@Dan thanks for posting the link I really enjoyed watching the video and it is clear to me that the steps he goes through in his thinking are really similar to the steps I go through in my mind

eg: I find Packer and all the other 'mystery' Calvinists unconvincing or worse

I took a load of notes, but I'll try and summarise one or two points of contention I have:

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1) much of his reasoning hinges on hinges on his own definition of 'justice' and 'good' and a misunderstanding of 'love' v 'hate' as mutually exclusive opposites

2) this is perhaps less important and more subtle, but he seems to fail to grasp that the 'effective call' is (perhaps exclusively) achieved by means of the 'general call': yes, a regenerate heart is necessary for a man to respond favourably to the call of Christ, but no that regeneration is not a fact unconnected with the call that is proclaimed!

3) amusingly (at least I thought so :p) he seems to argue that the inability to make a choice means that 'real' (ie libertarian) freedom does not exist. He then proceeds to deny that God is 'free' by that definition using almost precisely the same logic he earlier dismisses! (57:20 and 1:00:55)

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I thought all the way through that he is simple a Christian who elevates thinking about God in human terms above the revealed nature of God in scripture: however at the end he categorically denies this and basically states that all this is based on his understanding of scripture, and refutes contra-arguments from Romans 9 etc, etc elsewhere. I'd probably have to see/read what he says on that to judge his reasoning.

Based solely on what I have heard so far though, I think his definitions of 'love' and 'justice' are not compatible with the definitions God has revealed to us, if you see what I mean. In fact, and this should ring alarm bells in my opinion, they are only and uniquely compatible with the prevailing culture of today in the country he happens to live in.

America of yesterday did, and America of tomorrow will, understand the words differently. It is so easy to be "tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine"

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I should add that I'm not 100% on this or anything else: I am as weak and unsteady in my 'faith' as ever ;)

@JackDouglas here now

@JackDouglas haha I am also not 100% - but here's how I might approach this from an Orthodox perspective, keeping in mind Pelikan's quote which I wrote earlier (above somewhere), I'll write it here again

Even the current so-called middle-road resolution of Molinism uses this framework to a large extent (a Jesuit concocted it, what do you expect?).

But the original soteriological debates (Pelagius vs. Augustine) occurred moreso in a Platonist framework. I think trying to escape all frameworks in search of some objective view is a pipe dream; separating Christianity from philosophy is fruitless (the NT itself was written in a philosophical framework where Judaic thought was in interaction with Hellenistic thought). But I do think there can be a resolution that involves cognitive dissonance.

I think Jaroslav Pelikan said it best in “The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600),” (quoted above) where he says,

“Fundamentally, the objection was that Augustine had resolved the paradox of inevitability and responsibility at the expense of responsibility, and that he glorified grace by belittling nature and free will…. Grace and freedom stood in a kind of antinomy, which had been resolved first in favor of freedom and was now being resolved in favor of grace, but which ‘the rule of the church’s faith’ did not permit one to resolve at all” (p. 320).

I know that Walls critiques the ‘antinomy’ argument, but he is attacking the argument as set forth by J.I. Packer in his 2008 book on “Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God” (which I’ve read), a critique I agree with (because Packer calls it an antinomy then proceeds to espouse five-point Calvinism – he is more or less dodging the logical conclusions of his argument rather than leaving it as a true mystery).

But I think that there is an orthodox Christian perspective that can truly leave this as a mystery without using it as a cop-out for intellectual dishonesty (or laziness). What this looks like varied a lot in the early Church (see my post on this: rockadoodee.com/themes-of-salvation-in-the-early-church), but it was never resolved dogmatically. Perhaps the Aristotelian framework itself is actually our problem here.

Maybe we shouldn’t try to discuss the Work of Christ apart from His Person. Maybe we should pay close attention to the fact that the only ‘dogma’ in the early Church concerned Jesus’ relationship to God the Father, and the relationship between the hypostases (persons) of the Trinity. The implication seems to be that if you get the part about who God is right, there is no need to try to dogmatize the rest.

Perhaps this is because they viewed ‘salvation’ as being united with a real God – not as mere intellectual assent to the “right” statement of doctrine. Just some thoughts....

@DanO'Day thanks Dan, I'm just reading your blog post

"Perhaps we’ve oversimplified salvation so that we can fit it on a PowerPoint slide (or Keynote or MediaShout, etc.) and share it with a friend in a five-minute conversation."—I agree! I think we treat doctrine/dogma as if it is fact: this is a recipe for all sorts of disaster in my view. 'Trinity' may well be the best single word to describe the personal nature of God, but it is not the be-all and end-all of God's revelation about his personal nature!

I like to hold on to doctrine as lightly as possible when I approach scripture. Is the Holy Spirit a person in exactly the same way that Jesus is? Clearly not. Scripture is deeper than that (which is not to say that all things have been revealed of course!)

incidentally, Jesus' own explanation for why he spoke in parables is rather less 'appealing' than the idea that parables are easy to understand or remember, as I'm sure you know

"I all-too-often think that I have it all figured out, and in doing so I try to create a God in my own image; a God I can understand. But this is really no god at all." <<<< yes that :)

It is good to read Job is it not?

@JackDouglas indeed! "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"

@DanO'Day ha ha yes, and the answer is..... nothing. there is no answering that. Yet I wonder what we do in our hearts when we say 'God is good': are we describing God as revealed or demanding that he fit in our box?

it all depends on whether we mean the same thing by 'good' as God does, doesn't it?

@JackDouglas bingo, that is (along with the Aristotelian framework issue) why I'm not a Molinist

I knew I meant to look that up... off to Wikipedia

interesting, but seems like tying yourself in knots a bit!

room topic changed to Room for Jack Douglas, Dan and swasheck: Gnosticism in Conservative Evangelicalism?: (no tags)

@JackDouglas yeah, I don't agree on the terms and framework of the debate, so the perspective becomes invalid for me