In my previous post I had commented on Doug Wilson’s 15-minute opening statement in the above debate. In this post I will be commenting on his 5-minute rebuttal, which commences at around 41:17 minutes into the video, and begins as follows:
“All right, first let me begin by freely embracing what Kurt said about ‘all’. When I say, ‘Does God decree evil acts?’ I am including absolutely every evil act. I began my journey in this ‘Acts 4’ business, just wondering, ‘Did God decree the crucifixion of Jesus?’ But since then, having come to the Calvinist position, I hold to the Westminster Confession, which says that God ‘freely and unalterably ordains whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.’”
Which is a somewhat ambiguous statement. If it means that God foresees and foreknows what will come to pass, and permits it to come to pass, and could have prevented it from happening if he had wanted to, but chose not to, that would be a true statement. But if it means that God had predestined and predetermined it to happen as it does, including all the future choices, decisions, desires, and inclinations of man (good or bad), thus depriving mankind of moral agency and freewill—which is his theological position—that would not be a true statement. In his theology foreknowledge is possible only through predestination, which is not a logical requirement. He continues:
“So God is not the author of sin; but he most certainly is the author of a story that has sin in it. This is not a defect, this is not a defect in the story; but it is rather the glory of it.”
Which is a meaningless statement. Creation is not a “story,” it is reality, it is a fact. It is made up of real people doing real things—good and bad—and being held accountable for their actions on judgment day. What makes God not the author of sin in creation is the freewill and moral agency of man—which he rejects. He continues:
“So to a few points of rebuttal: if we look at Kurt’s horrific examples that he began his opening statement with—the mistreatment of these prisoners of war, experiments and whatnot; Kurt is saying that God ordained certain evil acts, like the selling of Joseph into slavery in Egypt, or the crucifixion [of Jesus], but not these. The question that I would pose here is, does God know how to decree an [evil] act like that, without violating his holiness? If God decreed these actions—the mistreatment of the prisoners of war—in the same way that he did the crucifixion, or the scriptural examples—does he know how to do that, without violating his holiness?”
(The logical anomaly of referencing the crucifixion of Jesus in this debate was discussed in my previous post.) That is a loaded question. The implication of that statement is that it is possible for God to decree such evil acts, without violating his holiness; the only question is, whether he knows how to do it or not! Doug Wilson has figured out how to do it, the remaining question is whether God has or not! He rules out the option that it may not be possible in fact for God to decree such evil acts, without violating his holiness—which is indeed what the Bible teaches:
Deuteronomy 32:
4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Leviticus 11:
45 For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
Leviticus 19:
2 Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.
Psalm 5:
4 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.
Jeremiah 19:
5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:
1 Peter 1:
15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;
16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
James 1:
13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
1 John 1:
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
That describes the God of the Bible, which doesn’t match the description of the God of Calvinism that he is advocating. He then continues:
“Another question is, when you tell these horror stories about this sort of thing, was God in the room when these experiments were being done? Was God present? If any of these prisoners were crying out, screaming out in pain at the evil that was being done to them, did God hear their prayers? Did God hear their cries? Was God there? Did God have the ability to intervene, and why did he not intervene? And does that refusal to intervene involve a choice on God’s part? So, vile deeds were being committed; was God present when they were being committed?”
The answer to that question was given in my previous post. This (brief) period of mortality is a time of test, a time of trial, to see who will do good and who will do evil—and be rewarded or punished accordingly. Man is free in this life (up to a certain point) to commit evil acts, and hurt others, so he can be held accountable for his actions on judgment day, and receive a just punishment. But firstly, his ability to do evil in this life, and cause harm, is not limitless. If he goes beyond certain limits, God intervenes, and causes destruction, as he did in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah for example, or the Flood. Secondly, this mortal period of test and trial is very short, compared to the rest of eternity. Very soon this period will come to an end; and those who have committed the evil acts will receive a just punishment; and those who have suffered will be fully compensated for their sufferings. After that we have the rest of eternity to look forward to, where the present condition no longer applies. He continues:
“If we limit God’s decrees to God having a purpose or a meaning, you know, for the cross, or for the redemptive help that Joseph would bring by delivering Egypt from famine and so on, if God has meaning for those events; and yet I get mangled in a terrible car accident, and members of my family die and so forth, is there any meaning for me? Is there any meaning in what I am going through? Or is it, those events that God decreed in scripture, they have meaning; but ‘you Wilson are just caught in the machinery’.”
According to scripture, there would be a general meaning, but not necessarily a specific one. One of the purposes of this (brief) mortal experience is for us to learn good and evil—in the widest sense of the term—including experiencing adversity, suffering, hardship, and pain. That is one of the biblical definitions of “evil”. It doesn’t mean that God had specifically planned it for him to have a car accident (assuming he had); but it doesn’t mean that God was ignorant of it either; and could have prevented it from happening if he had wanted to; but chose not to. Another possible scenario is that he had deliberately caused the accident to happen, for whatever nefarious reasons that might have been; and God allowed him to do it for the reasons previously given—because this is one of the purposes of this present (brief) mortal experience. He continues:
“One of the things, one of the hidden writers in this debate—and I would like to finish with this, because it is already evident to me that this is what is going to determine how we read our exchanges—there is a fundamental creator-creature divide; and by that I mean, if we postulated a cosmos, with the great ocean of being, the great sea of being; and God is the whale; and we are the krill, or the minnows; then it makes sense to me why any exercise of sovereignty on God’s part, from within the system, is going to take away my freedom; because if I walk up to a man; if I walked up to Kurt, and pushed him; my exercise of my liberty would take away Kurt’s liberty. To the extent that I am pushing, his liberty is being displaced. It is like billiard ball physics; one ball strikes the other, and it displaces the other. So if God is simply a huge muscle bound Zeus inside the system, inside our created order; and he is just pushing us around; then yes, all of Kurt’s objections would hold. But if God wrote the universe the same way Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, we have got a creator-creature distinction; because how much of this speech was Shakespeare, what percentage of it was Shakespeare, and what percentage of this speech was Hamlet’s? it was 100/100.”
Except that that is an illogical and meaningless comparison, which has no basis in scripture. Firstly, his Calvinistic doctrine of “sovereignty,” which he takes for granted, is not biblical. Secondly, God did not create the world the way Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Neither the analogy of Shakespeare and Hamlet is correct, nor the analogy of the whale and the ocean is correct. God’s creation is not analogous to either of those. The correct biblical theology is as follows:
Firstly, when we speak of freewill, or moral agency, we speak of it operating within our creaturely limitations. I can walk but can’t fly. Birds can fly. Does that mean that birds have more freedom than I do? In a sense I suppose yes, they do! I can also fly in airplanes, which birds can’t! But do they have more freewill, more moral agency than I do? I wouldn’t say so. That is a different thing. I have the freewill, the moral agency, to go and rob my neighbor’s house—regardless of whether I can fly like birds or not. But I can also be put in prison, because I had previously robbed my neighbor’s house, in which case I cannot now go and rob my neighbor’s house again, because my freedom is restricted. So none of his Calvinistic (and non-Calvinistic) analogies are applicable. The correct theology is the one I gave in my previous post, which in more detail can be expressed as follows:
According to the Bible, (1) God has created mankind possessing 100% moral agency, and libertarian freewill. (2) He has created this present (brief) mortal experience as a period of trial, a test, to see who will do good and who will do evil, so they can be judged, and be rewarded or punished accordingly. That necessitates, or makes inevitable, the presence of evil in this (brief) period of mortal existence. (3) God has set aside a day of judgment in which all of mankind (Christian and non-Christian alike) will be judged in righteousness, according to their good or evil deeds in this life, and receive a just reward or punishment. (4) The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes it possible for those who have committed evil acts in this life to repent of them, and be forgiven, so they won’t be held accountable for them on judgment day. There is no “imputation,” and “faith alone” is a heresy. There is justification and sanctification through faith, repentance, baptism, and gift of the Holy Ghost; wherein they are washed and cleansed from all sin; becoming pure, holy, and righteous before God. (5) Repentance and keeping God’s commandments is not the same as “works,” or “works salvation”. Those are two different things. There is no salvation without genuine repentance; and to “repent” means to turn away from sin. It means to stop breaking God’s commandments, and start keeping them. And repentance is a volitional act; it is something that we choose to do or not to do. It is not something that just “happens” to people whether they like it or not just because they have “believed” (as in Calvinism). (6) This period of mortality, of test and trial, is very short, compared to the rest of eternity; and cannot be compared to it in the eternal scheme of things. (7) Foreknowledge is an extension of God’s omniscience. It does not necessitate predestination. There is no predestination of mankind to salvation or damnation from creation; nor of man’s choices, decisions, desires, motivations, and actions in this life (as in Calvinism). Mankind are 100% free to make such choices and decisions in this life, so that the judgments that God will bring upon them on judgment day will be just. (8) Calvinism is false, it is a heresy. It is a demonic and Satanic perversion of the gospel which has no biblical support.
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