The Castle Church Door

I was recently asked why I thought God created so many hellbound beings. Any answer is speculative, but here’s my conjecture:1.Of course, the reason why God created so many hellbound beings isn’t a question distinctive to Calvinism. It isn’t generated by Calvinism.To the contrary, supralapsarian Calvinism at least offers a partial theodicy. Even if it fails to furnish a specific answer to the question of why so many ...

An author writing under the pseudonym of Gregory MacDonald has penned a book entitled The Evangelical Universalist (SPCK 2008).The first question I’d ask myself is, why the pseudonym? It’s not as if he’s in imminent danger of being burnt alive at the stake.Is he afraid of losing his job if he goes public? But he’d only lose his job if he holds a job in which he’s expected ...

Below are all the links to the massive debate between Calvinism and Arminianism that took place between (mainly) Victor Reppert, Steve Hays, Paul Manata, and Dominic Bnonn Tennant. This post will function as a (almost) one-stop shop for seeing anti-Calvinist arguments, and rebuttals to those arguments. Our opponent, Victor Reppert, has a PhD in philosophy and so makes for an ideal representative of the philosophical arguments Arminians use ...

Some Arminians were kind enough to help the world out by giving them a dictionary of Calvinist terms. In the spirit of brotherly love, we do the same:********************All (1): All always means all. Yup, Jesus died for every single human, including those already dead and in hell, and even including himself.All (2): (as to sin) If its related to sin, "all" doesn't include babies.Amazing Grace: Horrible song composed ...

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.""A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice ...

[Dave Armstrong] “I must admit that discovering this information today almost literally took my breath away.”I hope there was someone around to administer CPR. “It's a rare Protestant who will so brazenly defend denominationalism, since they are well aware that it is absent from Scripture.”Absent from Scripture in what sense? The Pharisees and Sadducees represent the Jewish equivalent of denominations. Not to mention many other Jewish sects in ...

dmitry chernikov said...“So, when you see X number of murders committed per 100,000 people, you say to yourself, ‘I guess God wanted a world with (exactly) so many murders!’ Is it possible that God would prefer fewer murders/denominations and that it is precisely our job to minimize the number of them (to the extent compatible with other goals)?”Hi Dmitry,There is no yes or no answer to your question. ...

Apparently Reppert wasn't clear on my argument, I'll have to repeat it (and add a new one at the end). He writes,I had asked: "Could it not be rational for a person to say that they have more reason to believe that a predestinating God would not be good than to believe that Scritpure teaches predestination even if, upon the study of the Scripture, they discover that, so ...

Victor Reppert wants to play a game of chicken. Who blinks first?Fine. I’m prepared to call his bluff. The first thing I’ll do is to remark on Reppert’s tactics. Reppert is a philosophy prof., but when he gets cornered, he resorts to sophistry and demagoguery. This is a case in point.He’s resorting to the argument from authority. He’s invoking C. S. Lewis and John Wesley. “Steve, I dare ...

Last time Victor Reppert thought he had a silver bullet objection to Frankfurt-type counter examples. I pointed out that Frankfurt-cases have been employed that dealt with choice and not only action.Another objection to Frankfurt-cases we will look at has a strong pedigree. It has been advanced by Kane (who many of our Arminian friends here have lauded ad nauseum), Widerker, Ginet, and Wyma. It goes like this:If free ...