{"id":4701,"date":"2013-05-17T13:25:12","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T17:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=4701"},"modified":"2015-04-04T16:35:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T20:35:47","slug":"jerry-walls-what-is-wrong-with-calvinism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/jerry-walls-what-is-wrong-with-calvinism\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Walls: What is wrong with Calvinism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Daomzm3nyIg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Devastating.<\/p>\n<p>I have long noted that Augustinian\/<strong>Calvinist theology is unpopular among Christian philosophers<\/strong>, though many, like me, go through a Calvinist phase (when I was a sophomore and junior in college), before seeing its problems to be hopeless. <strong>Walls concisely and fairly<\/strong> sums up what Calvinism is all about, and then shows it to be profoundly problematic, focusing on philosophical problem rather than biblical ones.<\/p>\n<p>I would add that many of us &#8211; many Christians who&#8217;ve studied analytic philosophy &#8211; are persuaded by the <strong><a title=\"Consequence Argument\" href=\"http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/incompatibilism-arguments\/#ChoConArg\" target=\"_blank\">Consequence Argument<\/a><\/strong> that compatibilism about human freedom is false, and also that if compatibilism about human freedom were true, then J.L. Mackie would have a sound <strong><a title=\"screencast lecture on Mackie's argument\" href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/VfVp5yz56e0?t=2m10s\" target=\"_blank\">argument for atheism<\/a><\/strong>. Christians need to make the <a title=\"screencast lecture on Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VKwxg2W7_e8\" target=\"_blank\">free will defense<\/a> against that argument, and to do that, you must believe in libertarian freedom. (But, that&#8217;s the kind of freedom we all, or almost all, believe in anyway.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mysterianism<\/strong>, as Walls points out, is <em>very<\/em> important to being a Calvinist. They think that &#8220;The Bible teaches X&#8221; is an answer to any difficulty. <a title=\"On Positive Mysterianism\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/dale\/On%20Positive%20Mysterianism.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">But it isn&#8217;t<\/a> &#8211; in particular, objections to the effect that the Bible doesn&#8217;t actually teach X, and\/or that X seems to be a contradiction.<\/p>\n<p>Judging just by a few things he says here, I <em>assume<\/em> that Walls is a &#8220;<strong>social<\/strong>&#8221; trinitarian; but I don&#8217;t think that detracts from his case. And note that God is a &#8220;he&#8221; throughout.<\/p>\n<p>Note to young professors and grad students &#8211; <strong>this is how you give a presentation<\/strong>. Note what Walls does.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Simple but relevant slides. Not too many. No distractions.<\/li>\n<li>Talks loudly, to the audience, moving around.<\/li>\n<li>Touch of humor.<\/li>\n<li>Knows what he wants to say, is passionate about it.<\/li>\n<li>Carefully reasoned. He&#8217;s done his homework; he&#8217;s not just ad libbing or recycling sermon or classroom material.<\/li>\n<li>Clear enough to disagree with. If you&#8217;re a Calvinist, he&#8217;s put you on the spot, and given you some hard choices to make. Calvinist theologians could assign this lecture to their students, and make this an assignment: refute Walls.<\/li>\n<li>Generous enough quotes from his opponents, with just enough context.<\/li>\n<li>Clear use of well-chosen concrete examples to make his points and distinctions.<\/li>\n<li>Aggressive, but not in a mean or unfair way. Doesn&#8217;t mince, put on kid gloves, or dance around a point.<\/li>\n<li>Calls a spade a spade, a weasel a weasel. Qualifies, but doesn&#8217;t waffle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Well done<\/strong>, Dr. Walls.<\/p>\n<p>And well done <a title=\"Evangel University\" href=\"http:\/\/www.evangel.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Evangel University<\/a> and <a title=\"Schmidly award\" href=\"http:\/\/www.evangel.edu\/press_releases\/2013\/04\/30\/evangel-university-presents-2013-orville-and-jewel-mills-young-faculty-award\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Schmidly<\/a> for hosting the talk, and the <a title=\"SCP website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.societyofchristianphilosophers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Society of Christian Philosophers<\/a> for sponsoring it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devastating. I have long noted that Augustinian\/Calvinist theology is unpopular among Christian philosophers, though many, like me, go through a Calvinist phase (when I was a sophomore and junior in college), before seeing its problems to be hopeless. Walls concisely and fairly sums up what Calvinism is all about, and then shows it to be&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/jerry-walls-what-is-wrong-with-calvinism\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jerry Walls: What is wrong with Calvinism?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,62,6,14,8,10,20,9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-calvinism","category-complaints","category-history","category-linkage","category-logic","category-mystery","category-philosophy","category-theologians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35141,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701\/revisions\/35141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}