From: pduggan
Subject: Goedel’s Incomplete Theology
Are we claiming that TULIP and the decree are true statements, but not actually derivable from the Bible as a covenantal document?
It strikes me as odd to say that we can know all about the fact that there is a decree and that TULIP is true, but that we’re kinda “not supposed to think about it too much”.
I think our critics think that knowledge of TULIP and the decree as it applies to the individual is saving beneficial knowledge. So synchronically we experience undifferentiated grace, but synchronically, we can theologize and know that somehow that grace IS differentiated, and that theologizing necessarily affects out subjective experience of that grace, serving to differentiate it.
And we’re saying “don’t do that”. Or are we?
Paul the Diagnostic Questioner
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 14:37:11 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: Goedel’s Incomplete Theology
pduggan wrote:
I think our critics think that knowledge of TULIP and the decree as it applies to the individual is saving beneficial knowledge. So synchronically we experience undifferentiated grace, but synchronically, we can theologize and know that somehow that grace IS differentiated, and that theologizing necessarily affects out subjective experience of that grace, serving to differentiate it.
And we’re saying “don’t do that”. Or are we?
Do you mean “diachronically” for the second “synchronically”?
If so, I don’t have a problem with that.
joel
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 8:47:09 -0600
From: pduggan
Subject: Goedel’s Incomplete Theology
it applies to the individual is saving beneficial knowledge. So synchronically we experience undifferentiated grace, but synchronically, we can theologize and know that somehow that grace IS differentiated, and that theologizing necessarily affects out subjective experience of that grace, serving to differentiate it.
Do you mean “diachronically” for the second “synchronically”?
If so, I don’t have a problem with that.
Not really, or maybe I don’t know what term of art to deploy :-)
What I mean is we experience grace, and we also sit and read some theology which explains the grace to us. We learn about the decree and calvinism. And then we, in a new moment, come to know that if we are elect, we have received a grace that is different from the common grace that some reprobate church member gets.
So we sit there with a knowledge about grace which of necessity affects our subjective experience of that grace, which if we didn’t know calvinism would be seen as undifferentiated.
A Lutheran who rejects calvinism says that the apostate and the faithful have all received the same undifferentiated grace. But if we accept calvinism we have somewhere in out minds the idea that the elect have a different kind of grace, that is (or should be?) knowable/disucssable/ a subject of predication in its differentiation.
The calvinist world has generally taught calvinism to help people have a better comprehension of the kind of grace they have to cause them to comprehend the nature of the Sovereighty of God, human inability etc.
Are we saying: yeah, all that is true, but it shouldn’t *affect* you? Or what?
Paul
