Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda - The Church Reformed and Always Reforming
I was unhappy with the limited customization available to free accounts with WordPress, so I moved this blog over to Blogger. Both this blog and its IRC channel are now closed. The new blog is Itinerarium Mentis here. If you wish to chat with me on IRC, you can find me on the Dalnet network in either #Christian or in #TwilightCafe.
A message to commenters “Kerin” and “DM”: I have responded to your comments there.
(This article addresses the material left by a commenter named ‘GM’ on the “I Contend We Are Both Atheists” article. Click here.)
It is a welcomed but certainly unexpected example of ‘irony’ to observe our commenter, GM, engaging in the very thing that he accused me of—a condescending sophistry which attempts to foment support from the readers by denigrating the opponent. Although he unequivocally characterizes my post in this fashion and therefore falls prey to his own accusation, the fact remains clear that I did not overtly characterize Roberts this way. GM apparently thinks otherwise, but it cannot escape the reader’s notice that this was something that GM had to infer from my article—and incorrectly because, despite whatever feelings GM might harbor, I have not in fact belittled Roberts in my post. I did say that “musings and ramblings were his foray, not philosophical precision,” but that was not intended as either an insult nor a criticism. It is, in fact, something that Roberts tends to admit himself and the very reason I chose to not criticize Roberts. It is simply the way he is, and I do not see that this should be viewed as a fault. Furthermore, I do not criticize individuals; I criticize arguments, under their own self-contained merits. If an argument is faulty or erroneous, it’s not from any failings on the part of its proponent.
GM admits that “a person cannot be an atheist if he believes in a god” but then insists that Roberts’ adage never claimed otherwise. It is astonishing, I confess, that GM could manage to arrive at such a bewildering conclusion, one which is obviated by any responsible interaction with the text of my article. For the sake of any readers who might think GM’s criticism has an ounce of merit, let’s examine this a little more closely.
“I contend we are both atheists,” Roberts said; “I simply believe in one fewer god than you do.” To whom is this addressed? “One fewer god than you,” Roberts said, so this implies a hearer. Is he addressing himself? That would be impossible, for how can Roberts believe in one fewer god than himself? It is a logical contradiction to describe someone as believing in one god and, at the same time and in the same respect, no gods at all. So is he addressing a fellow atheist? That would be absurd because his hearer believes in one god more than Roberts does, who is an atheist. Ergo, Roberts is addressing a theist who believes in at least one God. Consider: (1) If Roberts is a confessed atheist and (2) believes in “one fewer god” than his hearer, (3) then the very meaning of the text demands that his hearer believes in at least one God. The question which my article posed has not lost any merit: As long as his hearer believes in at least one God, Roberts cannot meaningfully “contend we are both atheists.”
In conclusion: If Roberts is addressing himself, the whole thing short-circuits on a logical contradiction. If Roberts is addressing a fellow atheist, how can Roberts believe in “one fewer god” than a supposed atheist? If Roberts is talking to a theist, how can he “contend we are both atheists” when his hearer believes in at least one God?
GM tries to retain the validity of his argument by insisting that Roberts’ second sentence “demonstrates that the supposed ‘believer’ is deluded.” Two things can be noted here. First, GM is willing to push Roberts’ argument to extremes that Roberts’ himself is not comfortable to. Nowhere in Roberts’ adage does he claim that believers are deluded, and for good reason: one is “deluded” when one adheres to a belief or idea in the face of invalidating evidence, and there is simply no evidence that invalidates belief in God. To hold that believers are deluded is a position that cannot be sustained with any intellectual integrity. Second, whether “deluded” or not, GM just admitted that the hearer is a “believer,” as my criticism maintained.
GM finally attempts to demonstrate that my “second criticism is largely destroyed already” (although the reader can decide whether my argument has sustained any damage at all yet) and offers to make “one more pass” by the pitifully impotent bulldozer. I will quote his argument in full because it is so convoluted that I cannot even make heads or tails out of it:
To claim that a person believes in a god because that god told him to do so is inadequate, especially when that god explicitly states, “Thou shalt not have any other gods but me.” The commandment necessarily acknowledges the existence of other gods but jealously insists upon his adherent’s sole devotion. This in turn necessarily requires the believer to reject all other gods save the one.
First, if God demands unadulterated allegiance, even going so far as to make a commandment of it, then exactly how does that render inadequate the claim that “a person believes in a god because that god told him to”? GM does not tell us. I cannot even determine how these things are at all related. Second, neither my article nor my theology maintains that a person believes in God because God said to. I am not aware of any theology that makes this claim. Strawmen are easy to knock down, GM, but they leave your opponent’s argument untouched. Third, while Scripture’s proscription against belief in other gods thereby tacitly acknowledges the existence of other gods, it also confesses elsewhere that they “by nature are not gods,” that “ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save,” that he is to be pitied who “says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.” Scripture is quite clear that these gods are nothing more than artifices of man: “The LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other . . . Apart from me there is no God.”
This, of course, leads back to what my argument actually was: The reason I dismiss all the other possible gods is because Scripture declares that they “by nature are not gods,” that “apart from the LORD there is no God.” That’s my reason. We have Roberts claiming his reason for dismissing God is the same as my reason for dismissing all other gods. We can see this is actually not the case at all.
2 Peter 3:9? Major problem for Calvinists, if you ask me. If what Peter meant here when he said “all” was those believers to whom the letter was written, then wouldn’t he be saying that God is not willing for any those believers to perish but for all those believers to come to repentance? This simply would not make sense, you must see, for how can one who is already a believer come to repentance? So are these people believers or non-believers?
Believers, obviously. If you have read Peter’s epistles at all, he made very clear to whom his letters were addressed. But there is something to be said here. The people who Peter was writing to were believers, however the people who Peter was writing about are all those beloved and chosen by God; some, like those to whom Peter was writing, existed as believers at the time but many were not yet even born! Peter is writing to those particular believers but the context quite plainly demonstrates that he is not writing about only those particular believers; included were all those yet to come. The elect who at that time had “obtained a faith of equal standing” are temporally separated from the elect who had not yet obtained that faith or even been born. He is writing to these believers but also about those yet to come.
Consistently throughout both epistles (3:1), the “us” being referred to are “those who have obtained a faith of equal standing” with the apostles (1:1), to whom God granted “his precious and very great promises” (1:4 [with whom he is not slack concerning his promises, 3:9; cf. 3:13-14]), the “beloved” (3:1, 8, 14, 17), and the “brethren” (1:10a) who—notice carefully now—have been chosen and called by God (1:10b; cf. 1 Pet. 1:2, 2:9). This is for whom the Lord is longsuffering, not willing that any of these should perish but that all those chosen and called by God, the full number thereof, should come to repentance. As the apostle Paul makes clear (3:15-16 authenticates Paul), there is a remnant of Israel who will see their salvation after the full number of the Gentiles has come in. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as the scoffers would have us believe. The Lord is not late; he has a set time for his return which has always been known to God (Mar. 13:32) and this timing is without any regard to when his creatures think he should return. As Matthew Henry put the matter, the Lord “does not delay beyond the appointed time . . . [in as much as] God kept the time that he had appointed for the delivering of Israel out of Egypt, to a day (Exo. 12:41), so he will keep to the time appointed in coming to judge the world.” Men have their ideas of when they think the Lord should return; “but they set one time and God sets another, and he will not fail to keep the day which he has appointed.”
There is still another consideration which adds further support to this interpretation, that the “all” in this passage refers not to all mankind indiscriminately but to the sheep chosen and called by the Father. For if it refers indiscriminately to all mankind, then we have created a number of contradictions from one end of Scripture to the other, because we find in various places throughout Scripture that God, although he takes no pleasure in it, is indeed willing that some should perish—and that very justly, on account of their sin and rebellion.
But we don’t even need to examine scripture elsewhere, for in Peter’s own epistle here, he too affirms that God is in fact willing that some men should perish. He affirms, here in his second epistle (2:9-17), that God does indeed “reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment,” ungodly men who are “like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed” and who “will utterly perish in their own corruption, and will receive the wages of unrighteousness,” men that he refers to as “accursed children” for whom “is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.” And even in this very third chapter we are examining (3:7), Peter proclaims that “the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
Remember also something Paul said, with regard to God’s enduring patience and the objects thereof: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction.” And why would God do this? “In order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” (Rom. 9:21-24; cf. 5:9; 1 Thes. 5:9; 1:10). Since God, in his righteous justice, is indeed willing that some should perish on account of their sins and transgressions (Rom. 12:19 [cf. Deut. 32:35]; Col. 3:6; Joh. 3:36; Rom. 6:16, 23; 1 Cor. 15:56; etc.), obviously the “all” in this passage refers to the “us” stated therein, who are amply identified as God’s chosen sheep given to the Son, for whom he laid down his life.
In a rather complicated series of interrelated blog posts (which I have no intention of trying to summarize because I doubt I could maintain any semblance of coherence), David Wayne over at the JollyBlogger had offered his thoughts on a post by Tod Bolsinger entitled Astonishing Generosity about our Christ-centered duty to express our faith through tangible love in “becoming people who reflect God’s astonishing generosity.” Wayne was influenced positively by Bolsinger’s thoughts and, later, encouraged by a brief anecdote by Jared Wilson at The Thinklings on this subject; he wanted to share it with his readers for their spiritual edification—but with a caveat: he said he did not want “to start any kind of chain reaction where bloggers start trying to top one another’s stories”
Umm… it would seem that I summarized it anyway. Well, I hope it was coherent.
Anyhow, in one respect I have to wonder why Wayne would want to avoid such a thing. Perhaps the issue of ‘pride’ was on his mind, and by this I mean that he probably did not want to see bloggers pridefully engaging in holier-than-thou behavior. Although I certainly see the wisdom in this, I want to offer a perspective from the other side of the coin. What if bloggers did start a “chain reaction” of anecdotes describing ways in which they were able to practice astonishing generosity? And what if it uplifted our fellow believers to see Christ-praising grace running rampant in various parts of the globe and motivated them to either share their own edifying anecdotes or to go out into the world and turn such Christian principles into practice?
This seems to be what Michael Asbell was thinking when he commented (in Wilson’s post) that we need, with greater consistency, to turn these ideas of grace into acts of grace, that it is an unfortunate reality that too many people “agree with things like this [more] in principle than in practice.” Personally, I often find myself disheartened by the apparent lack of layman charity in my city, a situation that is aggrevated by the number of people who claim to be believers. In other words, if there are as many believers in this city as church membership would indicate, then why is there not a great deal more layman charity observed? And by “layman charity” I mean people going out there and getting their hands dirty, so to speak, becoming personally involved in manifesting to the world this grace wrought by Christ. (The question is rhetorical, of course, since the answer is already revealed in Scripture, but it is hoped that it might kindle a fire under the seat of some whose spiritual life is prepared to engage God’s grace at a new level.) It almost seems as if people are content to give a fraction of their income to the church and consider their Christian duty as being finished for the week, confident that the church will use that money to do good somewhere.
Such a practice is certainly a good thing and it is certainly needed, but is it enough? I submit that for the true child of God it is not. We as God’s children are called to participate in a more authentic and sincere vocation with a deeper level of commitment influenced by a profound love for God. As a pastor of mine once reflected, “What am I doing for a God to whom I owe everything?” This is not merely a positive abstract principle upon which we contemplate whenever we are not too busy doing something else. If we are at all “a new creation” through saving grace in Christ, then love and peace and kindness and goodness, etc., are not principles for intellectual digestion but real attributes of our character, God willing, as the fruit of the Spirit manifests itself in our sanctification as our nature is further conformed to the image of the Son.
This is why I am in favour of hearing the personal anecdotes that believers can share about the various opportunities they’ve had in their own lives to reflect God’s astonishing generosity. I want to know—not assume—that there are some genuine believers out there in the world authentically doing the work of Christ among the lost. “It is a central activity of the followers of Christ to reveal God to the world,” Bolsinger writes, insisting that it’s not enough to be generous: “Our generosity must astonish the people around us, leaving them dumbfounded for an explanation, flabbergasted for a rationale. It’s not enough to be good to [those] who are good to us; if we are going to be his followers [then our] generosity must flow to the very people [to whom] we don’t want to be generous,” and to a degree that leaves them astonished. This I feel compelled to affirm with a heartfelt amen to Bishop Wright and Tod Bolsinger. “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:9-10).
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful . . . And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Col. 3:12-17).
It is a very popular idea—far too popular—that somehow ‘agnosticism’ is neutral territory on the question of God and where one stands with respect to belief in him. Cruising through Technorati this evening, I discovered a post by Roberto Teixeira on the subject of agnosticism in his blog (which is not usually devoted to subjects like these, so perhaps he has not explored the finer points of philosophy). After giving a little background information about how and why he turned his back on God, and the weakness of the arguments for God that he has encountered, he made a rather disappointing remark:
Agnostics cannot prove or disprove god; thus, they neither accept nor deny it.
This is, of course, simply false. In reality there are two species of agnostic: (1) those who believe God exists, and (2) those who do not. And this is because ‘agnosticism’ in itself is a sub-set of both theism and atheism; one can be an agnostic theist (e.g. Deism) or an agnostic atheist (e.g. ‘weak’ atheism). The term ‘agnostic’ refers to what one knows (epistemic) and ‘atheist’ refers to what one believes (doxastic). I can hear Teixeira saying something like this: “I can’t really say for sure whether or not God exists—” (this would be his agnosticism speaking) “—but my worldview has no place for God and my life is lived without any reference to him” (this would be his atheism speaking). We must grant that Teixeira is an agnostic on the epistemic question, because he claims to be an agnostic, but we can also perceive him as an atheist due to his implied Naturalist assumptions and conclusions. The reality is that no one is ever just an agnostic; when it comes to the question of God’s existence, even the most ambivalent person ultimately comes down on one side or the other. Even if one has not thought very much about the issue, he nevertheless conducts his life in a manner consistent with either theism or atheism (e.g. he lives his life as though God does not exist; practical atheism).
Just as a side note, one of his concluding remarks was:
People cannot be reasoned out of something they didn’t reason into.
There are two things to be said about this: (1) I certainly know many atheists who did not reason their way into atheism, and (2) I certainly did reason my way into Christianity. In the final analysis, his clever adage does not apply to reality quite as neatly as he might have hoped.
