Hays said that God’s freedom is sui generis, not falling into either libertarian or determinist models. A Molinist asked if this was a paradox (wanting to get Hays to admit God has LFW so man can have it). i) T-fan notes that God’s will is not like man’s will. It is not something that begins from existing circumstances and produces a choice that is responsive to the circumstances in which it finds itself. It itself determines all circumstances – God’s will’s decision is not something that comes to pass. It always was. ii) In both Molinism and Calvinism the order of the knowledge of God is logical, not temporal: Natural, decree, free for Calvinism, and natural, partial decree, middle, rest of decree, free for Molinism. By contrast, humans have a temporal/logical order – nature, circumstance, decree. iii) Molinism effectively makes man’s decree a product of his circumstance, which really sounds quite deterministic, though the Molinist insists it isn’t even though he admits a person will always do the same thing, all things equal. iv) God is the uncaused cause, self-existent. Springboarding off of Hays Against Molinism
Creation.com responds to more detractors. The opening line of an objector is, as seen by anyone aware of the textual tenacity of the NT, a rather embarrassing statement, giving its condescending tone coupled with ignorance: “This is exactly why I can’t stand religious people who are ignorant to everything else than their own small dome. Your stupid Bible has been rewritten and changed so many times…” Makes one wonder if this individual is as learned in the areas of evolution as the transmission of the Bible? http://creation.com/spore-gamers-attack-christianity
DeYoung takes issue with the call to spend money in recession, instead urging people to be thrifty. He finds the former morally and economically dubious: i) Saved money is likely to be productive money. Americans are not in danger of saving too much, and economists agree that piling on debt and not saving is a recipe for long term economic disaster. Moreover, we generally save by putting it in a bank, etc. The genius of a (healthy) credit system and free market capitalism is that your money is being spent as it’s saved. ii) For individuals and families, it's always wise to live within your means. iii) Governments, not individuals or families, are responsible for any deficit spending needed to moderate economic downturns. iv) Assuming that there is a paradox of thrift encourages waste. Not every dollar spent is productive. v) Properly understood, "thrift" means the ethic and practice of wise use. “The economy doesn't grow by paying people to dig holes and fill them back in again. The economy grows when the needed ditch digger figures out how to build better ditches, in a faster time, for less money.” Go Ahead and Be Thrify, The Country Will Be Ok
Piper has a tribute to his father, who was an evangelist, here. http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1874_A_Tribute_to_My_Father/
While a bacteria supposedly awoke after being frozen for 120000 years, and evolutionists are eager to imagine thriving bacteria on distant harsh planets, AiG points out that this just ignores how that life could have originated. AiG also notes (again) a study dismissing dinosaur to bird evolution. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/06/20/news-to-note-06202009
Mohler writes on signs of maturity and manhood. i) Manhood is biblically a functional reality, demonstrated by leadership and fulfillment of responsibility – the sufficient maturity to hold an adult job and handle money. “A real man… knows how to hold a job, handles money with responsibility, and, if married, takes care of the needs of his wife and family. Failure to develop economic maturity leads to young men who float from job to job and take years to “find themselves” in terms of career and vocation.” ii) For boys to become men, they must be taught how to work, save, invest, and spend with care. iii) To many boys are coddles and entertained today and demonstrate and laziness detrimental to their futures as husbands and fathers. iv) A Christian man sees his work as an assignment from God—and as a gospel issue. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n3/signs-maturity
Spurgeon writes about the deceitfulness and folly of toning down hard truths: “Do not be like the fellow, in one of the American towns, who saw a traveller leaning against a lamp-post, weary and worn with his journey. The traveller enquired of him how far it was to such a place, and was told that it was ten miles. The weary traveller sighed, and said, "I shall never hold out. I shall faint on the road." "Ah!" said his sympathizing informant, "I did not know you were quite so far gone, I will knock off three miles, and make it seven for you."” The Folly of Toning Down Hard Truths
At Solapanel, Windsor writes on changing words, citing the example of ‘wicked’ which often means cool, interesting, etc. and ‘unethical’, which has replaced ‘immoral’. He suspects, though, that ‘ethics’ is used because it’s personal and individual, whereas they avoid morality because it hints at absolutes, and a God who will judge us by those standards. If we only talk of ethics, we may blunt the Gospel. But then, how do we best communicate? Watch your language
Hays continues discussing God’s love for the reprobate with a universalist who apparently attempted to use original sin as an objection to Calvinism. i) Universalists, like atheists, demonize a God who would consign anyone to everlasting punishment. ii) Hays reiterates that in terms of God’s determining who is elect and reprobate, there is nothing in particular which a possible person was going to do. It’s not as if he was going to do one thing rather than another until God preventing him from doing that. A possible person has no default setting. God institutes one course of action, and this actual agent wasn’t going to do otherwise. iii) God is responsible for what happens in the world, but not solely responsible, and not blameworthy. iv) “The question at issue is not whether God is (partly) responsible for the sinner–but whether God is responsible to the sinner.” v) God doesn’t have to ‘rectify’ the outcome of His decree, as if it’s defective. vi) The universalist says that at least annihilationism holds that unrighteousness won’t permanently exist: Hays notes that if unrighteousness is unacceptable in eternity, it’s unacceptable in time. The fact that sin exists at all shows there’s nothing inherently intolerable about the mere existence of sin now or in hell. vii) We cannot infer God’s intentions from his commands. Commands are not equivalent to predictions. Does God love the reprobate—3
Some have trouble with the fact that God is the Potter, we are the clay, and that He sovereignly determines who to form as vessels of wrath and who to form as vessels of mercy. Some object overtly, and some are subtle. T-fan notes an Arminian objection to unconditional election, that even a carpenter uses a long nail when appropriate. The problem with this is that it treats God as finding men as pre-existing objects – this is the very error under Molinism. They view God as finding men as-is and then basing His decrees on this. But the Scriptural analogy disagrees with this; God is the Potter. He doesn’t find nails, He forms clay according to the purposes that He has in them. And even a carpenter comes prepared, purposefully choosing to bring the nails for the job. cf. 1 Cor. 4:7; Gal. 5:22; Eph. 2:8. Even our faith is something we receive - it's not something of our own that differentiates us from another. It is God who makes the difference. The Potter or the Carpenter
Phillips points to the silliness of evolutionary thinking with regard to bat’s ‘learning’ (bodily tools?!) how to thwart bats. Smart bugs. Or, brilliant designer. Isn't evolution wonderful- — 7 (anti-sonar moths)
Considering Sotomayor’s comments to a senator’s question, JT points to an article which concludes she “has no excuse not to know what Sen. Coburn was getting at. She has no excuse not knowing that abortion on demand has been the law of the land since January 22, 1973. She has even less excuse covering that up in a nationally broadcast congressional hearing, if she does know it.” Sotomayor and Abortion- A Tutorial
Think Adam’s headship isn’t fair? FAIL! (Wow, that was quick.)Adam's headship isn't fair dodge (NEXT! #17)
Here’s a summary from Religion News Service on the rescinding of the ban on homosexual bishops by the Episcopal Church last week. Openly gay Bishop V. Gene called it a ‘day to rejoice’. [One major problem with this is that love does not delight in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.] Coverage of Episcopal Church Lift of Gay Ban
JT interviews Piper on Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson and John Paton. Consider missionaries to whom this book could be sent. Piper briefly speaks of how writing on these three men affected him. “John Paton’s life thrilled me because of his courage… He responded once to a man who said he might be eaten by savages, that we will all be eaten by worms, so there is not much difference, if only he could die for Christ.” “William Tyndale’s life made me want to give my best efforts to study and understand and teach the Scriptures. He was betrayed and strangled and burned because he wanted the common man to have the Bible…” “The life of Adoniram Judson was the most sobering because of how relentless were the losses. He lost three wives. He hung upside down in a hot, bug-infested prison…” Piper encourages missionaries in that all their suffering is worth it. While some use the immanent threat of persecution to promote activism, Piper argues that persecution, death, and suffering will be the very means God uses to spread his kingdom. In the NT Christians pervasively suffer. Suffering is not God’s problem, but His plan (Col. 1:24). “We are too sinful to be left without suffering. And the world is too sinful to see our love unless it comes with suffering.” Therefore we suffer for our sake and theirs. Three Questions with John Piper about Filling up the Afflictions of Christ
JT points to a new book, Your Jesus Is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel Good Savior (Kregel, 2009).
Here's research suggesting that if President Obama's health-care overhaul succeeds, 48.4% of Americans with private health coverage will have to drop their coverage in favor of the government plan (since their employers providing the insurance will opt for the less-expensive option). Health Insurance Shift
This blog comes with Piper’s recommendation: http://hispeaceuponus.com/
T-fan notes, “Apparently this is also old news, but it is reported that chaplains who pray in the House of Representatives are forbidden from using the name of Jesus Christ (link).” Sad News - Jesus Christ Not Welcome in Congress
Apparently Luther is charged with ‘changing’ Genesis 3:15 to masculine pronouns, instead of feminine, when, as Luther says, it was the Latin Bibles that say “and she will crush”, and this passage is therein applied to Mary. Luther Changed Genesis 3-15-
White notes, in interacting with a Romanist, that they simply assume the existence of the Marian doctrines because their ultimate authority is, of course, Rome, and this permits them to can twist and contort history. Romanists believe the Trinity, etc. "Because God revealed it to us through Christ and his Holy Church." Protestants believe in biblical truths, rejecting Romanist dogma, on the basis of the revelation of God in Scripture, which records for us its revelation in the Incarnation of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Mark Shea- No, I Can't Defend My Position, but I Can Pretend
Hays, while recognizing Blomberg as a fine NT scholar, who has written a number of useful books, takes issue with his “Calminian” post. i) Speaking to the argument from disagreement, Hays notes that Blomberg subscribes to Baptist theology as outlined in his seminary’s statement of faith, and historic premillenialism. Yet godly men have disagreed on these points. So are they not completely faithful to Scripture? ii) “Another reason that godly, Bible-believing Christians can disagree over the five-points of Calvinism is a lack of clear thinking. Indeed, Blomberg will be furnishing some examples.” Hays notes the straw man in Blomberg’s implying that Calvinism deemphasizes human responsibility. Moreover, Plantinga is not a Calvinist. Calvinism rejects Molinism; Plantinga holds middle knowledge and LFW. iii) Foreknowledge is not what humans would do. Foreknowledge is knowledge of the future. Advance knowledge of what will happen–not what would happen. iv) Blomberg confuses middle knowledge with counterfactual knowledge. Calvinism affirms counterfactual knowledge, but rejects middle knowledge. In Reformed theism, God’s knowledge of hypotheticals is grounded in his knowledge of hypothetical decrees. v) Blomberg says God must choose to create some beings and not others; Hays notes this does not preserve sovereignty, and it reduces God to ordering from a catalogue. vi) To the idea that there are many passages that “seemingly paradoxically, affirm at one and the same time God’s sovereignty and human freedom”": We need to draw a firm distinction between what the Bible teaches and the impression that makes on some readers. That some readers can’t harmonize doesn’t mean Scripture affirms a paradox. vii) Blomberg misses the causal relation in Phil. 2:12-13, inserts a tension in Isaiah 10:5-13 that isn’t there, and his interpretation of Gen. 50:20 cuts against the grain of the narrative arc, as this represents the long-range fulfillment of a prophet dream which took place at the onset of the cycle. Gen 50:20 completes the cycle. The brother’s will is subordinate to God’s will. “Their attempt to advert the outcome is, unwittingly, the very means by which the outcome is realized. They intend one thing, God intends the opposite.” The point of the narrative arc is to show the sovereignty of God here despite the subversive efforts of the brothers. This is no problem for Calvinism. Why I'm not a Calminian
Burk notes an interesting comment in the WSJ: “The glory of Walter Cronkite’s career is that he did more than anyone to earn his viewers’ trust and establish his profession’s authority. The tragedy is that he also did more than anyone else to undermine them.” A Critical Look at Cronkite’s Legacy
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