Saturday, September 08, 2007

More on Olson

Steve Hays fisks Roger Olson's Arminian theodicy, concluding that (1) it's unscriptural; (2) it's incoherent in principle; (3) it's ineffectual in practice.

Also, I've hesitated as to whether or not to mention anything about Michael Spencer's riff against Rick Phillips on this issue. I like Spencer and often find his blog posts provoking and/or helpful, but I think this post is over-the-top and bordering on dishonest. Spencer introduces something irrelevant (agreement or disagreement with Piper) and completely eliminates the heart of the issue (the fact that Olson says that he cannot distinguish between the God of Calvinism and the devil himself). I think we in the Christian blogosphere can do better than this.

Update: I'd like to go on record and publicly apologize to Michael Spencer for introducing the issue of "dishonesty" into the discussion. One of the rules I've tried to set for myself--and encourage others to follow--is to understand before critiquing, and I confess that at this point I simply don't understand, and therefore I shouldn't critique. Perception of dishonesty and actual dishonesty are obviously not the same thing, and again, I should not have raised the issue.