I saw that I made the headlines over on Frank Turk’s (aka CenturiOn) blog. Now, I haven’t read Frank’s blog for a long time- about a month ago I started again. On dial-up, Frank’s blog took about 14 hours to load due to the pictures and layout. Now on high speed, I’ve been visiting regularly. Great blog! If you haven’t visited, you will enjoy Frank’s world. I’ve known this guy for a few years now- I use to watch him pummel people over on the CARM boards. His posts were incredible. I never saw him lose an argument. I’ve kinda lost touch with him since he’s become a blogging superstar. But, I still treasure the candy rosary beads he sent me. You think I’m kidding?Some of you might not know this, but a few years ago, Frank was a guest on the Bible Answer Man show. He was part of a roundtable discussion. Hank invited him to dialog with anti-Calvinist George Bryson. Some other guy was there as well. Anyway, the entire show can be heard here:
Frank Turk on The Bible Answer Man Show
Frank, a Christian marketing entrepreneur, Superhero, blogging mogul, all-around-decent guy, also made some comments on the aesthetic nature of blogs. Now, I can appreciate a well- constructed slick website or blog. But I’m a guy more interested in content. One will note, my blog here uses the simplest of all blogger templates. I don’t have a lot of fancy pictures or graphics. I just use a bunch of words and a picture here and there. I realize though, people like being entertained. They enjoy being bedazzled by images. That’s probably why I won’t spend the time to add a lot of images. Now, there’s nothing wrong with what Frank does on his blog. He has like 10 million readers or something like that. He says “boo” and get 68 comments. His content is also very good. He can make a good point and entertain at the same time.
Frank also commented on my recent review of Roman Catholic "conversions":
At any rate, James the New Jersian, AKA TQuid, is roiling the Catholics this week for their new superhero ex-Calvinist convert, and I have to admit something. The whole discussion left a bad taste in my mouth.
My thoughts on this will have to wait for another day. Stay tuned.
Hey Frank- send me more candy!
Posts
11 comments:
I'd just like to note that James Swan has always ranked, in my book, as the smartest internet apologist on the planet. I know that's sort of a left-handed complement, but I'm a fan of James.
I had no idea the Bryson audio still existed. For me, the funny thing about that call is that Bryson and Hank don't want to apply their accusation against Calvinism against their own claims. You know: Calvinists don't think God does evil, either. But Calvinism admits, at the ontological level, that God made the men who go to hell knowing that they would go there -- that's what "exhaustive foreknowledge" means.
Anyway, before I start ranting about that, I'm going to go find James another candy rosary to celebrate the recent conversion he has been discussing here at his blog.
I did, in fact, predict the divorce of Sonny and Cher in a prescriptive way.
However, I encourage James Swan publicly and urgently to join TeamPros -- whether or not he wants another candy rosary.
And I'll let either James have the last word on this topic. It is not driving any traffic to my blog (who knew that nobody ever followed outbound links from aomin.org), and it took me 15 minutes to write this tiny comment because I had to keep editing out all the really good come-backs to DrO's joke (singular) about my age.
I won a prize for that costume.
I know that breaks my word to let you have the last word, but it had to be said.
... cursed MyFamily ...
James Swan,
You have been ROARED!
http://gojiras-stomping-ground.blogspot.com/2007/02/this-weeks-roaring-shout-out.html
That audio brings back memories. I am glad I can still interact with you guys since our CARM days are long gone. I enjoyed posting with you guys. It was cool being on the side of the two smartest guys on CARM while I got to put my sentence or two in between.
Okay, you win, TQ, I owe you two blog posts this month.
Mark
Mr. Swan.
I thought I would appreciate Frank Turk's lively dialogue as well. You see, we were having an informal back and forth, recently, on the book of James but he has decided to quit our discussion. He claimed victory by the mere citing of a lexicon and an error-filled, brief, and careless objection to my work by Dr. Daniel Wallace. He furthermore banned me from his blog for giving a simple hyper-link to a post on mine that continued to respond to his criticism. He did this even though the comment I put the link in was one where I relayed to him that I contributed money to a mission organization that he was advocating in the OP.
In an email correspondence, he told me that he was banning me from his blog because of the link. He told me that if I had any more links to give him, that I should do it in an email. Well, I did send him one more link, to a post on my blog where I was responding to the objections of his expert, and he told me he was banning me from emailing him as well.
I don't understand this guy.
To see my points about Frank, I will give you the scoop on our debate.
Here is an original few posts about my take on james 1:21 in particular:
Study of the Phrase "sozo" with the object "psyche" in the LXX
The Possiblilty and Probabilty of the Free Grace Position on James 1:21
Frank Turk sent these posts to Dr. Daniel Wallace to review. Here is Daniel Wallace's response to my posts:
Frank Turk's Dead Horse Post-Mortem
and the following are three responses to Dr. Wallace, of which Frank decided not to respond to:
http://free-grace.blogspot.com/2006/12/response-to-frank-turks-big-gun-expert.html
http://free-grace.blogspot.com/2006/12/response-to-dr-wallaces-objection-part.html
http://free-grace.blogspot.com/2007/01/response-to-dr-wallaces-objections.html
I thought it wasn't Frank Turk's style to brush off a good discussion with an theological opponent.
Antonio da Rosa
Free Grace Blog
Frank,
Can you gives us a proof as to your assertion that:
"In the Frank Turk interview I see there is a tendency on his part to speak about God apart from Jesus Christ, using the appeal of human logic and reasoning."
Much to my suprise you've certainly assumed much about Frank's Calvinistic position given the time you've spent on this blog.
Paul Helm has written a piece on the "Classical Calvinist Concept of God".
http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2006/12/classical-calvinist-concept-of-god.html
Mark
Mark,
Frank is a fellow Lutheran like me and I think as a general observation, I too have noticed that in Calvinistic expositions like that of Piper's Future Grace, you hear about this independent concept apart from Christ. Thus to a Lutheran mind, that is rather strange to their ears - John 1:17.
Jesus is our hermeneutic (so to speak).
Lito
Frank,
In light of your somewhat of an explaination, I would say that you are more guilty of seperating the Father and Son. Unless, that is, you are saying they are not one in mind? If all was created by, through and for Christ and the Father gives His own to the Son then Turk's observation in fully intact.
What Turk was trying to show is that there is a purpose for evil in the world. And that everyone has the same "problem" in that the Father as well as the Son knew that there would be those who would not believe and live a full life only to end up in hell.
Can you show me from Scripture that God doesn't know who will or won't believe prior to their being born? Or would you posit that God doesn't know such information until a person is actually formed in the womb and/or born?
Mark
Oh brother.
TQ: This is what you get when you bring me into it.
Everyone else:
One of the things that is problematic with this clip is that it doesn't actually exist in a vacuum. Bryson and Hanagraaf are the ones who posited the idea that God's knowledge is exhaustive without being causative, and they barely gave DrO a word in edgewise on that topic in the previous hour. I sat on hold while they did that ans waited them out.
In that, their counter-argument is this: God is a doer of evil if he makes men for the purpose of sending them to hell. That is, if God knows a person, and knows exhaustively and conclusively that this person will go to hell, if God makes this person, and this person factually does go to hell, God is a bad guy.
This argument is only slightly nuanced against Calvinism -- because the Calvinist view is that God makes the person -intending- to end him to hell. In the Bryson/BAM view, God maks this person knowing he will go to hell, but somehow -doesn't intend- this person to go to hell.
Yes. Let that sink in: God can make someone He exhaustively foreknows will go to hell, but in making that person, God doesn't -intend- for that person to go to hell.
The flaw is in the way Bryson/BAM portray exhaustive foreknowledge. As far as I can tell from listening to Hank and the Cav Chapel crowd, they have some kind of William Lane Craig influenced view of Foreknowledge as some kind of middle knowledge, but they don't have the sophistication to express it that way. That said, their view is a counter-reformational view because it is inherently a Molinist view. Craig expressly states that his view is derivative of Molina -- and in examining the position, we have to come to terms with that.
Before I wrap up, if I were to posit an affirmative defense of exhaustive foreknowlegde, it would be a decretal and as necessary in the fact that God is both creator and sustainer. But since I'm not doing that here, that's enough for those of you going at this to think about.
Last, who is this Antonio daRosa? Is he the guy who can make 23 exegetical mistakes in the NT and not have time to correct himself? If he is, how can we trust him to be honest about anything he does? My opinion is that he's not good company, and he's banned from my blog. You people treat him as you see fit.
Hey Frank:
That's fine. Are you saying that God has not told us how much of or whether He knows the future, or it is that everything God has told us about His knowledge is culminated but truncated in Christ?
I don't think there's any philosophy necessary to understand what the Bible teaches us about what Gods knows, whether He knows it, and by what means He knows it. All that is plainly stated in the Bible. The question is whether we will let that be a stumbling block to our dscipleship or to other who have not received the Gospel.
However, you may have a different view of this. Tell me: does the Bible tell us anything about what God knows in terms of scope? That is, is there something God doesn't know?
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