Gerety’s Hammer Misses the Mark: A Rejoinder to Sean Gerety’s “Irrational Baptists”
Posted by deangonzales on June 9, 2009
76 Comments
I recently posted a brief article entitled, “God Makes a Wish: That Each and Every Sinner Might Be Saved.” The article was basically an exposition of Deuteronomy 5:29, a text that portrays God as wishing for the saving good of those who never experience that good. Such a conclusion, as the late Reformed theologian John Murray noted, supports the doctrine of the free and well-meant offer of the gospel (see Murray’s The Free Offer of the Gospel). Of course, I recognize that not every Calvinist will agree with my conclusions. Some concede that God commands all men everywhere to repent but deny that God in any sense desires their compliance with that command. The reader will find this documented in my footnotes and evidenced in the lengthy and cordial exchange I have with Ben Maas in the comment section following the post. A few disagree with my exegesis and view of the well-meant offer quite strongly. One such critic is Sean Gerety, the administrator of the blog “God’s Hammer.” Gerety feels that my article is massively heterodox and hopelessly irrational. Not surprisingly, he entitles his critique, “Irrational Baptists.” In it, he calls me a “misologist” (hater of reason) and a “paradox monger.” He also asserts, on the basis of my interpretation of Deuteronomy 5:29, “[Dr. Gonzales] believes in salvation by works as well.”
I’d like to thank Mr. Gerety for considering my post important enough to critique. I’m also glad that he included links so that his readers can read my post(s). Hopefully, they’ll read all the footnotes and all my comments where I clarify and expand on my arguments. By reading the footnotes and my comments, many questions (accusations?) Sean raises in his critique will be addressed. While I don’t mind being critiqued and certainly don’t claim to have impeccable logic, I find Gerety’s criticisms shamefully imbalanced, misinformed, and short on brotherly kindness. Of course, I don’t mind the fact that he feels quite zealous to protect the logical coherence of God’s revelation (a conviction I share), and I’m not totally opposed to his use of satire and sarcasm (I’ve used it sometimes). But it seems to me he’s placed quite a negative and, in my estimation, distorted spin on my position, drawing a number of false conclusions. Accordingly, I offer the following rejoinder in the hope that readers like Sean Gerety might read my article and understand my position in a better light.
Am I an Irrational Baptist?
As noted above, Gerety portrays me and my position as if I’m advocating “irrationalism” in the fullest sense of that term. He labels me a hater of reason when in fact I employ rational argumentation throughout my post, footnotes, and comments (note my use of “if … then,” “because of” “therefore,” “consequently,” “accordingly,” etc.). Once again, I don’t claim that my reasoning is flawless and welcome any of you to interact with my on my blog. It’s called Tabletalk because I welcome healthy discussion (even disagreement). But I don’t think I deserve the epithet “irrationalist” or “misologist.”
Consider, for example, the fact that I challenged the logical coherence of the minority report’s logical caveat against the majority report (comment #40). I made Sean aware of my caveat before he posted this critique and asked him to address it (which, for some reason, he didn’t do). The minority report reasons as follows:
Desire suggests a want or lack in the one who desires which can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire. This is incompatible with the self-sufficiency of God. Desire is something weaker than the firm determination of the will. No such weak wishing can properly be ascribed to God whose will is firmly fixed and fixes all things.
Now let’s arrange their argument in the form of a syllogism:
Major premise: “Desire suggests a want or lack in the one who desires which can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire.”
Minor premise: “This is incompatible with the self-sufficiency of God.”
Conclusion: Therefore, “No such weak wishing can properly be ascribed to God …”
Why should the logical syllogism above confine itself with “weak wishing”? It would seem that the all-sufficient God who needs nothing could not, according to the logic above, desire anything. He’s perfectly sufficient and does not need a world or human beings or a fall or the cross, etc (see Acts 17:24-25). Consistency of logic would seem to demand that God couldn’t desire anything except himself. Yet God created the world because He freely desired to create the world and all therein. That fact doesn’t seem to fit well with the minority report’s logic. For that reason, I question the first premise. In the realm of human experience, “desire” may suggest a “lack” in the one who desires which can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire. But desire doesn’t suggest such a “want” or “lack” in the experience of all-sufficient deity. God desires, whether less strongly or more strongly, certain objectives outside himself simply because he is free to so without any constraint. For this reason, I do not find the minority report’s logic cogent. I may be incorrect, but it would be helpful if someone would graciously point out where I’m mistaken.1
Gerety also believes it’s irrational to infer an indicative from an imperative. In my article, I asserted that at a preceptive level God did not desire Adam and Eve to partake of the tree, which I deduced from God’s prohibition against eating the fruit in Genesis 2:16-16 . My reasoning went something like this:
Major premise: In Genesis 2:16-17, God says to Adam, “You shall not eat of the tree of knowledge” (imperative).
Minor premise: By inference, God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge (indicative).
Minor premise: The Bible and common sense make a connection between issuing a command to another to comply with one’s will and having a desire that the recipient of such a command comply with one’s will.
Conclusion: God did not desire (preceptively) Adam and Eve to eat from the tree.
Gerety misapplies a citation from Luther who chides Erasmus for inferring ability (indicative) from an imperative and suggests, in the words of Luther, that I’m more stupid than “schoolboys on street corners.” He also notes,
Dr. Elihu Carranza (who wrote the workbook for Gordon Clark’s, Logic) rightly observes that propositions are alone “the premises and conclusions of arguments” simply because only propositions can be either true or false. He goes on to note that commands, questions (with the exception of rhetorical questions which are intended as propositions) and exhortations “are neither true nor false.” So, how Gonzales thinks he can infer a desire or anything else from a command is indeed a mystery?
Well, I’m not sure why it’s still a mystery especially when I provided Gerety with a lengthy explanation before he posted his critique. I agree with Dr. Carranza that imperative commands, “Do this,” or prohibition, “Don’t do this,” are in themselves neither intrinsically true or false. But that God prohibited Adam from eating from the Tree is a true proposition. From this demonstrably true proposition, we may infer the following true proposition: God desired Adam to refrain from eating from the Tree.
To substantiate my conclusion, I first highlighted God’s imperative to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:3: “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” Then I noted how the prophet Saul infers from this command the indicative: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams” (15:22) (emphasis added).
Furthermore and in order to assure Gerety that I was by no means assuming some kind of Arminian notion of libertarianism, I provided some citations from reputable Reformed scholars who agree that God’s preceptive will may be described in terms of “wish” or “desire.” John Calvin, for example, writes,
What I have said of the precepts, abundantly suffices to confound your blasphemies. For though God gives no pretended commands, but seriously declares what he wishes and approves [Latin: vult et probat.]; yet it is in one way, that he wills the obedience of his elect whom he efficaciously bends to compliance; and in another that of the reprobate whom he warns by the external word, but does not see good to draw to himself. Contumacy and depravity are equally natural to all, so that none is ready and willing to assume the yoke (emphasis added).2
Zacharias Ursinus remarks,
There are four classes of things concerning which men give commandment. These are, first, divine precepts, which God desires, that men should propose unto themselves for their observance, not, however, in their own name, but by the authority of God himself, as being the ministers and messengers, and not the authors of these precepts (emphasis added).3
Heinrich Heppe cites the Reformed theologian Abrahamus Heidanus, who asserts,
(I) Strictly speaking there is but a single will of God called beneplaciti, whereby God determines by Himself what He wills to do in and concerning the creature. The second is but the sign and indication by which He shows what He wishes creatures to do. But He does not wish them to make His beneplacitum universal; but only the things which He reveals to them, Dt. 29. 29 (emphasis added).4
Apparently, my use of logic, Scripture, and the insights of other Reformed theologians were to no avail. Mr. Gerety insists that I’m still an irrationalist and misologist.
Am I an Irreverent Baptist?
Gerety not only accuses me of irrationalism but crass irreverence. In particular, he complains about the picture of a birthday cake with candles that appears on my post. He writes,
This image alone is disturbing. Dr. Gonzales paints a picture for us of the Sovereign Lord God of heaven and earth shutting His eyes while making a wish and blowing out the candles on His celestial birthday cake, hoping against hope that His divine and holy birthday wish might come true.
When Sean expressed his disturbance with this picture prior to his critique, I assured him that the picture was only intended, like most analogies, to convey one point–the idea of expressing a wish. I pointed out to Sean that when Moses pictures God as a “Rock,” we’re not so dull as to think Moses is describing God as dense. When Calvin describes God as a nurse lisping “goo-goo, gah-gahs,” were not so juvenile as to attribute feminine gender and irrationality to God. I might add that when Sean portrays the Bible as “God’s Hammer” (the title of his website), I’m not tempted to impute sacrilege to Sean for reducing the Holy Scriptures to an ordinary hand-tool. Accordingly, when I display a picture of a birthday cake with candles, most readers will recall the idea of “expressing a wish,” which is precisely what God does in Deuteronomy 5:29. But not one reader of my post, except Sean, made a univocal comparison between God expressing a wish and a human child expressing a wish. But lest such readers like Sean should be tempted to draw such an absurd conclusion and bring God down to the level of a child, I begin the post with these important words of qualification:
When you and I make a wish, we can’t be certain it will come true. But when God makes a wish, he has both the power and prerogative to effect its fulfillment. “Our God is in the heavens,” declares the psalmist, “he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3).
As it turns out, Mr. Gerety was the only reader of my post who ascribed an irreverence to me on account of the picture, and he continues to do so even after I provided him with the necessary qualifications above.
Do I Believe in Salvation by Works?
Gerety also infers from my interpretation of Deuteronomy 5:29 that “Dr. Gonzales] believes in salvation by works.” I found this “good and necessary consequence” quite remarkable, especially since the seminary of which I am academic dean affirms,
We believe that salvation always has been and always will be through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. We believe that this central message of Scripture has been most clearly and accurately expounded in the Reformed Confessions of Faith
When Ben Maas challenged Mr. Gerety’s (uncharitable) inference, the latter justified his accusation by asserting, “I was just tracing out where Gonzales’ handling of the verse necessarily leads. Dr. Gonzales may not believe in salvation by works, but his interpretation of Deut. 5:29 requires it.” So here Gerety equivocates. One minute he says, “Gonzales believes in salvation by works,” and the next, “Gonzales may not … but his interpretation of Deut. 5:29 requires it.” I wonder why Sean didn’t have the brotherly courteousy to share his concern with me before making such a remarkable accusation. If he had, I would have pointed out that Matthew Henry’s soteriological reading of Deuteronomy 5:29, which I quoted, corresponded with mine.5 I also would have pointed him to footnote #4 of my post, which reads,
Expositors like John Gill seem to reject Henry’s application of this text to salvation of sinners. Writes Gill, “These words do not express God’s desire of [the Israelites'] eternal salvation, but only of their temporal good and welfare, and that of their posterity; for their eternal salvation was not to be obtained by works of righteousness done by them, but their fear or worship of God, or by their constant universal obedience to his commands. They were saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, even as we. Their fear of God, and obedience to his will issued indeed in their temporal prosperity …” (For the Cause of God and Truth (reprint, Sovereign Grace Book Club, n.d.), sec. III, 4 [p. 5]. I agree with Gill that all men are saved by grace apart from works, I also agree that the blessing in view in the text had more immediate reference to their temporal prosperity in the Land of Canaan. Nevertheless, I also hold that God intended the people of the Old Covenant to look beyond its types and shadows of the Old Covenant to the eternal realities represented by such. Hence, their was both a temporal rest and an eternal rest (Heb. 4:1-10) envisioned in the blessing. In this way, the Mosaic covenant was not merely an administration of law but a “covenant of the promise” (Eph. 2:12). Moreover, “the fear” God desired from the Israelites in the text is nothing less than a “circumcised heart,” that is, regeneration and conversion. This God commanded of them (Deut. 10:16). But ultimately, it was an inward work only God’s grace could produce (Deut. 30:6; Jer. 32:39-40; Ezek. 36:26). Accordingly, since what God desires from the Israelites is ultimately regeneration and conversion and since such a heart-change is both the evidence of justifying faith and also a condition for eternal life (John 3:3, 5, 7; Heb. 12:14), I see no reason to confine the purview of this text to mere outward obedience and temporal prosperity. Strangely, in another place where Gill comments on this text, he seems to acknowledge that the “fear of God” in view is regeneration and conversion, and he locates the scope of the text within the scope of the covenant of grace: “that they would fear me; which is not naturally in the heart of man, is a gift of God, a part of the covenant of grace, is implanted in regeneration, and is no inconsiderable branch of it” (emphasis added).An Exposition of the Old Testament (William Hill Collingridge, 1852), 718. And though John Calvin, like Gill, interprets God’s wish anthropopathically (see below), he, nevertheless, did not limit the purview of the passage to the Israelites’ temporal blessing but applies the passage to his congregants as follows: “And so it is a very profitable warning for us when we see in this text how God wills that we should do the things that he commands us to the intent it might go well with us. Whereby we see that if we receive the doctrine with humility and desire to obey it, the end thereof cannot bee but happy so as we shall be sure of our salvation…. On the other side, let us rejoice inasmuch as we see how he procures our salvation and intends the furtherance thereof, as oft as his word is preached unto us” (emphasis added). Sermons on Deuteronomy (facsimile edition), trans. Arthur Golding (reprint, Banner of Truth, 1987), 261. [Note: Since I'm citing from a facsimile edition translated in 1583, I took liberty to update the spelling and punctuation for the modern reader.]
So, like Matthew Henry, John Calvin, and John Gill (in his commentary), I believe that the scope of this passage is not limited to outward obedience or temporal promises but has a part in “the covenant of grace,” assumes “regeneration,” and alludes ultimately to what the Promised Land prefigured, namely, soteriological blessing. Perhaps it would be helpful for my readers to know that in my doctoral dissertation I seek to refute the serious error (found in the NPP) that conflates faith and obedience in justification.
Can I Still Be Counted a Reformed Baptist?
There are other important issues I suggested Mr. Gerety should address before writing his critique. But he failed to address a number of these issues, which makes me wonder whether he was really interested in a rational and gentlemanly debate or whether he was just interested in winning an argument and painting his opponent in the absolutely worst light. For example, he represents Calvin’s and Gill’s view of divine emotivity and anthropopathisms as if they represent a monolithic Reformed consensus. “This is all Calvinism 101,” Gerety tells Ben Maas, “something one would have hoped even the dean of a purportedly ‘Reformed’ seminary would know.”
In response, let me point out first that the “anthropopathic” hermeneutic has been employed by Jewish Rabbis, the Early Church Fathers, and the Medieval Schoolmen long before Calvin or the Reformed stepped on the scene. So it is not a distinctively “Reformed” or “Calvinist” hermeneutic. Second, every Reformed interpreter (myself included) agrees that there is discorrespondence between divine and human emotivity. The real question in debate is “How much discorrespondence is there?” I demonstrate in my essay “There Is No Pain, You Are Misreading”: Is God “Comfortably Numb”? that not all Reformed scholars have agreed. There is, in other words, a considerable Reformed dissent from the approach that posits such a huge discorrespondence between divine and human emotivity so as to render God incapable of inward feeling vis-à-vis his creation. Charles Hodge, James Petrigru Boyce, Benjamin Warfield, and others think some older Reformed divines went too far in pressing discorrespondence. Robert Reymond, for example, has this to say about the question of divine emotivity as it relates to the WCF’s assertion, “God is … without body, parts, or passions” (II, 1):
Whenever divine impassibility is interpreted to mean that God is impervious to human pain or incapable of empathizing with human grief it must be roundly denounced and rejected. When the Confession of Faith declares that God is “without body, parts, or passions” it should be interpreted to mean that God has no bodily passions such as hunger or the human drive for sexual fulfillment.6
Of course, I’m aware (sadly) that Reymond doesn’t accept Murray’s (and my) interpretation of Deuteronomy 5:29 or the well-meant offer. But his general view of divine emotivity corresponds nicely with mine. Like Reymond, I affirm that God does not have human body, parts, or passions. Conversely, I also affirm, with Reymond, that God enters time and space and that within the matrix of human history God is able to respond emotively to states of affairs and events without threat to his transcendence, sovereignty, or immutability.
Moreover, I find that those Reformed divines who employ the hermeneutic of “anthropopathism” are not always completely consistent in their applications. When God wishes for the obedience and blessing of those who never experience such blessing (Deut. 5:29), John Gill takes great pains to urge the reader not to interpret the statement literally but “after the manner of men.” God’s “wish” is reduced to a kind of non-emotive approbation of obedience in the abstract or, in the case of Calvin, a kind of indicative rebuke against superficial devotion. However, when John Gill comes to David’s great sin, which God decreed but which God also censured, he writes,
But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord…. the murder of her husband, which he was accessory to, as well as the death of many others, and the marriage of her under such circumstances, were all displeasing to God, and of such an heinous nature, that his pure eyes could not look upon with approbation.7
Where’s the anthropopathic qualifier Gill found so necessary to insert in Deuteronomy 5:29?! After all, did David do exactly as God decretively desired? Why then does Gill feel at liberty to describe God as “displeased” when according to Gill’s system God must in reality feel nothing but pleasure towards all that happens? Or does Gill expect his readers to interpret his own comments anthropopathically too?
Calvin also equivocates. On the one hand, he wants to relegate God’s grief in Genesis 6:6 to a mere accommodation and render it void of any genuine emotive content. On the other hand, he wants the text to highlight (really not figuratively) “God’s hatred and detestation of sin” and to serve as a warning to his readers: “unless we wish to provoke God, and to put him to grief, let us learn to abhor and to flee from sin.” Wait a minute, Dr. Calvin. You just said that God couldn’t really feel anger or grief. Yet, after cautioning your readers against predicating any genuine emotivity to God, you turn around and insist that through such “figures of speech” we’re supposed to ascribe “hatred” and “detestation” to God—both of which are emotive in nature! Moreover, you want you readers to flee from sin lest they “provoke” God and “put him to grief.” I thought you just told us that God is untouchable? If God is only happy, how can he hate, detest, be provoked, and put to grief? Can’t have it both ways. For these reasons, I agree with Charles Hodge who asserts that emotivity is an essential part of a moral being. A God who is apathetic towards sin—whether in the abstract or whether considered in terms of concrete particulars—cannot also be holy, just, good, and true.
Am I a Heretical Baptist?
After reading Gerety’s post (and presumably mine), one of his readers even charges me with teaching Open Theism! I found that quite amazingly naïve and seriously mistaken. And yet, to demonstrate my willingness to be accountable, I invited Mr. Gerety and any of his concerned readers who suspect me of Open Theism, Romanism, or Arminianism after reading through my posts on the well-meant offer and divine emotivity (with all the footnotes and comments) to contact the board members of my seminary and file a complaint. Or, if they simply have questions that need clarification, I encouraged them to post those questions under the appropriate posts on the seminary blog. I will do my best to clarify any ambiguity or correct any misstatement I might make in a post.
The best part of Gerety’s post is the lengthy comment left by Ben Maas. As noted above, Ben debated my position on the well-meant offer on the RBS Tabletalk forum. Like Gerety, Ben does not find all of my arguments persuasive. Unlike Gerety, Ben understands my position and does not misrepresent me. Mr. Gerety and I can agree on one thing. As Gerety put it in a brief comment left on my blog (linking to this post): “Praise God that there are men like Ben Maas.” Gerety is thankful that Ben doesn’t bow the knee to an irrational God. I join him in this. Yet I’m also thankful that a guy like Ben Maas has not condescended to Gerety’s level of argumentation, which, in my humble estimation, is neither the best display of logic nor of Christian charity.
For these reasons, I believe Gerety’s “hammer” missed the mark. I trust he’ll use more caution in the future lest he cause damage to himself and to others.
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
- Some might suggest that the minority report is only referring to non-determined desires in the major premise. I would respond, first, by noting that even decretive desires are not-yet-fulfilled desires in their pre-creation state. In human experience, not-yet-fulfilled often denote a prior state of need, lack, or want. So I don’t see how the insertion of “non-determined” or “weak wishing” rescues the major premise. Here is how I would construct the syllogism: major premise-Scripture predicates desires of God that are actuated in history (because decreed) and also desires of God that are not actuated in history (because not decreed); minor premise-Scripture portrays God as independent of creation and as completely self-sufficient; conclusion-Desire predicated of God, whether determined (decretive) or non-determined (preceptive), cannot, by the very nature of the case, suggest a want or lack that can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire since God is by nature independent or self-sufficient. A more common argument goes something like this: God desires certain states of affairs. God is absolutely sovereign. Therefore, all God’s desires must come to futurition. I fail to see, however, why God must actuate every state of affairs that he might find intrinsically good and desirable. For my fuller response, see comment #40 of my post. [↩]
- John Calvin, Secret Providence, trans., by James Lillie, Article 7, John Calvin’s reply. [↩]
- Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans., G.W. Willard (Phillpsburg N.J.: P&R, 1994), 519-520. [↩]
- Heirnich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 87. [↩]
- Writes Henry, “The God of heaven is truly and earnestly desirous of the welfare and salvation of poor sinners. He has given abundant proof that he is so: he gives us time and space to repent, by his mercies invites us to repentance, and waits to be gracious; he has sent his Son to redeem us, published a general offer of pardon and life, promised his Spirit to those that pray for him, and has said and sworn that he has no pleasure in the ruin of sinners.” Commentary on the Whole Bible (reprint, Fleming H. Revell Co., n.d.), 749. [↩]
- A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 179. [↩]
- John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, en loc. [↩]
