive foreknowledge, God can make a rooster crow, then do you also agree that God could employ His abilities in various other ways toward fulfilling prophecies, similarly without relying upon exhaustive foreknowledge?
Sam, I can relate to your displeasure when one’s integrity is challenged for no good reason. Your taking offense alerted me to the way that BEQ26 could be easily misconstrued. I had a different reason for asking whether you could point to a previous public stand on the issue (on TV, in a paper, and I should have added: a lesson taught to your class, which would have shown that I was not distrusting your word, since that would not have been otherwise easily verifiable.) People who are forced by argument to change some position they hold typically don’t even admit to themselves that they have changed that position. To overcome that common human tendency, I was trying to push you to think hard about what you have said publicly about this issue, and not allow you to just assume my question merited only passing attention. I want to establish with certainty your current and previous positions on the attributes of the Incarnation. You know that I believe that this topic addresses the core issue in this debate. And since you found my ambiguous question “offensive,” that would make it all the more difficult to find the commitment to an introspective answer. I really hope to be assured in that, so while your answer indicates that you have always personally held this position, let me ask you:
BEQ29: Have you previously specifically taught others, your students, or your family, or your friends, that God the Son did not in any way give up in any degree any of the divine attributes?
BEQ30: Sam, do you agree that Christianity should make a conscious effort to identify pagan Greek influence on Augustine and other leading Christians, and if any is found, to re-evaluate related doctrines on strictly biblical grounds?
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