The above statement is an assertion only and does not therefore resolve the issue but instead removes it from discussion. The reliance on assertion assumes that one has interepreted scripture correctly, i.e. that God exhaustively knows all future actions as either “will” or “will not”. That interpretation is, however, what is being disputed and so cannot be relied upon as a basis for the assertion.

Furthermore, God’s revelation to us, and his creation of us, reflects his character as being one that is logical and rational. Consequently, though it is impossible to prove a negative–that there is no way that God could exhaustively understand the future as either “will” or “will not”–it appears to be both extremely unlikely and unnecessary.

regards,
John abc

You wrote:

“Terry, in regard to the question of assurance that God will be ultimately victorious, I must admit that strict Calvinism holds the advantage.”

I disagree with you here: Calvinism does not hold any advantage regarding God being “ultimately victorious”.

Define “ultimately victorious”?

My understanding of eschatology (and I believe that calvinists and Open Theists would agree with me on these key details) is that Jesus is coming back again. There will be a final judgment in which the devil and fallen angels and rebellious men will be separated from God and believers. God will eliminate the effects of sin and the presence of sin, bring about a New Heaven and New Earth in which there will be no more sin, no more death, no more suffering. This state in which evil and evil doers have been separated from God is an eternal state. If THAT all happens, and all of us (including Open Theists, Arminians, and calvinists) believe THAT, then how is THAT God not being “ultimately victorious?

If you define “ultimately victorious” as that all people will come to believe (i.e. universalism), that is not biblical.

If you believe what the bible says about how all the dead will be raised, how evil will be eliminated and how there will be an eternal state in which righteousness alone is present (again precisely things that all of us whether we are Open Theists, Arminians or calvinists affirm and believe), How is **THAT** God not being ULTIMATELY VICTORIOUS????

Now if you could demonstrate that determinists/calvinists **alone** affirm these eschatological facts (and that Open Theists and Arminians deny them), then your point about determinists holding an advantage would be true. But in fact we all believe these same eschatological facts.

“But that advantage comes at too high a price. If God minutely controls all thoughts, emotions and events, then, of course, he will have it his way every step of the way as well as in every detail of the final outcome. If God is the only significant actor, he will prevail simply because there is no one else in the neighborhood. Arminians and open theists see that kind of sovereignty as not a good fit with the relational God depicted in Scripture.”

My only quibble with what you say here is not your comments about how Arminians and Open Theists agree that God does not exercise this kind of “control” over us.

Rather you say “that kind of sovereignty as not a good fit with the relational God depicted in Scripture.”

I believe that you are confusing sovereignty and kinds of control here.

We all (again Open Theists, Arminians and calvinists all affirm that God is sovereign) agree that God is sovereign (defined **biblically** as He does as He pleases in all situations).

It is determinists who come along and REDEFINE sovereignty so that it lines up with their belief in exhaustive determinism ((similar to the way they redefine free will so that it fits with their belief in exhaustive determinism) as involving puppet master like control over humans (who are like puppets being directly, continuously and completely controlled like a puppet master controlling their puppet).

Arminians and Open Theists rightly disagree with this deterministic conception of CONTROL (with this kind of control), but any one who believes the bible and has personal experiences with God believes Him to be SOVEREIGN (e.g. when we pray for a person who is seriously ill, we know that God could heal the person or choose not to heal the person and this choice is up to God, He is sovereign in this situation, He does as He pleases in this situation). Our objection is **not** with His ****sovereignty,**** our objection is with the Calvinistic/determinist CONCEPTION OF CONTROL. A type of control that reduces men into to robots or puppets and does in fact eliminate genuine personal relationship, a type of control that logically follows if you affirm exhaustive determinism.

“Open theists are even more concerned to protect the idea of free, personal relationship between God and man than the old and more respectable Arminians; and consequently they are willing to see God as not knowing those future, not yet real free choices that he calls us to make.”

I disagree with this, because I (and I am not an Open Theist) want “to protect the idea of free, personal relationship between God and man”. But I believe that Open Theism concerned about protecting this reality, then makes mistakes regarding foreknowledge. I say that you can maintain both that God engages in free, personal relationships with man AND that God foreknows all that occurs (i.e. that **is** the position of classic Arminianism). The Open Theist desiring to hold to free will and genuine personal relationship feels compelled to jettison exhaustive foreknowledge. The Calvinist/determinist on the other hand, desiring to hold to exhaustive foreknowledge is compelled to jettison free will and genuine personal relationships. Arminians do neither affirming BOTH free will and genuine personal relationships and exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

Robert

This, among other things, is what makes Open Theism so attractive. A loving human father may permit his children to make their own choices though he knows they will make some wrong choices (but doesn’t have exhaustive knowledge of their future wrong choices, and hopes to be pleased by their good choices). When they do make bad choices, we cannot rightly say that they made those choices with their father’s cooperation. No, the father had instructed them on right and wrong, even warning them of the consequences of making bad choices, but he knew it was in their best interest to allow them significant freedom in making their own choices. It’s more difficult to defend the claim that a father with exhaustive foreknowledge does not cooperate with his children’s bad choices when in fact he is the one who sent them out into the world to make choices (all the while knowing what choices they would make).

Steve Lemke, one of the two editors of the book, rejects total depravity outright. He denies that humans are born in guilt and claims that, upon reaching an unspecified age at which moral action is possible, they become guilty through personal sin (Steve Lemke, “The age of accountability is a foundational belief,” http://www.baptistmessage.com/node/5815). Moreover,he claims that humans who are “dead in sin” are nevertheless capable, by nature, of responding to God in at least some degree.

Moreover, Paige Patterson, in his article “Total Depravity” which appears in the recommended book itself, argues at length against total depravity:

“There are two reasons Jerry Vines asked me to write on the doctrine of total depravity. First, he wanted me to address the most objectionable doctrine.”

“Are humans born guilty before God? That cannot be demonstrated from Scripture.”

So, is total depravity a minor doctrine within Arminian theology, a doctrine the rejection of which is “for the most part . . . consistent with classical Arminianism?” That is, do classical Arminians really share with Calvinists, as they claim, a common understanding of total depravity? More to the heart of the matter, is it even possible to articulate a consistent Arminian theology without at the same time drifting into serious error, such as sacramentalism, semi-Pelagianism, or open theism? The ubiquity of such problems in contemporary articulations of Arminian theology seems to me to point to incoherence within the theological system itself.

Given Dr. Olson’s willingness to identify this book’s authors and editors as Armininian, their rejection of the doctrine of total depravity seems to me to provide very ample justification for labeling Arminianism, at least Arminianism of the form articulated by the book’s authors and editors, as semi-Pelagian. Indeed, their deliberate and explicit rejection of total depravity demands that label. If Whosoever Wills is, as Dr. Olson opines, “the best book against Calvinism that I know of in print right now,” Calvinists need not be alarmed by this challenge. And, those Arminians who disapprove rejection of total depravity, if any, would do well to look elsewhere for validation of Arminianism.

“The fundamental issue is not whether God is author of evil but whether God can be charged with evil.”

Trying to change the subject here?

Dr. Olson was clearly discussing how calvinism makes God the author of evil. Olson was not talking about the more general subject of “whether God can be charged with evil.”

“ Scripture, of course, denies both charges but, as Dr. Olson affirms, doesn’t spell out exactly _why_ the omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign God is innocent of the evil that has corrupted his creation.”

If “Scripture . . . denies both charges”, then since calvinism/exhaustive determinism logically entails that God is the author of evil, this amounts to Scripture denying calvinism to be true.

Of course this is not the first time this has been noted. Virtually all non-determinists (which is the majority of the Christian church) who have thought about it have come to this same conclusion (i.e. if God predetermines “whatsoever comes to pass” then God is the author of evil). Now calvinists hem and haw and dance around this conclusion, but they do so only because the conclusion refutes calvinism. And they feel compelled to do whatever they can to defend their system of theology.

Now a standard strategy or technique of calvinists/determinists, when directly confronted with the charge that exhaustive determinism entails that God is the author of sin, is to try to shift the discussion away from their irresolvable problem by attempting to argue that Arminians have the same problem. Note this evasive maneuver in McCarty’s next words:

“As I understand Arminius, he affirms, with Calvinists, that nothing happens without God’s permission _and cooperation_. The issue of God’s cooperation is significant. For instance, under law the distinction between planning a criminal act and cooperating in a criminal act is not sufficient to exonerate a defendant. It may reduce, but not eliminate, culpability. So, the Arminian theory does not make the problem of evil go away.”

So according to McCarty, in Arminian thinking, God COOPERATES with all evils, therefore making him culpable for all evils.

Hmm.

Exactly how is God “cooperating” with evils McCarty?

When a woman is raped or a child molested, precisely how is God “cooperating” with these evils McCarty?

Now we know that if God has a total plan in which every event is decided to occur beforehand and then history is the actualization of this total plan (i.e. if exhaustive determinism/calvinism is true): then it follows that God planned for every rape or act of molestation to occur. He planned for them to occur because he wanted them to occur. And in calvinism/exhaustive determinism God exercises a kind of control in which he ensures that all of these evils occur exactly as they occur (which is opposite “permitting” or “allowing” them to occur).

The Arminian view is not that God “cooperates” with evil, rather, God created beings (both men and angels) who are capable of evils/sins when they make the wrong choices. God created angels and men to be independent beings with their own minds, wills, capable of doing their own actions and making their own decisions. As independent beings, men and angels can be held accountable for their freely made and evil choices. But when we do choose to commit sin or engage in some evil, God is not “cooperating” in our sin. Nor did he plan every evil as determinism entails.

McCarty’s attempt to conflate directly causing and planning (i.e. determinism/Calvinism) and allowing or permitting independent beings to do their actions (i.e. indeterminism/Arminianism) reminds me of a joke circulating in prisons. A criminal upon arrest declares: “Don’t arrest me, arrest my parents for these things that I did. If they had not brought me into the world I never would have done these things. So arrest them, not me, it is their fault these things happened!” Now most of us see through the muddled reasoning of this criminal. But then apparently determinists such as McCarty do not. If we follow the criminal’s claims, then we should hold God responsible for all evils that occur because if He did not create humans and angels who are capable of choosing to do evil, no freely chosen evils would have occurred. Therefore, God is at fault for all evil and sin according to the determinist. I would never tell an inmate in reference to one of their freely chosen acts of violence or crime, that “God was ***cooperating*** with you in that action”.

“Moreover, on the classical understanding (which, of course, may be disputed) that God is outside time, I can’t make much of the difference between planning an act and cooperating in an act. The key distinction seems to involve time and therefore doesn’t apply.”

Again, McCarty wants to claim that Arminians believe that when angels or men sin, God is “cooperating” with the sin. That is not the Arminian view as it leaves out free will and that God created us capable of acting independently and doing our own actions.

Lately I have seen determinists modify this argument by suggesting that since God maintains the world in existence at all times and places, no event including evil could ever occur without God willing it to occur (can you hear the criminal now modifying his claim: “Don’t arrest me, arrest God, if God had not maintained the world in existence I never would have done these things, so arrest God not me for these things!”).

Robert

I’d say their comments go well beyond declaring something to be evangelical or not.

With respect, the following questions are burning in me as I read your words . . . Wouldn’t your stated goals be better served by writing a book about Christian unity, emphasizing the underlying orthodoxy and points of significant agreement between various Evangelical theologies? Will another theological attack lessen the tension? Isn’t it likely to fuel more of the same harsh debating – and possibly promote more marginalization?

I am in a church where Arminians and Calvinists coexist in beautiful harmony. The topic is not avoided, but it’s also not the main focus. The love of Christ is so strong in our midst that we can graciously overlook the very real differences and disagreements we have. It’s an ongoing work of God that proves there can be peace between us.

I do hope your book will bring about further FRUITFUL dialog. Your blog has certainly produced some. I hope that doesn’t change.

Blessings,
Derek Ashton