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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/28/2001 5:58 PM (GMT -6) |   |
05/31/01 1:37 PM
What’s up with God’s two wills?
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I posted this question in another thread, but I’m hoping it will get more attention up here: I would like to know more about how Calvinists biblically support their conviction regarding the two wills of God, particularly in relation to God’s predestination of sin and evil. How is this view reconciled with Jesus’ statement that “every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matt. 12:25; cf. Mark 3:24; Luke 11:17)? And how is this conception of God’s glory (which includes willing suffering and evil) reconciled with the biblical portrayal of God’s holiness (which cannot even look on sin and in which there is no darkness)? Thanks, GDG
p.s. Benjamin, thanks for the link, I will check it out. I would like to hear more from you about this though, too.
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
Wislawa
05/31/01 2:20 PM
RE: What’s up with God’s two wills?
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O.K. even though I am an openness cat I would like to try to defend Piper’s take on things in the spirit of Mephi’s ‘who wants to be a convert thread’. But just for the record I think this take compromises God’s integrity. I’m going to try to present this argument in a way that is sensitive to the trauma people really do suffer. Part of the reason that I want to attempt a Calvinist defence is because I have witnessed Calvinists defend their views in such a way that the insensitivity inherent in the view itself not only validates evil but also seems to support or partake in it. But I don’t know how successfully anyone could really do this because insensitivity really is intrinsic to this view and any attempt to pull punches or sanitize it for our protection waters down the reality of what the view is really saying. With that disclaimer I begin.
Piper explains the ‘two wills’ of God as looking through two lenses. So for example when someone gets raped God looks through the narrow lens and grieves with the victim, but through the wide lens He sees how it all fits into His plan which He willed. In the narrow lens His will is against the rape. In the wide lens His will is for the rape but that does not make God into the villain because God’s willing of this rape was justified by the good He alone can see through this lens. If we grant this than each one of us, even the person who got raped would also will the rape if only they could see what God saw when he willed it. We humans only see through narrow lenses. Of course Piper is taking this by faith on what he believes to be Scripture’s mandate but Piper himself can no more look through the wide lens than the rest of us.
The two-lenses theory has the added benefit of providing the comfort of knowing each rape, each murder, each and every evil event has a meaning. It wasn’t for no reason (nice double negative huh). It did have a purpose and not only that but its purpose is a good one. We of course cannot know what this purpose is because we cannot look through the wide lens. But perhaps it is enough to comfort us just to know that the purpose exists even if we can’t know what it is.
If we reject the two wills of God than we open up the possibility for senseless evil. So I ask you this: would you rather suffer meaningless evil or meaningful evil? Evil is a reality we cannot do away but when given these two choices wouldn’t we all want to find meaning in it?
When I first read his take on things I thought of a TV biography of Ronald Regan I had just seen. Regan during the lowest low of the 80’s repression acted out of something like a ‘two-lenses’ outfit. As part of a photo-opt he visited a single mother’s household which had been hit particularly hard. It of course was a planed pseudo-event meant for the media to witness but the actuality of the situation evoked a genuine spontaneous emotional response on Regan’s part. He was shocked, he struggled to hold back tears. Everyone at home could tell that this display was beyond even his ability as an actor. So moved was he by the plight of this woman that he wrote a personal check out for $200 to help her out. Now depending on your politics you may or may not believe the sincerity of this action but for the sake of this post I’ve always thought of it as genuine. So through the narrow lens Regan was actually hurt by the economic situation that many held him responsible for creating, yet all the while in the oval office through the wide lens he continued with his trickle down economics plan because he really believed it would work for the greater good.
So all you Calvinist cats how did I do?
Wislawa
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
GregBoyd
05/31/01 9:37 PM
RE: RE: What’s up with God’s two wills?
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Good job Wislawa (I think) -- but your disclaimer was QUITE a disclaimer! Sheeesh.
Let me play Calvinist here. Ghost Dog, is it a display of internal conflict if an artist paints an ugly feature into a painting in order to have it contribute to the beauty of the whole? Isn't it the case that the most magnificent musical pieces contain discordant sections (as Mozart first demonstrated)? As Augustine wrote, are not the most equisite poems composed of antithetical verses?
So too, why think there is anything schizo about a God who can will ugliness, on one level, and yet detest it in and of itself?
One of the elect
Doc
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
TGB
06/03/01 9:28 AM
RE: RE: RE: What’s up with God’s two wills?
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Doc-
Wow! Very good. Can you be yourself again and tell us how you would respond to such arguments?
Tom
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