Reymond on Theodicy then Patterson's Calvinism Sermon

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Biblical Theodicy and the Problem of Evil

And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Beginning of a stormy night here in Phoenix, Arizona. We've got a nice big rain shower heading our direction. They say we can get up to 2 inches, which for Phoenix is a veritable Noahic flood.

So you've got to remember in 2003 we had exactly 2 .54 inches of rain the entire year. The whole year. And so to get 2 inches in one storm over the course of two days, especially given that we've already gotten more rain than we've gotten in I don't know how long.

The weeds in my backyard have become living trees. They are truly an incredible thing to see. But anyway, at least it's going to hold off, I think, really coming down through the program. Why is that important?

Because this program would not exist in Seattle. Because our phone lines, when they get wet, they stop working. So that's just what happens, you know. So we should be able to get through it. 877 -753 -3341.

I have queued up and ready to go. The next page, Patterson's section, where he addresses compatibilism and things like that. I wanted to continue to do some reading, however. You may recall a week ago, Tuesday, I read a section from Robert Raymond's Systematic Theology on the subject of why God is not the chargeable cause of sin.

And I would like to start off by reading another section, because it is directly relevant to what Dr. Patterson is going to be saying in regards to a biblical theodicy. This is the subject that comes up all the time.

And people utilize this as the billy club to beat on Calvinism in saying we have a meaningful theodicy because we believe in free will. Somehow making the creature free in the sense of the liberty of indifference.

Remember what we read last time? I think it's a good section to read. The liberty of indifference. A freedom to act outside of the decree of God. That is to act in one way or act in another. And it is outside of the decree of God.

That is allegedly how you build a theodicy. Remember we played a clip from the Bible Answer Man broadcast. I may pull that one back up again. Especially if it's still in my queue here. Yes, it is. I'll load that one up.

Our computer's wonderful. And what was said was there's different ways of answering the problem of evil, but the Christian way of answering the problem of evil is free will. In fact, if you'll pop this up, let me go ahead and play that section.

See if I can just track it down for you here real quick.

And that's, of course, the idea that everything is a function of random processes, so there is no such thing as good and evil in that system either. It's all a part of random naturalistic processes. And then you have theism, and that is the only relevant response to the problem of evil.

And only Christian theism can answer the question in a way that's satisfactory to us. And here's the way Christian theism answers the question.

Okay, so he actually gave two previous answers. Now here's Christian theism. How does Christian theism answer the question of evil? It is not said here, Christian theism offers a number of answers. This is the statement from the Bible as a broadcast of how Christian theism actually does this.

This is actually what started all of this.

Christian theism acknowledges that God creates the potential for evil, and the operative word there is potential, because he creates humans with freedom of choice. So we choose to love, to hate, to do good, to do evil, etc.

And, of course, the record of human history bears eloquent testimony, as the event that you just chronicled does, to the fact that humans of their own free will have actualized the reality of evil through such choices.

So God creates the potential for evil, but we actualize that evil by the choices that we make, which leads to a further point. Without choice, love means nothing. And God is neither a cosmic rapist who forces love on people, he's not a cosmic puppeteer who forces people to love him.

What God does instead, is as the personification of love, he grants us the freedom of choice, and without that freedom, and I think it's really important to recognize, without having that freedom we would be little more than pre-programmed robots.

So there you have the form of the argument, as it is frequently made, against Reformed theology, defining Christian theism. The theodicy is God creates the potentiality for evil, but since you have libertarian free will, libertarian free will is that liberty of indifference.

It is not under the sovereign control of God, as far as his decree is concerned, and therefore you have your theodicy. Now of course, my objection to that has been repeatedly stated, and not really responded to, and that is, if God created with full knowledge of the result of what his creation would be, then he either created with a purpose for that happening, or he created with no purpose for that happening, in either sense, in either case.

He, as the one who created knowing what was going to happen, is responsible and accountable for making the decision to create as he created. It is not an answer to simply say, well, God gave us free will.

Did God know what we were going to do with this free will? If you say yes, then you really haven't accomplished anything. At least the open theist at that point is consistent. He can say no. Now of course, destroy is the entire essence of deity, if you want my opinion, but that's a whole other issue.

Those who seek to hold on to both the sovereignty of man's will, and God's exhaustive knowledge of future events, really have a very difficult time making that work without launching off into some extremely complex philosophical paradigms that rarely have any connection whatsoever to the scriptures themselves.

And so, going back to Raymond's systematic theology here, under a biblical theodicy, a response to the problem of evil, dealing with the existence of evil, given the fact that God decreed as part of his eternal plan that all men would sin, and that only some men would be redeemed from the effects of Adam's fall, why did he do it?

And a second question might be, is there any way we can justify his actions before men? I would suggest the following as the only possible direction which to look for a biblical and thus a defensible theodicy.

God's Glory as the End of Providence

Now, let me just stop for a moment and say, to me anyway, that is refreshing. And when I say it's refreshing, I am so tired of reading theology these days where the writers refuse to say something that strongly, where the writer refuses to say, this is biblical.

Instead, what you see today is very much what seemingly was going on in the days of Christ. Remember when Christ preached, the crowds were amazed. Why were they amazed? He teaches as one who has authority and not like the scribes and the Pharisees.

And how were the scribes and Pharisees teaching? Well, look at the Mishnah. Well, Rabbi so-and-so said this and Rabbi so-and-so said that and Rabbi so-and-so said this over here. Well, that doesn't answer any questions and that doesn't really excite anyone.

That doesn't give anyone passion. And Jesus didn't preach that way. And unfortunately, most theologians today write that way because it's politically correct, but the result is not something that I would really want to invest my money in.

But anyway, here is Raymond's biblical theodicy. The ultimate end, which God decreed, he regarded as great enough and glorious enough that it justified to himself both the divine plan itself and the ordained incidental evil arising along the foreordained path to his plan's great and glorious end.

But is there indeed, can there be such an end? Yes, indeed, there is such an end. Paul can declare, I consider that our present sufferings, which are ordained of God, the reader is referred to 2 Corinthians 11, 23 -33 and 12, 7 -10 for a sampling of Paul's sufferings, are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

And again, our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Romans 8 -18, 2 Corinthians 4 -17 and 1 Corinthians 2 -7. And what is that anticipated and destined end for us?

It is this, someday the elect will be conformed to the image of Christ, our highest good, according to Romans 8, 28 -29. But our conformity to Christ's likeness is not the be-all and end-all of God's eternal purpose.

We have not penetrated God's purpose sufficiently if we conclude that we are the center of God's purpose or that his purpose terminates finally upon us by accomplishing our glorification. Rather, our glorification is only the means to a higher, indeed the highest and conceivable, that God's Son might be the firstborn, that is, might occupy the highest place of honor among many brothers, Romans 8 -29, and all to the praise of God's glorious grace, Ephesians 1 -6, 10, 12, 14 and to 7.

The point of mentioning, he mentioned Adam, and I didn't bother to read it, it said that God's Son, not Adam, might be the firstborn. It says, the point of mentioning Adam in the above sentence is this, from the comparison which Paul draws between Adam and Christ, Romans 5, 12 -19, as representative heads of two covenant arrangements, it is necessary to insist that had Adam successfully passed his probation in the garden, he would have been confirmed in holiness passing from the state of being able to sin to a state of not being able to sin, and all his descendants would have received by legal imputation his righteousness.

But then his descendants, you and I, learning of the outcome of his test, would have needed gratefully to look to Adam, still living among us, as our Savior from sin and death, and as our righteousness.

God would then have been required eternally to share his glory with the creature, and his own beloved Son would have been denied the mediatorial role which led to his messianic lordship over men, and to his Father's glory which followed, Philippians 2 -6 -11.

Accordingly, God decreed to permit the fall, having purposed to order it to his own glory, Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6, Section 1. As for the others, some day the non-elect, irrevocably hardened in their rebellion against God, will endure God's wrath for their sin in eternal perdition, and this to the praise of his glorious justice.

Consider, of Pharaoh, who is the Old Testament type, and Pauline example of the non-elect man, God declares, I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth, Exodus 9 -16, Romans 9 -17.

It is evident from this divine declaration that Pharaoh, the enemy of God and of God's people, served the divine purpose in being instrumental to the display of God's power and his ultimate exaltation in the earth, and also in providing the backdrop against which God could, by contrast, make the riches of his glory, that is, his grace and mercy, known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory, Romans 9 -23.

Consider another example, in Revelation 19 -1 -4, after eschatological Babylon the Great, the symbolic epitome of satanic and human evil, is destroyed, heaven is filled with the exultant shout of a great multitude, saying, Hallelujah!

Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries, he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.

And again they shout, Hallelujah! The smoke of her goes up forever and ever. Here we have the ultimate end of all things in heaven and on earth, the unabridged, unqualified glorification of God himself in the praises of his saints for his judgment against their enemies and for his stark, contrasting display to them, who equally deserve the same judgment of his surpassing great grace in Christ Jesus.

And that end, God regards as sufficient reason to decree what he has, including even the fact and presence of evil in this world. That, of course, as I mentioned from Robert Raymond's Systematic Theology, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, a Thomas Nelson publication, and if you're looking for something to invest in, you might want to add that one to your shelf because it is a very readable discussion of many things.

A number of things I don't agree with. People keep asking me, When are you going to write a Systematic Theology? My constant response is, I'm too stupid to write a Systematic Theology. That is, it would require a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous amount of discipline and knowledge of a number of areas that I just recognize my weaknesses in.

Now, I would be interested someday, possibly, in writing what might be called an Apologetic Theology. That is, I've often argued that our apologetics, our system of apologetics, our means of defending the faith should be determined by our theology, not the other way around.

And therefore, really, the question that a lot of people would have is, well, what are the central aspects of our Systematic Theology that determine our apologetics? So therefore, writing something along those lines would be something that I would be interested in doing.

But certainly not the other direction, not a Systematic Theology on the whole because there's just too many things where I go, you know, it's difficult to go after that. Anyhow, there are other writing projects in the wings at the moment, but that's not what we're talking about today.

Having read that biblical theodicy, and you may have noticed the preeminence of passages from Scripture in that discussion, let us now go back to listening to the sermon that was delivered, I would say, approximately a year ago now at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is my recollection where this took place.

And we were listening to Dr. Paige Patterson. We began reviewing this quite some time ago. I unfortunately did not have the time to look up every well, not that I would even have the resources necessarily to look up every place we have looked at this, the previous part of the sermon before, but we're heading back to it now.

And he will raise some of these issues, and let's see if a response is provided to them that is that really takes into consideration given the context being the presentation in front of a theological body at a theological seminary doing graduate work, certainly there we would hope be that level of care in representing the Reformed position, especially the doctrine of compatibilism.

Let's see if that's what happens. The issues are very profound indeed, and as we wrestle with them to try to understand where human responsibility begins, and where God's electing providence should be seen as limited, or should it be all pervasive?

Men have struggled now for some 2 ,000 years with that question. Well, there are some who come to a position that is commonly called compatibilism. These are people that want to argue that libertarian free will can be asserted for man on one hand, and on the other hand, we can still hold somehow that the electing providences of God, even the supraluxarian electing providences of God, and that the two are somehow compatible and can exist together.

Now immediately, you sort of go, excuse me? Libertarian free will?

In the sense of the liberty of indifference? Certainly that's not what we are referring to, and that is not what a compatibilist would say. The entire viewpoint of the nature of the will and the function of the will, especially in relationship to sin and creatureliness, would be different between a compatibilist and a libertarian.

We do believe in free will, but not in the indifference concept, and that is the freedom of spontaneity rather than that of indifference. There's a difference between those two. So you'll notice sort of in passing there, there was a brief reference to supraluxarianism.

The discussion by Dr. Raymond in his Systematic Theology on that subject is also very useful. I frequently when people come in the channel and ask about that, refer them to that. Now I've even created a little pop-up that I just play and channel and it summarizes what he has in his book, but gives you an idea.

There is a little mention of that and the assertion that somehow what we're trying to do is just basically assert that libertarian free will and the sovereign decree of God can be put together even as a supraluxarian.

Evidently he feels that's somehow relevant though he does not explain why. And that this is what compatibilism is. Now of course if I was a non-compatibilist, if I was a person who didn't hold that viewpoint, and I was speaking to a group of people and I had the opportunity of responding to it, I would want to at least mention where they get their arguments from.

I would at least want to mention and those of you who listened to the Bible Answer Man broadcast last time I was on, December of 2003, know that I continually brought up the three passages that I feel are most central to the issue.

And that is Genesis chapter 50 verse 20, Isaiah chapter 10 verses 5 and following, especially 5 through 21, and then Acts chapter 4 verses 27 and 28 where in each one of these particular passages you clearly have the conjunction in Scripture of the sovereign decree of God you have God's purposes being fulfilled, you have God's predestining hand and you also have the responsibility of men, the actions of men, the hearts of men, the attitudes of men, and Scripture gives absolutely no indication whatsoever of embarrassment or concern that somehow these are not compatible, that they are contradictory to one another.

Instead, when it speaks of the actions of men, it very naturally does so flowing from the assertion of God's sovereignty, the assertion of God's total providential control over all human actions. And these actions that are described, by the way, range from the personal, where you have Herod, you have the brothers of Joseph, to national, nations, and so there's every level in between, you can't say, well, okay, I don't mind God having control of nations, I don't mind God turning the heart of the king wherever he will, as Proverbs says, but I have a problem if he does that with everybody, because, you know, the king, he sort of controls the country, but if he does that to individuals, you know, that's a bad thing.

That's not how, that's not what we're talking about here. These passages present this, they need to be exegeted and explained by a person who would, knowing that they are presented by compatibilists, would reject the compatibilist's position.

Unfortunately, that's not what we get in this particular situation.

Well, unquestionably, there is certain truth in this, for if both doctrines are somehow taught in God's word, then we must conclude that they are compatible. And yet, I suggest to you that compatibilism as a general philosophy is, in my estimation, quite flawed.

It's illusory. It does not really, ultimately answer the question. We are, if we adopt the view of five-point Calvinism, for example, ultimately pushed to some conclusions that are very uncomfortable.

One of those is a fatalistic conclusion. If it's all been decided in eternity past, if every act of man has been scripted of God, then, in effect, we have no say in it, and it is impossible to avoid a fatalistic end.

Unfortunately, that's all you're going to get. You're going to get the bland assertion that if you have the sovereign decree of God, then the result is fatalism. And, of course, fates, the fates, are those wonderful gods that determined what was going to happen, and fatalism, when it is utilized in this context, is not a positive term in any way, shape, or form.

And, in point of fact, the argument is really based upon creating an emotion in people's minds rather than actually dealing with the particular central focus of what we need to be talking about here. And I have frequently said that to try to describe the personal self-glorification of God through the creation of time and all things that take place in time as fatalism is a gross misnomer.

It is a gross misrepresentation. It does not take into account the reality of what we are discussing. Why? Well, it should be fairly clear that the compatibilist is talking about a very personal decree of God.

That is, God is the source of the decree. The end, as Raymond pointed out, is his own self-glorification. It involves our glorification. It involves our being conformed to the image of Christ. It involves the punishment of the justly punished reprobate, and so on and so forth.

It involves all that, but all those things come together to the praise of his glorious grace. It is self-glorification on God's part, and God has chosen to do this in a particular way. And it really doesn't seem to me that non-compatibilists take a whole lot of... they don't really take answering the question why God does things very seriously because, in reality, their position doesn't say God's doing a whole lot of stuff anyways.

He's pretty much just in control of big macro things and tsunamis and earthquakes and things like that, I guess, even though there's some questions there too, but he's not really engaged in a providential way in the actions of man to begin with.

You certainly then have a problem coming up with why God created. Why did God create? And non-compatibilists come up with all sorts of odd and unusual ways of answering that question. Very, very frequently, the answers to those questions are, in essence, focused upon man and upon unfulfilled desires of God.

There are many theologians today who would wish to confess a God who has tried to do something, and his reason for being glorified was in his trying, not in his accomplishing. Sounds like the modern American educational system, and God got stuck in it.

And he manages to get a B and we are just simply to glorify him for the effort, not for the perfection of the completion of that effort and that desire. There's all sorts of other questions that are raised because of this, but if Scripture is right, that what God is doing, that his ordering all things at the counsel of his will, and the fact that this is all to the praise of his glorious grace, if that is true, then their theodicies and their discussions of the issues of evil, or of this term using the term fatalism, simply do not meet the requirements of the ends that Scripture gives to us, that is, God's own self-glorification.

Compatibilism does not, five-point Calvinism does not result in fatalism, it results in exclusive self-glorifying providence. If you don't understand what the difference is, then you haven't been listening or thinking about what the issues are.

There is a vast difference between an impersonal fate of the future and God's self-glorification that is done purposefully so that all things result in his glory. That seems to me very obvious. Maybe to others it is not, but to me that seems extremely obvious.

That to describe God's chosen means of self-glorification through the redemption of a people in Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is all in all and he is the center of all things, to describe that as fatalism is simply reprehensible.

It's wrong. And a person who has seriously studied the issue should not do so. And yet many,.

Of course, do anyways. So we continue on. It also is a problem for theodicy, for a justification of the goodness of God, because ultimately it makes God the author of sin when the Bible explicitly says that he is not the author of sin.

Well, that's all you're going to get on that one too. That is, you just have the bland statement that if God is sovereign over all things, that makes him the author of sin. There's no discussion of secondary means.

There's no discussion of any of the things that we read in Raymond. Am I really that far out of the mainstream to think that as you stand before an audience at a graduate level seminary that you would recognize that there are young men, and in this situation I'm sure young women, sitting in front of you who have read these things.

They've read Raymond. He's in the library. They may have taken classes with odd professors like me who raise these issues and talk about these things. So if you don't address them and you just simply pass by them, isn't that going to be very painfully obvious to those who are truly struggling with these issues?

It would certainly seem to me that that would be the case. It would certainly seem to me that would be the case. We'll have more to comment on this. We're going to take our break at the half hour. We have one call online and we'll try to mix it all in here.

We'll be right back right after this break. A godly man is such a rarity today. Oh many stars strong and true quickly fall away.

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Compatibilism, Libertarian Free Will, and Divine Sovereignty

And welcome back to the dividing line. We are discussing some, well, okay, let's face it some deep theology today, but that's okay. That's alright. We do that every once in a while. Let me just, a couple things.

Let me point out something in the last break that is very, very important. Most of you who listen regularly, you heard last time we were talking about all the stuff that is going on in Seattle in August, the crews, the discussions that are going on.

I can't tell you how many times I've had people, you know, the week after the deadline, the week after the price goes up $100 per person, which is the end of March, say, oh, why didn't you say anything?

Or why didn't you warn us? And, you know, then on the other side they go, oh, you're talking too much about it, I can't go anyways. Look, you know, I have people all the time tell me, oh, I just love to go to Alaska.

Well, this will be my third time. And I can tell you something, just coming from me here, I've never been on a cruise like this one. Every cruise that I've gone on before, you've seen a third of what we'll see on this one.

That's just all there is to it. So, that's the first thing. Secondly, Rich was talking to a friend, and the friend laughed when he mentioned the cost. Because, for Alaska, it is, this is absolutely outrageous, outrageously low, for a trip to Alaska, especially then you add number three.

And that is, you can go to Alaska on a lot of different lines, but you're not, in fact, you can go to Alaska with a number of different ministries. And I'm not saying anything about those other ministries.

In any way, shape, or form, Lord bless them. They, you know, they're going to have a good time, too. But, you're just not going to get to do so with a conference beforehand, debate beforehand with John Dominick Crossan, and with the on ship dialogue and discussion.

It's going to be, it's absolutely positively unique. No two ways about it. And so, don't put it off. If you've been saying, I've got to talk to my wife about that. Talk to your wife about that! Don't put it off, okay?

Because, you know, it's just got to get done. Alright, 877 -753 -3341. I'm going to go ahead and take Frank's call because it's directly related to compatibilism. Then we have another call about something completely different, so I'm going to finish up this little section of Patterson afterwards, and we'll try to put it all together like that.

Let's talk with Frank. Dr. White, how are you?

How are you, sir? I'm well. Compatibilism. Yesterday in channel, I was wondering if you could talk about, you know, is there some kind of.

I am uncomfortable with the term paradox simply because that is an assertion of contradiction, and I see the reality of man's will and the reality of man's actions flowing from the recognition and acceptance of the divine decree of God which conditions and creates the conditions in which his will can be real, and hence that truth of God's divine decree and creatorship is what leads to and provides the foundation of the truth of man's actions being responsible before God.

If that was not the case, then the question becomes why is man accountable to God, especially since he's described as a slave of sin and all the rest of these types of things that are described of him.

If he's actually now a slave, you do not hold a slave accountable for doing what the slaveholder tells him to do. If the slaveholder tells a slave to fight against you, you don't hold the slave accountable to that, you hold the slaveholder.

So if Satan had that kind of power to do as he's described in scripture, and there is no sovereign decree of God, and there is no God does not have the ability to constrain the limits of Satan's power and so on and so forth, you would have no basis for being able to say that.

I do not see them as equal truths that are put together like the old railroad tracks meeting an eternity thing that even Charles Spurgeon used, but you know, no one's confessing the infallibility of Brother Spurgeon, but as I've said many times, if your train tracks ever meet, you crash, whether it's an eternity or not, and so I do not see them as equal rails as people like to call them.

The one depends upon the other. Without the one, the other does not exist. And so, especially when we're talking about what defines God's act of creation, that has to flow from something that's about God, not something that's about the creation.

And so, when we're talking about compatibilism, what we're saying is that a true understanding of why God holds men accountable, which is what we read before the Dave Hunt explosion last Tuesday, why God holds men accountable, the means by which he holds men accountable, the difference between the liberty of spontaneity and the liberty of indifference, all of that stuff is the idea that man acts in that way is compatible with the sovereign decree of God, that my God is big enough when he creates, to create in such a way that he can create creatures who have that kind of free will, not the libertarian indifference kind, but that kind of free will, hold them accountable, and bring about his own glorification.

Evidently, the non-reformed God can't pull that off, that he's dependent upon the creature, and so on and so forth. My God is big enough to do that without using Chatty Cathy dolls, and puppets, and engaging in divine rape, or doing any of the rest of that stuff.

In point of fact, he's big enough to do that in the same way that he's big enough to inspire scripture in a plenary fashion, while still using the writers, and their styles, and their vocabulary, and their experiences, and the result is still the inspired word of God, exactly what he desired it to be.