Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Swedes want to know: take 2: Ivar Arpi interviews me again" video.

  1. If you will tolerate my repost from above, I hope that those interested in this thread might find this of interest as well: 55:44 About the heresy criticism. JP-paraphrase"God's grace enables us, but we still have to do the work. How can both of these be true simultaneously? And the answer depends on your view of time." As a believer, I agree, and so did C.S. Lewis. About heresy. The Bible is full of paradoxes, (Jesus was human and divine, the Godhead is Three and One, etc.) and one of the most common forms heresy takes is to "resolve" the paradox by denying one side of the paradox to uphold the other. Exhortations to moral purity abound in both the Old and New Testaments, as does the assertion that we are empowered to do good by grace. If moral exhortation (or even moral exhortation without immediately invoking grace) is heresy, then the New Testament is full of heresy. The paradox is perhaps most starkly stated in: Phil 2:12 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Phil 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. C.S. Lewis: “On Calvinism, both the statement that our final destination is already settled and the view that it still may be either Heaven or hell, seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of Time, which I don’t believe in. The controversy is one I can’t join on either side for I think that in the real (timeless) world it is meaningless…All that Calvinist question — Free-Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’ — there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone.” and elsewhere “The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’—which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God who worketh in you”—which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could say, “He did this bit and I did that.” But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I do not think human language could properly express it.” /end of quotes So much for the theology, but that does not fully cover the inappropriateness of the criticism. Dr. Peterson is not presenting his ideas as a Christian theologian, rather he is giving psychological and practical moral advice, and pointing to a source of more. Do you really thing that the state of not being a Christian absolves one of the responsibility of attempting moral behavior? If you do, then you are the heretic. If you don't your criticism of JP is beside the point. Not all of those to whom he is speaking and writing are Christians.
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  2. 55:44 About the heresy criticism. JP-paraphrase"God's grace enables us, but we still have to do the work. How can both of these be true simultaneously? And the answer depends on your view of time." As a believer, I agree, and so did C.S. Lewis. About heresy. The Bible is full of paradoxes, (Jesus was human and divine, the Godhead is Three and One, etc.) and one of the most common forms heresy takes is to "resolve" the paradox by denying one side of the paradox to uphold the other. Exhortations to moral purity abound in both the Old and New Testaments, as does the assertion that we are empowered to do good by grace. If moral exhortation (or even moral exhortation without immediately invoking grace) is heresy, then the New Testament is full of heresy. The paradox is perhaps most starkly stated in: Phil 2:12 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Phil 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. C.S. Lewis: “On Calvinism, both the statement that our final destination is already settled and the view that it still may be either Heaven or hell, seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of Time, which I don’t believe in. The controversy is one I can’t join on either side for I think that in the real (timeless) world it is meaningless…All that Calvinist question — Free-Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’ — there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone.” and elsewhere “The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’—which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God who worketh in you”—which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could say, “He did this bit and I did that.” But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I do not think human language could properly express it.” /end of quotes So much for the theology, but that does not fully cover the inappropriateness of the criticism. Dr. Peterson is not presenting his ideas as a Christian theologian, rather he is giving psychological and practical moral advice, and pointing to a source of more. Do you really thing that the state of not being a Christian absolves one of the responsibility of attempting moral behavior? If you do, then you are the heretic. If you don't your criticism of JP is beside the point. Not all of those to whom he is speaking and writing are Christians.
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