Demolishing Triablogue: Calvinist Steve doesn't like God's ways

This is my reply to an article by Calvinist Steve Hays entitled

Friday, October 05, 2018

Must we earn the right to be heard?

In a recent interview with Christianity Today, Tim Keller said:

    Because the church has got so many of its own skeletons and so much coverup of sexual abuse and so on, I don't know how we can adjudicate…right now we don't have any kind of credibility for a lot of reasons…As the church tries to speak publicly to social issues…we have to do it with repentance. 

    https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/october-web-only/tim-keller-politics-news-midterms-united-states.html

That's true at the level of public perception, which makes it necessary to correct that misperception. I disagree with how Keller frames the issue. Christians don't need to apologize for "the church". I'm not "the church". I don't speak for "the church". And I shouldn't be saddled with what "the church" did before I was born. Moreover, I don't control "the church". I'm just one guy.

Sounds like the kind of reasoning atheists use to accuse the bible-god of injustice for causing later humanity to be infected with original sin that nobody else was responsible for except Adam and Eve.  I'm afraid your western sense of individualism is quite opposite from the earliest detectable Hebrew views set forth in the OT.  We have to wonder what David and Bathsheba's baby was telling itself as God tortured it to death for 7 days because of David's sin, a sin the baby himself obviously wasn't responsible for:

13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!"
 (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

 Maybe the baby was telling himself I shouldn't be saddled with what my dad did before I was born.  It's nice to know the one Calvinist on the internet who mistakes his blog for having an actual life, is so caught up in word-games he can't even tell any more when the crap he believes contradicts biblical teaching.

It suffers from a fallacy of personification, as if the church is just one thing, as if the church is identical in time and space, so that whatever was done at one time or place somehow transfers to "the church" at another time or place. 

 It does:

 26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
 27 Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it. (1 Cor. 12:26-27 NAU)

Sorry, Steve, but your modern individualist viewpoint is quite contrary to many passages in the bible that presuppose corporate responsibility.  That's tragic because it is Calvinists who would need to specialize in that doctrine, given their belief that Jesus' didn't just die for sinners, but that his death actually saves all for whom it was intended, which is not everybody (i.e., Limited Atonement).

"The church" is an an abstraction. That's a necessary abstraction for ease of reference, but it's becomes an overgeneralization when individual distinctions in time, place, and person are swallowed up by an indiscriminate category.

If you were spiritually mature, you'd care less about linguistic gymnastics and more about obeying 2nd Timothy 2:14.   Don't miss the "solemnly" in that passage, apparently, Paul thinks it VERY important that Christians abstain from wrangling words.  You don't have a choice...which should be music to the ears of a fatalistic hyperCalvinist like you, who believe in a god who predestined you to love the sins that he wanted you to also feel bad about.  You'll excuse me if I think a mean little boy torturing ants is an appropriate analogy to your god and humanity.

I don't speak and act as a representative of "the church". My positions should be evaluated by whether they are right or wrong, true or false, backed by reason and evidence, rather than fallacious guilt-by-association, which is a lazy anti-intellectual shortcut.

 On what other basis did God punish David's baby for sins the baby didn't commit, except the stupid doctrine of original sin which arises out of guilt by association?  Apparently if you had been one of the young boys among the prisoners of war which Moses required death for (Numbers 31:17), you would have said Moses has engaged in fallacious guilt by association.  Sorry, Steve, but your Calvinism is far to cavalier for any smart atheist bible critic like myself to think it the least bit threatening to what I believe.  If God predestined you to do whatever you do, it logically follows he'd want you to praise him for making you do whatever you happen to end up doing.  Only in Calvinism is it "wrong" to praise God for the way his absolute sovereignty actually works.  I think you are looking into a mirror when you accuse others of anti-intellectualism.

You can get out of that by saying the male babies Moses ordered killed had also participated in the previous sexual sin at Peor, but only at the price of opening ancient pedophilia-doors you'll be later wishing you hadn't opened.  That's right Steve, just continue mistaking your blog for real-time human contact, and you'll sink deeper and deeper into that I-run-away-from-challenges-because-I'm-afraid-of-winning delusional mire that you apparently can't clean off the bottom of your shoes.

The situation is rather different with Catholics since they do acquire a corporate identity in a way that Protestants don't. Catholicism is fundamentally and pervasively institutional in a way that the Protestant faith is not,

 And their idea of corporate identity is more biblical than the Protestant version.  It doesn't matter if apostle Paul said divisions are good (1st Cor. 11:19), he also plainly declared, without qualification, that there should be NO divisions in the church (1:10, 12:25).  Jude 1:19 ascribes evil to those who "cause divisions".   I say Paul contradicted himself.  You ready to debate biblical inerrancy?  Or did God predestined you to think that only one reply per person was the foundation of immortality?

so Catholics can't disassociate themselves from what their denomination does in the same way Protestants can disassociate themselves from institutional Protestantism.

 Try reconciling that with Paul's metaphor that the entire body suffers when one member suffers, supra.

Of course, I also forget that as a staunch Calvinist, you believe your thoughts are infallibly predetermined.  I remember Calvinism...what a pile of demented shit that was...we are supposed to believe God predestined us to sin, but we should nevertheless live as if we think he didn't. FUCK YOU.