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Jürgen Habermas on the Trinity

Remonstrans recently linked to a nonsensical post about the trinity by “naked pastor”.  Most detailed explanations of the trinity are sophist nonsense, and naked pastor is a real humdinger.

Just last night, I read Jürgen Habermas in “The Dialectics of Secularization”, and came across another whopper of a theory:

Without initially having any theological intention, the reason that becomes aware of its limitations thus transcends itself in the direction of something else.  This can take the form of mystical fusion with a consciousness that embraces the universe; it may be the despairing hope that a redeeming message will occur in history; or it may take the shape of a solidarity with those who are oppressed and insulted, which presses forward in order to hasten on the coming of the messianic salvation.  These anonymous gods of the post-Hegelian metaphysics – the encompassing consciousness, the event from time immemorial, the non-alienated society – are an easy prey for theology.  There is no difficulty in deciphering them as pseudonyms of the Trinity of the personal God who communicates his own self.

Wow, Habermas blithely declares, in passive voice, that “there is no difficulty in deciphering” his putrid nonsense.  As if he is merely stating a common-sense fact, which any intelligent person would know.

It was very difficult to read the entire work, but I persisted.  Contrary to what I had been led to believe, Habermas is maddeningly nonsensical.  Like many of the other German philosophers, he is an expert at embedding unsubstantiated presuppositions within deeply nested clauses.  One particularly annoying habit is his continual uses “post-this” or “post-that” to imply a sense of “progress”; as if anything slapped with a “post” label is now dead and overturned by whatever the chronicler of progress deems to be current.  And what can I say about the use of the phrase “post-Hegelian”?  Hegel was nonsensical enough; anyone who would eagerly build a castle on the foundation of Hegel’s grave is even worse.

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By joshua – July 19, 2009

Calvinism vs. Arminianism: The Real Beef

arminiantheology I’m now about halfway through Roger Olson’s excellent “Arminian Theology”.  As I suspected, many of the online criticisms against Arminianism are dishonest straw men that do not represent true Arminian theology.  This is no surprise, since the same dishonest tactics are used against Calvinism on the Internet, too.

It turns out that the surface area of disagreement, while meaningful, is very small.  Contrary to the accusations, Arminianism has absolutely nothing to do with Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. And contrary to what I have recently read from a respected Calvinist preacher, Arminians do not even disagree with Calvinists on all 5 points of “TULIP”.  Arminians fully hold to the doctrines of Total Depravity and Perseverance of the Saints (the T and P in TULIP).  Olson documents this exhaustively, showing that Arminius was arguably more strenuous in defense of these doctrines than Calvin.  All of the Arminian thinkers were impeccably orthodox on these two points, and it is telling that none of the anti-Arminian accusations on the Internet ever bother to provide evidence for their charge in the form of Arminian doctrinal statements or writings.

The real “beef” between Arminians and Calvinists, therefore, comes down to just three doctrines (the U, L, and I in TULIP):

  • Unconditional Election
  • Limited Atonement
  • Irresistible Grace

On these three points, Arminians accuse the Calvinists of making God into the devil, while Calvinists accuse Arminians of rejecting God’s sovereignty.  As far as I can tell, that about sums it up.

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By joshua – July 11, 2009

Buddha Congratulates Calvin on 500 Years

CalvinRolls We’ve recently wrapped up family visits in Toronto, Port Huron, and Princeton, and now relaxing near the beach in Pawcatuck, Connecticut.  In honor of John Calvin’s 500th birthday, my wife took this picture of a former Presbyterian church we drove past in London, Ontario.  The cement plaque in the side of the wall says that the church was established in 1910, and the large beaming statue of Buddha in the front is Vietnamese.

As my brother observed, this was a Presbyterian church, so nobody can say that the congregation were not warned.  The pastor probably warned the congregation of the imminence of God’s wrath often.  And now their building is a shrine to idolatry and sophistry.

~

One of the only good things to come out of economics recently is the field of “behavioral economics”, which shatters the myth of the “rational consumer”, and provides sound empirical evidence for the concept of the “totally depraved consumer”.  For most people, behavioral economics is redundant, since we already knew that people are not rational or ethical.  But for people who have been brainwashed by scientism, the field provides an invaluable tool to reacquaint them with common sense.  It uses their own tools to dismantle their fantasies.

In that spirit, check out Tyler Cowan’s post in honor of Calvin’s birthday: “John Calvin was a Behavioral Economist”.

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By joshua – July 10, 2009

Reason is Coercion

cslewis If you’ve spent any time at all in reasoned discourse with people, you’ve seen people make “ad hominem” arguments, which are a form of logical fallacy.  These are arguments like, “Your point is wrong, because you are high on drugs”.  Calling you a drug abuser does nothing to disprove your point, unless of course you were claiming to be sober at that moment.  The most revealing of these arguments is the “circumstantial ad hominem”: for example, “You are a Christian!  Of course you would say that!”

Just as you’ve undoubtedly seen ad hominem attacks, you’ve seen people accuse others of making ad hominem arguments.  Accusing someone of making an ad hominem argument is a foolproof way to shut them down and force them back into whatever logical trap you’ve constructed for them.  C.S. Lewis was often irritated by people who made circumstantial ad hominems, and he even gave this argument a special name, “Bulverism”.  Anyone who engaged in “Bulverism” was considered immediately illogical and wrong.

As much as I respect C.S. Lewis’s philosophical instincts, I think he misses the point on this one.  People who throw about accusations of “ad hominem” and “Bulverism” reveal what their true motives are.  They see logic and reason as weapons which can be deployed to bend the will of another.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with reason.  God is never illogical or irrational, and a firm commitment to intellectual honesty is an absolute necessity for Christians.  But when you start beating people up with “ad hominem”, you are obviously not thinking about your own character and humility; you are thinking about binding another person’s mind.

And Christianity at it’s core is an ad hominem proposition.  We believe that man is fallen and that the desires of his heart are sinful.  Christianity is entirely about the battle of man’s will against God.  Accusing people of “Bulverism” presupposes that those same people will arrive at God via logic, if only they close their eyes and pretend that neither of us has ulterior motives.  This fantasy is not only preposterous, it is non-Christian.

Circumstantial ad hominem is a logical fallacy in pure syllogistic reasoning.  But Christianity (and life and truth in general) is not an abstract syllogistic exercise.  Christianity is not illogical, but you never arrive at Christianity through pure logic that is ignorant of human motives.  Christianity addresses human nature and the desires of our own heart.  I don’t know why Christians would be afraid of admitting this.

When someone says, “You are a Christian!  Of course you would say that!”, you can take it as a compliment, and say “Yes!  And it’s not even illogical!”.

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By joshua – June 25, 2009

Chess is Violence

chess-boxing Chess is typically considered to be a passive activity closely associated with mental pursuits like philosophy and poetry.  Most people would never mentally categorize chess alongside wrestling or boxing.  And indeed, it is this apparent contrast that makes the sport of “chess boxing” so idiosyncratic.

Of course, major chess tournaments are advertised as battles between titans, but the relationship between chess and violence goes far deeper than metaphor.  Chess is violence.  Chess is about unilaterally imposing your will on another human being, while he tries desperately to avoid having your will impose.  And if you fail, his will will crush yours.  Some might argue that all two-opponent games could be tarred with this same brush of “violence”.  But no other voluntary game presents such a distilled essence of violence, except perhaps for the middle game and tesuji of the game of Go.

Violence is about will power.  With physical violence, the body is simply an instrument of the will.  In fact, wrestling could be seen as half cooperative dance, and half violence.  Boxing is much closer to pure violence.  And chess is pure violence – all that is preserved is the ruthless wills locked in combat.

To understand why chess is unique, you need to consider what other sorts of non-violent mental activities can be involved in games.  Cooperation, clarity of communication, pun and fancy, metaphor, narrative, empathy, persuasion, seduction, estimation of probabilities, and so on.  None of these mental skills are very important to chess, and are not developed with chess practice.  To become great at chess, you need brute force mental capability and extreme will power and concentration.  Your killer instinct and desire to crush the opponent needs to be strong and sustained over much longer periods than in the typical physical confrontation.  There is a reason that chess is physically exhausting, and that chess masters often go mad.

What else compares?  Maybe only love.  As Shakespeare said, “all’s fair in love and war”.  St. Paul gave the most beautiful definition of love in his letter to the Corinthians, saying that “love is not self-seeking”.  We all know that most human love affairs are completely the opposite of St. Paul’s description, and end up looking a lot like chess boxing: periods of intense mental calculation and scheming punctuated by bouts of overwhelming physicality.

~

Note that this is not a criticism of chess.  I personally enjoy the intensity of chess.  And when I play Go, I often play on a smaller board, to increase the element of battle and will power and to reduce the component of broad strategy that is critical on a larger board.  I am simply arguing that chess is a fun game because it strengthens and exercises the selfish will; a point which I intend to revisit in a future post about C.S. Lewis’s “Bulverism” and the “ad hominem” fallacy.

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By joshua – June 18, 2009

Eating Idol Food

We have an idol of Avolokiteshvara, hand made in Nepal of bronze, sitting on our mantle.  I have taught my daughter to pray near the idol, reciting the prayer of Psalm 115:4-8:

But their idols are silver and gold,
       made by the hands of men.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
       eyes, but they cannot see;
they have ears, but cannot hear,
       noses, but they cannot smell;
they have hands, but cannot feel,
       feet, but they cannot walk;
       nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
Those who make them will be like them,
       and so will all who trust in them

Then, I normally pull out some money and show her the faces engraved on the side, and we recite the same prayer to those little idols.

avolo I’m pretty much in the idol-making business.  For much of my life, I’ve helped people create models and simulations to persuade and help make decisions. From simple CAD designs to linear regressions and monte carlo simulations, to large-scale clustering and basketing algorithms.  For the past few years, my medium has been narrative.  Evolutionary biology is a treasure trove of idolatry techniques, and I find that its methods can be very persuasive to people.  Just today, I deftly employed some sophisticated evolutionary arguments to argue for a specific design decision, with good effect.  I felt the pride of craftsmanship, as people praised my narrative for its beauty and agreed with my conclusions.

I tell myself that it’s OK, because I know that they are “just models”, and if anyone else fails to realize that these are just models, it’s their own damned fault.  I’m very honest about the fact that I build soulless models, and it’s not my fault if others aren’t careful enough about idolatry.  In fact, I’m happy to discuss idolatry with anyone who wants to listen.

But I sometimes wonder if I’m violating one of the most important rules of being a Christian. 

When St. Paul and St. Peter differed on which parts of the law applied to Christians, they both agreed that it was very important to never, ever eat food that had been sacrificed to idols.  Modern Christians often ignore this law, since “we don’t have idol worship in our culture, and we certainly don’t offer them food!”

This seems like a big fat cop-out to me.  We do have idols.  I build them.  And people do make offerings to those idols.  We need to understand why St. Paul and St. Peter were so adamant about this point.  I believe that the answer lies in the story of Abraham documented in Genesis.  King Kederlaomer and his allies had defeated the king of Sodom and taken all of that king’s possessions.  Abram defeated Kederlaomer and his allies, and restored the king of Sodom’s wealth.  The king of Sodom, overwhelmed with gratitude, offered to give all of his material wealth to Abram.  By the law of power, these would have been Abram’s right, but Abram declined to accept any gift from Sodom’s king, saying (Gen 14:22-24):

But Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I have raised my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath hat I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’ I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me—to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre. Let them have their share."

This scene reminds us of the time that Satan tempted Christ, and many other examples in scripture.  Can any power outside of Christ claim to us, “I made you rich”?  Can any power outside of Christ claim to us, “I filled your belly?”

For the past decade or two, the world economy has been propped up by a speculative bubble based on pure fraud and idolatry.  As this recent article explains, it was a model that blew up the world.  It made all of us rich and fat.  And some of us knew that it was pure idolatry, starting with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  When I read his books, and knew that he was right, I blogged about it.  I confirmed from other idol-makers that our economy was based on worthless idols with feet of clay, and I blogged about that, too.  I even warned some people before the idol with clay feet collapsed.  But often asked myself if I was living off of idol food, by virtue of being part of the American economy.

Am I?  I don’t know, but I think I need to consider the possibility seriously.

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By joshua – June 15, 2009

Emergence and Joachim of Fiore

The 7-Headed Dragon I have Dissidens to thank for making me aware of “Emergence”, a piece of idolatrous performance art posing as an “evolution” of the Church.  Even the Emergents themselves aren’t sure what they stand for, but the primary thrust of their message is clear.  They argue that a new type of Church is emerging to replace the old order established by Peter.  Just as Peter’s Church replaced the old cult of sacrifice (they argue), it is now time for the outmoded institutional and legalistic system of Peter to give way to a more spiritual, loving, and free expression of Christ’s community.  The Emergents talk breathlessly of “hope”, “change”, “dissolving barriers”.  They sing songs about “all the people, living life in peace”, hand out books by Brian McLaren, and imagine a world where “I’m OK, You’re OK”.

McLaren proudly wears the label of “postmodernist”, having failed to get the memo that deconstructionism is dead and has been thrown out of most universities.  Does adherence to a thoroughly discredited decades-old sophistry make him a “traditionalist”?  Inquiring minds want to know.  We could write an entire book about the putrid relativism and pop-cultural staleness typified by the Emergents, but that is not the point of this blog post.  In this blog post, we will see how Emergence is of one spirit with the medieval heretic Joachim of Fiore.

Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), wrote in his 1976 book, “The God of Jesus Christ”:

“The most fascinating form of the yearning for the Holy Spirit was formulated by a pious abbot in southern Italy in the twelfth century, Joachim of Fiore.  Joachim was deeply conscious of the deficiencies of the Church in his time:  the hatred that separated Jews and Christians, the old and new people of God, from one another; the hostility between the Church of the East and the Church of the West; the jealousy between clergy and laity; the high-handedness and greed for power displayed by the Church’s men. …

He longed for a Church that would be truly in accordance with the New Testament and the promises of the prophets and, indeed, with the deepest yearnings of a man’s heart, a Church in which Jews and Gentiles, East and West, clergy and laity, would live in the spirit of truth and love, without precepts and laws”

Does this sound familiar?  This is exactly the set of problems that the Emergents set out to solve, and lays the blame in the same place.  Joachim had a “vision” of a “new order”, dominated by the Spirit, just as the previous order had been about the Son, and the order before that had been about the Father.  Joachim saw Church history as an “evolution” toward a time when the old rules would no longer be needed.

Ratzinger continues (bold for emphasis added by me).  This portrait of Joachim could just as well be a portrait of McLaren:

“There was thus some truth in the early Franciscans’ view of Joachim’s doctrine as a prophetic premonition of the figure of St. Francis, for Francis gave the most beautiful answer to Joachim.  Indeed, this was the only correct response, for Francis’ life was a winnowing fork that separated the spiritual and the demonic in Joachim’s work (something that the saint’s successors could not do).  His motto was “sine glossa” (without commentary).  He sought to live Sacred Scripture, and especially the Sermon on the Mount, without making fine distinctions and without evasions.  He wanted the Word to take him at his word.  Something that is distorted by all kinds of speculation in Joachim became perfectly unambiguous in Francis, and this is why he has been such a radiant figure down through the centuries: the Christianity of the Spirit *is* the Christianity of the lived Word.  The Spirit dwells in the Word, not in a departure from the Word.  The Word is the location of the Spirit; Jesus is the source of the Spirit.  The more we enter into him, the more really do we enter into the Spirit, and the Spirit enters into us.  This also exposes a false element in Joachim, namely, the utopia of a Church that would depart from the Son and rise higher than him and the irrational expectation that portrays itself as a real and rational program.”

This is very relevant to the question of the Emergents, because they paint Church history as a series of evolutions, where the old order is left behind and the new order “emerges”.  Ratzinger is having none of it.  Supported by scriptural references and exegesis which I have omitted for brevity, he concludes :

“This is why Irenaeus’ sketch of the trinitarian logic of history is so much more correct than Joachim’s.  For Irenaeus, this is not an ascent from the Father to the Son and then finally to liberation, to the Spirit.  Within history, the direction taken by the Persons is the exact opposite of this: the Spirit is present at the beginning as an instruction and guidance of man that is yet scarcely perceptible.  He leads to the Son and, through the Son, to the Father”.

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By joshua – June 13, 2009

Book Review: The Shack

 theshack Earlier this week, I picked up a copy of “The Shack”, since my pastor is going to preach a sermon this Sunday, explaining which parts of the book he felt contained wrong theology, and which parts right theology.  Normally, I would never buy or read a book like this, but I wanted to be able to compare my judgments to pastor’s, and it was a quick read.

Several people I know have compared the author (William Paul Young) to C. S. Lewis, and raved on about how they have bought copies of the book for all of their friends.  So I figured it couldn’t be all that bad.

Unfortunately, the book not all that good.  The story opens with a completely gratuitous, semantic-free, emotionally manipulative series of images.  Every hackneyed, melodramatic tear-jerking theme is compressed into the first 60 pages – a young boy watching his mother get beaten, being beaten himself by his father, murdering his father and running away, and having his child be murdered.  The storytelling has the over-the-top hyperbolic emotional feel of a southern revivalist preacher who likes to “soften up” his audience with manipulative stories to elicit a response.

If you are at all familiar with C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Homer, Shakespeare, or The Bible; you will know that emotions can be used to add a deep dimension of meaning and symbolism to stories.  This is a sign of good literature, and when you have learned to appreciate such masterful use of emotions to add semantic value to storytelling, you readily notice the lack of substance in the gratuitous manipulative use of emotions demonstrated in books like “The Shack”.

Worse yet, after “hooking” you with the mindless tear-jerker, the story shifts abruptly.  Very abruptly.  The protagonist finds himself in a shack, spending time with God the Father (a black woman), Jesus (a middle-eastern man), and The Holy Ghost (an Asian woman).  For the remaining 200 pages of the book, the plot consists of the protagonist having conversations with these three.  This is what passes as brilliant storytelling.  The author “hooks” you with a tear-jerker, and then makes you listen to 200 pages of boring intellectual sermons, in the form of carefully-scripted conversation that is completely unrealistic and forced.  In this sense, it feels a bit like one of those spiritual bubble-gum Richard Bach books, or like an Ayn Rand novel, where half the book is soliloquy.

Apart from the poor caliber of storytelling, the author displays a rather pitiable set of prejudices in an attempt to appear “culturally diverse”.  It’s as if a white-bread pastor from Minnesota sat down and thought, “What things would I have to show off in order to appear ‘universal’ to all Americans?”.  The result is an almost comical amalgam of the sorts of stereotypes you’d see only from watching too much “Oprah”.  In fact, the author explains in the opening notes that he dreams of this book becoming a Hollywood movie, so this isn’t exactly a surprise.  Not only does the book ape various television stereotypes in a rather naive and unsubtle way, the author panders randomly to various “causes du jure”.

Furthermore, the content of the 200 pages sermon is the sort of content that will not appeal to a broad audience, and is inaccessible to many for whom it might appeal.  It’s almost entirely theology; and a sort of cheesy spiritualized theology aimed squarely at readers of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”.  This isn’t to say that it’s terrible, but there is a very small, exclusive audience who can swallow this stuff.  This sort of navel-gazing spiritual fluff is preaching to the choir, and I imagine that many who give the book to unbelievers would be upset to find out how decisively the average non-believer will be repulsed by such a book.

My wife urged me to be charitable, since “not every popular book needs to be great literature”.  And that is true.  This book may well be of the caliber of a Tom Clancy novel, but I wouldn’t know, since I don’t read Tom Clancy.  I just want to be clear that this is absolutely no comparison to C.S. Lewis.  It’s not even in the same planetary system.

In terms on theology, I actually didn’t find much to complain about.  There were a handful of places where I felt the author was gravely wrong about important issues.  But there were scores of areas where the author was completely right about issues which confuse most people.  So, on the whole, I thought it was pretty good.  I am looking forward to hearing what my pastor thought.  If his points concur with mine, it will be a great occasion for me to puff myself up with pride and vanity.

Some of the things that disturbed me about the theology:

  • The author argues that God never punishes his children, because “Love never coerces”.  The author himself seems to be unable to draw a distinction between abuse and discipline.  Hosea 4:14 comes to mind.
  • The author seems unable to distinguish between selfish tears of frustration, and tears at God’s greatness and mercy.  He states that “it does a soul good to let the waters run once in a while”.  This is a stunning perversion of the “healing waters” that Theresa of Avila treated so thoroughly in her writings.
  • The author seems very confused about the role of “forgive your enemies”, and often flirts with what seems like a theology of karma.
  • The author often flirts with the idea that everyone may one day be redeemed, and that one day “all death will be gone”.  It appears that the author may not believe that anyone will be ultimately condemned to eternal death.

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By joshua – June 12, 2009

I Love How You Make Me Feel (Calvinists Are Sneaky)

One of the most common attacks on Calvinism I have seen is the insinuation that “Calvinists are Sneaky” when they evangelize.  Since Calvinists claim that God died only for the “elect”, and since they don’t know exactly who the “elect” are, then Calvinists would be dishonest to evangelize the Gospel by saying “Jesus died for your sins”.

The anti-Calvinists have a lot of fun with this, imagining the contortions that a true Calvinist would have to go through in order to share the Gospel honestly:

  • “Jesus died for my sins, and he might have died for yours, too!”
  • “Jesus died for my sins, but you have no hope unless you are one of the elect like me!”
  • “Jesus died for the sins of a small group of people, which sadly might not include you”.

931656 After I first started dating, I dated a number of girls over a number of years without ever falling in love.  I sensed that it would be very wrong to lie to someone about loving them, so when girls tried to raise the subject, I learned to be very sneaky.  I learned to change the subject, or even to preempt the question with statements like “I love how you make me feel”, or “I love hanging out with you”. 

Since then, I’ve fallen in love and married, but this experience taught me a thing or two about sneakiness, and I can understand why anti-Calvinists find the sneakiness to be funny.  But I think that the anti-Calvinists are completely wrong on this point.

The typical Arminian will evangelize the gospel by saying, “Jesus died for your sins”.  But they know as well as the Calvinist that some of the people they approach will NOT be saved.  The Arminian and Calvinist would agree 100% with the honesty of an evangelical introduction, “Jesus died for the sins of the world, but I have no idea whether or not you will be saved”. 

Both Calvinist and Arminian would agree that such a statement is true.  The only difference is that the Arminian chooses to obfuscate the truth (and even mocks the Calvinist for hesitating to obfuscate).  The Arminian argues that it’s best to present a half-truth at first, and only share the full truth after the convert has been "snookered”, so to speak.

This would be identical to my telling my youthful dating partners, “Sure, I love you honey!”, and then, later, having to qualify that earlier affirmation with, “Well, when I said ‘love’, it didn’t necessarily mean ‘love’”.  Or worse, “Well, when I said ‘love’, that was before you proved yourself to be unlovable”.

So I conclude that if the Calvinists are sneaky, the Arminians are worse than sneaky on this particular point.  The Arminians want to be able to say exactly what you want to hear, in order to get what they want out of you, and therefore they are willing to obfuscate and twist the truth – the truth that not everyone will be saved.  The truth that some will perish.

I will stop short of claiming that the Arminians are apostate.  But both camps clearly place a different sense of gravity on truthfulness with the unconverted.  Arminians seem to think that the end justifies the means, while Calvinists seem to think that you must be respectful and avoid manipulation when talking to the unconverted. 

The Arminians want so badly to be able to say “I love you”, and so desperate to avoid saying “I love how you make me feel”; that they change the definition of love.  Which is sneakier?

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By joshua – June 6, 2009

Death of the Saints

justin-martyr The more I read about Arminianism, the more I am convinced that I am not an Arminian.  However, I am cautious to judge, since I realize that many of the viewpoints I find most objectionable may not be “orthodox” Arminianism.  I just ordered a copy of Roger Olson’s “Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities”, apparently the definitive text on what Arminians actually believe.

I did find a defense of Arminianism posted by the book’s author, and find his arguments to be quite concerning.  Speaking about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, he argues that God could never allow humans to suffer, and says:

The God of Calvinism scares me; I’m not sure how to distinguish him from the devil. If you’ve come under the influence of Calvinism, think about its ramifications for the character of God. God is great but also good. In light of all the evil and innocent suffering in the world, he must have limited himself.

This line is very revealing.  He says, “The God of Calvinism scares me”, as if fear is a bad thing – as if “fear of the Lord” is an old-testament concept that doesn’t apply today.  His fatal flaw (and seemingly, the fatal flaw of many modern Arminians) is that he sees fear and love in purely human terms, and thus sees fear as being the polar opposite of love.

The scriptures say, “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, and also say, “perfect love casts out fear”.  What does this mean?  The popular Death Cab For Cutie song, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” asks this exact question:

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

While the statement may well have been apocryphal, it is quite profound.  It highlights the seeming contradiction between the two verses of scripture I quoted above.  Furthermore, it shows the natural scriptural ordering of these two (first fear, then love), and exemplifies the typical human reaction (revulsion).  What shall we make of this?

A closely related verse which may be challenging to Arminians like Roger Olson is Psalm 116:15; “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”

Is our God a bloodthirsty God?  This is the question that an atheist blogger asks.  He correctly realizes that our conception of God so far leads to the conclusion that the saints delight in seeing the suffering of the damned.  Again, the reaction to this seeming contradiction is the most revealing of all.  A commenter on the atheist blog remarks:

In high school, I had a brief fling with Evangelical Christianity, mostly through the influence of a girlfriend. One of the things she said to me, in a particularly painful conversation, was that it filled with her with horror to imagine being in Heaven and looking down to see me among the Damned. It’s perhaps not surprising that sometime later — after we had broken up — she started rebelling major time against her church’s teachings, and ended up in very liberal Christian waters. Me, I just ended up by not being Christian at all

This reaction is completely human, and something we can all understand.  The girlfriend could not imagine herself among the saints, rejoicing in (or at least impervious to) the suffering of her boyfriend.  And the boyfriend felt at least a little bit of pride and validation at being able to compete with lord Jesus for the girlfriend’s loyalties (enough to brag about it on a message board).

This is exactly the reaction of modern Arminians.  They say, “God isn’t Love if He doesn’t let Billy into heaven!”.  They want to define love in their own terms – they want to have veto power on love.  They want to be able to say, “if not all of my friends, then none of us!”.  But love defined purely in human terms becomes merely human, and dissipates into darkness.  What could be more appropriate a title for this song than “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”?

But human-centered love has become so tainted that it bears little resemblance to the Love of God.  Perhaps in the love of father and son there is still the resemblance, and even at times in marriage.  But only very rarely in romantic love.  Only in an omnipotent God can Love originate and be perfected.  Only Love which is perfect, only in God, can fear be dispelled.  We say that “God is Love” specifically to make it clear the “love is NOT God”.  The phrase “God is Love” was coined during the time when the great whore Babylon worshipped love as a goddess named Ishtar.  We should be very careful not to let modern Arminianism become modern Ishtar-worship.

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By joshua – June 4, 2009