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AlyoshaKaramazov
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 12/29/2003 7:58 PM (GMT -6) |   | I've been reading Doc's books for awhile now. I absolutely love reading the stuff--incredibly thought-provoking, WELL-researched, and tightly and convincingly argued. Doc, you rock my face off. Keep up the great work.
Some random thoughts I've had:
1. In God at War, what's with all the props out to the contributions of postmodernism? It's not clear to me what you affirm as true and good about postmodern thinking and what (if anything) you think is false and bad. The whole bit about how "Western thinking" is breaking free from platonic and aristotelian categories and is making way for this new mode of thought is weirding me out. What's going on here?
2. Do you think the biblical authors believed that Leviathan was a real physical creature?
3. OK, Satan and the POE is THE most helpful book on theology I've ever read, and Is God to Blame? is an awesome and readable encapsulation of its insights. While I have no question Doc's arguments for a "warfare worldview" refute a hard line Calvinist "blueprint worldview," I have a hard time understanding how it is that you couldn't hold to a warfare worldview and be a middle-knowledge proponent or some other Armininan position. And yes, I did see the footnote on how simple foreknowledge is compatible with a warfare worldview--but why JUST simple foreknowledge? There is a HUGE difference between ORDAINING evil for a greater good and PERMITTING evil for a greater good. And just what are we referring to when we talk about "greater goods" and "higher harmonies"? Doc talks a lot in the book about the "covenant of noncoercion" and the finitude of freedom and all of these variables that condition how God interacts with his free creatures--isn't this just appealing to a "higher harmony"? Anytime a theist explains why a particular evil occurs aren't they offering a higher harmony scenario? Why couldn't Wm. Craig, for instance, use these same explanations? But then, why is he a blueprint theologian and Greg Boyd is not?
Also, isn't the absence of a morally sufficient reason for permitting any given evil the definition of gratuitous evil? So, Doc, are you saying that for many of the evils that occur in the world, God doesn't have a morally sufficient reason for permitting them? But aren't your appeals to the covenant of noncoercion and finitude, etc., attempts to lay out morally sufficient reasons?
Anyway just some thoughts I've had on my mind lately. I'd appreciate everyone's responses. And keep up the fantastic work Doc!
"You see I have come to doubt all that I once held as true. I stand alone without beliefs, the only truth I know is you."--Paul Simon | | Back to Top | | |
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victoryword
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 181
| Posted 12/30/2003 6:39 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by AlyoshaKaramazov
3. OK, Satan and the POE is THE most helpful book on theology I've ever read, and Is God to Blame? is an awesome and readable encapsulation of its insights. While I have no question Doc's arguments for a "warfare worldview" refute a hard line Calvinist "blueprint worldview," I have a hard time understanding how it is that you couldn't hold to a warfare worldview and be a middle-knowledge proponent or some other Armininan position. And yes, I did see the footnote on how simple foreknowledge is compatible with a warfare worldview--but why JUST simple foreknowledge?
Hi
For now I just want to address this part of your post from my perspective. Before I had heard of the OV and leaned strongly towards the Arminian position (God knows all things past, present, and future) I struggled in my mind how God could create:
1. An archangel that He knew beyond doubt would one day rebel against Him and later cause the fall of man.
2. Create humans that He knew would fall and many of them would go to hell, all of this being against His own desires (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9)
3. Claim to be disappointed by all of this when it happened.
I could not reconcile it in my mind. In my own pulpit ministry I taught God's hatred for evil, His desire to save, heal, prosper (within balance of course), and bless people. I taught against what I called "hyper-sovereignty" teaching. At the same time I could not reconcile how God having exhaustive foreknowledge could be reconciled with all of my other beliefs.
Another example, when someone backslid and I sought to restore them, I would tell them of how God's heart is broken over their having turned from Him and how dearly he loves them. How disappointed He was in their turning away but how He longs for their return. Yet, how could such teaching be reconciled with the belief that God knew from eternity past that so and so would backslide on 2 September 2004, or even begin the process?
To add insult to injury, one of my daughters occasionally brought up this penetrating question during our family devotions: why did God create humans that He knew would end up in hell? The reason this question kept coming up was because Daddy (me), a minister of the gospel, could not offer her a satisfactory explanation. My response was always something to the effect that "God wanted a family". Yet, none of that answered her question. If He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what would happen - He was not thinking of the POSSIBILITY - but knew exhaustively the ACTUALITY - why did He go forward in doing it? I had no answer that satisfied her. It's only by the grace of God that she never turned away from the Lord because her own father could not give her the answers she sought.
These were not the things that led me to the OV, but when I began to research the OV I saw how it could easily solve some of my dilemma. I find it difficult to have a "warfare worldview" while at the same time believing that God has exhaustive knowledge of the future. What kind of war is that? That's just not much different than the "blueprint model." Why should Satan keep fighting so hard if he does not see any chance of winning at all? (of course it could be that he knows that he has lost already but want to take as many people to hell as possible).
Just my thoughts 
If your beliefs cannot be supported by Scripture, they ain't worth supporting
http://www.victoryword.100megspop2.com | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 12/30/2003 8:34 AM (GMT -6) | | "Postmodernism" is nothing to fear...
It's become the intellectual bogeyman of the evangelical movement recently, and that's silly. Sure, there's a lot to like in traditional Western thinking, but clinging to it blindly creates a volatile "us v. them" mentality, and that's what current transitional thinking ("postmodernism", if you will) is trying to break free of.
And besides, why is it that Christian writers are so obsessed with it? It is far less dangerous, spiritually speaking, than the rigid modernism that preceded it. Anyway, God's Kingdom marches on, and it's wonderful for free (no pun intended) thinkers like myself to find others who share the faith, yet feel free to critique the ingrained mindset of the American conservangelical church.
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 12/31/2003 5:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Ross,
You can start a new thread if others would like to chime in, but my "defense" of postmodernism is fairly simple.
Transitional thinking, as I like to call it, is just that. A transition. The rejection of metanarrative espoused by Wittgenstein, Derrida, et al. was essentially a rejection of the modernist metanarrative, which is a good thing. But "postmodernism" shouldn't be seen as the replacement of modernism, for modernism hasn't completely gone away. It (postmodernism) is a "bridge between continents", not a new continent itself. Like nihilism, it simply can't be lived as a consistent worldview. Unlike nihilism, it wasn't intended to be.
So, I just think that we as Christian thinkers should celebrate the fact that the monolith of modernism has been broken, and help blaze the trail to the "new" metanarrative (which I suspect won't be so very new after all). Dwelling on the evils of postmodernism is like criticizing a lame duck president; it ain't gonna be here much longer.
That's why I support Christian writers like Doc and Brian McLaren, who engage the culture of thought instead of needlessly attacking it.
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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