The "Reasonable Doubts" podcast on presuppositional apologetics: Part 4, 2 Thessalonians 2

Continuing with our critique of the Doubtcasters' critique of presuppositional apologetics and their allegations that the God of the Bible is deceptive...

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12
7For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. 8Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; 9that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, 10and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. 11For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.

The main pattern of note in these two episodes (RD98 and RD101) of the Doubtcast is low-quality biblical exegesis. I don't recall them citing any commentaries or exegetes, either. They seem merely to wing it when it comes to their analyses of Bible passages, and this is a serious problem for them.
The Doubtcasters, in examining this passage, assert that God sends a spirit of delusion on people to ensure they will not repent. They extrapolate from this idea some doubts as to whether people can be held morally responsible for not repenting and believing.
They also hasten to charge that Christians thus have no way to trust that God could be the precondition for intelligibility and reason, that since God deceives people, we have no way to know whether we are deceived at any given time.

Unfortunately for the Doubtcasters' point, the passage does not say anything of the kind.
Notice that the theme of deception is introduced early in v10 - the coming of the "lawless one" is in accord with Satan's activity and with deception of wickedness.
This is a common and constant biblical theme - that wickedness and sin lead to self-deception. Remember how Eve's refusal to listen to God in the Garden led to a total negation of the possibility of God's law being truly communicative and binding ("Has God really said...?") and then hiding from God? Why did she hide from God? God created the whole cosmos! How could someone hide from Him?
That is self-deception in action - this bizarre thought that it is better to do something silly like hide from the Almighty rather than confess and repent immediately, in sorrow and humility.
Or take Satan himself - the bright morning star, some say the head angel of all Heaven, hid pride in his heart and desired to make himself God Almighty. He has lost, been shown time and again his relative weakness, knows the Bible well, knows he is going to lose, and yet carries on fighting. Does he really think he can win? He may well think so - self-deception operates in such ways.

Thus, we note that the theme of the passage is dealing with "those who perish" and their wicked deception. That's a problem already for the Doubtcasters - they're supposed to be showing that Christians don't have a good reason to trust God, but Christians are not those who perish, and they've been rescued from wickedness.

Why do those who perish perish?
Verse 10 - "because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved."
Those who perish live in that deception of wickedness because they have not been saved. Why not? They didn't receive the love of the truth. But Christians have received the love of the truth, and have been saved.

So, now we arrive at verse 11, where God sends a strong delusion, and the text explicitly states why. It is because these wicked, self-deceived unbelievers have refused to believe the truth and be saved. This means they are stubbornly refusing to live for Jesus and thus carry out their calling and obligation. They are at war with God.

Is God obligated to send intelligence and information to obstinate, hateful enemies of His? On what basis would the Doubtcasters say He is?

Notice also that these wicked people have already refused to believe the truth, and then the deluding influence leads them to believe what is false. But they already believe plenty of false things. The point here is that God is leading these enemies of His to become worse enemies of His so that He may exercise harsher judgment against them.
But where is there any indication that God is deluding or misleading His people, His followers? Right, there is no such indication. Christians do believe the truth and take pleasure, not in wickedness, but in truth and holiness.

The Doubtcasters are simply engaging in silly, surface-level analysis of the text. They may have read more than one or two verses during their show (which, sadly, is more than you'll get in a lot of 'seeker-sensitive' worship 'experiences'), but they didn't actually take into account what the text said. They looked closely only at one phrase, and missed the entire point of the passage.

The Doubtcasters have shown that unbelievers have no reason to expect any good or any help from God, but that's hardly any surprise for the serious student of the Bible. We knew that already.

(Please leave any comments at the Triablogue post.)

The "Reasonable Doubts" podcast on presuppositional apologetics: Part 3

We continue our review of the Reasonable Doubts podcast on presuppositional apologetics with a few final posts about the alleged deception of the God of the Bible. Since the Doubtcasters mentioned numerous biblical passages to attempt to substantiate their accusation, it will be best to break the review up into more than one post.

The Doubtcasters attempt to level a contradiction between Titus 1:2 and other passages.
Titus 1:1Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, 2in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago...

The DCers believe they are showing that God is guilty of deception.
Perhaps my favorite comment of the entire episode is when Justin Schieber says that there's a rather large discussion of the deception of God at the urbanphilosophy site, and that unfortunately the biblical arguments were never brought up. What a laughable surprise - that the discussion there would avoid the Bible. How about that?


The first pericope I would like to deal with is the account of King Ahab, his court "prophets", and the true prophet of Yahweh named Micaiah in 2 Chronicles 18:12-28 and 1 Kings 22.

The Doubtcasters charge God with stepping in to make other prophets of the king lie about the upcoming battle, and assert that it's clear that God is not just letting Ahab believe what he already wants to believe, but rather God is actively engaged in the deception. A demonic agent who is going to go spread lies is volunteering for a job that God initiates.

In response, let us note the relevant things from the text:
-Obviously it's known that Micaiah is a real prophet of Yahweh and not of the false gods whose worship Ahab and his queen Jezebel had invested decades in instituting in Israel. Jehoshaphat recognises this fact when he asks for Micaiah rather than the sycophants in Ahab's court.

-Even the messenger knew that Micaiah was something of a misfit.

-Even Ahab knew it. It would appear that Micaiah's original line was delivered with some amount of sarcasm, for Ahab adjures him to tell him exactly what he saw.

-The true prophet of God Micaiah tells Ahab exactly what he saw.

-Ahab acknowledges that the prophecy communicated to him from Yahweh was not good: “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?”

-So, to review: Micaiah does tell Ahab exactly what he saw.
God told Ahab the honest truth.
So, right on the face of it, while the Doubtcasters want us to think that God lied to Ahab, here is the exact opposite information.