As for Piper, I haven’t read much of Piper over the last year or so. I read his critique of Tom Wright and started Don’t Waste Your Life but never finished. I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to call me the local Piper listener any more. I just don’t have the time to read him and everyone else I need to read (i.e. Waltke and Gesenius for Hebrew and Wallace and Robertson for Greek, to name a few).

I’ll take your word for Piper’s published works, but I think the ambiguity of some of his language explains some of my confusion…at least in his unpublished works.

As for his castigation of Calvin, I actually read that a few months ago (and when I looked for the quote recently I couldn’t find it…either that or it was someone else, but in my memory it was Piper – which is possible), so I look again to try to find it.

But, I think in the end, I’m not really the one to talk about Piper’s view…as I’m not even a Calvinist. So, I think your disagreement is really with Hank, not me….though, clearly I have had things to say about Piper.

So, as I admitted before, it’s entirely possible I’ve misunderstood him, but I find it interesting that Hank (our local Piper listener) is in disagreement with your position. (just an observation, not trying to prove anything).

I’ll get back to this discussion later. A bit busy right now to engage it a thoroughly as I did a few weeks ago when school was out.

The second quote makes a philosophical point. It doesn’t answer every question posed in the problem of evil to say that God permits some things but directly orders others. It does answer some, and Piper doesn’t deny that. He doesn’t think there’s no point in using permission-language, as evidenced by the first quote. But he acknowledges that if God permits something evil, it still makes sense for there to be a reason why God permits that evil rather than not permitting it. So it doesn’t solve all the problems raised by the problem of evil. This is perfectly consistent with what I’ve been saying about Piper, so again I’m not sure why you’re bringing it up as evidence against what I’ve been saying.

The third quote deals with exactly one level of the two levels Piper is willing to speak on. As he says in the first quote, it’s quite proper to refer to God as ordaining sin in one sense. He insists elsewhere that we should make the distinction between ordaining in a direct sense and permitting, but on another level God ordains everything that happens, or else it wouldn’t have happened. God’s permission is required for it to occur, and so it makes sense to call it part of God’s ultimate sovereign plan. In that sense, God is causally responsible for its coming to be. So again, I see no inconsistency between this and what I’ve been saying.

Then you go on to say that Piper castigates Calvin for allowing for permissive will. I’m not sure where he does that. The only mention of Calvin in the quotes you gave was to agree with Calvin, so it can’t be in any of these quotes. Where does this castigation take place? I’ve never seen anything of the sort in Piper, and I have seen him take the view that Calvin takes, so I still have strong doubts about what you’re saying.

Piper is not always clear, and he’s not always careful. There are some important issues where I disagree with him also. But on this issue I think he and I agree, and I think it’s the same view held by Calvin once you get around some of the looseness of his terminology and, as Obama would say, inaptness of his choice of words. So I’m not surprised that he got lots of emails by confused people. But I think he’s clear enough in his published works that I’m pretty confident of what his view is, and I haven’t seen anything to disabuse me of that notion in the quotes and links you’re giving.

Your last statement is false. He doesn’t think permitting sin is the same as effectively ordaining it. Permitting is a kind of ordaining (otherwise the third quote makes no sense, and I’m not sure the first one does either), but it’s not the same kind of ordaining as the stronger sense that he would distinguish from permitting (otherwise the first quote makes absolutely no sense). The reason God isn’t morally culpable has to do with this difference, but Piper isn’t willing to specify exactly what the difference amounts to. That means he hasn’t fully explored his view, but he’s willing to insist on the things that I think Calvinists need to insist on to be faithful to scripture, even if they don’t explore the philosophical implications as carefully as they could.

“It is right, therefore, to use permission to apply to God’s ordination of sin. But we should not assume, as Arminians do, that divine permission is anything less than sovereign ordination.”

“For the problem of evil asks how God can ordain evil without authoring it. And, as Calvin pointed out, the distinction between remote and proximate cause is also inadequate to answer the questions before us, however useful it may be in stating who is to blame for evil. Nor is it a solution to say that God permits, rather than ordains, evil. As we have seen, God’s permission is as efficacious as his ordination”
both from:
.http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/788_does_god_empermitem_sin/

“God does bring about sinful human actions. To deny this, or to charge God with wickedness on account of it, is not open to a Bible-believing Christian. Somehow, we must confess both that God has a role in bringing evil about, and that in doing so he is holy and blameless. . . . God does bring sins about, but always for his own good purposes. So in bringing sin to pass he does not himself commit sin.”

in: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/786_does_god_emauthorem_sin/

As for Calvin – that’s my point. He allows for permissive will. Piper castigates him for it. So I’m not really sure what you’re looking for in terms of a quote.

Now, if you still hold that I’ve misunderstood Piper, that’s fine…maybe I have. But in the beginning of one of those blogs he notes that after making these comments he received a lot of emails from people who were also confused about what he is saying. So, I suppose I’m not the only one.

For him permitting sin is the same as effectively ordaining it. God ordains sin…though, for Piper, he is not morally culpable in doing so.

As for Calvin, you don’t even give any quote for him, so I’m not sure what he even says that you’re taking this way. I could see Calvin getting upset at the idea of mere permission if that’s supposed to mean that God sort of concedes to something happening that he doesn’t prefer, so maybe that’s what Calvin means in whatever passage you have in mind. I’d be surprised if he said anywhere that there’s no sense in which God permits some things while causing others, as long as it’s true in both cases that both happened the way God wanted them to happen.

Some compatibilists do insist on saying that compatibilist freedom means you couldn’t do otherwise, but the original compatibilists, the Stoics, refused to say that, and I think they had good reasons. There’s certainly a sense in which the only possibility is the one that happens. That sense is that there’s only one possibility consistent with the past and the deterministic laws of nature. But it’s also true that you considered options and genuinely chose one, on any halfway decent compatibilist model of freedom. That means it’s perfectly legitimate to talk about those other options and call them possibilities. You, of course, didn’t know that the one you chose was the only one your faculties would lead to compatible with the deterministic laws and the past. But it seems to me to confuse efficient causes and final causes to care about that. What matters to me is not whether efficient causes lead to what I do in a way that traces back to events outside my control. What matters to me is whether the reasons I have for doing what I do are my own reasons and whether different reasons would have led to different choices. With compatibilist freedom, you certainly can have the latter, and it is a kind of genuine potentiality.

Tom, can you give the page numbers from Volf? I only copied the passage, not the page number when we were at your house.