I think it's helpful to think about wills firstly outside the context of religion and salvation and God. Our wills are always constrained by the context we live in. We cannot choose an option we do not know exists. We will not choose an option we consider to be truly reprehensible, or which is a total denial of who we are. A parent who loves their child does not exercise their will when every day they do not beat up their child.

But these constraints on our wills also do not excuse our chooses. The slave owner who has been brought up to believe their slaves are sub-human and who has never heard of abolition is still culpable for owning slaves and any abuses made to them, even though they may never have "freely" chosen to be a slave owner over letting their slaves free.

Constrained wills don't make us automatons. And so the influence of sin does not remove our moral capacity to exercise our wills towards righteousness.

Perhaps, but if our wills are purely constrained to God, then I don’t know if we have will

I still have yet to hear a good objection to my Calvinism universalism objection

1

oops

@LukeHill That is most certainly a gross distortion. Reformed theology says humans have free will, but damaged, "totally depraved". But once regenerated, and once faith enables one to receive Christ, grace heals the will somewhat, and can at least allow grace to come in to move the will to choose good monergistically in the sanctification stage. Arminian is a variation that conceives this cooperation with grace during the sanctification stage synergistically.

If I didn't describe it rightly, I defer to @curiousdannii.

@GratefulDisciple alright, then maybe I need to drop that objection

@LukeHill There's something missing in the 5 steps, but I'm not that interested to go into them. Anyway, they happen outside my consciousness and something I cannot change. If you are already a Christian, you're already "in" and need to worry more about Preservation of the Saints :-).

Gotta go. TTYL.

@GratefulDisciple aghhhh don’t do that to me! :) jk, but I am interested to hear your argument

@LukeHill You are equating the multiple wills of God. And that's not particular to Calvinists - we're all reading the same scriptures.

desiringgod.org/articles/are-there-two-wills-in-god

@LukeHill Perhaps more specifically, I'm not sure that #2 should say "wills" rather than "desires". I think all Christians should uphold these truths: God thinks it would be good for every human to be saved. God thinks it is good for evil people to receive justice. God thinks it is good for people who wish to be estranged from God not to be reconciled to him against their wills. God thinks it is good to bring dead people back to life.

What is particular about Reformed theology is that we do not think it is ungood for God to choose to bring some people back to life and leave others in their death, so long as whatever determines the elect is entirely outside themselves. So God is not choosing to save some people because they are somehow more receptive to God.

@curiousdannii Wow, that was a really good piece of theological writing, the kind I hope to one day be able to produce. I love how it was primarily working out of the scriptures, using secondary sources only to supplement the theology drawn out of the scriptures.

@curiousdannii did you just- compliment yourself?

That’s awesome lol

Oh you were referencing the article

Nevermind 😂

I think that the distinctions of Gods two wills is important, but I fail to see how Piper draws out those two wills in the one subject of man’s salvation

@LukeHill Not complimenting myself, just linking to my answer. The formatting comes out weird :P

@curiousdannii :D figured

It seems that this is more than deisre

This is will

Because what Piper seems to be drawing out is a Will of God and a desire of God

And he’s saying that God is desiring all men to be saved

But willing something else

@LukeHill Even the quite "literal" ESV says "not wishing that any should perish".

In any case, your argument is invalid once you acknowledge multiple wills. You would need to reformulate it with more steps that are more precise about what God is willing.

@curiousdannii very true

I’ll reformulate it and come back

I present to you the 11 premised argument

@curiousdannii feel free not to read this, but im interested in pushing this argument to the best version.

I suppose it’s only 8 premises and 3 conclusions

Are conclusions premises?

@LukeHill I'm not really following the logic of that sorry. 2 is not true, or else God wouldn't have allowed sin. I don't know what 6 & 7 are trying to say.

@curiousdannii I’m not sure if that’s true for #2, since sin can bring about higher order good.

And allowing for sin by giving man free will is arguably a higher order good since free will Is better than no will

6 and 7 are essentially the same statements, I left both of them for clarity.

Basically, God will act on his desires if his desire is the highest order good

I’ll explain more later, I’m out for dinner with family

@LukeHill A universe with only non-sentient non-suffering creatures has less suffering than this universe. But it's not the highest order good.

@curiousdannii right, because the lack of suffering is not a higher order good.

In that circumstance

@LukeHill One of the great feature of StackExchange is that it has a record of everything that is easy to access. It looks like the gold badges were because of famous questions; some of which were closed later when the site was tightened. So he was probably still having the mindset of the "pioneer" wild west era.

I see SE sites are really like a migrant community that is run democratically who in turn make rules. Meta site is the place for discussing the rules and decisions are naturally placed in some meta posts that become the faq, that in turn are promoted to be linked in the tour and help center for added visibility.

The mods are like elected sheriffs who need to make sure the migrant community not turning into an unruly wild west with fights breaking up in the saloons. Most of the time the sheriffs see their mission as helping the community to thrive following those rules that the community has set up so that the town can grow in a sensible manner that most people are happy with. So one way to see an SE site as building a town.

As @curiousdannii clarifies here the perceived "elitism" is not because of high expectation / perfection in the content (as in academic journal), but the prose is just academic in style: meaning, it's not a campaign speech, not a preachy sermon, not an opinion without citation, not a ranting, etc.

Therefore, the barrier of entry may not be as high as you expect.

About downvotes: 1) most downvotes, therefore, are not necessarily connected with content, but with style, which is easily remedied. 2) second most downvotes (on a Q) is because they are not useful "to build the town", i.e. not a question that the migrant community finds worthwhile keeping in a "library of questions". 3) only third most downvotes is about the content itself. If a visitor feels an answer doesn't really answer the Q or is a wrong answer, then it deserves a downvote.

My 3rd point. Keep in mind that each SE site IS a library of Q&A, which is the bedrock I referred to earlier. Stack Exchange is a cloud-based KB Management System, not an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, not a discussion forum, not a "help-desk system" where a user can create a ticket asking a question about a product. So trying to make a KB system to fit another mold is asking to redo the concrete foundation of a building.

As a KB system, there are 2 types of users: searchers, and contributors. A good KB system provides tags, easily searchable content, and a built-in way to sort valuable content from others (via votes, reputations, badges, etc.). Any community rules have to be made to serve that KB system, otherwise the rules will not work.

Let's talk about searchers. Searchers vote up/down based on the value of Q and A. They don't have to explain themselves, it's a democratic voting system and an integral function of a KB system. So frequent comments asking why this Q or why this A is downvoted miss the point. A KB system is designed so effort has to be low, otherwise that raises the bar of someone who wants to use the system. Searchers don't have to contribute, they simply use.

When searchers don't find what they are looking for, they become contributors of a question. This is where the KB system can expect that the contributor abides by the rules already set up by the community who has built the town of "library of Q & A". Some towns want to look like suburban, at most 2 floor high, some wants well-spaced out houses with plenty of trees around them, some wants high-rise townhome / condo buildings close to each other so they can walk.

A searcher who wants to add a Q to the town needs to abide by the "zoning rules" so the town becomes a good and easy to navigate place for future searchers. "Low quality" (negative votes) questions doesn't mean bad questions. It simply represents the kind of questions that the community doesn't want to keep in the town. I think this is the point that needs to be more communicated to New Question contributors.

Let's talk about Contributors to Answer. The main idea is to share knowledge. The barrier of entry is rather low compared to Wikipedia or academic journal. As mentioned above, the style is easily adhered to. The content will be evaluated by whether it meets the objective criteria set in the question using voting. Comments are not supposed to debate the answer, but simply whether it meets the objective criteria.

As a rule, I very seldom downvotes an answer; I use flags instead. On the other hand I often upvotes an answer if on the surface it looks objective, written in good style, and has citations. This is especially true if it's for a denomination I'm not that familiar like LDS. If I find that the content is wrong (in the area I have knowledge), rather than downvoting it I would provide a comment.

As long as the community votes like this, I think a Contributor to answer should find this to be a good feedback system. They should not be discouraged from lack of votes or negative votes or comments done right. They should see them as orientation on how to "build the town" according to the democratically agreed on "zoning plan" that they can influence in the meta site if they want to participate as a "town planner".

CONCLUSION: 1) Realize that SE is a KB Management system. This is the bedrock. Suggestion to improve the technologies of the KB System in general should be posted to the general Meta site.

2) Realize that rules are democratically established, discussed in site-specific Meta site to improve the experience NOT JUST the contributors but primarily for the silent searchers who simply upvotes/downvotes without comment and do flags if necessary. They shouldn't have to explain themselves, and most hopefully are aware of the site-specific "on-topic" criteria and the general SE styling guide applicable to all sites.

Their engagement should be minimal by design and Site analytics should provide feedback on search effectiveness.

3) Contributor to question should understand that this is a KB system. Not all questions are worth keeping, only "on-topic" ones. There's a style guide to follow which is applicable to all SE sites. That's why I notice new visitors that are high rep users in other SE sites tend to post quality questions right away. If the "town planners" want to modify the "on-topic" ones, there is a democratic process to follow where the meta site can facilitate.

4) Contributor to answer should also understand that this is a KB system, and that answers are voted based on how well it answer the question objectively, stylistically, and whether the content is right. They should see votes as a feedback system that is designed to make the town attractive for searches to use. If the town looks bad, searchers will not come. Thus the system has inherent interest or a life of its own, sponsored by the democratically agreed-on rules.

5) A mature KB system for a product (let's say a Dell laptop) will steady-state at some point and no more contributions are necessary. Christianity.SE is a KB system for "theology products" that keep evolving, so we want to invite both searchers and contributors to participate and optionally improve the quality of the KB, not because we are scholars, but to use Christianity.SE to learn more about our faith to better follow our Lord Jesus Christ or simply to satisfy our curiosity.

@GratefulDisciple Fascinating thoughts, thank you

@LukeHill BTW, My career is in IT. PLUS, in one of my previous jobs, I did customization for a KB system, so I feel qualified to speak from that angle which brings an advantage to me somewhat. Plus, programmers in StackOverflow (the original audience of the SE product) also usually has background experience with KB systems as a searcher, so when they start contributing they can see themselves on the other side as a contributor making it easier for them to transition.

In contrast, Wikipedia is a Wiki system, very different principle.

@GratefulDisciple ironically, Wikipedia serves as the main source here :)

@GratefulDisciple ah

@curiousdannii I agree that that article is a great piece of theological writing that synthesize the data of the Bible faithfully. I see it as a John Piper "branding", showing how to do Evangelical topical Bible study properly. But I feel I'm moving away from being evangelical to a generic magisterial reformation; Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, or Arminian doesn't matter. This is because I feel that the early church father doesn't view the Word of God the way Chicago statement does.

@LukeHill Yes, Wikipedia as a frequent source of citation, but not how the SE content is maintained, edited, organized, expanded, pruned, and presented. There is no voting system, for example, and no built-in search that is integral to the system.

But like Wikipedia, SE sites and Reddit and Quora are 1) "by the people, for the people", 2) content is open source, 3) lightly moderated, 4) no "top-down" purpose, so the result depends on community participation.

@GratefulDisciple also, Wikipedia actually tends to have bias, mostly towards left leaning ideals

@LukeHill Sure, probably because the participation is mostly by academic people who tend to be left leaning. Or we need more right wing participation.

It describes abortion as “a safe procedure”

@GratefulDisciple true

As I just pointed out in #1 to #4 above.

The usefulness really depends on both the users and the contributors.

Over the years, we can judge whether this model works or not.

For Wikipedia, I compare it with Britannica that has more stringent editorial control as well as more professional sources.

Britannica is a lot slower in evolving, but the content tends to be more professional and balanced when it comes to traditional encyclopedia topics.

My use case for both is to get a first stab on a topic, then I follow the footnotes / bibliography to the books. That's how students are taught to do research in the first place. My writing teachers said that a research paper should NOT rely only on encyclopedia.

I see SE site like C.SE as even more introductory in nature than Wikipedia, it's a bridge between total ignorance and some intro. Serious learners should eventually hit a textbook.

Even a textbook IS STILL introductory in nature. Eventually you need to hit academic journals and monographs.

Or for classical topics like democracy, economy, justice, etc. there is no avoiding The Great Books.

CONCLUSION: C.SE -> Wikipedia -> seminary textbooks -> journals & monographs. That's why I feel C.SE is not for me anymore. However it is a useful milestone in someone's journey. Some people just need C.SE and they're happy. Some people don't need C.SE in the first place, and happy to learn from their pastors.

Another good source is quality Christian magazines. Which ones do you read?

I started subscribing to Christianity Today since I find their coverage is broad, and their articles are a good balance combining scholarly background, current events, news about churches, and trend in theology. They serve the evangelical community, so I have a good source to go if I want to see what evangelicals are doing and thinking today. That's why Mars Hill podcast is there.

@LukeHill For Catholics and especially since you're into political science & economics, I think you have to check out First Things if you haven't already done so. I have read dozens of their articles and can vouch for the quality. I like First Things more for Christian integration with culture and philosophy, but I feel Christianity Today is improving in that area as well.

@GratefulDisciple I will, thanks. Once I finish the rise and fall of mars hill

Any magazines / blogs you recommend?

Thank you for the Apologetics Squared by the way, quite good.

@GratefulDisciple he’s awesome! I discovered him a while back.

@GratefulDisciple hmmm, let me find a few and get back to you. I’m more of a podcast/YouTube guy

google.com/…

@GratefulDisciple here is an interesting article on my most recent question

it regards the trinity and love

@GratefulDisciple Well I'm not sure I support the whole of the Chicago statement either. I'm not sure how well it handles the two versions of Jeremiah.

@LukeHill Richard Swinburne is a well-known Christian philosopher of religion, so it makes sense he would write that paper to make the concept of Trinity more intelligible for analytically minded 20th century philosophers. I found a review of his argument.

But the theologian's concept of Trinity was NOT derived from logic, but from Scripture and apostolic tradition. It goes from Jesus's claim about Himself, because God in His essence is unknowable, and this has been the case for thousands of years since Abraham. Just to remind you that Swinburne's argument doesn't prove Trinity like you said in your Q.

I don't know why someone would -1 your question (I +1 it). The only gripe for me is "multiple beings that contain the same properties of God". That's not correct language. There's only a single being for God, the ultimate being that is uncaused, that we cannot put under any genre, the self-existing, etc.

As Bishop Barron's video say, the Trinity is NOT supposed to be conceived strictly as 3 Persons that are like 3 beings with relationships (he referred to the picture of Abraham's 3 guests) but should be as how Aquinas said it: "subsistent relations". I found another video from Bishop Barron that talks in more detail about the Trinity. Very good.

@curiousdannii I see. My biggest gripe is that it wouldn't support the interpretation of 6 day creation as cosmic temple (not literal six 24 hour day). I realize how it can create a slippery slope. But I heard that even St. Augustine allowed a non-literal 6 day creation. So I would want to be more guided by how the early church fathers read the Bible until around Augustine. After that, probably too much adding new doctrines and reading into the Bible.

@GratefulDisciple There was a post by Aimee Byrd that I can't find anymore discussing her previous experience with the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The basic point was that she felt more at home with confessional Christians even if their confessions are different, than with Christians who don't hold fast to a confession even if they have more theology in common. I think I agree with that.

@GratefulDisciple I didn't think it made such specific genre assertions. Checking it now.

Yep, the Chicago statement is completely compatible with the framework interpretation of Genesis 1.

@curiousdannii Thanks, I'll keep her books in my radar. P&R seems to be a publisher for non-evangelical Reformed books?

@curiousdannii That's good news.

What do you think of R. Scott Clark who advocated confessional Reformed in his blog? I came across a few of his articles that I kind of agree.

@GratefulDisciple I'm not too sure what you mean by "magisterial reformation", but I'd encourage you, as you read widely and think deeply, to find a confession that you can call home, even if you have a small number of disagreements to it. (As Presbyterian candidates in Australia are allowed to disagree on the WCF's 6 day creation and pope being the antichrist.)

Submitting to a confession, sitting under it, shows I think humility about our own abilities to read the scriptures and think theology, and acknowledges the Spirit's leading and guidance of the Church through the ages.

@GratefulDisciple He's a good thinker, but if I remember correctly, also a bad gatekeeper, refusing to allow the Reformed Baptists to call themselves Reformed.

I need to take that advice myself though, and give the London Baptist Confession a thorough read to see if I can sign up to it. Or maybe there's another Reformed Baptist confession I could.

@curiousdannii Sure. It's just before evaluating post-1500 confession, I would like to trace the development of Western theology before Augustine first, to get a feel of the progress of theology from Irenaeus to Augustine. And I should also read Confessions. It's about time.

@GratefulDisciple SE often works as a guide to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is no good if you don't know what terms to look up. SE lets humans interpret your question and point you to the field specific terminology.

This is because I feel Protestant theologies are too much a reaction to Catholicism of 1500, not 100% a recovery of the early church. Then there is the New perspective of Paul to be considered, as well as ANE.

On some theology topics Wikipedia is quite good, but on others it's almost totally lacking.

@GratefulDisciple As they should be though. God guides the church through times of disagreement so that we will increase in knowledge. The debates of the early church led the church to a deeper understand of the doctrines of God and Christology, so that we have a better understanding of the Trinity than the Apostles had. I think the reformation era did the same for soteriology. And I think the 20th century has done the same for our pneumatology. Whichever side you end up on these debates, we have grown.

This series seems a good place for me, borrowing them from a local library.

@curiousdannii Sometimes I'm just bewildered on which authority to trust. For pneumatology, should we then go with Pentecostalism or NAR? I feel a lot safer with either Aquinas's pneumatology (which is being rediscovered by Catholics in response to the charismatic movement) or Calvin's / Jonathan Edwards / Puritans.

On soteriology, what's the proper way to evaluate N.T. Wright's appropriation of New Perspective of Paul, which has many variations, some more liberal than others? It seems N.T. Wright striked the right balance.

@GratefulDisciple Well until more confessions are written to take into account the debates of this age, you'll have to decide for yourself, or sit in the uncertainty. :)

@curiousdannii Exactly. That's why I feel tracing the 2000 theological history should be good, at least rudimentarily. So I want to start from the beginning: Irenaeus, the first systematic theologian after Paul.

@GratefulDisciple I don't know too much about the NPP, but it's always felt thin on evidence. Or rather, I haven't seen much argument why it can't be both. There are strong pushbacks against NTW, I know Piper wrote a long book, but haven't read it myself. Any evangelical college will definitely discuss the NPP.

@curiousdannii NPP had early pushbacks by big names like Don Carson and John Piper. Like you said, they even wrote books refuting N.T. Wright 10-20 years ago I think. But it seems the controversy has died down as each side found more common ground. This will definitely be a major theme in the 2nd Edition of the IVP Dictionary. Cannot wait to get my hands on it after it's published, hopefully this year or next.

@GratefulDisciple There are definitely insights to be gained about the historical context of Paul's writings from the NPP movement. But in some ways it doesn't affect soteriology too much. It is an important discussion and challenge in Biblical Studies. But if we believe that God inspired the scriptures, then he can say that he inspired them to speak to more than just the original context. Paul is non-specific enough that both the "traditional" reading and the NPP can be read out of the text.

It has been in the works since 2018, maybe next year.

So even if the NPP is right, that doesn't mean that we can't use Paul to determine how our soteriology should respond to legalisms of future ages. I think that's partly why NPP has diminished in significance?

As Wikipedia says: "According to Sanders, first-century Palestinian Judaism was not a "legalistic community," nor was it oriented to "salvation by works."" This is important for Biblical Studies to determine. All Christians should want to understand what the texts say and mean. But theology is about applying the texts to new situations, so it doesn't matter if 1st century Jews didn't believe in salvation by works, we can still use Paul to respond to anyone in the Church's history who does.

But as we do, we just have to be careful that we're not misusing those texts and what they say.

@curiousdannii It seems the sensationalism has died down as everyone realized NPP mostly added clarity on what "law" means to Paul, and also to change the distorted characterization that early Judaism was legalistic without grace. I haven't read deeply into it myself, only hearing bits and pieces.

Came across a recent (2019?) very brief summary of it in this Closer to Truth Interview series with N.T. Wright and Alan Torrance. Seems benign to me. If you have a chance to watch them, I wonder what you think.

Well, as always, very good talking to you. I have to go. TTYL.

@GratefulDisciple Here are some blog recs: aimeebyrd.com secundumscripturas.com facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063567760645 koine-greek.com

@curiousdannii Thanks. I'll check them out.

@GratefulDisciple See ya