Category: Uncategorized

Team Calvin: Question 3

CC. John 6:37, 44 and 45

All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.(…) No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

If there are those that get saved without God’s prior action (Pelagianism), or those that refuse the action (Arminianism), then where do they fit between the “no one” of the first verse and “every one” of the second? Please describe a possible chain of events for such a person so that it doesn’t conflict with any of the verses.

First, it is necessary to correct the error in the question. Pelagianism is “the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special Divine aid.” This does not mean that “there are those that get saved without God’s prior action”, but rather, that there are those who are not in need of salvation or God’s prior action since they do not merit condemnation. The distinction is significant.

Now to address the direct question. There is obviously no need to figure out where the Pelagian unfallen fit here, since they have no need to come to Jesus Christ for a salvation they do not require. This, however, would appear to be a very small group of people; the Biblical record suggests a potential set of three: Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus Christ himself. So, what remains is to determine where those who require God’s grace but nevertheless refuse it fit between the “no one” of the first verse and “every one” of the second.

And when we consider the verses, it is perfectly obvious where these Arminian refusers fit. They a) have not been given to Jesus, b) have not come to him, and c) have not heard and learned from the Father. But none of this indicates that God does not wish them to be saved, that they have not been drawn by the Father, or that they have not heard the Father.

As is so often the case, Team Calvin’s position is based on a serious failure of reading comprehension. Their concept of election and irresistible grace, as it corresponds with these selected verses, is dependent upon assuming that “draws” is equivalent to “gives” and that “no one can come unless” is equivalent to “everyone must come if”. Not only are these two assumptions not necessarily true, they are quite obviously false on their faces as well in the context of the totality of Scripture.

As for the chain of events:

1. The Father draws everyone, since as per 1 Timothy 4, He “wants all people to be saved. He speaks to them through Creation and through His Spirit. All are taught.
2. Some hear, learn and permit themselves to be drawn. Some hear, do not learn, and do not permit themselves to be drawn. Some do not hear, do not learn, and do not permit themselves to be drawn. See The Parable of the Sower in Mark 4. All are taught, but not everyone learns.
3. Those who permit themselves to be drawn to the Father are given to His Son, Jesus Christ.
4. Those who are given to Jesus Christ go to him.
5. Jesus Christ does not cast out any who come to him, but raises them up on the last day.

I should perhaps mention that based on the various definitions, it is incorrect to describe me as a Arminian since my theological stance is more accurately described as Pelagian. I agree wholeheartedly with Tertullian when he writes: “I find, then, that man was constituted free by God. He was master of his own will and power…. For a law would not be imposed upon one who did not have it in his power to render that obedience which is due to law. Nor again, would the penalty of death be threatened against sin, if a contempt of the law were impossible to man in the liberty of his will…. Man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance.

Team Calvin: Question 1
Team Calvin: Question 2

John Piper’s murderous god

If you aren’t convinced that omniderigistes worship the god of this world rather than the genuine Christian God, you’re probably not paying attention to their words:

Why would God reach down his hand and drag his fierce fingers across rural America killing at least 38 people with 90 tornadoes in 12 states, and leaving some small towns with scarcely a building standing, including churches?

If God has a quarrel with America, wouldn’t Washington, D.C., or Las Vegas, or Minneapolis, or Hollywood be a more likely place to show his displeasure?

We do not ascribe such independent power to Mother Nature or to the devil. God alone has the last say in where and how the wind blows. If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command….

Therefore, God’s will for America under his mighty hand, is that every Christian, every Jew, every Muslim, every person of every religion or non-religion, turn from sin and come to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and eternal life. Jesus rules the wind. The tornadoes were his. But before Jesus took any life in rural America, he gave his own on the rugged cross.

Piper’s Jesus is a serial killer. He is a murderer, a slayer of children, and like those who follow his lead, he also appears to be a fairly shameless liar. His Jesus isn’t merely responsible for tornadoes, but also the gulags, the gas chambers, and the guillotines. The more I read of what John Piper has written, the more I am convinced that he worships Satan in the cloak of Jesus, the more it is readily apparent that he worships an antichrist.

Piper states very clearly that he does not ascribe independent power to the devil, but rather to his god. But if I am correct, (and I believe there is copious scriptural evidence and Christian tradition to support my contention that Satan is the ruler of this world and is responsible for much of the evil in it), and if Piper worships the god that he believes is responsible for committing such havoc throughout history for its own mysterious reasons, how can one possibly conclude that the man is anything other than a grievously deceived Satan worshipper?

Mailvox: the logic of suffrage

This dialogue with Bohm merits its own post.

1. Do you concur that when the government imposes a law on the populace, it is intended as a restriction on human behavior?

2. Do you concur that a general restriction on human behavior is a restriction on human liberty, given the definition provided by Icarius?

For the sake of argument, I will concur with both your propositions, with the caveat that restricting one’s ability to rob, maim and murder, say, is obviously beneficial to general liberty.

3b. Do you concur that laws are passed in order to modify existing human behavior?

of course I concur, since I’ve said as much already, except perhaps to say ‘prohibit’ instead of ‘modify’, since people will carrying on murdering other people even when they know they shouldn’t really.

4b. Do you concur that the threat of government force causes humans to behave differently than they otherwise would?

Agreed.

5. Do you concur that laws are backed by the threat of government force.

Agreed. I would have thought that, for the purposes of this discussion, 4b) and 5) amounted to the same thing.

6. Do you concur that because they are backed by the threat of government force, laws cause humans to behave differently than they otherwise would?

Ha! So we have another transitive relationship. I am bound to agree with proposition 6.

7. Do you concur that the imposition of laws backed by government force amounts to a restriction on the behavior of those humans who would otherwise choose to behave differently?

I suppose so. I would prefer the term ‘modification’ rather than ‘restriction’. Are we going to address those humans who choose not to behave differently.

7b. Do you concur that a “modification” amounts to a “restriction” when the legally permissible range of human behavior has been reduced?

I find myself balking at this supposedly ‘logical’ approach. This formula is too vague to be meaningful. The ‘range of human behavior’ remains the same whether it is permitted or not. What constitutes a ‘legally permissible behavior’ is decided by a judiciary on a case by case basis. You’re presuming that human behavior is a range that is measurable; reduced or extended, which presumes that behavior comes in some kind of unit. Is unlawful killing of a human being a unit of human behavior? Or is simply killing a human being the unit to be measured? There are myriad different circumstances under which a death might be deemed lawful or unlawful, depending on the circumstances and who is doing the killing. Is gambling a unit of behavior? Or should it be divided into smaller units, depending on the nature of the punt? Laws against sports gambling in the US do not prevent Americans gambling on other stuff or indeed on sports. Furthermore, what is considered unlawful in one place, is perfectly legal elsewhere, even within the US. This is probably not what I’d say precisely if I had more time today, a bit rushed but there you go. But I really think we should stop talking about ‘human behavior’ and address something more tangible.

There is nothing vague about “the legally permissible range of human behavior.” Nor is this approach anything but logical, there is nothing supposed about it. The fact that you are balking at this approach is because you are increasingly beginning to understand that your position on the matter is not a logical one. So, I will repeat the question. Do you concur that a “modification” amounts to a “restriction” when the legally permissible range of human behavior has been reduced?

OK, I’ll play ball. I concur just to see were this is going.

8. Are there significantly more state and federal laws than there were in 1919?

I would have thought so, yes.

9. Do you concur that because laws restrict the legally permissible range of human behavior and because there are now significantly more state and federal laws than there were in 1919, the legally permissible range of human behavior has therefore been reduced since 1919?

That’s certainly true.

10. Do you concur that the majority of the electorate is capable of effecting change in the number of laws passed by its representatives?

The Eurebellion begins

At long last, the politicians are turning against the Euro and the European Union:

“The euro is not in the interests of the Dutch people,” said Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing populist party with a sixth of the seats in the Dutch parliament. “We want to be the master of our own house and our own country, so we say yes to the guilder. Bring it on.”

Mr Wilders made his decision after receiving a report by London-based Lombard Street Research concluding that the Netherlands is badly handicapped by euro membership, and that it could cost EMU’s creditor core more than €2.4 trillion to hold monetary union together over the next four years. “If the politicians in The Hague disagree with our report, let them show the guts to hold a referendum. Let the Dutch people decide,” he said.

The Dutch aren’t the only ones. The open challenge from the new Spanish premier is arguably even more serious:

The Spanish rebellion has begun, sooner and more dramatically than I expected.
As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission and the European Council (hijacked by Merkozy).

Taking what he called a “sovereign decision”, he simply announced that he intends to ignore the EU deficit target of 4.4pc of GDP for this year, setting his own target of 5.8pc instead (down from 8.5pc in 2011).

In the twenty years or so that I have been following EU affairs closely, I cannot remember such a bold and open act of defiance by any state.

There is no real left-right divide in Europe anymore, as the Europhile-Euroskeptic one is much more significant. While the mainstream parties have long succeeded in their game of taking Europhile positions of varying degrees of enthusiasm – Eurofast vs Euroslow – the parliamentary systems have permitted the development of a continent-wide anti-EU political movement of the sort that the two-party system in the USA tends to preclude.

And eventually, the anti-EU side will win because the iron laws of economics are on their side.

Run away, Rush, run away

I find Rush Limbaugh’s retreat on Slutgate to be more than a little amusing:

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh apologized Saturday to a Georgetown University law student he had branded a “slut” and “prostitute” after fellow Republicans as well as Democrats criticized him and several advertisers left his program.

The student, Sandra Fluke, had testified to congressional Democrats in support of their national health care policy that would compel her college to offer health plans that cover her birth control.

“My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir,” Limbaugh said on his website. “I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choice.

Now, I don’t know if Ms. Fluke is a slut or not. I do know her position on government funded birth control is idiotic and that she’s not intelligent enough to understand basic supply and demand or she wouldn’t be pursuing a law degree at the age of 30. So, she may well be a slut, but she is not necessarily one. I tend to think it’s a little strange to apologize to someone for something that is possibly, though not necessarily, true without first attempting to determine if one is actually incorrect or not.

But Limbaugh’s apology demonstrates the fundamental cowardice of the conservative media. They are spooked as easily as neurotic thoroughbred horses. He’s the one with the massive audience, so why should he pay any attention to what his advertisers want? By allowing them to dictate his limits, he’s making himself their bitch. That’s fine, if that’s his desire, but then he would do well to abandon all of the heroic posturing of which he is so fond.

As with the Republicans, Limbaugh operates by one core principle: Always Retreat. And that is why conservatism has failed and one reason why American democracy is a thing of the past.

WND column

The Limits of Democracy

Two of the most informative political tracts one can ever expect to read share very similar names. I mention this simply because in these degreed, but uneducated days, if one happens to refer to Cicero’s “Republic,” one can reliably count on being “corrected” by someone insisting that it was not Cicero, but Plato who wrote it. But for all their similar appellations, there are distinct differences between “De re publica” and “Res publica” that are less the result of the distinction between practical Roman thought and philosophical Greek philosophy and more the difference between the experience of an accomplished politician and the utopianism of an academic without responsibility.

Mailvox: convinced by the consequences

No doubt many readers will be amused by the eventual outcome of YM’s experience in attempting to discuss a basic political principle with his mother:

My father arrived home from a business trip last night. Upon hearing what happened, he ungrounded me, and suggested to my mother that punishing a child for thought crime would only drive him further into misogyny. Then he took me aside and said “While you may be right about Santa Claus being not being real, you have to accept that a 6-year old will throw a tantrum at you when you tell him that.”

The funny thing is, I never actually told her women shouldn’t vote, only that it was an interesting idea, yet she still reacted like a child. Given my mother’s irrational response, I am now firmly on your side. I had seen this sort of behavior before, but mostly from younger, feminist women. I never thought in a million years that my evangelical, allegedly traditionalist mother would act the same way. You are right about learning a valuable lesson on women.

Ironic, and yet hardly surprising. YM is not only fortunate in having a strong male father in his life, but he is aware of it. Notice too that he didn’t react with outrage to his unfair and absurd grounding, but simply waited calmly for his father to rectify the situation. This is the way things are supposed to be.

As I have pointed out many times before, those who are capable of intellectually defending their position will do so calmly. Those who can’t always try to shut down the conversation one way or another. While the pro-suffrage side did have some effective hypothetical arguments in the early part of the 20th century, the subsequent 90 years of negative consequences have sufficed to destroy them utterly.

It’s interesting to note how female solipsism can trump a mother’s instinct to defend her son, which nevertheless is capable of detaching a woman from Team Woman at times.

Mailvox: try again, George

Unsurprisingly, yet another atheist demonstrates that he doesn’t know what “evidence” is.

“You have repeatedly asserted that voting is equivalent to liberty, now please either offer your evidence in support of the assertion or retract the claim.”

If there is no connection between liberty and voting, then how could women voting have negatively effected the amount of liberty in the country.

Furthermore it has been demonstrated throughout history that only way to undermine authoritarianism, to assure that the people and not the very few, define liberties is to assure that government is the result of the consent of the governed. The only way to assure all are able to consent is through democracy of one form or another.

You fail to understand the dynamics of basic political science. I believe your misogyny gets in the way in this case.

My purported misogyny and/or failure to understand the dynamics of basic political science are wholly irrelevant here. And even if we ignore its obvious flaws, it is imposible to deny that the logic presented by George here is not evidence.

So, I repeat the demand: You have repeatedly asserted that voting is equivalent to liberty, now please either offer your evidence in support of the assertion or retract the claim.”

Mailvox: seriously, don’t do this

Ken makes what I regard to be an inexcusable blunder:

I haven’t looked as closely at the numbers as you have but if you subtract the female vote entirely, is it possible that the Nazis simply would have come to power earlier because prior to ’32 the women were voting for parties other than the NASDAP?

Nothing against Ken, but I really dislike this sort of thing. Trying to come up with alternative explanations when you haven’t even bothered to look at the data is the hallmark of the idealogue, the anti-intellectual. It is neither discourse nor analysis, it is almost always mere excuse-making.

In this case, the answer is simple. No, because a) they weren’t even close and b) the dominant SPD was heavily supported by men. In 1928, the NSDAP was only the ninth-largest party in the Reichstag with 2.6% of the vote. Although they improved significantly in 1930, coming in second with 18.3% of the vote, they were still too far behind the dominant SPD with 24.5%, moreover, if Ken had paid more attention to what was already mentioned he would have realized that the SPD would have benefited even more than the NSDAP from the absence of the female vote, which tended to go to the Catholic parties prior to 1932.

In 1931, the NSDAP launched its campaign to win over female voters. A year later, in the first 1932 election, it won 37.3% of the vote to the second-place SPD’s 21.6%.

There is certainly nothing wrong with coming up with an unusual or alternative hypotheses, but one should always check them against the readily available data before offering suggestions, especially when one is proposing them in contradiction to another’s informed conclusions.