The Legitimacy of Paradox as a Theological Model - Part 5

Pastor Richard Ostella of Westminster Reformed Church in Plymouth, Michigan has graciously granted permission to re-publish his March 2009 ETS paper on theological paradox here at THEOparadox. To understand these thoughts in context, please begin with part 1.

2A. Case in point 

  The focus here is not on the paradox of sovereignty and responsibility;11 it is on this assertion: “Fallen man does not have free will in his moral actions, but he does have full moral responsibility.” Here, free will means that fallen man has the ability to do good or evil.12  

Our case in point has two threads. They are in tension since it is difficult to grasp their inter-connection. It is easy to use one to deny the truth of the other. One could argue that if man is morally unable in his actions then he cannot be accountable for them. Moreover, it is easy to reason that if man is accountable (in light of Judgment Day), then he must have moral ability, i.e.  free will.13 Questioning belief in responsibility is hardly controversial, so our present task is to 

establish the claim that fallen man does not have free will.

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Pastor Ostella's Footnotes

11 See John Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (P & R Publishing: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2001), pp. 119-141 for a discussion of free will in relation to foreordination.  

12 “God has give us genuine freedom to accept or reject the grace offered to all,” Bruce R. Reichenbach, “Freedom, Justice, and Moral Responsibility,” in The Grace of God and the Will of Man, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 299 and “the power of moral choice entails the ability either to choose the good God designed for us or to reject it…the good thing called free will” is something man has in the fall, Norman Geisler, Chosen But Free: A Balanced View of Divine Election (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishes, 1999), 22-23, 29. David Basinger emphasizes the philosophical definition that free will is the ability to what you want without being forced in doing it: “God…must allow choice to be voluntary in the sense that it is free from coercive divine manipulation,” The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment (Downers Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996), 36. Notably, Calvin states that those who are not graciously illumined by the Spirit are people who “voluntarily disbelieve,” Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J. K. S. Reid (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 58. 

13 In his infamous book on the philosophy of religion (“Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone”), Immanual Kant gave philosophy and theology a definition of free will that has the status of a commandment indelibly codified for all time on tablets of stone. His definition is intuitively simple and profoundly toxic. On one hand, if I am responsible for my actions, then I must be able to choose to do what is right or to do what is wrong. On the other hand, for Kant (and in many subtle ways for his disciples), belief in autonomous free will is an ultimate controlling belief (a presupposition) in his interpretation of Scripture and Christianity. For example, according to Kant’s reading of Scripture, it is of the essence of man that the antecedent to every act is an expression of freedom; otherwise, “the use or abuse of man’s power of choice in respect of the moral law could not be imputed to him nor could the good or bad in him be called moral” (p. 16). Thus, the tablet of stone for much of modern philosophy and theology has these inscriptions: “If I am responsible, then I must be able” and “duty demands nothing of us that we can not do” (p. 43). His ultimate controlling belief leads Kant to some extraordinarily toxic views: restoration from the fall by selfconversion, the Son of God as a personification of the perfect humanity located in each person and justification by faith in the good that one finds within and freely chooses to incorporate as a maxim or rule of life (pp. 40-48). A contemporary example of this same toxicity is the open-theist use of free will as the controlling belief that leads ultimately to a redefinition of the biblical teaching about God (as Frame shows in No Other God, pp. 119-122).


PART 6 - Click Here

The Legitimacy of Paradox as a Theological Model - Part 2

Pastor Richard Ostella of Westminster Reformed Church in Plymouth, Michigan has graciously granted permission to re-publish his March 2009 ETS paper on theological paradox here at THEOparadox. To understand these thoughts in context, please begin by reading part 1.

1A. Theological Paradox  


For Van Til, a paradox is an apparent contradiction or any intellectual tension.1 It relates to the philosophical notion of contradiction.2 The coherence of God and His revelation calls us to avoid contradictory thoughts and practices. Simply put: being God’s image bearers, we are to be like Him. God is logical because He is truth. If there were contradictions in God's knowledge, then some of His knowledge would be false, He would not be the truth, and He would not be God. Accordingly, there is no contradiction in God’s revelation; therefore, man, His image bearer, to be like Him, must avoid contradiction.3

  

Nonetheless, we must come to terms with apparent contradictions, beliefs that seem inconsistent. Importantly, we know that there is no inconsistency between them because God has revealed hem. Paradoxicality should be no surprise. After all, we are creatures and He is the Creator. We have limited knowledge; we cannot penetrate all the interconnections that exist within the truth that God knows. Pointedly, paradox is the “result of our ignorance about interconnections.”4

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Pastor Ostella's Footnotes

1 Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace (Philadelphia: P&RP, 1954) 9-10. In Defense of the Faith (P&R Publishing: Phillipsburg, 2008, 4th edition, edited by Scott Oliphint), 67-68 he says: “Our knowledge is analogical and therefore must be paradoxical.” Oliphint on Van Til notes that what seems to be contradiction is not ultimately one because “God is exhaustively coherent” (fn38). Oliphant also explains the Van Til uses paradox to refer to “any intellectual point of tension” (fn38).  

2 The idea of contradiction has almost universal recognition.  Outside the history of Western philosophy, some 

people try to make sense of statements like "you are to meditate on one hand clapping." However, this example shows that one of the reasons that contradiction is wrong is that it is meaningless and blocks communication. You cannot make sense of "one hand clapping." Try to clap with only one hand; it becomes "one hand waving." It is ambiguous (you can "clap" one hand against something) but what is meant is "clap your hands together but only use one hand" (trying it I cannot even keep one hand still!). That is contradiction. It breaks down communication; very often, it breaks down honest communication. 

3 Therefore, to fulfill our role on earth receiving God's communication to us in nature and in Christ, we ought to be logical, consistent, and non-contradictory in our thinking. Cf. Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (P&R, 1972): “The rules of logic must be followed in all our attempts at systematic exposition of God’s revelation, whether general or special,” 9. Using logic is an “ought to”; it is an ethical ought. Being logical is being godly. It is God-like. It is good and proper. It is required of us not only academically or intellectually but also morally and spiritually. How else are we going to obey the Lord when He says, "Come now let us reason together"? To place a healthy emphasis on logical and critical thinking is a hurdle all its own. However, once we jump this obstacle, we face other ones such as the problem that human reason may take on a magisterial role rather than a ministerial role. When that happens, the reasoning self forgets (avoids, denies) the reality that he is duty bound under the authority of God’s revelation and he will have difficulty accepting “mysteries that are beyond reason’s ability completely to comprehend” (Scott Oliphint, Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology, [P&R Publishing, 2006; cf. the insightful citation from Owen, 255, fn39] 88-89). In the end, this is a failure to practice the most humble use of logic. 
4 John Frame, “The Problem of Theological Paradox” in Foundations of Christian scholarship: essays in the Van Til Perspective, ed. Gary North (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1979), 321. Frame goes on to explain that “we do not know precisely how they ‘dovetail,’ how they take account of one another. We know that they do dovetail, for we know that God’s plan is wise and exhaustive, and usually we know how they fit together to some degree, but the gaps in our knowledge often demand that we rest content with a paradoxical formulation” (underlining mine). 


PART 3 - Click Here

John Frame on the Inerrancy of Scripture

Here's an excerpt from Frame's article on inerrancy, written in 2002:

This is not a mere "modern" position. As we have seen, it is the position of Scripture itself. Augustine in the fifth century declared, "None of these (scriptural) authors has erred in any respect of writing." Infallibility⁴ is affirmed in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1 and in the Belgic Confession, Article 7.

Shall we speak today of biblical "inerrancy?" The term does, to be sure, produce confusion in some circles. Some theologians have gone far astray from the dictionary meaning of "inerrant." James Orr, for example, defined "inerrant" as "hard and fast literality in minute matters of historical, geographical, and scientific detail."⁵ Well, if "inerrancy" requires literalism, then we should renounce inerrancy; for the Bible is not always to be interpreted literally. Certainly there are important questions of Bible interpretation that one bypasses if he accepts biblical inerrancy in this sense.

But we should remember that Orr's use of the term, and the similar uses of contemporary theologians, are distortions of its meaning. Perhaps those distortions have become so frequent today as to inhibit the usefulness of the term. For the time being, however, I would like to keep the term, and explain to people who question me that I am not using it in Orr's sense, but rather to confess the historic faith of the church.

We do have a problem here: Other things being equal, I would prefer to drop all extra-scriptural terms including "infallible" and "inerrant" and simply speak, as Scripture does, of God's Word being true. That's all we mean, after all, when we say Scripture is inerrant. But modern theologians won't let me do that. They redefine "truth" so that it refers to some big theological notion⁶ , and they will not permit me to use it as meaning "correctness" or "accuracy" or "reliability." So I try the word "infallible," a historical expression that, as I indicated in a footnote above, is actually a stronger term than "inerrancy." But again, modern theologians⁷ insist on redefining that word also, so that it actually says less than "inerrancy."

Now what is our alternative? Even "accuracy" and "reliability" have been distorted by theological pre-emption. "Correctness" seems too trivial to express what we want to say. So, although the term is overly technical and subject to some misunderstanding, I intend to keep the word "inerrant" as a description of God's Word, and I hope that my readers will do the same. The idea, of course, is more important than the word. If I can find better language that expresses the biblical doctrine to modern hearers, I will be happy to use that and drop "inerrancy." But at this moment, "inerrancy" has no adequate replacement. To drop the term in the present situation, then, can involve compromising the doctrine, and that we dare not do. God will not accept or tolerate negative human judgments concerning his holy Word. So I conclude: yes, the Bible is inerrant.

It is interesting to note Frame's frustration over the many distortions of the term, resulting from over-literal views (such as that of James Orr) on the one hand, and from minimizations of the of term's meaning on the other. The Chicago Statement seems to strike the right balance, and I am surprised Frame doesn't mention it. However, I concur with Frame's desire to affirm the Truth of Scripture as presented by Scripture.