Adam and Eve

Does God Love All Persons? Or Does He Hate Most?

Published by Papa Giorgio

As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? (Ezek. 33:11, NLT)

In my small group conversation was just getting off the ground regarding this topic, of God’s love. I had, providentially, just listed to this video [below] and was going to adopt this tact into my response. As I was just gonna get going another brother in Christ came in and conversation changed. So I followed up with the ppl in the original short discussion:

  • Like Paul Harvey would say, “Here is the rest of the story.” Frank Turek notes the view that I said was jaundiced in group…. that the splitting of God’s will creates an “infinite application of God’s justice,” but a “finite application of His love.” It bifurcates God in a way the Bible does not. God is a Whole. (5 minutes):

If God Wants All Saved, Why Isn’t Everyone Saved?

(Above Video, description) Can anyone truly produce good works apart from Christ, or even choose to submit to God on their own? A Calvinist questions Frank on predestination, human freedom, and whether we are capable or incapable of choosing God. Join the conversation and share where you land in the comments!

Here is more to connect the idea above.

(Below Video description) Does God want to save all men? Yes He does! The Calvinists are wrong.

In the short conversation, Psalm 5:5 was mentioned, which reads:

  • The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You hate all workers of iniquity. (NKJV)

Here, we have a picture, not of where man begins, but where sin’s grip will take him if he continues in rebellion against God. (As an aside, I like Bible Hub’s dealing with this sticky issue) I had a discussion of this verse on my Facebook, but cannot find it unfortunately. So I will respond to the ideas herein. The first few clips are showing how reading Scripture without the additional lenses of a 16th century philosophy can bring out the beauty, assurance in God, and the meaning to the audience David intended:

Prayer regarding enemies (5:4–12). The psalmist next complains to God about his enemies—especially their destructive speech which consists of lies and flattery. He urges God to indict them and let them experience the consequences of their destructive behavior. He also asks God to get them away from him. The psalmist turns from God’s enemies to those who seek God’s protection. For these, the psalmist asks protection, joy, a sense of great security.

Dana Gould, Psalms 1-50, Shepherd’s Notes (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 1999), 25.

The assurance of being heard is now won by the petitioner from the fact that the wicked are not allowed to appear before Yahweh, whereas he himself, the petitioner, has access to the sanctuary

Hans-Joachim Kraus, A Continental Commentary: Psalms 1–59 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 155.

Stanza 2 focuses on the accusers, but in the form of praise for God’s judgment of the wicked. The foes are described (vv. 4–6, 9–10) [Enemies]. With mouth and tongue they destroy. They are boastful and speak lies; they are bloodthirsty and deceitful (vv. 5–6). Such persons cannot stand in God’s sight; for God, such behavior must be abhorrent (v. 6). The implication is that the LORD will never permit the wicked access to the sanctuary, to which the psalmist now seeks entry.

James H. Waltner, Psalms, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottdale, PA; Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2006), 50.

Verses 4–6: David distances himself from his enemies

Now he is sure that God is hearing him, David’s thoughts of his enemies are different from what they were in Psalm 3. Then he was thinking of the strength of their numbers (3:1), now he is thinking of the weakness of their position before God. God cannot dwell with them because they are wicked and God takes no pleasure in evil (v. 4) in fact he hates such (v. 5). Since God is not with them, they will not stand. When he appears among them it will not be to prosper but to destroy them.

For God is just, and their charges against David have no basis in fact but are lies (v. 6). Absalom and his party were acting against him out of sheer deceit and cruelty; they are bloodthirsty and deceitful men. This is the truth behind Absalom and his campaign. It is sufficient ground for David to believe they will not succeed and that he will return, as he goes on to say.

Eric Lane, Psalms 1-89: The Lord Saves, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2006), 42.

The first response is via Calvinism Answered Verse By Verse and Subject by Subject. Here is there response to this idea:

How do non-Calvinists deal with certain Bible verses which show that God hates certain people?

  • Psalm 5:5: “The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity.”
  • Psalm 7:11: “God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.”
  • Psalm 26:5: “I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.”
  • Malachi 1:3: “But I have hated Esau [referencing Edom], and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.”

It is answered in two ways. In some instances, the word “hate” just reflects preference, such as Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” However, that may not be a suitable understanding for all occurrences, such as Malachi 1:3, in which God said that He is “indignant forever” with the Edomites, regarding their betrayal of Israel during the Babylonian captivity. So, how can a God who “is love” (1st John 4:8, 10) hate anyone? It’s not that He wants to, or that He needed to create people to hate. God’s wrath is conditional. Evil distorts God’s perfect ways, and for those who do commit evil, God would rather have it that they turn back to Him, so that He may show them mercy, than to have to exercise judgment upon them.

Micah 7:18: “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.”

So, although God may declare that He hates a particular sinner, that does not preclude His longing to see restoration through repentance. One example is that of wicked King Ahab, when God was delighted to see his repentance, and in turn, relented from His intentions of judging him: “‘Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son’s days.’” (1st Kings 21:29)

To further illustrate, I might say: “I hate people who tailgate on the highway and drive recklessly,” or I might say, “I hate people who don’t flush the toilet when they’re done.” This doesn’t mean that I have arbitrarily thrown names into a hat, and chosen to unconditionally hate them for no reason whatsoever. Rather, it means that my disapproval of them is based upon their free will choice to commit an act which I disapprove of. This is what God is expressing at verses like Psalm 5:5, Psalm 7:11, etc., as He is defining a certain class of people who have freely chosen to enter that class, by freely choosing to sin. It’s somewhat similar to when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a desire for his children to be judged, “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Make no mistake, God still does judge people. However, He judges them for the “content of their character,” so to speak, as displayed by the type of actions that they chose to engage in. (In other words, He doesn’t judge them on arbitrary things, such as skin color, or whether or not He unconditionally picked their name out of a hat from eternity, and arbitrarily decided to hate them for no other reason than that their name was selected.) God looks to the heart, and judges people accordingly: “‘I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.’” (Jeremiah 17:10)

Of course Leighton Flowers deals with this. I will clip his longer video, but my clip is still long mind you. He is essentially reading from his own article: “Does God Love or Hate His Enemies?” Here is the “truncated” version:

In a favored site I like this comment:

  • The wages of sin is death, but it is not God’s pleasure to see the death of anyone. However, anyone who hates Him and refuses to return, will see death. In every man-made government the penalty for high treason is death; it is no different in the Kingdom of God.

The whole thread is worth a read — it includes many from varying theological assumptions. (This resource was mentioned, click to enlarge)

I wish to note as well, that Calvin’s Institutes is a work I do not like all that much. However, I hold his commentary on a higher level because he withholds much of the Augustinian influence at bay, so-to-speak. Here is his commentary on verses 4-6 of Psalm 5:

Verses 4-6

  • 4 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness; evil shall not dwell Smith thee. 5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight; thou hatest all that commit iniquity. 6 Thou shalt destroy them that speak falsehood; Jehovah will abhor the blood-thirsty 9 and deceitful man.

Here David makes the malice and wickedness of his enemies an argument to enforce his prayer for the divine favor towards him. The language is indeed abrupt, as the saints in prayer will often stammer; but this stammering is more acceptable to God than all the figures of rhetoric, be they ever so fine and glittering. Besides, the great object which David has in view, is to show, that since the cruelty and treachery of his enemies had reached their utmost height, it was impossible but that God would soon arrest them in their course. His reasoning is grounded upon the nature of God. Since righteousness and upright dealing are pleasing to him, David, from this, concludes that he will take vengeance on all the unjust and wicked. And how is it possible for them to escape from his hand unpunished, seeing he is the judge of the world? The passage is worthy of our most special attention. For we know how greatly we are discouraged by the unbounded insolence of the wicked. If God does not immediately restrain it, we are either stupified and dismayed, or cast down into despair. But David, from this, rather finds matter of encouragement and confidence. The greater the lawlessness with which his enemies proceeded against him, the more earnestly did he supplicate preservation from God, whose office it is to destroy all the wicked, because he hates all wickedness. Let all the godly, therefore, learn, as often as they have to contend against violence, deceit, and injustice, to raise their thoughts to God in order to encourage themselves in the certain hope of deliverance, according as Paul also exhorts them in 2 Thessalonians 1:5, “Which is,” says he, “a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled, rest with us.” And assuredly he would not be the judge of the world if there were not laid up in store with him a recompense for all the ungodly. One use, then, which may be made of this doctrine is this, – when we see the wicked indulging themselves in their lusts, and when, in consequence, doubts steal into our minds as to whether God takes any care of us, we should learn to satisfy ourselves with the consideration that God, who hates and abhors all iniquity, will not permit them to pass unpunished, and although he bear with them for a time, he will at length ascend into the judgment-seat, and show himself an avenger, as he is the protector and defender of his people. 10 Again, we may infer from this passage the common doctrine, that God, although he works by Satan and by the ungodly, and makes use of their malice for executing his judgments, is not, on this account, the author of sin, nor is pleased with it because the end which he purposes is always righteous; and he justly condemns and punishes those who, by his mysterious providence, are driven whithersoever he pleases.

In the 4th verse some take ra, in the masculine gender, for a wicked man; but I understand it rather of wickedness itself David declares simply, that there is no agreement between God and unrighteousness. He immediately after proceeds to speak of the men themselves, saying, the foolish shall not stand in thy sight; and it is a very just inference from this, that iniquity its hateful to God, and that, therefore, he will execute just punishment upon all the wicked. He calls those fools, according to a frequent use of the term in Scripture, who, impelled by blind passion, rush headlong into sin. Nothing is more foolish, than for the ungodly to cast away the fear of God, and suffer the desire of doing mischief to be their ruling principle; yea, there is no madness worse than the contempt of God, under the influence of which men pervert all right. David sets this truth before himself for his own comfort; but we also may draw from it doctrine very useful in training us to the fear of God; for the Holy Spirit, by declaring God to be the avenger of wickedness, puts a bridle upon us, to restrain us from committing sin, in the vain hope of escaping with impunity.

Some INSPIRING PHILOSOPHY YouTube Shorts:

In the debate Dr. Turek mentions in the YouTube Short to the right, his memory was a bit off [graphic at the bottom with the corrected reference], however, he is still correct… as many 5-pointers mention God not allowing Adam and Eve to sin, but actually causing it. See my two posts:

  1. Is God the “devil” Behind Satan? | Sovereign Puppeteer
  2. RC Sproul and Adams Fall | Calvinist Obfuscations

In a dealing with Psalm 5:5-6, Dr. Eitan Bar (co-founder of one of my go-to Jewish ministries, ONE FOR ISRAEL — although he is no longer affiliated with them. Which I kind of agree with – he rejects an eternal punishment in hell as well as the penal substitutionary theory.)

But Doesn’t God Hate Sinners?

You hate all who do wrong. – Psalm 5:5

Marco from Reading, Pennsylvania, wrote to ask pastor John Piper: “Pastor John, what do you make of the saying, ‘God loves the sinner, but hates the sin?’” John Piper’s answer included a quotation of Psalm 5:5 as well as the following statement:

It is just not true to give the impression that God doesn’t hate sinners by saying, ‘he loves the sinner and hates the sin.’ He does hate sinners. – John Piper

Likewise, pastor Mark Driscoll preached to his congregation the same motif:

The Bible speaks of God not just hating sin but sinners… Psalm 5:5, “You,” speaking of God, “hate all evildoers.” God doesn’t just hate what you do. He hates who you are! – Mark Driscoll

In the same way, Reformed Baptist pastor David Platt wrote:

Does God hate sinners? Listen closely to Psalm 5:5-6: “The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; You hate all who do wrong.“ – David Platt

The ECT’s (Eternal Conscious Torment) logic in quoting Psalm 5:5-6 goes something like this:

  1. Those who sin are sinners.
  2. Everyone sins.
  3. God hates sinners.
  4. God must separate Himself from sinners.
  5. Therefore, God hates everyone and must condemn all to hellfire.

Practically speaking, fundamentalist preachers believe that every cute newborn, every sweet toddler, and every child playing in your neighborhood’s park—are all sinners condemned to hellfire as God hates them.

A Ronnie Rogers Break (SOURCE):

Once we dismiss the pleasantries of Calvinism, the only reason some are in heaven and some are in hell is because it pleased God for them to be there. Notwithstanding the weak and misleading arguments to the contrary by many Calvinists, I maintain all consistent Calvinists inevitably believe in double predestination. They either believe God actively predestined some to hell, as Calvin does, or he did so by choosing not to offer what would have surely delivered them from hell to heaven, which is unconditional election and selective regeneration. Calvin refers to this cold, inescapable reality as the product of God’s wish, pleasure, and counsel.*

* John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), vol. 2, bk. 3, chap. 21, sec. 7, pg. 210.

On the surface, Psalm 5 seems to contradict verses like John 3:16, which states, “For God so loved the world.” In “World,” John speaks about the people in it, not the waters and soil. John essentially says, “For God so loved the sinners.”

So, is there a conflict between Psalm 5 and John 3:16?

Psalm 5:5

Biblical Hebrew has a limited vocabulary, so many Hebrew words carry a broad range of meanings, varying according to context. Moreover, the meanings of words often evolve over time.

To fully grasp the message of Psalm 5:5, it’s crucial first to understand its context. Hebraist scholar Mitchell Dahood interprets Psalm 5 as a “repudiation of false gods when one was accused of idolatry.” In a similar vein, VanGemeren, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Semitic Languages, views Psalm 5 as God’s self-distinction from other deities, asserting that “whereas other religions brought together good and evil at the level of the gods, God had revealed that evil exists apart from him.”

Thus, with this context in mind, more accurate than ‘God hates everyone’ will be to conclude that God hates idol worshippers. Remember, the pagans around ancient Israel would not only steal office pens and lie about how lovely you looked in your new evening dress tonight; they would burn their babies in the fire as a sacrifice for their idols. The pagans were cruel and evil. So, it is they, in this context, that God hates.

But this isn’t even the main problem with how Psalm 5:5-6 is being misused.

The Biblical Meaning of “Hate”

Much like “love,” the English word “hate” has become heavily loaded with strong emotional connotations in contemporary language. “Hate,” often used to express extremely strong emotions, is usually associated with images of violence, wrath, death, and anger. In biblical Hebrew, however, “hate” means something else altogether.

Regrettably, preachers often misinterpret ancient Hebrew (and Greek) terms when reading a translation in their native languages, applying modern perspectives and interpretations. This misinterpretation can occur accidentally, but at times, it might also stem from a desire to support a pre-existing theological agenda.

SANE = To avoid, reject, and ignore

The Hebrew word translated to “hate” is SANE. The Hebrew Bible frequently uses SANE as a synonym for ‘reject,’ ‘avoid,’ ‘deny,’ or ‘ignore.’ If you don’t trust my Hebrew skills as a native Hebrew speaker, then allow me to point you over to the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible, where ‘SANE ’ is explained as something one avoids:

The pictograph is a picture of a thorn, then is a picture of seed. Combined, these mean “thorn seed.” The thorn, (the seed of a plant with small sharp points) causes one to turn in directions to avoid them.

Hate as reject: In Romans 9:10-13, Paul clearly uses “hate” in a matter of election. God elected Jacob yet rejected (SANE/hated) Esau. “Esau I have hated” is not about God wishing for Esau a violent and painful death but about God rejecting Esau and electing Jacob instead.

Thus, biblically speaking, to hate someone is to reject or avoid them—to deny your attention, election, intimacy, or blessings from them. If a woman hates her husband, she turns indifferent, pushes him away, avoids him, and leaves him. On the other hand, if she still cares for him — loves him — she will get angry and fight loudly and emotionally. You go to battle over the things you cherish most but avoid associating with those you hate and are apathetic about.

Hate as ignore/avoid: Paul’s understanding of “hate” is also why Paul says, “No one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body.” (Ephesians 5:29). We all know people who emotionally hate their body or parts of it. I emotionally hated mine when I was a fat kid with zits on my face. But as we just established, biblical hate is not about emotions or feelings of detestation. Paul was saying that no one ignores their body. We indeed drink water when we are thirsty and don’t avoid going to the toilet when our body tells us to (even if emotionally we “hate” ourselves).

The understanding that to ‘hate’ means to reject, ignore, or avoid is the only way the words of Jesus would make any sense:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. – Luke 14:26

Love would not demand that you “hate” (in the modern emotional sense of the word) others or your family because that would contradict Jesus’ commandment to love even our enemies. So clearly, to “hate” your family must mean we have to choose him over them, not loathe and despise them.

As a Jew, I had to experience Luke 14:26 when my Jewish mother first found out I believed in Jesus. When she demanded I stop believing and reject Jesus, I had to reject her plea, choosing Christ instead.

In the same way, we should read Psalm 5:5-6. God rejects the evildoers—the idols and those who worship them. God’s rejection of idols stems from their influence in leading Israel to commit heinous acts, such as the burning of their children.

To conclude, from a biblical standpoint, when you reject, avoid, or ignore someone, you SANE (“hate”) them. Therefore, God may “hate” in the sense of withdrawing blessings and protection from people, rejecting their appeals, or avoiding them. However, God loves even the greatest of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

RC Sproul and Adams Fall | Calvinist Obfuscations

Published by Papa Giorgio

(There are only two types of Calvinists/”Reformed” models: consistent and inconsistent. Double predestination is consistent.) In the video that follows these two quotes, you will see the quote by John Calvin… but I wanted to put an old quote by RC Sproul — who — apparently hasn’t read John Calvin:

DO YOU SCHOLAR MUCH RC?

  • Herein lies the problem. Before a person can commit an act of sin he must first have a desire to perform that act. The Bible tells us that evil actions flow from evil desires. But the presence of an evil desire is already sin. We sin because we are sinners. We were born with a sin nature. We are fallen creatures. But Adam and Eve were not created fallen. They had no sin nature. They were good creatures with a free will. Yet they chose to sin. Why ? I don’t know. Nor have I found anyone yet who does know.

RC Sproul, Chosen By God (Wheaton, IL: Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers, 1986), 30-31

  • “God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at His own pleasure arranged it … Though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is in themselves … Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7; 3.23.8

What if Calvin was more extreme than most Calvinists today? In this clip, Austin Fischer and Leighton Flowers unpack the forgotten (or ignored) parts of Calvin’s own words—especially around God ordaining the Fall and reprobation. If you’ve ever been told Calvinism is misrepresented, this is the clip you need to see.

MORE:

  • “Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God.”1
  • “Surely, if God had not willed the fall, He could, and no doubt would, have prevented it; but He did not prevent it: ergo He willed it. And if He willed it, He certainly decreed it”2
  • “Plainly it was God’s will that sin should enter this world, otherwise it would not have entered, for nothing happens except what God has eternally decreed. Moreover, there was more than a simple permission, for God only permits things that fulfill His purpose.”3
  • “Not only did God have a perfect foreknowledge of the outcome of Adam’s trial; not only did His omniscient eye see Adam eating of the forbidden fruit, but He decreed beforehand that he should do so.”4
  • “Also, Calvinists often affirm that Adam was free before the Fall. But again, I always speak of freedom relative to God, and from this perspective, I would say that Adam had no freedom whatsoever even before the Fall. To be “free” from sin is irrelevant. The issue is whether Adam was free from God to choose to remain free from sin – he was not. In addition, I would not say that God permitted Adam to fall, but that God caused it.”5

1 Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 234

2 Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, Ch. II, Sec. II, Par. 4 (Link)

3 A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 162

4 A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, Appendix II, The Case of Adam, p. 283

5 Vicent Cheung, The Author of Sin (WEBSITE), last accessed 7/29/2025.

In an excellent post, Robin Phillips explains the reasoning behind the “Reformers” positing WHY God HAD TO make mankind fall:

…. As already mentioned, this theory says that God hates evil so much that He must ensure its eternal perpetuation, for if in a trillion years from now there was even a millisecond of time in which God didn’t have a group of sinners to be angry at, then this would be tragic as one whole part of His character (justice) would be unable to be expressed.

As Douglas Wilson once put it on his blog,

In a world without sin, two of God’s most glorious attributes—His justice and His mercy—would go undisplayed. This, obviously, would be horrible … In a world without sin and evil, at least two attributes of God would have gone unrevealed and unmanifested, those attributes being wrath and mercy. Since this is obviously intolerable, God determined to direct our affairs the way that He did.

Jonathan Edwards expressed a similar idea when he wrote:

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all … Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired … So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.

The same notion is present in the works of Saint Augustine:

…if all had remained condemned to the punishment entailed by just condemnation, then God’s merciful grace would not have been seen at work in anyone, on the other hand, if all had been transferred from darkness to light, the truth of God’s vengeance would not have been made evident. —City of God 21.11

[….]

The problem with Calvinism is that its quest for rationalistic clarity does away with this necessary mystery. Calvinism asserts that evil exists because God wants it to be there—end of story. As Calvin put it in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “I say with Augustine that the Lord has created those who, as He certainly foreknew, were to go to destruction, and He did so because He so willed,” while later Calvin extends this idea to its consistent corollary, which is that “man by the righteous impulsion of God does that which is unlawful.” In other words, according to Calvin, the sinner sins because God impels him to do so.

Calvin picked up on this same theme later when he wrote that:

[M]an falls, the Providence of God so ordaining …that by the will of God all the sons of Adam fell into the state of wretchedness in which they are now involved … Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it.

God, in His own pleasure, arranged evil?

These are difficult words, especially since they appear to directly implicate God in all the wickedness of the world. It easily solves the problem of evil, but does so at the expense of other scriptural teaching. For example, Psalm 5:5. In the Septuagint—the Old Testament text quoted by the New Testament writers and the canonical text of the ancient Church—Psalms 5:4 reads “For You are not a God who wills (thelon) lawlessness (anomian).”

In fairness to Calvin, he was able to maintain some degree of dialectical balance that would be lacking in his followers. That is why my critique of Calvinism recognizes that Calvinism is larger than simply the teachings of John Calvin. This was impressed upon me when our former church put on a family camp and invited R.C. Sproul, Jr. to speak. The younger Sproul has taken Calvin’s teachings to such an extreme, going even further than his father—let alone Calvin himself. For example, Sproul took particular delight in describing to us in detail how God desired sin to come about, and how God forced the devil to sin like a man operating a remote control. In his book Almighty Over All, Sproul expands on this point, writing, “I am suggesting that he [God] created sin … Where, I must ask, does the law of God forbid the creation of evil? I would suggest that it just isn’t there.”

This leads to what I consider to be a trivialization of evil.

R.C. Sproul, Jr. posted a Facebook status saying that since God is sovereign, even those things which are not as they ought to be really are just as things ought to be. He went on to say that there are ultimately no “bad” things, since God is completely sovereign. Now if all he means is that even bad things work out ultimately for good, then I have no problem. But there is a great difference between saying, on the one hand, that God works good out of evil, and on the other hand, saying that that since God is the author of all things, evil isn’t really bad (or that everything which happens ought to be).

If, as Sproul maintains, God is the author of evil, then we would have to say that He fosters wickedness in people’s hearts. But if so, then God is sinful by the Biblical definitions of sin and evil. Consider that in the Proverbs, the ones who incite and tempt to evil (like the fool’s friends or the prostitute) are as morally guilty as the simple man who falls prey to those temptations. James says that God does not tempt us, but if God is the author of evil then He is doing a lot more than merely tempting us: He is fostering the evil in our hearts and inciting us to sin.

Under this scheme, the words “God is good” are no longer intelligible, as God is violating His own self-revelation of what constitutes “goodness.” Consequently, if God really is the energizing principle behind both the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, then we would have to conclude that the Biblical categories used to describe God are ultimately non-descriptive. Moreover, it would make a mockery of the antithesis that we find throughout the war-Psalms, if God is the causal force behind both sides.

Moreover, if God is the author of evil, then we would have to conclude that evil is just as much an intrinsic part of God’s character as His goodness. But in that case, we are left without a standard for distinguishing between good and evil. Using God’s character as the standard would then be akin to using a tape measure on which inches and centimeters are all mixed up. God can only be the standard for distinguishing between good and evil if the former and not the latter is fundamental to His character. …

I will finish the thought I have…

GOD NEEDED TO CREATE MAN TO BE WHOLE

… according to Calvinism. A theological “heresy” in my mind at least.

 

Is God the “devil” Behind Satan? | Sovereign Puppeteer (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I sent a friend the video of Dr. Theodore Zachariades stating that God wills [causes, not just permits] a man to be unfaithful to his wife.

  • God works all things after the Council of His will. Even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so! And when He wants to, he orders those to commit adultery when he wants to! (Video)

My friend dismissed this person as a hyper-Calvinist. But as the video below notes, using his definition of a “hyper Calvinist,” A.W. Pink, John Piper, Jeff Durbin, James White, and many-many more, would thus be considered the same. Because of the age restriction, the video must be watch on YouTube, link in pic.

When I asked him: “Question RW, is Piper, Calvin, White and Durbin hyper-Calvinists?” He simply replied “Fishing Bait.” But this is an interesting phenomena… and after decades of encountering Mormons and J-Dubs, the disconnect is the same. I get links and not actualizing on statements made when challenged. When shown a person who follows to the end the logical conclusion of theistic determinism found in Calvinism, the person who is the Calvinist is dismissed as a “hyper-Calvinist” by their fellow Calvinist’s if they are challenged. When that label is then applied rightly to others for the same reason — meaning, using RW’s definition of what a hyper-Calvinist is — then all these others have said worse; and would be by definition, hyper-Calvinists.

Two quick examples. 1st John Calvin, then, John Piper:

John CALVIN:

… how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission. . . . It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them. . . . Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.

John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 10:11

John Piper:

Ephesians 1:11 goes even further by declaring that God in Christ

“works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is energeø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).

John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42. (FULLER QUOTE VIA THIS PDF)

John Lennox notes in his wonderful book,  “Determined to Believe? The Sovereignty of God, Freedom, Faith, and Human Responsibility,” that Martin Luther struggled with the consequences of this form of thought:

Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation. In his book The Bondage of the Will, written in response to Erasmus’ essay On Free Will, Luther said:

[The] omnipotence and foreknowledge of God, I repeat, utterly destroy the doctrine of “free-will”… Doubtless it gives the greatest possible offence to common sense or natural reason, that God, Who is proclaimed as being full of mercy and goodness, and so on, should of His own mere will abandon, harden and damn men, as though He delighted in the sins and great eternal torments of such poor wretches. It seems an iniquitous, cruel, intolerable thought to think of God; and it is this that has been such a stumbling block to so many great men down through the ages. And who would not stumble at it? I have stumbled at it myself more than once, down to the deepest pit of despair, so that I wished I had never been made a man. (That was before I knew how health-giving that despair was, and how close to grace.)

In this passage Luther seems to be aware that there is a deep moral problem with aspects of his view… [RPT: before redefining “grace” that is – almost like what is, is.]

Calvinism’s [T.U.L.I.P.] Logical Conclusion Displayed

In a reference in that above book is this paper: “I Believe In Divine Sovereignty,” by Thomas H. McCall in Trinity Journal (TRINJ 29:2 [Fall 2008]), 209-210. Of which I excerpt:

… He [John Piper] works long and hard to illustrate this [theistic determinism] from Rom 9:1-23, which he concludes is about the purposes of God being preserved “by means of the predestination of individuals to their respective eternal destines.”11 And we are not to think that God is righteous in spite of such action—instead we are to see that God is righteous because of this action, for the “heart of Paul’s defense” is this: “in choosing unconditionally those on whom he will have mercy and those whom he will harden God is not unrighteous, for in this ‘electing purpose’ he is acting out of a full allegiance to his name and esteem of his glory.”12

This all-determining action of God notably includes predestination and election, but it extends far beyond—it extends to everything. God determines all events that occur in the universe, including all demonic and satanic action.13 As Mark R. Talbot puts it, God creates, sends, instigates, and moves others to do evil, because “nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will.”14 Talbot makes the point with relentless and unmistakable clarity:

Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed. God’s foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events.15

Make no mistake: “when even the worst of evils befall us, they do not ultimately come from anywhere other than God’s hand.”16 …

NOTES:

11. John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 218, cf. 56-73.

12. Ibid., 219.

13. On this see John Piper, “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God: Ten Aspects of God’s Sovereignty Over Satan and Satan’s Hand in It,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 19-30. Piper here uses the rather confusing (given his determinism) language of “permission.” By my lights, what he means when he says that God “permits” something is this (a) God determines it to occur and then (b) does not act so as to override his previous ordination. Regarding talk of “permission,” I think that John Calvin’s approach is more consistent, [….]  see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.xviii.1, and John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 696.

14. Mark R. Talbot, “‘All the Good That Is Ours in Christ: Seeing God’s Gracious Hand in the Hurts Others Do to Us,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 43 (41-43), emphasis original.

15. Ibid., 43-44.

16. lbid., 47.

Dave Hunt is right to say that Calvin uses unbiblical positions in dealing with this Augustinian determinism:

There is yet another question that troubles many: If man is free to choose between options, would that not in itself deny both God’s sovereignty and His foreknowledge? Luther claimed that this question was the very heart of the Reformation and of the gospel itself. In fact, Luther dogmatically insisted that it was impossible for God to foreknow the future and for man at the same time to be a free agent to act as he wills.

Believing firmly in God’s foreknowledge, Luther wrote an entire book titled The Bondage of the Will, to prove that the very idea of man’s free will is a fallacy and an illusion. Several reasons have already been given as to why Luther was wrong on this point, and that issue will be dealt with further in the next chapter.

Though Calvin took so much from Augustine, like Luther he also rejected the Augustinian belief that God could foreknow the future, while at the same time man could have a free will. According to Calvin, foreknowledge leaves no room whatsoever for free will, because foreknowledge is the same as predestination:

If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question [of free will] … but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed them, they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience. …

If this frigid fiction [of free will] is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which everything depends, he rules over all? (Calvin, Institutes, III: xxiii, 6–7.)

Calvin repeatedly uses such unbiblical and utterly fallacious reasoning.

The Calvinist assumes a contradiction between sovereignty and free will that doesn’t exist. The fact that God is able to allow man freedom of choice, while still effecting His purposes unhindered, is all the more glorifying to His sovereign wisdom, power, and foreknowledge.

And one last point on this via MONERGISM.COM:

  • In order to understand this better theologians have come up with the term “compatibilism” to describe the concurrence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Compatibilism is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism. — John Hendryx (John Hendryx is the creator and editor of Monergism.com | SEE: “We are not Determinists!” for more)

Here is A.W. Tozer’s take of the above:

  • Here is my view: God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.

Tozer is saying that the Calvinist God is too small. Something I run through with Mormon Elders if they decide to come into my home to discuss further their “mission.” In a similar vein, philosophical determinism (atheism/evolutionary paradigms). In what follows — quote’wise — if this is true fore secular forms of determinism, then so to it applies to THEISTIC DETERMINISM:

Atheists reject evidence as illusory…

Why?

Because they “have to.”

Donald C. Abel in his book, Fifty Readings in Philosophy, asks us to imagine for a moment that you walking along and come to a fork in the road. One street is called Divinity Avenue, the other Oxford Street. Assuming you have to walk down one of them, there is a confrontation of choice.  Continuing he says,

  • Now, I ask you seriously to suppose that this ambiguity of my choice is real; and then to make the impossible hypothesis that the choice is made twice over, and each time falls on a different street. In other words, imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate ten minutes of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that, everything else being the same, I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. You, as passive spectators, look on and see the two alternative universes; one of them with me walking through Divinity Avenue in it, the other with the same me walking through Oxford Street. Now, if you are determinists, you believe one of these universes eternally impossible, because of the intrinsic irrationality or accidentality somewhere involved in it. However, looking outwardly at these universes, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one, and which the rational and necessary one?

Donald C. Abel, Fifty Readings in Philosophy (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 296.

  • “He thus acknowledged the need for any theory to allow that humans have genuine freedom to recognize the truth. He (again, correctly) saw that if all thought, belief, feeling, and choice are determined (i.e., forced on humans by outside conditions) then so is the determinists’ acceptance of the theory of determinism forced on them by those same conditions. In that case they could never claim to know their theory is true since the theory making that claim would be self-referentially incoherent. In other words, the theory requires that no belief is ever a free judgment made on the basis of experience or reason, but is always a compulsion over which the believer has no control.”

Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 174.

The implications of strict naturalism are grim or even counterintuitive. For example, Bertrand Russell affirmed that any philosophy hoping to stand must ultimately take for granted the (naturalistic) picture of unguided causes and accidental collocations of atoms and must be built on the “firm foundation of unyielding despair.” When it comes to naturalism’s implications for morality, naturalist Kai Nielsen contends that reason can’t bring us to morality; this picture ”is not a pleasant one,” and that reflecting on it ”depresses me.” When it comes to consciousness, naturalist Daniel Dennett considers it an illusion- -something fellow-atheist Thomas Nagel finds utterly confused:

  • You may well ask how consciousness can be an illusion, since every illusion is itself a conscious experience …. So it cannot appear to me that I am conscious though I am not … the reality of my own consciousness is the one thing I cannot be deluded about …. The view [of Dennett] is so unnatural that it is hard to convey …. Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious. … And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, ”maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

Jaegwon Kim acknowledges the stark picture painted by the naturalistic brush. Naturalism is ”imperialistic; it demands ‘full coverage’ … and exacts a terribly high ontological price.”

Paul Copan and Charles Taliaferro (editors), The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays on Theism’s Rationality (New York, NY: Lexington Books, 2019), viii

I could go on, but you get the point. To fashion the issue for you to see, Jaegwon Kim could have said:

  • Theistic determinism is ”imperialistic; it demands ‘full coverage’ … and exacts a terribly high ontological price.” (added for emphasis) 

What is this price? Here is just one example… God vs. God:

Here is a Facebook post I recently posted:

  • “What is there for God to harden, provoke, or restrain if not the autonomous will of creatures?”

If God knows the future because He planned the future [Sproul, Piper, MacArthur, etc.], when God hardens, provokes, or restraines…. is He working against Himself?

If the “T” of TULIP [total depravity] is a reality, wouldn’t hardening, provoking, or restraining someone be the same thing as digging up bodies in a cemetery and putting blindfolds on the rotting cadavers?

In other words, does He plan the abuse of a child just to redeem that act in some way to bring glory to Himself? Is Satan superfluous?

Are all the prescriptions in the Bible making God out to be duplicitous – since he has planned our actions thru determinitive means?

You could not argue that “evil” is really “evil.” Eastern philosophies run into the same problems as the atheist’s/evolutionist’s I just noted above. The Calvinist runs into the same issue. And it is a distortion of Christianity (T.U.L.I.P.):

(Eph 1:11) “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑒ø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).

John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42.

Or…

Is it more like Tozer notes — which lowers man’s position by making him/her responsible to God’s law; and keeps God’s holiness and glory intact as He truly redeems or judges such actions (is He judging Himself in Calvinism? Working against His own will? Secretly?)

TOZER:

God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, ‘What doest thou?’ Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.

There is an analogy of two chess players. As you walk up on one professional chess player, he is sitting on one side of the bench, and at the end of his move he gets up walks to the other side, sits down, thinks a moment and makes his move. This process is repeated until the game is over and the chess player wins.

Guaranteed.

When you ask him why he is playing chess alone, he says to ensure his victory. Or as Piper notes in his book astonished by God: “…the reason God knows the future is because he plans the future and accomplishes it.”

You wouldn’t think too highly of his skills, would you? As you walk down the road a bit further, you come across another chess master. This time however, there is a line of players, world famous chess players, lined up as far as the eye could see. As you watched, the one chess player was handily beating every player that sat before him. Player after player.

With whom would you be more impressed with?

And it is this perceived contradiction that leads Calvinists to a polluting of God’s character, which A.W. Tozer tackles in his book, Knowledge of the Holy. Here is a excerpt…. I changed a couple words to read better:

… While a complete explanation of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereign wisdom God has permitted evil to exist in carefully restricted areas of His creation, a kind of fugitive outlaw whose activities are temporary and limited in scope. In doing this God has acted according to His infinite wisdom and goodness. More than that no one knows at present; and more than that no one needs to know. The name of God is sufficient guarantee of the perfection of His works.

Another real problem created by the doctrine of the divine sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, how is it possible for man to exercise free choice? And if he cannot exercise freedom of choice, how can he be held responsible for his conduct? Is he not a mere puppet whose actions are determined by a behind-the-scenes God who pulls the strings as it pleases Him?

The attempt to answer these questions has divided the Christian church neatly into two camps which have borne the names of two distinguished theologians, Jacobus Arminius and John Calvin. Most Christians are content to get into one camp or the other and deny either sovereignty to God or free will to man. It appears possible, however, to reconcile these two positions without doing violence to either, although the effort that follows may prove deficient to partisans of one camp or the other.

Here is my view: God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.

Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfilment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.

We know that God will fulfil every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that Gods perfections will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of God the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.

Toward all this God is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him from His purposes; nothing turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, no accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omninpotent, there can be no want of power to achieve His chosen ends. God is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.

In the meanwhile things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity doth already work. Within the broad field of Gods sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good with evil continues with increasing fury. God will yet have His way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.

Certain things have been decreed by the free determination of God, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences. God has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in the obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of God. He has also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last.

Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on Gods side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win. Here there is no chance, no gamble. There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made. By the mercy of God we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequences by making a new and right choice. Beyond that we cannot go.

The whole matter of moral choice centers around Jesus Christ. Christ stated it plainly: He that is not with me is against me, and No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. The gospel message embodies three distinct elements: an announcement, a command, and a call. It announces the good news of redemption accomplished in mercy; it commands all men everywhere to repent and it calls all men to surrender to the terms of grace by believing on Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.

We must all choose whether we will obey the gospel or turn away in unbelief and reject its authority. Our choice is our own, but the consequences of the choice have already been determined by the sovereign will of God, and from this there is no appeal.

Gender-Neutral Pronouns An Attack on “Being” | The Imago Dei

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • Moral standards…presuppose absolute moral standards, which in turn presuppose the existence of an absolute personality. In other words, they presuppose the existence of God. But what God?… Of all the major religious traditions, it is only biblical religion that affirms a God who is both personal and absolute. [Only biblical religion sees] that the idea of absolute personality is closely linked to the ideas of a Creator-creature distinction [as reflected in the imago Dei], divine sovereignty, and the Trinity. Compromise these and you compromise the personality of God. This precise pattern of thought is found only in the Bible and in traditions which are heavily influenced by the Bible. Is it then too much to say that morality presupposes the God of the Bible? I think not. — John Frame

I have been wanting to connect the reason I see gender-neutral pronouns like, they/them, ze/zim, sie/hir, are being used by the post-modern Left. The real — bottom line reason — is it dilutes evidences for God and every human’s “Imago Dei” Norman Geisler notes that “[t]he only ‘common ground’ with unbelievers is that they too are creatures in God’s image and live in God’s world.” Continuing he says,

  • But there are no common notions or methods; non-Christians approach the world differently from Christians, and they view it differently. We have a common world with unbelievers but no common worldview. The contact point with unbelievers is the imago Dei. But even here the “point of contact” is the “point of conflict,” for “if there is no head-on collision with the systems of the natural man there will be no point of contact with the sense of deity in the natural man.” Conflict is inevitable because of human depravity and sin.

I will emphasize our personal being in our language to bolster the point in this paragraph

Let me explain a bit more. Part of the Imago Dei in us all is that we get our “being” from it [“It” – the Ultimate Being]. In other words, an example I use is “can you refer to yourself in the womb of your mother without using personal pronouns? We have an “I” in our being. But that “I” has not always existed… it itself was brought into being by my, or your, parents. Who likewise had being, but “contingent ‘being,'” as they relied on others for their being.

I know, it is tough. But this “being” I am speaking of is argued well below, and is an excellent apologetic for God and the Christian worldview. Excerpted from my post, “Kalam Cosmological Argument ~ History and Argument“

PUT THUS:

We spoke of the universe as “the collection of beings in space and time.” Consider one such being: yourself. You exist, and you are, in part at least, material. This means that you are a finite, limited and changing being, you know that right now, as you read this book, you are dependent for your existence on beings outside you. Not your parents or grandparents. They may no longer be alive, but you exist now. And right now you depend on many things in order to exist–for example, on the air you breathe. To be dependent in this way is to be contingent. You exist if something else right now exists.

But not everything can be like this. For then everything would need to be given being, but there would be nothing capable of giving it. There would not exist what it takes for anything to exist. So there must be something that does not exist conditionally; something which does not exist only if something else exists; something which exists in itself. What it takes for this thing to exist could only be this thing itself. Unlike changing material reality, there would be no distance, so to speak, between what this thing is and that it is. Obviously the collection of beings changing in space and time cannot be such a thing. Therefore, what it takes for the universe to exist cannot be identical with the universe itself or with a part of the universe.

(From “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God“)

An excellent short video explaining this all is this one,

Contingency Argument SPEED RUN!

In other words, our “being” has a Cause in His “Being.” Plato saw this dimly in his Theory of Forms:

Plato’s Theory of Forms is a philosophical concept that explains the nature of reality. The basic question goes something like this:

We can see trees, cats, circles and many other things in everyday life, and we can easily recognise each one as the thing it is supposed to be. But, if we look closer, we never really see anything like a “standard cat.” Every cat is different, and so is every tree and every drawn circle. Especially with geometric forms, they are never perfect. Every circle we can see in our world is either broken, distorted, pixelated, or in a myriad of other ways not “a perfect circle.” In fact, a perfect geometrical circle would need to be drawn with a line that does not have any thickness, and so would be invisible!

So how is it, Plato asks, that we are able to identify circles, trees and cats if have actually never seen a “standard” thing of each kind?

There are two worlds, Plato says: the world of physical objects and the world of Forms. The world of physical objects is the world we see around us, while the world of Forms is the world of abstract concepts and ideas. The Forms are perfect, unchanging, and eternal, while the physical objects we see around us are imperfect, changing, and temporary.

Norman Geisler explains this in differing ways with the following. And note, I have more in-depth reproductions of his arguments in the second half of this post — along with the PDF reproductions for download. But I am here desperately trying to dumb the argument down to make the broader point. Which is, the “pronouns” being foisted on us ARE AN ATTACK on the foundation of truth and reality, which is rooted in God’s “Being”, Image, transferred to us in a finite, now fallen way.

Based on Sufficient Reason

(See an excellent article at The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

P1) A contingent being exists.

  1. This contingent being is caused either (1) by itself, or (2) by another.
  2. If it were caused by itself, it would have to precede itself in existence, which is impossible.

P2) Therefore, this contingent being (2) is caused by another, i.e., depends on something else for its existence.

P3) That which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (3) another contingent being, or (4) a non-contingent being (necessary) being.

  1. If 3, then this contingent cause must itself be caused by another, and so onto infinity.

P4) Therefore, that which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (5) an infinite series of contingent beings, or (4) a necessary being.

P5) An infinite series of contingent beings (5) is incapable of yielding a sufficient reason for the existence of any being.

P6) Therefore, a necessary being (4) exists!

Based on the Principle of Existential Causality

  1. Some limited, changing being[s] exist.
  2. The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.
  3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being.
  4. Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.
  5. This first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal, simple, unchangeable and one.
  6. This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition

A mix of both

  1. Something exists (e.g., I do);
  2. I am a contingent being;
  3. Nothing cannot cause something;
  4. Only a Necessary Being can cause a contingent being;
  5. Therefore, I am caused to exist by a Necessary Being;
  6. But I am personal, rational, and moral kind of being (since I engage in these kinds of activities);
  7. Therefore this Necessary Being must be a personal, rational, and moral kind of being, since I am similar to him by the Principle of Analogy;
  8. But a Necessary Being cannot be contingent (i.e., not necessary) in its being which would be a contradiction;
  9. Therefore, this Necessary Being is personal, rational, and moral in a necessary way, not in a contingent way;
  10. This Necessary Being is also eternal, uncaused, unchanging, unlimited, and one, since a Necessary Being cannot come to be, be caused by another, undergo change, be limited by any possibility of what it could be (a Necessary Being has no possibility to be other than it is), or to be more than one Being (since there cannot be two infinite beings);
  11. Therefore, one necessary, eternal, uncaused, unlimited (=infinite), rational, personal, and moral being exists;
  12. Such a Being is appropriately called “God” in the theistic sense, because he possesses all the essential characteristics of a theistic God;
  13. Therefore, the theistic God exists.

IN OTHER WORDS, our being, the “I” that we experience the world through IS AN APOLOGETIC, EVIDENCE of God!

Our being has a logical argument from Thee Being.

Our being (ways in which something can exist or occur or to be presented, or stand) is rooted in a theistic argument that is much surer in it’s premises and explanations.

That aside, the Marxist [read here atheistic] attack on Western values and truth is rooted itself in negating the Judeo-Christian aspect of historical truth, or knowing Part of this argument is the enquiry into “what we can know.” Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution either state or assume this:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

[….]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

[….]

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…”

This title of Supreme Judge of the world establishes God not only as the Creator of the world but also as the source of moral law. This statement is in opposition to the idea of Deism, which says that there exists a supreme being or creator who set the universe in motion but does not intervene in human affairs or the natural world. This statement suggests that those writing the declaration believed that the God of the Bible was the ultimate judge of good and evil.

The final mention of God in the Declaration of Independence labels God as the giver of Divine Providence.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

This is a statement of trust in the divine’s oversight and actions that would result in declaring independence from Britain. These four mentions of God show that the founding fathers had a clear belief in moral truth which originated from a supreme being. In an article for Intercessors for America, Tyler O’Neil states, “The leaders who formed our country based their arguments for independence on the laws of God, and they trusted Him to guide America through its struggles. They looked to faith as a bulwark of freedom, not as its opposite.”

What Role Did Religious Beliefs Play in the Founding of the United States?

Many religious backgrounds made up those living in Colonial America at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and Jewish congregations were all represented within the American Colonies.

It is well documented that 51 of the 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention claimed to hold Christian beliefs. Even Benjamin Franklin, a proclaimed Deist, gave a call to prayer that contained several references to scripture on June 28th, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was struggling to agree.

“The Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention God but references frequently concepts central to Christianity like morals, reason, and free will,” says David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a Texas-based group dedicated to promoting America’s Christian heritage. …

(CHRISTIANITY)

In other words, attacking the foundation of knowledge and beings able to know moral truths and reality is at the heart of the pronoun issue. It is both an attack on our freedoms here in America, as well as an attack on our freedoms discovered via Western culture writ large.

WOMEN IN APOLOGETICS notes the foundation of “truth” in part of their post:

Truth

There seems to be little consensus where there was once clarity on what constituted male and female, boy and girl, man and woman, he and she. This is evidenced in the growing number of people who identify as transgender (those who experience gender dysphoria, a condition that describes the “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity”) or those who identify themselves using other nontraditional gender terms. As such, it is becoming somewhat common for people to state or list their preferred pronouns in conversation, on social media, before meetings, or in email signatures. For example, during the 2020 election season, several Democratic presidential candidates put their preferred pronouns on their social media profiles.

In contrast, the Christian worldview asserts that God created people to be either male or female. Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” God did not intend for sex and gender (identity) to be separate from one another; they are synonymous. To adopt a different worldview on sex and gender would be to reject the truth. Nevertheless, the culture today is attempting (with some success, unfortunately) to convince Christians differently. 

To not call someone by their preferred pronouns, like,  xe/xir/xirs, ze/zir/zirs and fae/faer/faers, is liked to a “human rights violations.” In fact, those prouns are an attack on what it is to be human.

Our essence.

Our being.

Dennis Prager says it is a war on human order. Which is a war on God:

Genesis 3:5 has the serpent (the Devil) tempting Adam and Eve. Half-truths are the best the Serpent can come up with, but the commentary I love on this verse will follow. I will highlight some points in it. 3:5 reads: “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (CSB).

Here is the commentary:

The climax is a lie big enough to reinterpret life (this breadth is the power of a false system) and dynamic enough to redirect the flow of affection and ambition. To be as God,25 and to achieve it by outwitting him, is an intoxicating programme. God will henceforth be regarded, consciously or not, as rival and enemy. Against this human arrogance ‘the obedience of the one’ and his taking ‘the form of a servant’ show up in their true colours (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:7).

So the tempter pits his bare assertion against the word and works of God, presenting divine love as envy, service as servility, and a suicidal plunge as a leap into life, ‘All these things will I give thee …’; the pattern repeats in Christ’s temptations, and in ours.

— On knowing good and evil, see on 2:9 [see below].

25. Or, gods (AV). The word ’ĕlōhîm can be used generically to include the angelic orders; see on 1:26.

2:9

…. The knowledge of good and evil is perhaps best understood in this living context. In isolation it could mean a number of things, many of them with biblical support. The phrase can stand for moral or aesthetic discernment (e.g. 1 Kgs 3:9; Isa. 7:15); yet Adam and Eve are already treated as morally responsible (2:16, 17) and generally percipient (3:6) before they touch the tree. It could be a hebraism for ‘everything’ (i.e. man is not to covet omniscience); yet it can hardly mean this in 3:22. It has often been regarded as sexual awakening, in the light of 3:7; recently R. Gordis suggested that this tree thereby offers a rival immortality to that of the tree of life, in the procreation of a family and a posterity. This too is open to several objections, including the fact that 3:22a is incompatible with it (heaven is sexless in the Old as in the New Testament), and that God instituted marriage after forbidding the use of the tree that is said to symbolize it.

In the context, however, the emphasis falls on the prohibition rather than the properties of the tree. It is shown to us as forbidden. It is idle to ask what it might mean in itself; this was Eve’s error. As it stood, prohibited, it presented the alternative to discipleship: to be self-made, wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator (cf. 3:6). Even more instructive is the outcome of the experiment; see on 3:7. In all this the tree plays its part in the opportunity it offers, rather than the qualities it possesses; like a door whose name announces only what lies beyond it.

Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 1, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967), 67–68, 73.

Yep. It is all a big lie. And the extreme gender confusion with it’s high rate of suicide is literally “a suicidal plunge as a leap into life.”

And the battle goes on…

And another point. Lets say you work at a Starbucks in West Hollywood, and you have 4-people who each have chosen a preferred pronoun[s]. For example, here are some of the choices:

  • So one person uses “xe, xem, xyr, xyers.”
  • Another uses “ne, nem, nir, nerself.” 
  • Yet another uses “ci, cer, cer, cirs.”
  • And lastly this person uses “ve, vis, ver, verself.”

How is one supposed to keep track of all that hogwash so as not to get fired? It is impossible for even these 4 to keep it straight. In Michigan they are making these felonies:

A new Michigan bill would make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.”

The Michigan Hate Crime Act, designated HB 4474 , passed in the state House on Tuesday and now goes before the Michigan Senate.  It will replace the existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and expand the categories of people protected by the law.

The new bill would include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as classes protected against intimidation.

[….]

If passed, the hate speech legislation would make violators guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.

(DAILY CALLER | see DAILY WIRE as well)

AMERICAN THINKER notes this religious attack implicitly at the beginning of their article:

God-fearing people recognize that the effort to demolish the two God-given genders is a shaking of the fist at the Almighty. After all, the first chapter of the Bible says: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). This paradigm empowers females who are created in the imago dei. They are different from males, but equal to them at the level of essence. Nature and biology confirm God’s binary design.

Unfortunately, we live in a post-Christian society. Sane arguments often fall on deaf ears. The secular elites who control education and the media have marginalized those who provide biblical explanations. Given this sad reality, might there be another way to end the compelled speech of pronoun lunacy in which people can decide by which pronouns they will be referred?

[….]

For example, if someone asked another person about me: “What do you think of Newt?” They would need to respond something like: “I hate Newt. He is a tyrant. He never does what you ask of her.” Note that “he” is used when Newt is the subject of the sentence, and “her” is used at the end when Newt is the object of the sentence. If they failed to honor my preferred pronouns and said, “…He never does whatever you ask of him…” this would be a violation. I would report this, and press charges, if possible.

Mary could likewise insist on her pronouns being “She” and “Him.” Those speaking or writing about Mary would have to write something like: “I appreciate Mary. She is a great friend. I have no better friend than him. She is a great listener.” Or she could insist on “He” and “Her” (as does Newt).

Can you imagine if as many people as possible insisted upon this practice? Might it cause the regime of verbal tyranny to collapse? Though we are in the process of butchering English with the improper use of “they,” the mind can factor in this mutation and get used to it. However, since native English speakers calculate pronoun case automatically and subconsciously, it would be nearly impossible to speak and write in a way that could satisfy those who insist on different gendering pronouns that are case-dependent.

Yep. It is impossible to satisfy such people. This thinking “wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator.”

SOME APOLOGISTS DISCUSS THE ISSUE:

Douglas Groothuis w/Melissa Dougherty

Today, I interviewed Dr. Groothuis about the craziness we see around us and what we can do about it. Dr. Groothuis holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is a Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. He is the author of sixteen books and has also published over thirty academic articles in journals as well as dozens of pieces in publications.

Nancy Pearcey w/Babylon Bee’s Ethan Nicolle

Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle welcome Professor Nancy Pearcey. She is professor of apologetics and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University and author of several books, most recently Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. Prof. Pearcey’s books also include Total Truth, Finding Truth, The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo and How Now Shall We Live? (co-authored with Chuck Colson). They talk about sexuality, gender, abortion, and Christianity’s high view of the human body.

Topics Discussed

  • Abortion… scientific human life vs modern Personhood Theory
  • Biological Sex vs Gender
  • The Christian’s high view of the material world and the human body due to belief in the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the new heaven  and earth.
  • Trusting in a design vs individual revolt against nature and biological realities
  • Language as a front in the culture war
  • All of our actions endorse a worldview
  • What about people who identify as “gay Christians” or some other adjective placed before the word Christian?
  • Nudity in medieval Christian art

Unnamed People w/Melissa Dougherty

There’s a postmodern ideology that is plowing through our world that aims to dismantle all societal and moral norms. This ideology is responsible for how we have gotten to the point in society where language is rebranded and “sex” and “gender” are separate. Now, there are supposedly unlimited genders. If this isn’t disturbing enough, the logical conclusion of this ideology (which really functions like a religion) is that age should be flexible, too. Kids should have the freedom to choose what age they identify as… as sexual beings. This ideology says this is good, liberating, and empowering.

This is completely shocking. And absolute garbage that should be talked about and brought to light.

I Learned A New “Theological” Term: Baculum (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is my intro to this story via my Facebook page for this site (added to just a tad):

A recent story has caught the attention of many in mainstream culture… but is starting to filter down to the myopic persons (like myself). It is this, that eve was not created from a rib ~ (really, something to do with Adams side — probably involving DNA, like adult stem-cells or something… bottom line is though, WE DON’T KNOW) ~ but from Adams penis bone (or, “baculum”).

I didn’t stutter. I said, Adams penis. While I can only imaging the furor and angry clambering across the gender feminist sub-culture (and smile inwardly at this writhing), I HAD to post on this topic.

“Enjoy.”

Another tidbit I learned from cruising the internet about this story is that an extinct walrus is known to have a 22-inch bacula. (The picture to the above/right is of a four-foot walrus bacula)

Keep dreaming boys!

When I first saw the below story… I thought the professor HAD to be a lib! Why? Because progressives have a tendency to sexualize e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g ~ which is why sex-education starts in kindergarten now. Anyhew, here is the “bulk” of the story via The Blaze:

A professor of the Bible in California has posed the theory that the Adam and Eve narrative in the book of Genesis was mistranslated and that Eve was created not out of Adam’s rib, but his baculum, or penis bone.

Ziony Zevit, a professor of biblical literature and Northwest Semitic languages at American Jewish University in California, recently presented his argument in an article in Biblical Archaeology Review based both on what he believes to be an erroneous translation for the Hebrew word for “rib” and also on the unique anatomy of the human male, one of the few mammals lacking a baculum.

He also pointed to the fact that men and women have the same number of ribs and that men have an even number of ribs, suggesting none are missing….

Using the logic from the story I have read… Adam had two??? But I digress… apparently, literally. However… my amateur musings aside, here is the logic of professor Zevit:

  • A rib seems like an unlikely origin for Eve because male and female humans have the same number of ribs.
  • Ribs also lack “intrinsic generative capacity”, which penises have “in practice, in mythology, and in the popular imagination”.
  • Most mammals – and especially primates – have bacula, humans do not.
  • It is therefore “probable” that Adam’s baculum was removed to make Eve, and not a rib.

(We Just Lost It)

The Hebrew is really just saying “from his side.” That is it. “a “rib” is just a cultural “guess” at what took place, but we really do not know.

So after hanging out at a friends house for his birthday, I mentioned that I think the professor mentioned in the story is liberal. [Plus, as a fan of Dennis Prager… I knew the odds were in my favor. See Prager’s “Explaining Jews, part V: Why are Jews liberal?“] So when I got home, I looked him up. This is his background:

  • University of Southern CA, B.A. 1964
  • University of California, Berkeley, M.A. 1967
  • University of California, Berkeley, Can. Phil. 1970
  • University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. 1974

Um… Berkeley… in the seventies?

Bam!

I read an interesting article on Professor Zevit’s piece that I think was helpful. The article is entitled “A Flaccid Interpretation of Eden,” and is by Joseph Ryan Kelly. A very informative piece, I suggest reading it in its entirety.

…Novel interpretations like this one occur from time to time throughout Zevit’s re-reading of the second, third, and fourth chapters of Genesis. He maintains that Eden was a real location in the Armenian highlands somewhere west of Lake Van (Eastern Turkey), the most northern corner of the inhabited world known to ancient Israelites. Adam was not created from dust, light in color, dry, and loosely compacted. God formed him from apar, a “clod” which, like humans, is rich in constitution and ruddy in complexion. Following the transgression of the divine command — or the “oblique instruction,” as Zevit prefers for the grammatical informality of the command — God’s curses transform neither the bodies of the individuals involved nor their environment. Rather, as performative speech acts, they transform somewhat negatively how the serpent, “Hawwa” (Zevit refers to Eve by her Hebrew name), and Adam perceive an element of their lives.

Is Zevit just out to present novel, if philologically and historically sound, interpretations of the Garden of Eden? I asked myself this question with increasing frequency as I found it more and more difficult to hold together in my mind’s eye the picture of Eden Zevit was painting. What themes tie together a far northern location for Eden, creation out of clod, ossifical castration, and curses functioning as performative speech acts? This cacophony of novel (and sometimes not-so-novel) interpretations does not resolve harmoniously — at least not into the familiar narrative of sin and death that characterizes Western culture’s tradition of a fall. Zevit’s narrative becomes clear only near the end of the book. Forget sin and death; this is a story about human nature, the acquisition of knowledge, and ethical self-awareness. A story not about loss, but gain. Not a decline, but a rise.

It is unfortunate that Zevit’s chosen path of discovering what really happened in the Garden of Eden elides other interpretive paths explored in Western culture. He focuses exclusively on philology and historical criticism as tools of discovery, but during the Enlightenment a number of philosophers could not regard as purely sinful humankind’s acquisition of knowledge. They too cast aside notions of a fall. Immanuel Kant, for example, saw humankind’s pursuit as a positive step for the development of humankind, even if human actions introduced evil into the world. The first human couple discovers the freedom that constitutes the foundation of human morality. This freedom and capacity for moral discernment is fundamental to Kant’s deontological moral philosophy centered on the categorical imperative.

Philosophers of the twentieth century continued to acknowledge the merits and necessity of human freedom, although they were less enthusiastic about its implications. The circumstances of their own day — world wars and the threat of mutually assured destruction — made it increasingly difficult to remain generally optimistic about human freedom. What they discover in the Garden of Eden is not the origins of sin but an explanation of human sinfulness. The fall is less an experience in history and more the culmination of the creation of humankind.

Acknowledging that “knowledge is not foolproof,” Zevit’s interpretation otherwise lacks the sobering dimensions of this twentieth century philosophical interpretation. The Garden story is a “positive and optimistic one.” Immediately following the events in the Garden, human knowledge leads to the development of urban centers, pastoral nomadism, musical instruments, forged metal tools, and manufactured materials. Where other scholars tend to see an embedded critique of Mesopotamian civilization, Zevit sees only the human capacity to create knowledge. These implicit elements of critique aside, the flood and the confusion of languages at Babel explicitly reveal a darker side of human freedom. Readers of the biblical text, like philosophers of the twentieth century, are justified in recognizing that human freedom has its tragic consequences.

Has Zevit pulled back the curtain on these early chapters of Genesis? While his use of philology and historical criticism forces us to reconsider interpretations often taken for granted, his approach does not produce confident conclusions. Does God really create Hawwa, Eve, out of Adam’s penile bone? Genesis 2:21 describes God removing one ofAdam’s ribs or ṣelaot. To incorporate this detail into his interpretation, Zevit translates the term ṣela as “lateral bone.” Imagining the baculum as belonging to a category of lateral bones strikes me as a specious argument. But perhaps more pressing is the way this proposed etiology differs from other etiologies involving humans in the Hebrew Bible. Elsewhere, biblical texts use past events to explain cultural institutions or customs.

[…..]

What Zevit is proposing is altogether different. By removing Adam’s baculum and closing up the flesh, God forever changes physical features of the male anatomy. The eighteenth century French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck thought organisms could transmit to their offspring characteristics they acquire during their lifetime. However interesting Zevit’s Lamarckian interpretation may be, it seems atypical among biblical etiologies, if not anachronistic. Do other etiologies in the Bible betray a belief in the inheritance of acquired traits? One does not readily come to mind. Moreover, it seems counterintuitive that Israelites would have believed one could inherit acquired characteristics given the regularity with which they circumcised male penises. Though not a coup de grâce, this thought raises a pressing question about an already tenuous interpretation.

The challenge of interpreting enigmatic details like this one exemplifies the problem inherent in trusting that the tools of our academic disciplines will guide us to some supposed real meaning of the biblical text. Claims about the authentic meaning of any biblical text function best as a marketing strategy — a means of attracting a broad customer base for discussions about textual and sometimes historical interpretation that may otherwise fail to produce intrigue among the general public.

I appreciate that Zevit has produced a book discouraging scholars and the general public from taking for granted the interpretation of this classic biblical text. However, I question the value of perpetuating the misconception that the object of interpretation is to discover the one real meaning of a text. If a text contained only one truly authentic meaning, it seems reasonable to assume such interpretations would have long since been realized. That scholars like Zevit continue to use the tools of their disciplines to construct different plausible historical interpretations of biblical texts should indicate not the inadequacy of their tools, but rather the inadequacy of such a limited understanding of textual meaning. Despite the interesting insights Zevit derives from his imaginative interpretation of Genesis 2-3 — or rather because of them — we are no closer to discovering what really happened in the Garden of Eden.

BTW, “baculum” (Latin) is part of a fallacy in logic:

Argumentum ad baculum

Argumentum ad baculum is a fallacy in argumentation that is based on an appeal to force. For example, “You better believe what I say because if you don’t, I will beat you up.”

Did Jesus Believe in Adam and Eve? Do You?

Published by Papa Giorgio

The following details a conversation that never really finished. The reason is because many who claim the mantle of Christianity (whether truly saved or not, only God knows) often times do not accept the words or positions given to them ~ clearly ~ in the Bible. And while we do not know the heart of those who claim to be Christ followers, when they start to rip out parts of Scripture, not accepting others, thinking portions of it has been changed over time, allegorizing still other portions of it… you can tell that someone else is sitting on the throne of their heart and not their savior.

To wit,

I have a couple of neighbors who are dear friends, but one can only try to talk about baseball and movies and TV shows so much. Engaging in challenging discussions about worldviews and Christian accountability, is what I like. These lack of deeper conversations has really kept us neighbors, not sojourners to a better place.

I finally bit-the-bullet due to the many “interventions” on my FaceBook via this neighbor’s brother (who himself is a friendly acquaintance). I have become more bold with my neighbor and her brother in regards to topics that do not deal with cute, fluffy kittens. The internet already has enough of those.

Being a “Christian” means something… and it has never been a libertarian island of self. Never. So, one of these important worldview discussion came by way of the Pope recently saying — at least in sensationalized headlines — that God is not “a magician, with a magic wand.” I guess there was no “magic wand” involved in Jesus’ Resurrection either? CBS even went further to note that,

  • “Galileo Galilei could have used Pope Francis. The church branded the astronomer a heretic for arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun.”

I swear, people do not know history well. But that dumb historical statement on part of CBS is-neither-here-nor-there.

For the more in-depth, see these two audio/video presentations that take the myth of Galileo to task: The Christian Roots of Science, and, Dr. James Hannam Describes Events Leading to Galileo’s Censorship. A recommended book is Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion.

Another side-note is the Church’s activity in the “staus-quo” of accepting secular science (via Creation.com):

The heliocentric (from Greek helios = sun) or Copernican system opposed the views of the astronomer-philosophers of the day, who earned their livelihood by teaching Aristotle and Ptolemy, and so were biased against change. They therefore either ignored, ridiculed, destroyed, or hostilely opposed Galileo’ ’s writings. Many Church leaders allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Aristotelians at the universities that the geocentric (earth-centred) system was taught in Scripture and that Galileo was contradicting the Bible. They therefore bitterly opposed Galileo to the extent of forcing him on pain of death to repudiate his findings.

This was because:

  1. The Church leaders had accepted as dogma the belief system of the pagan (i.e. non-Christian) philosophers, Aristotle and Ptolemy, which had become the worldview of the then scientific establishment. The result was that Church leaders were using the knowledge of the day to interpret Scripture, instead of using the Bible to evaluate the knowledge of the day.

  2. They clung to the ‘majority opinion’ about the universe and rejected the ‘minority view’ of Copernicus and Galileo, even after Galileo had presented indisputable evidence based on repeatable scientific observations that the majority was wrong.

  3. They picked out a few verses from the Bible which they thought said that the sun moved around the earth, but they failed to realize that Bible texts must be understood in terms of what the author intended to convey. Thus, when Moses wrote of the ‘risen’ sun (Genesis 19:23) and sun ‘set’ (Genesis 28:11), his purpose was not to formulate an astronomical dictum. Rather he, by God’s spirit, was using the language of appearance so that his readers would easily understand what time of day he was talking about.3 And it is perfectly valid in physics to describe motion relative to the most convenient reference frame, which in this case is the earth. See the sub-article Sunspots, Galileo and heliocentrism.

This plain meaning (the time of day) is perfectly satisfied by the language of appearance and does not demand the secondary deduction that it is the sun itself which moves. Indeed, this is exactly the same thing that scientists do today in weather reports when they give the times of ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’. They are using the language of appearance, and using the earth as the reference frame. A convenient figure of speech does not invalidate science; nor does it invalidate the Bible.

Likewise verses such as Psalm 19:6 and 93:1, which the writer(s) clearly meant to be poetic expressions, were given a literal meaning…

Theistic evolution is not compatible with the Bible. It just isn’t. And much like atheists and skeptics I deal with, I have come to the firm conclusion that while they have read an uncountable number of fiction books, they have never walked into a Christian book store and bought and read a single book by a person who specializes in making proper distinctions between Intelligent Design, theistic evolution, and evolution. Because neo-Darwinian theory is not compatible with the Christian faith, no matter H-O-W much one tries to fit the square peg through the round hole.

A Longer Presentation That Hash Out Theistic Evolution/Neo-Darwinian Failures

At any rate, I engaged in conversation to try and get a person[s] who is not use to having meaningful conversation about personal subjects such as faith to engage and engage in a way that their stated beliefs would have to have a logical conclusion. A consequence. If they cannot follow this deduction, then there is a cog in the wheel somewhere. You will see where.

What follows is that discussion [minus names to protect privacy and edited for aesthetic purposes and ease of use here ~ with commentary] where I try and get the people involved to latch onto the ideas of the Author of the universe, CLEARLY presented in the Bible. Here is the conversation, and note that if you are regular church goer how this conversation would have gone differently in your mind:

ME

RT, I will do this here instead of on your Facebook. It will be a series of pretty easy questions. There is a point… but it requires honest dialogue. It may seem too simple and come across as demeaning… it is not meant to be. LKD may want to watch or be involved as well. It is partly based on this point in an aforementioned book, here is the page[s] I am thinking of (click to enlarge):

Josh p9 150
Josh p10 150
Josh p11 150
Josh p12 150

We ~ as Christians ~ should enjoy deep conversation about our Savior that yes, may even challenge our own opinions. It may not change them, but for heaven’s sake (*said like a gray haired older grandma with care and concern*), to insulate oneself from the basics of The Way that challenge assumptions presumed is not the road to growth.

SO, here is the first question: “Who is the founder of Christianity?”

Here is the first response, and it is one I am use to from atheists and skeptics, but I think pride plays more of a role here — something we all exemplify ourselves:

LKD

Paul.

ME

Nope. I am a Christian because I am “what” like?

LKD

You must think we are retarded. I said Paul because I heard a debate on that once.

Let me say that if I were to have this conversation face-to-face, LKD would realize how monotone and calm I am in asking this question. The keyboard is an amazing thing, something my wife (for instance) is not immune to. She will read an email to me but put here emotional assumptions or current feelings onto the text that the original sender probably had not in any way meant to convey. (We are reprobate creatures and battle tirelessly with our dual nature with guidance from the Holy Spirit… it is natural we put onto others this emotional state we are experiencing and not the best of intentions.) In previous conversations I have shared my “legal statement” to get this point across, I will place that here for clarity, then back to the conversation:

“By-the-by, for those reading this I will explain what is missing in this type of discussion due to the media used. Genuflecting, care, concern, one being upset (does not entail being “mad”), etc… are all not viewable because we are missing each other’s tone, facial expressions, and the like. I afford the other person I am dialoguing with the best of intentions and read his/her comments as if we were out having a talk over a beer at a bar or meeting a friend at Starbucks. (I say this because there seems to be a phenomenon of etiquette thrown out when talking through email or Face Book, lots more public cussing and gratuitous responses.) You will see that often times I USE CAPS — which in www lingo for YELLING. I am not using it this way, I use it to merely emphasize and often times say as much: *not said in yelling tone, but merely to emphasize*. So in all my discussions I afford the best of thought to the other person as I expect he or she would to me… even if dealing with tough subjects as the above. I have had more practice at this than most, and with half-hour pizza, one hour photo and email vs. ‘snail mail,’ know that important discussions take time to meditate on, inculcate, and to process. So be prepared for a good thought provoking discussion if you so choose one with me.”

I think the same thing is happening here so I circle back to my original introduction to reintroduce this idea:

ME

I have already written in the OP (original post): “There is a point… but it requires honest dialogue. It may seem too simple and come across as demeaning… it is not meant to be.” I asked for honest dialogue. Do you feel like talking about Christ is a trap of some sort?

And no, I do not think you are retarded (nor do I think RT is dumb). But do I think some people, rather than coming to logical conclusions about important issues in a faith they aspire to in some way (even if it disagrees with their own opinions), obfuscate the issues at hand? Yes. Mark 8:38:

  • “For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation,the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

I know this is VERY simplistic — again — it is NOT meant to be demeaning. Professor Jay Wegter? You want to join in for some very simple talk about the faith? The question is “Who is the founder of Christianity?” A hint from H.G. Wells:

  • “I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. ____ _____ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”

Who was this mystery person Wells was talking about?

LKD

I’m going with The Trinity. God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior and the Holy Spirit aka Ghost which I never cared for as a child.

ME

Okay… I don’t don’t know why you won’t give a simple answer, but you sorta answered the second question. (the H.G. Wells quote did not encompass the doctrine of the Trinity, but simply placed Jesus Christ as this person.)

The next question is “who did Jesus claim to be, which eventually got Him crucified?

LKD

The only way to God. The Romans crucified anyone who they deemed as false kings.

ME

He claimed to be God in fact. Right?

LKD

That takes me back to the Trinity which is God.

ME

The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God.

In Matthew 22:43, citing Psalm 110, Jesus said, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’ [Messiah]?” Jesus stumped his skeptical Jewish questioners by presenting then with a dilemma that blew their own neat calculations about the Messiah “Lord” (as he did in Ps. 110), when the Scriptures also say the Messiah would be the “Son of David” (which they do in 2 Samuel 7:12.)? The only answer is that the Messiah must be both a man (David’s son or offspring) and God (David’s Lord). Jesus is claiming to be both God and human, at the same time!

See also John 8:58 and 8:59 — they were gonna kill Jesus for claiming equality with YHWH (God of the Old Testament)….

Theology 101 is fun.

LKD

I learned ALL of this starting 50 years ago and actively studied via Zion Lutheran Church and the Navigators for 20 years, you don’t forget this stuff.

[There was some small talk back-and-forth.]

ME

Okay, continuing along the dialogue — and keeping it simple. Jesus is God, which is classically defined as:

▶ God is often conceived as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith. The concept of God as described by theologians commonly includes the attributes of omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.(Wiki)

He is part of the Trinity, was involved with creating man in “Our” image (Genesis 1:26), was part of the convo with YHWH [that is the Hebrew designation for God that practicing Jews cannot say, they will put in something else there, like Adonai] on earth speaking to YHWH in heaven (“Then the LORD [YHWH] rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD [YHWH] out of heaven.” Genesis 19:24) all the way to Christ Himself in John 8:58 saying he is the Great “I Am” from Exodus (Exodus 3:14), getting Himself “dead” eventually.

So yes, Jesus is God (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence) — correctly defined by LKD as part of the Trinity, God proper because of that.

Now, here are some Scripture, where God proper is commenting on nature. I do not want to focus on them all, but rather, want to, as people who understand who Jesus CLAIMED to be — and PROVED it by resurrecting his own body…

A SIDE-NOTE FOR THE WINNER OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL (@LKD) POP QUIZ:

Here is the Trinity involved in raising Jesus from the dead: God raised Jesus from the dead: “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” (Acts 2:32 KJV); The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Romans 8:11 KJV); Jesus raised his own body from the dead: “Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.” (John 2:19-21 KJV)

…Okay, here is the portion… and I want you to ignore the age issue, but focus on Adam and Eve. And we can get to the depth in our understanding of where you differ from evolution in believing in where we came from (rocks, or the Creative Hand of God):

….Now, when we search the New Testament Scriptures, we certainly find many interesting statements Jesus made that relate to this issue. Mark 10:6 says, “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’” From this passage, we see that Jesus clearly taught that the creation was young, for Adam and Eve existed “from the beginning,” not billions of years after the universe and earth came into existence. Jesus made a similar statement in Mark 13:19 indicating that man’s sufferings started very near the beginning of creation. The parallel phrases of “from the foundation of the world” and “from the blood of Abel” in Luke 11:50–51 also indicate that Jesus placed Abel very close to the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning. His Jewish listeners would have assumed this meaning in Jesus’ words, for the first-century Jewish historian Josephus indicates that the Jews of his day believed that both the first day of creation and Adam’s creation were about 5,000 years before Christ…. (http://tinyurl.com/n6eahjy)

[Added info of the prevailing views around Jesus and Moses: “In Christ’s day, the prevailing philosophy on origins included evolution and long ages of earth history. Their view, of course, was not Darwinian evolution, but it held that the earth and the universe, acting on itself by the forces of nature (which were given names by some) had organized itself into its present state, and was responsible for all of life. The same was true for the philosophy of Moses’ day, as he prepared the book of Genesis.”]… (ICR)

The most basic thing I want to glean from God’s (Jesus’) own lips is that he believed in a literal Adam and Eve — again, whether you think mankind (homo-sapiens) are millions of years old or thousands, Jesus makes clear that they were created, as He did in Genesis (making them in Our own image). I do not want to debate all the nuances you RT or LKD may have. Jesus Himself believed “a”, so you ~ by understanding ~ this have already tweaked the classical evolutionary story of “goo-to-you.”

SO THE QUESTION IS THIS: “Did Jesus believe in a historical Adam and Eve?”

This is where the conversation effectively ended. Many people do not want to submit all parts of their thinking under God. Jesus believed in a literal Adam and Eve. This goes against evolutionary theory as many understand it. They have no idea what Intelligent Design is and how it responds to many of the issues in an acceptance of an unBiblical theistic evolution.

An Aside for those that LOVE the Bible and their Creator — In talking to Dr Edgar Andrews (see his bio) he points out some verses as well:

…If you want to limit yourself to the words of Jesus Himself (as distinct from NT testimony as a whole) you have I think only two specific texts to argue from:

1) Matt 19:4 ‘And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ (repeated in Mark 10:6 “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’) In Matt. 19 it is important to notice the words that follow; “and SAID ‘For this reason …“, quoting Genesis 2:24. But this latter text doesn’t say ‘God said’ … which means that Jesus attributes the simple statement of Gen. 2:24 to God, thus testifying to the divine authorship of this verse and by implication the whole book of Genesis.

2) The other useful text is Mt 24:38 “For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, etc”. Here Jesus testifies to the historical reality of the flood, Noah and the ark. Most theistic evolutionists believe that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are mythology and not to be taken literally or as historically true. (But this may not apply to everyone who accepts macro evolution).

I will end with this interview of Dr. Andrews via Apologetics 315: