Olson Review Part II

Roger Olson’s Book and the Limits of Its Scope

Pre-Geneva continuing the episode that we began just last week, reviewing Roger Olson's book against Calvinism, Rescuing God's Reputation from Radical Reformed Theology is the subtitle. And it sounds somewhat familiar.

We remember back to Dave Hunt's initial forays into the field, that's what he was concerned about was rescuing God's reputation. And that's what all the Arminians are about. And should be able to finish this up in time to hopefully take some phone calls.

And also, I have queued up the audience interruption of Ergen Kanner speaking a couple weeks ago now at Calvary Chapel. We have some information that has come to light concerning that particular subject.

And so I thought we would get to that as well. But you already have that thing sitting in front of you. So I guess there's something you wish to wish to say. No, you're just sitting there. Just got it ready just in case.

Okay. All right. You may recall that last time I mentioned to you that if you're looking for a full explication of Arminian theology or an explanation, well, really for almost anything in regards to Roger Olson's actual position on the nature of God, the nature of God in time, the relationship of God's decree, if there is a decree, God's desires and man's will, et cetera, et cetera, that you're going to have a hard time getting that out of Against Calvinism.

He in essence says in the book, that's not what this book is about. Go read my Arminian Theology Myths and something or other for that. Well, so I guess I'm going to have to do that now too. Thankfully, it's not very long according to what I saw, it's only 250 pages in length.

So I have it on my Kindle now and thanks to the individual who picked that up for me and I will be recording it and it's not a super high priority. I'll be perfectly honest with you, but we'll get around to it and see if we can discern exactly how Roger Olson would answer the very questions that he puts to the Calvinists.

We can get an idea from this book, but not to a sufficient depth to really criticize it in a meaningful fashion. So it's one of the many downfalls of this particular book is it really doesn't answer a lot of the questions that itself raises.

Now in the appendix, a second appendix to the book, you have Roger Olson's responses to certain accusations and we had gotten through the first three. I want to finish those off today and then we'll go from there.

If you would like to comment on Roger Olson's book or if you would like to maybe defend Roger Olson's book, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number 877 -753 -3341 and you can get hold of us on Skype at dividing .line maybe, yes, no maybe, yes, dividing .line via Skype and we will get you put on the air later in the program.

We've got about six issues to address, six statements. The last one that we had finished off with was number three in the appendix, only Calvin isn't going to explain how God saw to it that Christ would die his atoning death on the cross unless God foreordained that certain sinful men would crucify him.

God could not have assured it. His response was, this is wholly unnecessary to suppose, surely God in his wisdom and power can assure that a certain event, capitalized, happen without manipulating certain people to sin.

Divine Providence, Human Sin, and the Hour of Christ

Now, let me stop and add something to what I said last time and that is, manipulating certain people to sin, as I was just sitting here thinking about it, presupposes a particular kind of theology of man.

Have you thought about that? When you think about that, what I'm saying is that man would have to be forced to sin. Rather than recognizing that man left to himself, man without restraint, will sin and sins continually, the plowing of the wicked is sinful, that the idea is, from Olson's perspective, or at least what's presupposed in this statement, is that people wouldn't sin unless manipulated by God to do so.

And I would argue that one of the most obvious examples of God's sovereignty over human action and human desires found in the Gospels, and particularly in the Gospel of John, what just jumps out and waves flags at you and leaps up and down, my hour has not yet come.

And you've got men sent to arrest him. They won't lay hands on him. Why? Because his hour has not yet come. Well, what's that mean? We know what they want to do. We know what they want to do, but they can't do it because his hour has not yet come.

And that seems painfully obvious to me, to be an example of God's providence, overriding the desires and activities of men. But I continue. Yes, God foreordained the cross of Christ. Let me stop there.

Did he foreordain the exact means by which the cross of Christ would be brought into existence? Did he ordain the exact time and place, the fullness of time? Because if he did, and Acts 4, 27 to 28 means anything, then the idea that this is mere permission falls apart.

Yes, God foreordained the cross of Christ, but did not cause certain men or see to it that they would to sin. One alternative. Now notice, I just love squishy, squishy people. Most people who deny biblical truths do so by saying, well, you know, it's possible that maybe it means this.

It's possible. I was listening for three hours to a heretical book that's an attack on the deity of Christ and the Trinity, while writing on Friday. Then I just had to turn it off and listen to some truth for a while, just sort of, you know, maintain some balance.

And over and over again, it was, well, you know, we don't want to be dogmatic. There's this constant attack upon how dogmatic Trinitarians are. Oh, they're just so dogmatic. And they say we're not Christians if we don't believe in the Trinity.

They're so mean. But the writer doesn't realize he is utterly and completely dogmatic about one thing. The Trinity can't be true. He can't necessarily tell you what is true, but he can tell you dogmatically the Trinity isn't true.

You should, you should catch that way of thinking and go, hmm, you're dogmatically certain that I'm wrong, but you don't have any dogma to replace that with. You just really don't know, or it's, well, here's just this general thing out there, you know, it's this fuzzy thing, but I can't answer the questions that you've answered to the Trinity.

I'm not even going to try to answer them. I mean, those are unanswerable questions, but I can dogmatically say that you're wrong. Here we have one alternative is that at the right time, Jesus Christ wrote in Jerusalem in the triumphal entry, knowing it would provoke his crucifixion, there was no need to manipulate certain individuals to sin.

Well, if Jesus had supernatural knowledge that his activity would result in people sinning, certainly, how did he know that? That's the question. Lots of questions, lots of questions that we have to address there.

But that was one we allegedly already covered, and if I were going to be faster than this, we're not going to get any of these things done. Number four, unless Calvinism is true, we cannot trust the Bible to be without error.

Only if God overrode the author's free will can the Bible be God's word. I don't, I've never heard anyone say that, to be honest with you. That's odd. But anyway, neither Arminianism nor other non-Calvinist Christian theologies say that God never overrides a person's free will.

So I guess God can override a person's free will. What they say is that God never foreordains or renders certain sin, or the choice to accept God grace. Probably should be God's grace, typo. Now, I just, I just, so, man's free will will never be overridden so as to cause him to sin, and man's free will will never be overridden so as to cause him to accept God's grace.

So in the most important things, God will not override man's free will. So what are the things in which he will override man's free will? They must be really minor things, or irrelevant things, or something.

Anyways, God puts pressure on people to do good, including to receive Christ. But never influences to evil or overrides free will in the matter of salvation. Well, this is just an appendix, these are just statements that are being made.

We'd love to see some biblical argumentation, but given what we had in the rest of the book, I'm not sure that we would really be finding much of that biblical argumentation in other places. Number five, only Calvinism can account for God's sovereignty over nature and history unless God foreordains and controls every event, event is capitalized again, down to the smallest puff of existence.

And down to every thought and intention of the mind and heart, God cannot be sovereign. I'm not sure what a puff of existence is, that's a new one to me. No, I don't think it has anything to do with smoking at all, no.

That's a sniff of existence? Oh, that's a puff of existence. Okay, anyway, I think this is his way of approximating R .C. Sproul's, if there is one renegade Adam statement, I have a feeling. His response, this is not what sovereignty means in any human context.

Well, good, that renders the rest of the response irrelevant, because we're not talking about a human context. A human sovereign is in charge, but not in control of what goes on in his or her realm. Okay, God can steer the course of nature and history toward his intended goal and assure that they reach it without controlling everything.

Really? Are you sure of that? I mean, once again, we can show, we can present all sorts of examples where one tiny little thing has changed the course of history. You know, some of the famous examples of that, you know, the stone in the horse's shoe and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Evidently, God's providential sovereignty is similar to someone driving a car that has bad steering. He can aim for the general direction, but, you know, the course is going to have some variation in it, all dependent upon other stuff, I guess, I don't know.

But it's going to get to its destination. He can steer the course of nature and history toward its intended goal and assure that they reach it without controlling everything. God is like the master chess player who knows how to respond to every move his opponent makes.

Now, I never made master, okay? I, my last tournament that I played when I was 14 years old, United States Chess Federation, back when I was so dedicated to playing chess that I could play it without a board.

Remember? Remember driving back? Oh, yeah, you remember driving back to Salt Lake, remember? I've got witnesses to this. I've got witnesses. If we hadn't had that close call passing, I wouldn't have even lost the position in my mind.

Remember that? We were on that two-lane road. What was that? That 89A alternate? Remember where Benson's grandson went blown by us in his red Corvette that one time at about 120 miles an hour or something like that going up to General Conference?

Oh, wait. We're sitting here reminiscing and nobody has any idea what we're talking about. The last tournament I played many, many, many moons ago when I was like 14. I played about, my rating for that tournament was like 18, 10, something like that, 18, 15, something like that.

I think the low-end master is 2 ,000, so I wasn't there, but I was a good chess player once. I spent way too much time on it, but I was a good chess player once. Let me tell you something. Even the master chess player, even the great programs they have today, which you can put on your iPad and your computer that just will destroy almost any human being, do not know how to respond to every move his opponent makes.

I'm sorry, that's just not the case. There is no danger of God's ultimate will not being done, his ultimate will. I wonder what that ultimate will is. In fact, Calvinism cannot explain the Lord's Prayer that teaches us to pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, which implies that God's will is not already being done on earth.

According to Calvinism, it is. Now, that is, okay, yeah, everybody, now, okay, I'll explain. We were driving, we were, I'm sorry, we were, I forgot to explain. We were driving back from General Conference, and there were multiple, at least two cars in the caravan, and we were communicating, three or four, more than that, okay.

We were communicating on CVs, and I decided to play chess while driving with someone in the car behind me who had a chess set, remember? Who was it? Do you remember who it was? Kevin Johnson. Was it Kevin Johnson?

Okay. So, I was playing Kevin Johnson, and he's in the car behind me. I do not have a chess set, I do not have a chess board. I was keeping the position in my mind, and I lost the position, and driving, yes, and I lost the position when I had to pass somebody, and sort of got a little hairy, a little close, and that was it.

But this was, how long ago was that? That was 19, what, 89-ish, or?

I recall these as late as the 92, somewhere in there, but it used to be, we did the, you did that more than once. Oh, did I?

Oh, okay. Thank you. Appreciate the witness there. Anyway, the Calvinist cannot explain the Lord's Prayer. Really? If we pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we're contradicting ourselves?

You can always tell someone who's on the outside who really has not thought through what we believe when they make criticisms like that. They don't understand that God ordains the ends as well as the means, and therefore it is the desire of the, I mean, it's like saying, well, if election's true, then God would never have commanded that people repent, because no one can unless he, that's like, the means by which repentance takes place is the calling of the gospel.

I mean, we've said this so many times, and it's just so rare to encounter criticism of Calvinism that actually recognizes what Calvinism is. And here's a place where he messed that up. Number six, only Calvinism can explain passages such as Romans 9, which says that God shows mercy to whom he will show mercy.

Well, that's not all Romans 9 says. It does say that he will mercy whom he mercies, and he will harden whom he hardens, and it will say it in exact parallel with the two phrases. Yes, it does say all that.

Taken out of the context of the whole book of Romans, chapter 9 can seem to pose a problem for belief in free will. Yeah, there's nothing else like in Romans 1 or Romans 8 or anything like that about, you know.

However, the Calvinist interpretation that it teaches God's unconditional and even arbitrary choice of individuals, ultimate beings cannot be arbitrary, anyway, to save another individual's was never heard of before St. Augustine in the 5th century.

How do you know that, Dr. Olson? I mean, do you have every sermon that was ever preached from every church father? Do you have everything that was written by every Christian during that time period? No, you don't.

At the very least, what you might want to say is the early church fathers did not focus upon this text nor upon this subject. There certainly did seem to be discussion of relevant subjects by, for example, in the epistle to Dionysius, Clement talks about the elect all the time, but we don't have any specific sermons on this specific topic that we can go to that would give us the, you know, an insightful understanding.

That might be a little safer and more truthful. All the Greek church fathers interpreted it differently. You can always tell when you're dealing with someone who just doesn't do church history when they say stuff like this.

Do you have everything that every Greek church father ever wrote on this subject? No, you don't. And so to make this kind of statement is just to, I'm sorry, it's grossly unscholarly and it sounds a lot like certain appendices in a book called Chosen but Free.

A perfectly sound alternative interpretation. Here we go again. I can't really refute yours, so let me throw some others out, see what sticks. Says that Romans 9 is not referring to individuals or personal salvation, but to groups and to service.

Well, you know what? We've blown that one out of the water enough times, haven't we? Yeah, we have. Can't substantiate that in any meaningful exegesis from beginning to end, but you can find lots of liberal exegesis that can cut the chapter up into parts.

We don't have to worry about that. God is sovereign in choosing Israel and then the Gentile church to play their respective roles in his plan of redemption. I'm sure that was very helpful to Pharaoh, about which the words quoted in the original objection were actually said.

But anyway, number seven, reform theology, Calvinism is the only solid foundation for conservative biblical Christian theology. All other approaches, such as Arminianism, a man-centered theology, inevitably lead to liberal theology.

Well, take out the word inevitably, and I would pretty much agree. Arminianism is not a man-centered theology, but a God-centered theology, where, I would just add in, where God tries his best, but man is the ultimate decider in the ultimate way in which the triune God is self-glorified, which I think is the whole problem.

It is driven entirely and exclusively by a vision of God's unconditional goodness and love. The one main reason Arminians and other non-Calvinists believe in free will is to preserve and protect God's goodness, so as not to make him the author of sin and evil.

So you make man the author of sin and evil, and who created man? Well, God did. Well, did man know what was going to happen? Well, unless you're an opetheist, yeah, he did. Doesn't really actually answer anything, but anyway, Calvinism makes it difficult to recognize the difference between God and the devil, except that the devil wants everyone to go to hell, and God wants many to go to hell.

Arminian theology does not lead, man it's even hard to read this kind of stuff, Arminian theology does not lead into liberal theology. If anything, Calvinism does that. Friedrich Schleiermacher, and somehow Schleiermacher is not capitalized, the father of modern liberal theology, was a Calvinist, or maybe, just maybe, Friedrich Schleiermacher wasn't a Calvinist.

Maybe he was opposed to the most fundamental and foundational elements of Calvinism. Maybe, just possibly. He never even considered Arminianism. He moved right from conservative high Calvinism to universalism, oh, he was a universalist, oh, okay.

While holding right from conservative, wait a minute, he never considered Arminianism, he moved right from conservative high Calvinism to universalism, while holding on to God's meticulous providence, even over evil.

Most of the 19th century liberal theologians were former Calvinists, who came to abhor its vision of God, and developed liberal theology without any help from classical Arminianism. Classical Arminianism has been preserved by many fundamentalists, holiness and Pentecostal Christians, and free will Baptists, none of whom can be considered liberal.

Now is that supposed to be an argument that Arminianism has never led to liberalism? Because I know lots and lots of examples of where Arminianism led to liberalism. And all those guys that you mentioned, what started first?

Did they continue to have a high view of the consistency of God's revelation in Scripture? Oh, you mean they had abandoned that? It's interesting, in the articles I wrote just this week on what it means to be truly reformed, what was one of the first things that I said?

One of the very first things I emphasized was the fact that to be truly reformed, one must have the highest view of Scripture. As soon as you abandon that, there is no reason to continue to call yourself reformed.

None. Absolutely, positively none. There really isn't. Number eight, God has a right to do whatever he wants to with his creatures, and especially with sinners, who all deserve damnation. His goodness is shown in his merciful rescue of some sinners he owes nothing to anyone.

Those he passes over deserve hell. All statements of fact. While it may be true that everyone deserves hell, although even many Calvinists hesitate to say that about children, I guess they don't believe in the original sin, God is a God of love, who generally desires all people to be saved, as the New Testament clearly testifies in 1 Timothy 2 .4 and see our discussion of his assertion, where he says there is no way to get around the fact that all people means every single person without exception.

Well, we've already demonstrated that that is utterly fallacious. This is merely Roger Olson's unfounded assertion, and it cannot be defended from the Greek text or from the context of 1 Timothy 2 .4.

In fact, it can rather easily be refuted. The issue is not fairness but love. A God who could save everyone because he always saves unconditionally, but chooses only some would not be a good or loving God.

Why is that? Well, because in Roger Olson's universe, remember, he's already said that even if God revealed that he exists the way that Calvinists think he does, he wouldn't worship him. He wouldn't worship him.

This is not a man under the authority of divine revelation. He's not. If you can say that, if you can say, even if God revealed himself to exist this way, I would not worship him, you're not a person under the authority of divine revelation.

You have decided, this is the realm of God's I'm willing to worship, and if you fall outside that, well, I'm just not going to worship you. I don't care if you are the real one. I'm not going to worship you.

So you're not a person under authority when you make that kind of statement. So what's the fundamental argument of this book? The fundamental argument of this book is if God could save everybody unconditionally, then he must.

That grace can be demanded. It's not free. It isn't. God is not free in that way. If he can save everyone, he must. Period. End of discussion. Any other God is Satan. There's the argument of against Calvinism.

There's Roger Olson for you. And I think that's why, I think Roger Olson realizes that. I think he realizes it's a very simple, I will not worship your God, so I don't want to talk to you about it. I think that's why he will not engage with people such as myself on a topic like this.

He would certainly not be the God of 1 Timothy 2 .4 and similar passages. Well, that's why Roger Olson is wrong about 1 Timothy 2 .4, and that's why it can be demonstrated that he's wrong about 1 Timothy 2 .4.

But you're not going to see it in the debate because, well, he just doesn't do that. Number nine, if God foreknows everything that will happen in the world he is going to create, including the fallen and all its consequences, that is the same as foreordaining all of it, including sin and evil.

Now, this is very close to what I have said. And that is, if you're going to say to me, how dare you say that sin and evil is a part of God's foreordination, well, if God created, knowing, knowing what the result of his creation would be, then the issue of responsibility remains, yes?

Foreknowledge, Foreordination, and the Problem of Divine Causality

Okay, here's about the lengthiest response you're going to get, out of this book anyways. God foreknows because something is going to happen. He does not foreknow because he foreordains. There's the first sentence.

What does it mean? It means that what happens is outside of God's foreordination and God takes in knowledge of it. I don't know how you can even maintain classical theism at this point without going for open theism.

Because what he's saying is, God foreknows because there's something to be foreknown out and it's not the result of his creative decree. So either there's something that exists outside of God's will or it's created by something else.

There's a co-creator with God. Think about it. God foreknows because something is going to happen. The future is fixed. God knows that the future is fixed. He takes in knowledge of that future but the shape of that future is not due to his having created it.

So who created it? Where did it come from? In other words, according to scripture, tradition, and reason, he mentioned the Wesleyan quadrilateral. But that's only three of the four. Anyways, according to scripture, tradition, and reason, Adam's sin is what caused God to foreknow it.

So God's foreknowledge is controlled by the objects of its foreknowledge which exist outside of his decree and evidently outside of his creative act. So there are things that exist that God did not create.

Not sure where they came from. Adam's sin is what caused God to foreknow it. God did not envision Adam's sin and then decided to create the world in which Adam would sin. The difference lies in God's intentionality.

The Calvinist must believe... The Calvinist must believe... But wait, do you think that we've been given a meaningful answer here yet to now turn to criticizing Calvinism? I haven't gotten a meaningful answer yet.

I don't know what he means here. Is he a Molinist? Is he an Obetheist? What's he saying? Or is he going to do what this other person was doing? I can tell you the Trinity is dogmatically wrong but I'm not really sure about...

I can't answer some of these questions. Maybe the sun pre-existed in some form. I don't know. That type of thing. Well now I'll criticize the Calvinist for answering these questions but I know one alternative is this and one alternative is that and I don't know.

Maybe this, maybe that. That's real easy. The Calvinist must believe God intended Adam to sin and rendered it certain, making God the author of sin. Because God can't use secondary means just because the Bible says he does doesn't mean anything.

Arminians and other non-Calvinists believe God never intended for Adam to sin even though he knew it would happen. It was not his will. Calvinism makes it God's will. So God willed to create a world where his will was not done but he knew in the creating of it what would happen but everything that's not his will is therefore, I guess, purposeless?

But wait a minute because he knows that Adam's going to fall and all the rest of his plan would be dependent upon that so his plan would have had to have been anteced no that doesn't... He would have to follow after what Adam did and oh man I wish he would just tell us what he actually believes because it would really help.

But that one was a train wreck. Number 10. Non-Calvinist theologies undermine assurance and confidence of salvation because they make it dependent upon human decisions. Only Calvinism provides comfort and assurance because it says everything is God's including the gifts of repentance and faith.

Well I would certainly say that if your view of salvation is such that your continued abiding in Christ is dependent upon your actions well yeah there's not going to be much reason for assurance there.

If you've got a Christ who tries and tries and tries to save but the ultimate decision is all man's then there is no basis for assurance. None. And his response. Actually Calvinism undermines comfort and assurance by making God arbitrary and morally ambiguous.

A God who would predestine many people to hell when he could save them because his choice to save is always unconditional is untrustworthy. So if God's free in this matter of salvation then God's untrustworthy.

See none of this is logical but it does flow from a very strong emotional detestation on Roger Olson's part of well the God of the Bible. Also how can people know for sure of their election? Many Calvinists have doubted their election.

Calvinists talk about signs of grace that prove someone is elect but what if a person is not sure he or she is displaying enough signs of grace. Calvinism no more provides comfort and assurance than Arminianism and other non-Calvinist theologies that assure people they are saved if they trust in Christ alone.

Libertarian Free Will and Moral Responsibility

Well we could spend a fair amount of time oh there's more of these. Oh there's a number 11. I'm sorry. There's a number 11. I thought there were only 10. I'm sorry. We could spend a lot of time on that last one but I do want to.

We have one phone call and I want to get I want to make sure to play that thing today. So number 11 non-Calvinist theologies such as Arminianism believe in something that is impossible libertarian free will.

Belief that free decisions and actions simply come from nowhere. Calvinism and some other theologies as well as many philosophers know that free will simply means doing what you want to do and people are always controlled by their strongest motives so being able to do otherwise libertarian free will is an illusion.

Okay. If free will only means doing what you want to do even though you couldn't do otherwise how is anyone responsible for what they do. If a murderer for example could not have done otherwise than murder then a jury judge or jury should find him not guilty perhaps by reason of insanity moral responsibility accountability and guilt depend on ability to do otherwise libertarian freedom.

The Calvinist view of free will isn't really free will at all. Moreover if there is no such thing as libertarian free will then God doesn't have it either and that makes God creation God's creation of the world necessary and not freely chosen in which case it is not by grace but by necessity.

The Calvinist view of free will robs both God and people of ability to do otherwise then they do and therefore renders their decisions and actions neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. What is simply is and what will be will be.

Sadah. Sadah. He didn't say that but I decided so didn't I. That goes contrary to all our instincts and intuitions about moral responsibility and God's transcendent freedom to create or not to create well the idea that God had to create is absurd.

He chose to create. Once he created and had a purpose for creating I guess the idea is well if God has to display his glory then he's not really free. Well no he chose to do X and he chose to pursue X by means Y and therefore that's why he acts the way that he acts is consistent with his choices.

But again this is what happens when you have someone who is not under the authority the Word of God. He doesn't determine these issues by by the Bible he doesn't go to Genesis 50 he doesn't go to Acts 4 he doesn't go to Isaiah 10 and say wow these are places where God said I'm going to do this I'm bringing this nation against this nation and I'm going to then punish that nation because the attitude of its heart could have done something other I guess he might have to say it could do something other.

It's rather obvious that that's not the case but you just this is this is the difference between deriving your theology from scripture and you're driving your theology from your experience your intuition reason etc etc and then cramming it into the Bible which is what you have with Roger Olson.

So there you go there are the 11 I thought there were 10 11 statements made at the end it gives us some idea of where he's coming from but as I said as I have opportunity to I will listen to his Arminian theology as well and who knows maybe we'll do another Radio Free Geneva in the future where we respond to those things.