Category: Apologetics

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Mueller & Chambers On The Inconsistency Of Arminianism

“Arminianism, like the Molinist theology on which it drew, is little more than the recrudescence of the late medieval semi-Pelagianism against which the Reformers struggled. Its tenets are inimical to the Pauline and Augustinian foundation of Reformed Protestantism.

In the Arminian system, the God who antecedently wills the salvation of all knowingly provides a pattern of salvation that is suitable only to the salvation of some. This doctrinal juxtaposition of an antecedent, and never effectuated, divine will to save all and a consequent, effectuated, divine will to save some on the foreknown condition of their acceptance of faith, reflects the problem of scientia media. The foreknowledge of God, in the Arminian view, consists in part in a knowledge of contingent events that lie outside of God’s willing and, in the case of the divine foreknowledge, of the rejection of grace by some, of contingent events that not only thwart the antecedent divine will to save all, but also are capable of thwarting it because of the divinely foreknown resistibility of the gift of grace. In other words, the Arminian God is locked into the inconsistency of genuinely willing to save all people while at the same time binding himself to a plan of salvation that he foreknows with certainty cannot effectuate his will. This divine inability results from the necessity of those events that lie within the divine foreknowledge but outside of the divine willing remaining outside of the effective will of God. Arminian theology posits the ultimate contradiction that God’s antecedent will genuinely wills what he foreknows cannot come to pass and that his consequent will effects something other than his ultimate intention. The Arminian God, in short, is either ineffectual or self-contradictory. Reformed doctrine on the other hand, respects the ultimate mystery of the infinite will of God, affirms the sovereignty and efficacy of God, and teaches the soteriological consistency of the divine intention and will with its effects.

Richard A Muller

Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice:
Arminius’s Gambit and the Reformed Response.

Philosophical and Theological Problems with Arminianism in all its various forms.

“1. Free will theology absolutizes the will of man and thereby reduces god to ontological equality with man. The knowledge of god is bound to the temporal actions of men. God cannot know the future acts and actions of men because those actions, products of a libertarian volition, do not yet exist in time. Thus God cannot know the future.

2. Foreknowledge being impossible, God’s knowledge is contingent on future potentials. God must learn from actions of men that occur outside of His mind and independent of His will. God cannot know all things, His knowledge being dependent on the arbitrary and indeterminate choices of the libertarian will of man. Thus god is not omniscient.

3. God then is not sovereign in all spheres and therefore not sovereign at all as sovereignty is understood in the classical Christian sense. God is limited and no longer all powerful. This is not the Christian God who declares the end from the beginning or who works all things after the counsel of His will. This is a god who learns and reacts to events that occur in a creation that has an existence independent of Himself. This God is not omnipotent.

4. Since there are conditions that occur outside of Himself, conditions which of necessity cannot be known in advance, events which He must learn as they occur, God must react and change to adapt to these circumstances. This God is not immutable.

5. In order to keep creation moving towards his desired end, he must of necessity intercede at times and violate the indeterminate will of man. But this is the very will that is said to be inviolable in the soteriological act. This god is compromised and inconsistent. This god is arbitrary and capricious. This god is confused and contradictory.

6. This god, it is said, has died for all men for all time, knowing full well that His plan of salvation will not save all men. So while some men decry the determinate God of Calvinism, they are more than willing to accept a god who knows the future infallibly, knows his plan will be ineffective for the majority of mankind and institutes this plan anyway knowing full well that it’s result will be the death of most who have ever lived.

7. Free will adherents reject a God who determines all things. But they are willing to accept a god who knows all things and chooses to do nothing about them. This is, so they say, because the will of man is free. God knows full well that terrorists will fly a jet into the WTC and chooses to do nothing. He is capable of doing something but values the libertarian will of men above the eternal destiny of all those in the buildings and so chooses, by his refusal to intercede, to consign most of those inhabitants to eternal death. If I observe a crime and have the ability to do something to prevent it or know in advance of it’s occurrence and fail to notify the proper authorities I am as guilty as those that perpetrated the crime. This god is guilty of complicity. He is an accessory before the fact.

8. In the case of open theism, god didn’t know what he was doing or what He would get by doing it (sin, evil, murders, war, untold human suffering on a massive scale) yet was willing to take that chance. This is the god who risks, but exactly who and what were affected by this risk? To add to the conundrum god could not know if there was anything he would be able to do to correct the mess he created. And the open theist suggests that the god of Calvinism is cold hearted and despotic?

9. This god potentially died for no one. The atonement is universal in scope. God has not done anything more for one person than He has done for any other person and the one thing he has not done for those who are lost is to save them. Salvation is for everyone in general, but for no one in particular. This god is dependent and ineffective.

10. Libertarians tacitly reject total depravity. Man is not dead in sin but merely sick. He is inclined to do evil but is not in fact evil. Salvation is a potential that must be appropriated by the individual. Man cannot be wholly dead in sin and make this choice. The potential for good must be present. Man must overcome the inclination to reject God in order to accept the offer of the Gospel. Unfortunately, the Gospel itself, while evidently powerful enough to save those who choose to accept it, is impotent to convert the hearts of most of mankind. Free will theology suffers from its own type of particularism, but it’s an arbitrary particularism dependent on the condition of the individual. Salvation is “available” only for the ethically advantaged.

11. No wonder then that the evangel is often reduced to begging and pleading. God is not going to do anything but offer a potential. MAN is the decisive factor. Man is the determinative agent. We must convince man to make a positive decision for Christ. Better salespersons are more effective evangelists. Solus Christos is lost as salvation is synergistic. Arminianism stands on the same epistemological ground as atheism.”

Mark Chambers

Texas State Congressman James Talarico Says Something Really Stupid

“Christian Nationalists are not interested in Christian values. They are only interested in legislating Christian dominance. Christian Nationalism (CN) is putting prayer in schools and taking free lunches out. CN is teaching the bible in schools but refusing to give teachers a pay raise. CN is forcing schools to post the ten commandments while nominating a candidate for President who has violated almost all of them. It is not about Jesus. It is about power.”

James Talarico
Texas State Congressman

1.) If Christian Nationalists are not interested in Christian values then they are not, by definition, Christian Nationalists.

2.) What could possibly be wrong with legislating Christian dominance? Is it only Christianity when one legislates the dominance of other non Christian religions?

3.) I am a Christian Nationalist. I am not interested in putting prayer in schools but I am interested in taking “free” lunches out. In point of fact, what I am really interested in is legislating a dominance that results in closing down completely government schools.

4.) There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody, somewhere is paying for that lunch.

5.) I am a Christian Nationalist. As a Christian Nationalist I am opposed to the humanist hacks they call “teachers” to teach the Bible in government schools. Can you imagine how badly they would do so? I am also opposed to giving teachers a school raise. In point of fact, in my Christian Nationalist world all government school teachers would be out of work since all government schools would be shut down. I would shut down government school since, as a Christian Nationalist, wanting dominance, I do not want humanists being dominant over children as seen in their teaching the children that humanism should be dominant in their thinking.

6.) If schools are shut down then the idea of posting the ten commandments is now big deal. However, if government schools are not shut down, why shouldn’t the ten commandments be posted since the refusal to post them demonstrates the States desire to have its religion be dominant.

7.) This chap was adamantly opposed to posting the 10 commandments in Texas schools and he contributed to killing the bill in Texas.

8.) In desiring to post the ten commandments while nominating Trump who has violated all of them, Christians are involved in contradiction for sure. However, all because someone supports something wrong (nominating Trump) doesn’t mean it is wrong for them to support a good thing (posting the ten commandments.) It merely means they are inconsistent. Talarico’s inconsistencies are all over this stupid quote. Does that mean everything the man does is wrong?

9.) What ever could be possibly wrong with wielding power? So what if it is about power? When one embraces Christ are they at that point no longer to have authority or power? Should they not have the power of Fathers or Husbands? Should they not have the power of employer or politician?

10.) Why is it that the idea of embracing Jesus automatically means the idea of giving up power? I don’t doubt that for some Jesus is used as a mask to grab power but that doesn’t mean that automatically Christianity and power are incompatible.

Something R2K Will Never Be Accused Of

“and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.””
‭‭
Acts‬ ‭17‬:‭7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Can you imagine any pagan crowd today complaining; “Those R2K Christians… I hate them because they are always saying there is another King, Jesus?”

This one passage by itself should eliminate R2K from serious consideration as a legitimate Christian theology.

Doug Wilson, Side-B Nazism, The Green Witch & Awaking From The Silver Chair

In his latest brain fart the legendary gatekeeper Rev. Doug Wilson accuses those of us who agree with Augustine, Chrysostom, Luther, and Calvin on the issue of the Bagels as being a new version of “Revoice.”

Only the most high Rev. Wilson observes; whereas “Revoice” was about side-b sodomy, those of us who agree with our Fathers on the issue of the Bagels are side-b Nazis. According to Pope Doug we who agree with our Fathers on the Bagel issue are trying to be “sin-adjacent.” True, per Pope Doug, we don’t want to be out right Nazis but we do want to be kind of like that. Why some of us even have the temerity to agree with Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, David Irving, and many others that the genocide numbers may well have been inflated. Indeed, per Doug it seems that it may well be a sin to not only inquire too closely about the actual number total of deaths but it is even the case that it is beyond the pale to even contemplate the possibility that International Jewry had an agenda that was decidedly against the German people. One wonders if Doug has ever read about the boycott against German goods called for by International Jewry in March of 1933?

So, in Doug’s brain any honest attempt at historical revision automatically falls under the category of a Nazi version of revoice where Christians see how close they can get to Nazism without actually becoming Nazis. Of course, by this standard, Augustine, Chrysostom, Luther and Calvin and many Church councils were the original version of Revoice that folks like Sam Alberry, Nate Collins and Misty Irons copied in 2018.

Of course, Doug, as he typically does, leaves himself an out by saying, after he rips people who question the WW II narrative, that he has been questioning the WW II narrative for decades. Yeah, it sure shows Doug.

Doug wants to accuse these young chaps of being a Nazi version of “Side-B Sodomy.” Very well then, I accuse Doug of being the embodiment of C. S. Lewis’ “Green Witch” in the Narnia book “The Silver Chair.” If you will remember in that novel, Prince Rilian, has been seduced and enchanted to serve the ends of the Green Witch. However, the spell is never complete and daily the Prince is required to sit in the Silver Chair in order to get his daily fix of enchantment that will keep him beholden to the Green Witch. One day, in the presence of Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum, Prince Rilian incrementally awakens from the spell and begins to rail and rage against The Green Witch and her spell upon him. At this point the Green Witch enters into the room they are all in and begins to sing again her spell of enchantment in order to put the Prince back to sleep and so under her spell.

Doug is playing the Green Witch. Young men are waking up to how much and how often they’ve been lied to by the Governmental-Corporate-Ecclesiastical-Media complex. In this awakening everything is being questioned from the post-Enlightenment/ WW II consensus forward. People are discovering that for centuries, if not millennium Jewish and Biblical Christian interests have been at severe cross purposes. Yet, in this awakening there we find guys like Doug Wilson seeking to reinvigorate the spell that has had us all sleeping for decades and has had us serving as lackeys for the purposes of an Institutional Green Witch that is contrary to our own Christian and National interests.

Now, to be sure, there are voices out there that are excessive on this subject. For example, some of the work, that the Lutherans, Mahler and Woe, are doing is positively unhinged. Keep in mind though that the swing back of this pendulum may be particularly vicious given the resentment and rage over being lied to for decades. If the snap back is extreme guys like Wilson (Andrew Sandlin, Karl Trueman to name a couple more) have to share the blame. Forcing the lid down on a boiling pot only guarantees that the whole pot is sure top explode.

Doug Wilson on this subject (and more than a few others) is the Green Witch seeking to put the young Princes of the realm back to sleep.

And myself?

I’m just trying to play the role of faithful Puddleglum by casting myself on the fire that is aiding in the Green Witch’s enchantment. I can only hope that burnt McAtee smells as head clearing as burnt Marshwiggle.

Addendum

I would strongly recommend that Doug read the following books. It is only a start.

E. Michael Jones — The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit
E. Michael Jones — The Holocaust Narrative
Maurice Pinay — The Plot Against The Church
Hillarie Belloc — The Jews
Martin Luther — The Jews and Their Lies
John Calvin — Response to Question and Objections of a Certain Jew
Against the Jews — Chrysostom

Schlebusch and McAtee Answer A Putative Conundrum by Natural Law Enthusiast Stephen Wolfe

“How do anti=natural law folks contend w/ the story of Abimelech and Abraham (Gen. 20) in God says that King Abimelech had ‘integrity of heart’ (v. 6), and he appears to have a sort of fear of God ( v. 14-15), a degree of civil righteousness (v.4), and clearly had knowledge of justice (v.9)?

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

1.) Dr. Adi Schlebusch answers,

Groen van Prinsterer on the traditional nature of General Revelation:

“Natural law is not known from reason. But, people say, look at much wisdom the ancients had! For sure. But they derived it from tradition. I mean not to say that they had actually seen the Books of Moses, but rather that their wisdom came from that same divine revelation that was written down in Scripture, albeit mediated by tradition.”

2.) Bret continues;

Anti-natural law types do not say that all pagans have zero notions of civil righteousness. Indeed, we would say that any pagan who has zero notions of civil righteousness will need to be locked up. (And given the recent P. Diddy revelations and before that in 2016 the Pizzagate revelations we are now at the point where we desperately need to start locking people up.) Similarly, anti-natural law types do not deny that the pagan will, buffet style, pick and choose that from natural law that can be used to get their Christ denying worldview off the ground and operating. The Christ-hater will use natural law to climb up into God’s lap in order to slap him in the face. So, anti-natural law types note that the Christ-hater is very selective as to what he will “learn” and not “learn” from natural law. For example, the natural law advocate at a early stage of departure from God’s reality may well say “adultery is wrong,” yet, 40 years later, because they have no anchor in special revelation (God’s Law Word) will now have no problem with sodomite marriage. Natural law hasn’t changed over that course of time but the Christ hater, being blown about by cultural relativism have given up that particular notion of natural law formerly embraced. This is because the carnal mind is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7). Luther offered long ago that anything noble that the Christ-hater did should be counted as “splendid vices.”

So, what anti-natural law types deny is that the pagan will be consistent in what he says he learns from natural law. Remember, at every turn the pagan will disallow natural law to instruct him in complete righteousness and so the anti-Christ types natural law like a wax nose that he can accept or not accept according to his liking as that liking is influenced by the cultural around him. The greater the culture becomes unhinged from God’s revealed law word the more likely the garden variety Christ-hater will choose to drop natural law options that he might have previously accepted.

The denigration of our own culture bears this out. In previous generations in the West, influenced as it was by God’s special revelation, those who were not Christians borrowed capital from Christianity to inform their reception of certain natural law categories — yet without embracing enough of them to be genuinely walk in righteousness as God counts righteousness — while dismissing other natural law categories at their whim.

All of this to say that, as I’ve noted before that what is called Natural Law can be seen as working in a culture highly influenced by Christianity but this is only due to the fact that the larger culture is shaped by special revelation. Natural law in these cases is “seen as working,” but it is not really what is working. What is working is that the Christ-hater is borrowing capital from the Christian worldview. Later, then we turn around and point back and call that “borrowing” natural law.