After a couple of weeks dealing with various sundry tangents, ranging from “survivor” blog hypocrisy–and implicit Marxism in appealing to “tone” as the plumb line for a comment’s moral truth–to the theoretical and abstract ideas of space and time, and the relative relationships between objects thereof, we can once again return to the topic of the non-rational reformed idea of “free will”.

Oh  yes…every once in a while you will hear some neo Calvinist “scholar” concede that, oh yes…of course WE “choose”.  Of course, YOU decide to accept Christ.

And then you, by now, understand that behind this conciliatory platitude must exist some kind of rank deception disguised as an olive branch…and and even worse is the implicit expectation of how we, the slobbering barbarian masses should just fawn and blush and cry great crocodile tears of joy that a paaaaastor would deign to agree about an idea, an issue, a point of contention…oh, my, the vapors I get just thinking about His Highness the Benevolent King Pastor the First (because they are always first in their own minds) deigning to validate and allow me my point, my freedom, my own mind, even if it is only within the dark and dank confines of some small, irrelevant, token-ish way.  Oh, what sovereign grace of God could permit such a loving and kind King to rule over me and my barbarian brothers and sisters.

And of course, as I said, by now we all know that this is all bunk, and that these are merely the kinds of things they say to get you to shut up and tithe.  There is no more rational thinking behind a statement like that of Pastor Wade Burleson over on Wartburg Watch–“I choose!”–coming from a reformed protestant than there is in the ye-old-practice of casting aside ALL of their theological contradictions, relegating them to the shelf of “Who are you, O man? Vessel of wrath!” and “God is a mystery; who can understand His ways?”.

Trust me.  When a Calvinist or any follower of neo-Reformed mysticism claims any sort of “free will”, you can smell the stink a mile away.  There is something wrong in Gotham City.

You see, Calvinists always have a hedge against any kind of free thinking…by now, you must understand this.  A free-thinker does not need an authority…authority being simply another made-up doctrine, never actually applying to any human being in Christ.  The point of the gospel is that we are NOT under law anymore; we are our OWN source of innocence before God, and the only authority we must accept is the law of love which wholly AFFIRMS self, and consummates this fact by equally affirming (loving) others.  NO outside “authority” is needed nor warranted.

As an aside, in my opinion, the idea of a fully funded, salaried professional Pastor is something only ancillary to the New Testament Gospel in the remotest way.  What you get with this kind of structure is indeed, ALWAYS going to eventually wind up in the cul-de-sac of “authority” and submission, obedience, complimentarianism, and patriarchy. And from this stems all manner of abuse.  As soon as one realizes there is good money in “pastoring”, a “living wage” (and the living is good, as the palace-like mega churches doth profess) the message is muddied.  The motives mixed, and truth suffers.  Jesus never commanded a salary, and He was God.  So then why should any of us get paid to tell people about Christ?

And I really don’t care about their proof-text of Paul, and what it says about the ox and the muzzle and the grain.   When it comes down to brass tax, Calvinist churches in America do a LOT of taking and a very, very little TREADING of anything.  They produce almost nothing.  And what they do produce is not ever held up to any kind of objective standard.  There is no obligation of course to produce; to actually do an EFFECTIVE job, with noticeable and measurable outcomes, nor performance accountability to the people who PAY them.  The farmer keeps his ox only insofar as the ox has measurable, profitable VALUE…and THAT value is not given to the ox to decide.  But since the pastor is “first” among you, whatever he does is not for you to gauge.  But how is that anything at all like a farmer with an ox which WORKS towards a profitable and never SELF-defined end?

Oh..how far we’ve strayed in our churches form the REAL point of the proof-text.

No, no, no…oh, no… how MUCH grain they should be treading is not for YOU, the lay person, to say or to judge.  They can sit on their hands and howl at the moon and you are commanded by God to submit and to tithe, goes the determinist, despotic refrain. They presume that what is yours is theirs for the taking.  They use the Ox and the Grain proof text as a means to obligate you to support them financially.

Yes, I might sound cynical, but there is no real rational correlation between “not muzzling an ox”–that is, allowing the ox to eat so that he may continue to PRODUCE–and paying a handsome salary to a man to stay in one place and talk for an hour once a week.  Notice also that the Ox actually moves around.  Maybe as part of the job duties, pastors should do weekly missions trips around the community where they actually go OUT and tell strangers who are NOT paying them about Jesus.

But I digress…as usual.

As I was saying, any neo-Reformed/Calvinist person claiming that will is free only EVER do this with the explicit understanding that any free-will engaged by a person is firmly under the umbrella of God’s sovereign Will.  So, in effect, what they are saying is that your will is free, but is LIMITED.  John Immel explained to me that this is what is called in philosophical circles “soft determinism”.  You are in a cage of divine sovereignty.  Inside the cage, or the box, as I like to call it, you can do what you “want”.  You can lift weights.  Use the toilet when the mood hits you.  Write your loved ones about how wonderful and utopian the “freedom” is behind the iron bars of God’s sovereign plan for your life, while you gaze with pity on the poor souls out in the world, beyond the “yard” and the barbed wire, who are walking along the wide roads of the great outdoors straight to hell.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen.  This is Calvinism’s freedom.  The freedom to be inexorably bound to the destination of the box.  It hurdles through space and inside you use the latrine and eat your fruit loops…hey, it’s up to you, Wade will say.  You are FREE.  But where the box is going…whether to the fires of hell or to the bliss of the reformed black hole paradise…well, try to leave the box and you hit a wall.  Try to jump and there is the ceiling which bloodies your head.  Try to dig and your shovel cannot penetrate God’s bedrock of determinism.  The box is going where it is going.  You are pacing back and forth in your “freedom”.  Nothing more.

And this is precisely what I believe Wade understands is “orthodox”…and yet, he cannot see the explicit impossibility of such an idea. I think he really believes that there is some kind of freedom buzzing around in that mind of his.

And to these people we pay a living wage?

The truth is, the whole idea of free-will (or will at all) is a anathema to the reformed crowd.  The entire theology and philosophy is utterly rooted in the idea of the objective existing and BEING REACHED long before YOU had any say in the matter.  Categorical determinism is the only possible conclusion to be had from reformation theology…from the Heidelberg Catechism to the Westminster Confessions to the Puritans statements on the church’s civil authority.  There can be NO freedom of any kind.  Any freedom they tell you about is a lie at worst, and…well, a lie.  It is a lie whether they have the intellectual fortitude or motivation to see it or not.  There cannot be any such thing as freedom residing under the absolute umbrella of determinism.  Of “sovereign will”.

If God is infinite, so is His determining power.  There can be no freedom.  When you use the latrine is up to God.  When you sleep is up to God.  When you rise is up to God.  Whether heaven or hell, or up or down, or red or blue, or Barack or Mandella or Mao or Churchill or Winnie the Pooh or stupid or smart, or white or hispanic or “white-hispanic”…it’s AAAAAAALLLLLL God.

You see, if the box is going where it is going, then what you do inside is wholly irrelevant.  There is no PURPOSE to what you do “freely”.  Freedom then merely takes on a new definition.  And it is this:  freedom is what you do that is utterly in service to the destination of the box you are in.  Where the box arrives is THE functional outcome of what you do.

If you go to the latrine, what is the real outcome?  The box inexorably moves towards the determined goal.  If you get head lice, what is the outcome?  The box inexorably moves towards the determined goal.  If you flunk Ms. Hogwrath’s calculus test, what is the outcome?  The box moves.  If you choose Christ, what is the outcome?  Deny Christ, what is the outcome?  The box moves.  Straight, never veering to the right or left.  It goes where it always will go because it has been determined to go there.

Every outcome of every action results in the same objective, regardless of what “choice” you make.  The functional outcome is DETERMINED.  It is not, nor can ever be free.

But wait, one might protest.  We shall concede that the box is going where it’s going, but wouldn’t it be more logical to say that what you do is simply irrelevant rather than saying that the outcome of what you do is the determined objective of the box?

Well, part of me wants to say to-may-to, to-mah-to.  But I’ll ignore that part in favor of the discursive argument.

I would argue that it is not more logical.  We have conceded in this example that both you AND the box exist.  And, really, co-exist.  The difference is moot. For all intents and purposes, YOU cannot be separated from the box.  That is the Calvinists’s whole damn point.  And so if you are real and what you do is real, but YOU cannot ever be removed from the box, and we agree that the box INDEED does have an objective, and that objective is real and determined, then the only rational conclusion taking into account all of these premises is that when YOU act, it MUST be in service to the only purpose/objective which actually exists:  the destination of the box.

The only way to change this is to declare that the person simply does not exist.  To declare that anything the human being does is irrelevant to the destination of the box is really, metaphysically speaking, declaring that the human being does not, in fact, exist at all.  Or, that the human being IS the box, which is what I believe is really being argued…and which is actually the exact same thing as saying the human being doesn’t exist at all.

There is no way to separate a REAL human beings actions from some kind of effect.  Actions are causes, effects are what follows.  If a human acts, there MUST be an outcome, and the outcome cannot be NO outcome, which is what we are attempting to argue when we say that man’s actions are wholly irrelevant to the determined objective of the box he or she is in.  There are NO irrelevant outcomes resulting from actions which are FREE and REAL and of a human being.  They must have literal, observable meaning.  And if we then concede in our ridiculous Calvinist hubris that the only real meaning is that of the determined objective of the box, then all actions of the human being are, in fact, directly in service to the determined objective and as such, MUST then themselves be likewise determined.  Freedom in this case is a lie.

And as I said the only alternate idea is to declare that the human being, if his or her actions are truly irrelevant, then cannot actually BE.  He or she IS the box, per se.  For actions are NOT literally ever redundant.  If we say they are, then this is metaphysically the exact same thing as declaring that the person is not real; that the person does not actually exist apart from the box (which is EXACTLY the Calvinist point); that the person is the box, and since the box has a divinely determined objective then there can be no free-will in this construct.  There is no free will because the only real objective is determined; and also there is no free-will because in this construct man does not actually exist.

I have said this once, and I will repeat it over and over until I die.  Determinism is an ABSOLUTE.  The beginning and end of it is determinism, period.  There can be NO reconciliation with ANY other idea of any kind, be it humans, or devils, or will, or power, or up or down or black or white or God or Christ.  Determinism is determinism is determinism.  There is NOTHING more besides.

It is rational larceny to pretend anything else.

I understand that my take on the trinity is different. It is the NUMBER I cannot accept. I understand that on its face this also may smack a bit of the Primacy of Conscience interpretation of reality because I deny that numbers actually exist; I see them as merely another way man qualifies relative movement of other objects; which, as this movement is always relative, means that numbers are NOT constant. They are only constant in a particular theoretical construct which has a consensus of definition. The OBJECTS we observe are constant, and their existence is HOW numbers and everything else we abstract about them can be arrived at.

This is not an appeal to the idea that TRUTH is beyond us, though it may look like it. It is an appeal to reason as the foundation of how man knows anything he knows. It is not that the senses are insufficient to measure their surroundings, that three isn’t really three. It is the recognition of logically contradictory assumptions directly related TO the efficacy of the senses. If we know that three is an abstract concept man uses to organize his world, we understand that we when say “three object”, that the only thing ACTUAL is the objects. Three is a way to communicate meaning effectively. Beyond man’s cognitive abstraction, three does not really exist…and this is easy to see because without man’s mind, three is a wholly irrelevant concept. What in the universe, including God, needs “three” to be an ACTUAL thing in the universe? Nothing. God doesn’t need three. God doesn’t need the universe. God is God, the universe the universe. Numbers go away as soon as man’s mind evaporates into ether.

And so reason, that thing which allows man to know anything he knows, true or false or up or down, is the root of knowledge. Sense feeds information, reason organizes the information in ways that are effective for the promulgation of his life. And this information CANNOT then be reasonably contradictory because contradiction can never affirm life, it can only destroy it by declaring that man cannot ultimately know what is good or bad; what is of value to life and what is not. And if this is true, man is dead before God takes the breath to speak him into existence. And so the objective reason of man can and should routinely discern between what is actual, and what is abstract. As soon as the abstract becomes the actual, you get primacy of consciousness, and destruction inexorably follows. You get the death of TRUTH.

And so, you cannot look at God, and make the reasonable declaration of his infinite absolute-ness and then in the same breath contradict yourself by saying “trinity”. Whatever you may sense, your REASON allows you to take the information and plug it into a rational construct and get an answer about TRUTH. I may “read” three “persons” in the bible. I may “see” “three” persons before me. But IF I concede that the rational conclusion of God is that he is absolute, we can quickly understand that what I see is NOT necessarily the proper description of what actually is. We can understand that an infinite absolute can manifest itself however it wants, with no regard for the limitations of space and time…and if we understand this, we can understand how we may observe “three” and yet know that God is not really three of anything at all, because three contradicts absolute.

This is not unprecedented. The theory of relativity is rooted in the idea that what we observe is, well, relative. Meaning that truth can be known, but not merely as a result of “seeing”. Because what we see is only rooted in how an object acts relative to WHERE we are. The action of God as three is relative to our observation. But our reason dictates that He cannot, in fact, be three.

This is the root of the disagreement. Obviously, its tedious…but it isn’t that hard to understand if people actually WANT to understand it.

Frequent and highly intelligent, interesting, and refreshing commenter on TheWartburgWatch.com blog, Patrice, wrote a very kind reply to my last post here.  Her comment was not in reference to the post, but instead was a soothing and encouraging word concerning an exceedingly unpleasant experience yours truly had over there yesterday when I (foolishly?) attempted to point out the metaphysical impossibility of the “doctrine” of the Trinity (see the thread under TWWs post “The Stockdale Paradox: We know the end of the story”).  My response to Patrice is below:

Patrice,

Thank you for your support and your kind words.  Your voice is a very refreshing one; one willing to challenge long-held assumptions, based upon your own personal experience.

You have experienced the “logical” conclusion of contradictory doctrines first hand.  In this way, you and I are kindred spirits.  Our mutually abusive fathers, as well as my time in SGM.  These experiences are painful…but they are eye-opening.  You can ignore contradiction; you can pretend that if we were all just “nice” Calvinists like Wade Burleson everything would be all Christian kumbaya and koinonia and all that.  But you cannot ignore the pain; and you cannot ignore the pain as a rational indication that something is seriously wrong.  You are not held captive by a rank fear that somehow deciding that a doctrine, whether in the bible or not, cannot be true if it contradicts God and man’s metaphysical nature according to all we know must be true for us and God to actually exist.

You may not think so, but this puts you light years ahead in your thinking from most people on the “survivor blogs”.  Even Dee and Deb and Wade.  For all of their raging and just vitriol at all the abuse which occurs in American Christianity, they still concede the very doctrines which drives the destruction.  This is why Wade and Dee and Deb and Kris and Guy and a hundred other bloggers are simply not a credible threat to neo-Calvinism.  They are not taken seriously, and their comments are summarily deleted from neo-Cal blogs.  It has nothing to do with them being a “threat”, but everything to do with the fact that the neo-Calvinists do not want to cloud the purity of the doctrine with the implicit hypocrisy of those who “ride the fence”.  Ultimately Mark Dever, and Driscoll, and Piper, and Mahaney and Mohler and the rest KNOW (if they know them at all) that Dee and Deb and Wade will, when it comes down to brass tacks, concede the VERY determinism which puts man at the mercy of the destructive, violent, abstract collective called the “local church”.  They don’t need them coming around and confusing people when ultimately, there is no need.  THAT’S why they delete the comments.  Because the comments are irrelevant.

I know I’m venting…and I am.  But you must understand that ultimately I don’t care about Wartburg Watch so much…I went there because a lot of people read there, and they REALLY need to hear someone challenging the doctrinal assumptions at the root, because the doctrine is the boot on their necks.  Otherwise, I can tell you, nothing will ultimately change.  Sooner or later, Dee and Deb and Wade will once again succumb to the weight of their own devotion to Primacy of Conscious (the idea that real TRUTH is found beyond man’s reason…which means, it really can’t be known) and the cycle will begin again.

As for me leaving TWW…

Well, I think that’s a foregone conclusion at this point.  My goal is to challenge the Primacy of Consciousness paradigm at every turn (which is why I go after the “golden calf” of trinitarianism, and total depravity, and church discipline, and biblical inerrancy…because at the root these are really merely appeals to “well…truth is a mystery, who can understand God’s ways?”), because it is abusive and hates humanity.

Dee has made it clear that my opinions will no longer be tolerated, and so there is little point in me commenting anymore.  Dee is utterly devoted to reformed orthodox interpretations of the faith, and because I have dared to call out Wade on his reformed beliefs; I pissed her off…so, she no longer hides her devotion anymore.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist for me to get the message.  And what is the message? You know it well:

“Don’t you dare challenge the doctrine.”

I’ve heard it before.  It is the hallmark of the very abusive churches TWW pretends to challenge.  That’s why I said the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I appreciate your advice regarding tone.  It is good advice, except the problem is not my tone.  If you look at my posts, I haven’t in months made a personal attack.  My posts ALL have only to do with denying the Primacy of Consciousness assumptions in reformed doctrine.

For a while, I “toned it down”.  I chose to believe that it really did have to do with my presentation. I understood that my sarcasm or my bluntness was off-putting…and it was, and Dee and Deb were right to ask me to pull the reigns.  But then I noticed that people like “Daisy” were able to assault me and my character with impunity without so much as a peep from Dee.  And then yesterday when Dee took the mask of “love” off and did the same thing, clearly distorting my comments for the sake of insult, the truth hit me smack in the faith.

It isn’t that they want me to “be nicer” or “tone it down”.  No, they want me to say that “I could be wrong”.  Or that the people I disagree with “have a point, too”.

But I won’t do that because I’m not wrong.  The rage against me has to do with the fact that I DON’T have to concede they have a point.  Because they don’t.  The idea that God is three AND one is impossible.  It is not only literally impossible, it utterly denies God’s infinite absolute; an absolute which by definition cannot be numbered, regardless of what humans “see” or what “the bible says”.  And the bible never says “trinity”, and it only says “three” when it says “and these three are one”.  Which brings us squarely back to the disagreement in the first place…which isn’t really a disagreement. It is a logically and metaphysically IMPOSSIBLE doctrine.  And I’m a liar if I say it isn’t.  And I won’t do that.

Three are One is a METAPHYSICAL statement.  It is not a LITERAL numerical interpretation of God.  That is what “Daisy” is saying, and that is simply wrong.

At any rate, the point is that TWW is no longer a place where I can safely and without abuse promote a truly anti-Calvinist message.  Dee and Deb are all about “getting along” which is why they have partnered up with a Calvinist Pastor.  But getting along must always find a root cohesion of premises and beliefs.  And I deny every doctrinal assumption that is reformed, pretty much, as mysticism and Platonism.  And I’m not familiar with the “creeds” that Dee has decided are inerrant, but I’m pretty sure I deny them, too.

I have no interest in agreeing with ideas that I know are false.  And I will not say they are not false when I know for a fact that this does nothing except further Calvinism’s worship of death and its abject hatred of humanity.

Anyway, thanks, Patrice.  You are a marvelous and wonderful and GOOD person.  God loves you very much, and know this…you and your human body are sacred and affirmed by God.

-Argo

Let’s take a moment to define “free will” so that we are all proceeding from the same meaning…and, more importantly, the proper meaning.  Not the false, tortured, and grotesquely distorted meaning the neo-Calvinists insist on inflicting upon everyone.

When we speak of free will we must realize that human volitional control (determining one’s desires and pursuing them) is only part of the definition.  Free will is an idea that says that ALL objects in Creation, including man and his ability to reason/abstract/determine/declare/decide, etc., are the categorical sources of their own ability to act, and to be acted upon.  NOTHING is the driving force of any object of Creation except itself.  Before it can act, it must possess the innate, self–derived ability to act.  Before it can be acted upon by another object, IT must possess the innate, self-derived ability to effect an “equal and opposite reaction” to the force of the other object acting upon it.  For without the innate ability to ACT as an EFFECT of another force the object cannot recompense in the form of an “opposite reaction”.  In short, it must be able to react FIRST, or there can be no reaction; the cause cannot not cause anything.  The cause is moot.  There is no cause without an object which is able to react; and that ability belongs solely to it.

NOTE:  Tangent alert

Incidentally, this is why I deny the (unbiblical) notion of “first cause”.  For if NOTHING exists to be caused upon, then there can be no “first cause”, by definition.  What exactly is God, as an infinite object, and the sum and substance of Himself so that no definition can be given to Him in a non-relative (to Creation) way except to say “Himself” (and even that is really an external qualification…for really the title “Himself” applied from within Himself is redundant and thus impossible…but anyway, you get the point)…yes, what exactly is God “causing” if ALL–and yes, ALL…and you must understand what is being said here; all means ALL–which exists is Himself prior to Creation?  There is nothing existing except Himself; and He cannot cause Himself…for that is a contradiction in terms; and certainly a contradiction to “first cause”.  If nothing existed until God created it, then from what material did God create creation?  No material existed.

So did God make Creation from Himself?  Well…if that is the case then Creation must be God, and God completely, because how do you “part” God.  How do you have part of an infinite absolute?  An infinite PERFECT absolute.  Creation cannot be part of God because there is no such thing as partly infinite, partly perfect, partly absolute, partly I AM.

Well…the “logic” goes, He created Creation out of “nothing”.  Hmmm.  Well…how does that work, exactly?  How does one get something from nothing?  By definition nothing is nothing…so it must be wholly contradictory to declare that nothing can be something (and yes, I certainly deny the existence of “empty space”, or “the vacuum”….I can prove it does not actually exist).  You see, elementary mathematics declares that anything times zero is what?  Zero?  Exactly.  And why is that?  Because no matter how many times you multiply nothing by itself, nothing is the only resultant product.  You can have a trillion nothings, and what do you get?

Right.

It is as simple as that.  So, if God makes, but there is no material from which to make, then God makes nothing.  And if God causes, but there is nothing to be caused upon, then there can be no effect.

Well, it comes from God’s imagination, and He just speaks it and there it is, some will say, without a hint of shame.

Okay.  Question.  What exactly comes from God’s imagination?  What exactly is God’s imagination? And where exactly is God’s imagination?  What is God’s forethought?  In an environment that is purely His infinite perfect Self, where exactly does this imagination exist that cognitively conjures up abstract things based upon abstract notions and ideas that do not involve Himself?  From what can these divine ideas possibly come from, if nothing else exists? What does God sense besides Himself that is the onus for an external idea?  What could God possibly be “imagining” within Himself that isn’t Himself, when by definition, within God, as an absolute, there is no rational way to incorporate an imagination, or abstract thought, or plans, or a “future”…in order to predestine those things which do not exist.  In other words, to predestine nothing at all.  And how can God be imagining Creation, and predestining it, when it does not exist?  Again, what is there He is imagining?  If all is Himself, and there is nothing from which to imagine something not God, then how can it be imagined?  If God does not see anything except Himself, how can He imagine anything NOT Himself? If nothing exists except God, then there is nothing else to imagine. 

Yes…clearly we have some serious existential problems with a priori divine imagination.

There is no way around this except to concede contradiction at the root of creation.  The idea of nothing actually being nothing is axiomatic.  There is no way not to concede it and yet formulate a rational argument.

But I digress…as usual.

So, yes…in order for there to even be a an “effect”, the object must possess an innate ability of itself to be caused upon.  To react in a specific way to the external force.  The reaction is wholly a function of its ability to react to the cause.  And of course the root of this is existence, and I submit that since all things must cause and react according to their innate, self-derived ability to do so, their existence is FIRST a product of their own ABILITY to exist.  Meaning, divine Creation must imply a source material which is NOT God, and never was, with which to create. And that material’s existence must be self-derivative FIRST, before God can cause upon it in order to create something from it.  Since there is no creating something from nothing, then the something must exist first, prior to divine creation, and because IT is able to.  God is not its ability to BE…it is its own ability to be at its root.  And what this means then is that the foundation of every object in creation is a material that exists of its own free “will” to exist.  It was not created by God, it has always, eternally existed along side God.  It is uncreated…the material from which Creation is formed.  And again this means that at the root of all objects in creation is an ability to be which is utterly self derivative. 

So even if God causes, the ability to be caused upon belongs to the object…and this contradicts the idea of God as “first cause”; which “orthodoxy” interprets as “something from nothing”; or DIRECT creation.  But this idea on the other hand is much more rational, and submits that the first cause of something’s existence is the something.

Deny this, and all of Creation becomes God (or God becomes Creation).  And the entire paradigm of rational existence and all knowledge of any kind comes crashing down in a spectacular implosion of moral and metaphysical anarchy.

So basically what “free will” boils down to is not the idea that man can do “anything”, but that anything man does is a direct function of his own ability to do it, apart from God.  Whatever he thinks, desires, or does, or anything else, is wholly of himself.  It is free…it is its own cause.  MAN is able to observe his surroundings and determine values for himself concerning them.  MAN is able to conceptualize himself and his life and take actions which are objectively and efficaciously in service to his own life.  Man’s will is thus free in the same way the rest of his body and mind are free; and because there is no functional difference between man’s will and the REST of man.  So the moment man himself ceases to be the root and ultimate cause of his own thought and action, man is no longer man.  Man is nothing more than that which is compelling him from beyond himself.  If man’s will is not free, and free to effect whatever ultimate conclusion upon which he arrives at the end of his life, as a function of his ability to organize his surroundings, rooted in the efficacy of the senses (for there is no “other” without the senses; and without a concept of “other” knowledge cannot exist…think about it; more later), then there is no such thing as man.  He is an illusion. And by definition man can know nothing, least of all God.

(Please note:  For the purposes of this post (and most others on this blog), the term “determinism” or “determine” should be understood as PRE-determinism, according to the accepted metaphysical definition found in neo-reformed theology and its most comprehensive form, Calvinism.  Pre-determinism meaning that the outcome of one’s life is the function of a divine decision made without respect to the one or the one’s actions whatsoever, usually referring to salvation or damnation (but often including ANYTHING whatsoever in service to the doctrine of “God’s sovereignty”; and, further, made before you ever even existed. 

Yeah…trying figuring the logic out on that one.  You were determined before you were.  Hmmm…how does that work exactly?  It hardly seems possible to determine something before it exists.  Because before it exists it is by definition nothing.  So, er…the determined outcome of nothing must equal nothing.  Wait…did I just debunk neo-reformed determinism?  Maybe there is no need for the following post.

Oh…what the hell.  Can’t hurt. )

If man’s will is in service to and a direct function of God—and in this post I will demonstrate that both “in service to” and “a direct function of” are the exact same thing as it pertains to the neo-reformed/Calvinist doctrine of the divine pre-determinism of man’s salvation or damnation– then there is no rational way that it can be qualified as “free” in any honest sense of the word.  Attempts to do so are either deliberately or unwittingly deceptive, and can only be part of a carefully nuanced argument that at its core is logically unworkable; and demands the suspension of disbelief by anyone who lays claim to the reality of their own existence and/or the existence of God (for they are not mutually exclusive in the Creator/Creation construct…meaning one does not exist without the other). Which they must…for existence, being axiomatic, is an unavoidable prerequisite to any argument of any kind.  By definition, if you don’t exist, then neither can your argument.

And, to begin this article, part one, I want to focus on this:  The idea that those who believe in determinism must deny their own existence in order to do so.  And this is precisely the reason why those who accept determinism can never argue from any idea that can ever be consistent with their OWN self-affirmed beliefs.  If you are determined, then you are a perpetual effect.  You, and all you know and do can have nothing to do with independent will; and as such, there is no real you.  And if there is no you, you don’t have an argument to defend.  Everything about you is a forgone conclusion stemming from the absolute of determinism that can have, by definition, no beginning.  Determinism has determined.  Thus, everything is merely an effect.  Will of man can have nothing to do with it.

But even more than that, because determinism is an absolute, will of any kind can have nothing to do with it; that is, the determined outcome of your life, and all you do and know and are.  In other words, if man’s will isn’t free, then God’s will isn’t either.  Determinism is the ONLY force; the beginning and end.  Full stop.  For in this notion of divine determinism, God’s reason for the outcome (or “objective”, of your life) must NOT include anything to do with man or Creation–if it does, then it isn’t determinism; it is based (yes based) on an attribute of man or creation that must happen according to a wholly independent ability of man or Creation to act on its own behalf.  And if this is true then God’s determinism is conditional on something outside himself.  Aaaaaand if this is true, then determinism is based on the free will of man and/or creation to act, and thus, man cannot be determined because arbitrary actions of another are the root of reason for the objective, and the objective could not have been pre-known/pre-determined until the object (man and/or creation)acted FIRST.  And if it is man’s free will which must have acted first, then the objective is inexorably rooted in man’s free choice; it is not determined.  And if the act is a function of an inanimate, unconscious created thing acting according to its own ability to act in this way or that, then the objective is inexorably rooted in arbitrary inanimate action; it is not determined.  And if we claim that neither of these instances can be true in light of God’s absolute sovereignty over Creation and man, but that the objective for man is a function of God’s sovereign and free Will, then that Will, being utterly resistant to any form of object action outside of Itself, can find no basis in man or Creation.  And if that is the case, then God’s reason for setting the objective must be completely arbitrary…that is, a result of His OWN utterly unfettered free and wholly sovereign will.  In other words, God’s rationale for the determined outcome of your life is nothing more than Himself.  Because bereft of any outside influence whatsoever, the only definition for God’s will is GOD.  God’s will can have no other definition.   Which means that any reason for doing anything is predicated on His will, it is predicated on nothing more than HIMSELF. All “why?” questions return to:  God.  All how, when, where, what, and what if questions are likewise the same:  God.  God is the beginning and end of His own Will, and thus, God is the only reason that He does anything at all. (Seems a bit redundant then to throw man into the mix…and oh, it is; which is why human beings are disposable fodder for “doctrine” in the Calvinist/neo-reformed orthodoxy/orthopraxy.)

And if that is the case, then any divine Will effected upon Creation and Man, having nothing to do with either whatsoever, or anything else, must be completely exclusive to Creation and Man, and thus, must be totally arbitrary.  There can BE no reason because God would have to be the reason in this construct.  But God then must be a reason that is wholly exclusive to Man and Creation.  God’s “reason” is utterly removed from man and Creation.

Thus, the reason as it is applied to man and Creation has to be arbitrary because the only way it can be not arbitrary is if there is something in man or Creation that bridges the gap between God and the man and/or other Created object He has determined.  If the reason has nothing to do with the man or object determined whatsoever, then insofar as the man or object is concerned, the reason is again utterly arbitrary.  “God is God”  when applied as a reason to the divinely determined conclusion of an object or man can mean only one thing, again:  there is NO reason.  Because “God is God” is not a reason, it is a metaphysical, existential statement.  It is a metaphysical axiom that can have nothing at all to do with ANYTHING not God.  And thus, this being the deterministic rationale, the rationale is demonstrably false.  There is no reason at all.  The outcome/objective concerning man is arbitrary, and it must thus be set arbitrarily. And if the objective is set for purely arbitrary reasons, then the objective is not determined.  Because if something is determined according to NOTHING (i.e. no relevant preconceived criteria involving the determined object whatsoever), then it cannot be determined because NOTHING cannot determine SOMETHING.   And that is the problem in the Calvinist construct.  They ALWAYS want nothing to somehow equal something.  They want the utter removal of man from the entire process of salvation and existence to somehow equal an outcome that is actually efficacious to man. Via “election” and “predestination” man is both literally condemned for nothing and literally saved from nothing, and yet they still demand that we concede that somehow condemnation and salvation can actually be REAL and somehow can actually apply relevantly to man and his life. They want man to be utterly enslaved to a nature outside his will–which means outside his very SELF—be it the sin nature for the “evil” he “does”, the Holy Spirit for the “good” that he “does”, and yet concede that there can actually be an efficacious “joy” (heavenly pleasure) or “gnashing of teeth”(hellish pain and agony) by THE MAN.  But the man does not exist in anywhere in the entire equation!  So there is no MAN to DO anything or RECEIVE anything.

Behind the slick and intellectual façade, Calvinism, and reformed theology in general, is a logical and metaphysical fraud.  And this is truth:  It cannot possibly be true. 

So, once again, if we argue that man’s conclusion is determined, then God cannot have freely made the choice.   Something must have determined it for Him; either an outside force beyond Him (which must also be determined, by the way, as determinism is an absolute…remember?), or something in man or Creation was a root and undeniable matter upon which God decided to base the outcome of one’s life (meaning the “matter”, whatever it is, had to have happened FIRST, and FREELY)…in which case the outcome is not determined.  It is rooted in the free ability of man and/or Creation to act according to themselves, apart from God.

Crazy-smart and ALWAYS welcome LydiaSellerOfPurple posted this comment today under my last post.  My response was so long, it warranted making the whole exchange a separate post.  In my response, I affirm Lydia’s observation of the confusing and ultimately incoherent “explanations” of Calvinist doctrine; in particular, the seeming concession of “free will”, as exemplified by Wade Burleson in an exchange I had with him on the blog “Wartburg Watch” the other day:

Lydia said:

Argo, I used to read Wade’s blog back in 2006-7 and came to the conclusion he was more antinomian than anything. Also, I think the Calvinist doctrine is pretty much embedded in his family history. Did you ever read about the letter AW Pink wrote his grandfather? (I think it was his grandfather…might have been “great great”)

But as time goes on and you read Calvinists you see they insert what we might call “free will” statements into comments or teaching. And these references negate what their doctrine teaches (or even what they said earlier!) so it gets very confusing. It is like they live in a cognitive dissonance and when you try to flesh it out there is always some wordy confusing explanation that really makes no sense or answers the actual questions.

Which leads me to Calvinism works on paper and from pulpits only. I have come to see this more and more clearly over the last few years. You cannot “live” out Calvinism without it causing tons of problems in the long run. The simple belief that man has no real volition starts to wreck havoc in practical application of beliefs! And then the leaders start to try and explain that you have freedom to sin but not freedom to accept Christ as Savior. It gets very strange. It is like a big black hole where green is red and sky is land.

The sheer confusion inherent in Calvinism makes it look intellectual at first. But if one is serious about it and digs in, it starts to look like institutionalized confusion and chaos.

I have come to think of Calvin as having a personality disorder. I get this from his behavior in life to his writings. He thrived on power, control and keeping people off balance. He did not suffer anyone to disagree with him including his close friends like Castillo whom he eventually banished and ruined.

It is like waking up one day and realizing you were following the dictates of Hitler without realizing it. The man was a creep and he systematized what folks are following today no matter how much they claim otherwise.

Argo said: 

Lydia,

John Immel says that Calvinism appeals to people because it is the most systematized, comprehensive, and organized version of protestant ideas.  While I agree with this, I think there is another reason…and it is the reason I find the doctrine has mass appeal for both smart and average-thinkers.  It is simply what you pointed out already in your comment:  the confusion.   Smart people enjoy yet one more chance to use their cognitive acumen to  “be in the know”, and dumb people like feeling smart by claiming a kindred spirit with “the know”.  And the “know” is even that much better when it is the functional difference between being on a path to heaven and the wide road to hell.  Damnation and life.  More importantly, YOUR life, and and the much deserved damnation for all the people you hate:  liberals, homosexuals, feminists, Obama, deists, Arminians and other assorted heretics, Catholics, atheists, MSNBC, R-Rated movie watchers, daters not courters, those who won’t serve on the UCCC (Urinal Cake Cleaning Committee), boys with long hair, and public school teachers…among others.

And because the theology is SO systematic…well, it just sounds so doggone intellectual.

Funny how it stops sounding intellectual and just sounds INSANE once you are finally able to apply this one simple truth to it:  EVERYTHING in Calvin’s doctrine…and I do mean EVERYTHING is designed to remove YOU from YOU.  To put YOU inexorably beyond TRUTH; beyond God, beyond salvation…even beyond damnation.  If you are anywhere around, even in hell, you are “doing it wrong”.

I think people just really, really enjoy believing they know something that other “ordinary” people don’t.  They LOVE to be the ones who have “truth”; who reeeeally understand.  They love being the ones who reeeeally know that up is down and down is up and black is white.  I think they feel empowered by this in some way…like they have some kind of uniqueness that impresses themselves, and gives them a mandate to somehow dictate the terms of reality for everyone else.

Also…now that I think about it (again), I think this is why so many scientists, particularly physicists, I have known are so doggone pretentious…possessing a sense of innate haughtiness which taints their persona’s, and they talk to the “regular” folks almost in something akin to parental tones.  They are just so giddy at the fact that they somehow understand the master and the strings; the “language” of the cosmos, which is hidden from the lesser minds.

So…like you said.  Confusing.  With confusing concepts and words that have just enough of a ring of truth and spoken with just enough “authority”, and systematic just enough..yes, this combination takes people right where they are dying to go.  To the place where they are special and smarter than everyone else who foolishly think that what they see is actually what is real.  And the really ironic part is that this kind of thinking is actually accomplished with doctrines like “total depravity”.  Have you noticed the level of arrogance displayed by those adhering to reformed doctrine?  They speak to you like you are a child; or worse, rebuke your “heresy” or block you from their blogs altogether.  As if somehow depravity doesn’t apply to them…as if, for some reason THEY are exempt from the depravity of the mind, and that through the mine-laden obstacle course of TULIP they have come out the other side with understanding.  Which, of course, is completely contradictory to their doctrine, which categorically declares that men can know nothing at all. There is no human agency capable of understanding GOOD; which is to say TRUTH.

But at the end of the day, for all of their pomp and circumstance, they are really third-rate thinkers.  The fact that someone as intelligent as Stephen Hawking or Leon Lederman–both Nobel Prize winners–cannot see the inherent logical fallacies in scientific determinism astounds me.  The fact that they cannot understand that you simply cannot claim that the TRUTH of things is this: TRUTH cannot be known, by definition, since all of reality is simply an EFFECT.

Scientific determinism makes every mathematical equation ever devised utterly moot before it leaves the gate.  All these great equations they use to “prove” their deterministic ideas are dead on arrival based on their OWN assumptions that everything is determined by natural law.

But if this is the case–that natural law “governs” (determines)–you cannot describe the cause and effect of reality because everything you observe is mutually exclusive to the CAUSE.  That is, the CAUSE can never be known because everything, including man’s very thoughts have already been determined FOR him.  If your reality–everything that ever is or was–is merely the effect, what is the cause?  They pretend to know, but by their OWN tacit admission understanding is IMPOSSIBLE.  They CANNOT know the cause.  And if they cannot know the cause, they cannot know that we are all determined.  If you don’t know what is determining, then you can’t claim determinism.  It just doesn’t work.  And you can’t use math to determine the cause, because math, by definition is part of everything that is ALREADY determined.  Mathematical proofs and physical laws are not cause, they are EFFECT.

It is a logic that doubles back on itself and destroys its own assumptions.

Also, I am shocked that they cannot understand that determinism is an absolute.  That is,  if everything is determined, then that which determines must ALSO be determined. You can NEVER arrive at any kind of cause…there is no such thing as something being determined by that which is arbitrary.  You cannot ever make the equation ARBITRARY + DETERMINISM = DETERMINISM  work unless you make ARBITRARY equal to zero.  And that leaves you with what?  Determinism.  Going back as far as the eye can see.

And the fact that someone as “wise” as RC Sproul cannot see the impossibility of a concept like “God controls every molecule” makes me crazy.  The fact that he cannot see that this makes everything GOD (according to Argo’s Universal Truth #7:  Anything which precedes directly from an absolute is the absolute), and utterly eradicates any line between God and Creation and ALSO makes man’s ability to then understand anything at all totally impossible, because man cannot EXIST in this construct…well, let’s just say I remain unimpressed with the turning wheels behind their eyes.  They could use some grease.

And the fact that Wade Burleson can say with a straight face and honestly believe he speaks the truth that it is his WILL by which he chooses Christ but that that his will is utterly UNABLE to resist God’s calling reveals just how little these men truly understand the world they pretend they can bring good to with such nonsense.  The fact that they won’t or can’t see the glaring rational larceny in such a view is staggering.  And they get PAID to preach ideas that are wholly irreconcilable with what can be true.  A will that is ALWAYS inexorably bound by something outside of it is NOT FREE.  If God is absolute, and our will is ultimately subject to HIS will, then what does Argo’s Universal Truth #7 say?

“Anything which proceeds directly from an absolute IS the absolute”.

If our salvation proceeds directly from God’s will, then our will plays NO part in the salvation process, period.  Further, our will MUST BE the exact same thing as God’s will, for we cannot function according to our will because his grace is irresistible…so by definition His will absolutely trumps our will.  We become God.

How hard is that to understand?  Really…you are going to nuance your argument to that extent…to blasphemy?  You need to go there, to the place where contradiction is the root of God?  That’s what the truth is now?  Lies?  Whether intentional or as a product of your elementary reason.  This is what Christianity is?  Irrational thinking?

Where is truth then?  Nowhere.  It is gone.

But see, this is the whole idea of irresistible grace and limited atonement.  Oh, sure…Calvinists have no problem conceding free will.  They’ll do it all day long.  Why?  Because, as always, they apply irrational, mystic, false logic to the definition.  They concede man’s will, but the ULTIMATE decision belongs to God.  In other words, man’s will profits him exactly zero.  It is ALL up to God’s arbitrary graces.  In the words of Wade Burleson “God is not obligated to save us”.

What I believe he is saying here is that whether you WILL Christ or not is irrelevant, because God gets the final say, and He is not obligated (I disagree completely with this; once Christ was sacrificed, indeed, He had obligated Himself to the salvation of those who would believe, otherwise He makes Himself a hypocrite).  THAT is the essence of limited atonement.  Regardless of what human will desires, God is going to choose who gets saved.  You can accept Christ all day long, but it means nothing to God.  YOUR will means nothing to Him.  You are saved by His will only.  And this of course means that your will isn’t free, because it amounts to nothing in the end.  Your life concludes where it concludes based on God’s will only.  YOU have nothing to do with it.  Even your belief in Jesus is meaningless.

Evil philosophy.

Of course, the REALLY wicked part of this is that it makes Jesus ultimately irrelevant; His sacrifice, pointless.  If believing in Jesus isn’t efficacious to salvation, but the sacrifice is trumped by God’s predetermined will, then of what use is the sacrifice?  It is of no use.  It means nothing.  God is going to save who God is going to save.  You were saved, not by believing in Jesus, but by God’s arbitrary will.  By definition if God is not going to save you based on your faith in Christ (choosing to believe), then belief in Christ cannot POSSIBLY MATTER.  Which means that Christ’s sacrifice cannot POSSIBLY MATTER.  It is neither here nor there. Believe if you want by your “will”.  It matters not to God.  God’s criteria is…well, who the heck knows?  Even HE cannot know.  It can only be utterly arbitrary. He cannot have a reason beyond Himself, and since He is an absolute, HE, alone, cannot have a set value…He is an INFINITE self.  ANY reason He has then can only equal God.  And as far as Creation is concerned, the functional value of that is ZERO.

Without real relationship, God can have NO reason for doing ANYTHING in Creation.  Because He is what He is…and if that is His criteria for His will–Himself–then the applicable value of Him applied to anything NOT him is nothing.

I have said all along that Christ does NOT make election possible, but election makes Christ MOOT.  And it does.

And so, here we are with Wade.  Saying one thing, but what he says isn’t really what he is saying (incidentally, this was the whole beef people had with me on Wartburt…claiming that I was telling them “that they believed what they said they didnt”; all I was doing is telling them that what they were saying wasn’t really what was being said).  He concedes certain things because the gymnastics of semantics, along with his “authority” as a “called” (gnostic) minister, allows him to twist reason in service to his “sound doctrine”.  I believe this is what is happening.  I’m not accusing him of willfully doing this…really, I think most of these guys are just not that deep.  They don’t seem to posses the intellectual fortitude to follow their ideas to the places they must reasonably go.  Or they don’t possess the will. Which makes sense, since they don’t believe their will effects much in the grand scheme.

But God only excuses ignorance so far.  After a while, as a teacher, you are supposed to know.  If you don’t, you are at best incompetent, and at worst a liar.

Okay…whew.  That was long.

I’m going to make this a post, LOL

I have been going round and round with self-proclaimed Calvinsts on the Wartburg Watch.  One of which is–or…er might be?– Wade Burleson, the E-pastor for Wartburg’s E-church.  I qualify this with a “might be?” because I have yet to pin Wade down…his ability to subterfuge language is amazing.  He knows all the subtle ways to nuance his argument so that his doctrines are difficult to define objectively.  On one hand, he claims he believes in free will, but then on the other hand seems to defend the idea of God needing to compel that will to act…which of course is NOT free will.  The point is that I do not want to call Wade a “Calvinist” in the strict sense, but his ideas are definitely of Calvin, most apparent, the idea of Pervasive Depravity.  He and some other posters on Wartburg enjoy lauding the observable manifestations of “good” and “grace” they see in their churches, for following the very doctrines which I have shown to be wholly antithetical to human life.  Also, doctrines that I believe are categorically evil.

The following was my response to the idea of perceived “good” trumping the logical conclusions of the doctrine, and the metaphysical assumptions the doctrine lays as its indefatigable  foundation.  I have added some notes in italics for clarification:

Why Calvinists MUST Reject Calvinism, Regardless of Any “Good” or “Grace” They Perceive

For years and years I felt just like JeffS (one of the self-described Calvinist posters on Wartburg). I had heard some of the objections, but I easily brushed them aside because of all the “grace” I experienced and saw in the church. Then I saw how quickly the very same doctrines of “grace” could be used to scourge those who intended to question the “divinely appointed leadership”. Then the ugly side of Calvinism roared to the surface, and I realized from then on that doctrine was EVERYTHING. All actions are rooted in assumptions. And the more I studied and thought the more I realized that the MEN leading the church had not changed. The doctrines they believed had not changed. It was merely that the circumstances were such that only the “good” side of Calvinism was apparent (and because of my own evil decision to only see what I wanted to see). It was only when people in the church began to demand justice based on their OWN observations and convictions, rooted in the belief that they held some inherent self-worth that demanded it when I saw how, according to the same doctrine that had been preached for years, this could not possibly be true. Man has NO right to demand justice from appointed “elders in the stead”.

So, someone is wrong here. Me or Wade. Anon 1 (a highly thoughtful and very intelligent commenter who also rejects the Calvinist construct) or Jeff S. The doctrine says what it says, so someone is not understanding it properly.

I submit that what we EXPERIENCE is irrelevant. It is the assumptions that drive the teachings, the actions, that matters.

So, either Calvinist doctrine leads where it leads, and is rooted in metaphysical beliefs about man that are what they are, or it does not. And IF the doctrines are antithetical to human life, then we are obligated to reject them. What we experience is beside the point! Perceived “good” is beside the point! Objective good is all that matters! If the doctrine is evil, then how can we EVER stand before God and make excuses for why we “did not want to change”. If we say “because I felt, or I experienced”…we have made a mockery of morality. We have insulted God. We have decided that WE are in a position to declare what ideas are good and what ideas are evil based purely on our subjective experiential opinions. We have traded reason for madness.

And God will call you a hypocrite for violating you OWN doctrinal beliefs.