Hahahah
This is what happens when Neo Calvinist preachers actually think they are clever. Tullian Tchividjian maybe you should put down the social media and step away from the iPhone. But I hope you don’t because you reveal the madness deep underneath the doctrine.
Just so everyone knows what Herr Tullian is saying . . . beyond the cute effort at alliteration (syllogism . . . suffering . . . . savior: get it?) a syllogism is a method of deductive reason developed by Aristotle.
The formulation is Major premise + minor premise = deduction
The classic example:
- All men are mortal
- Socrates was a Man
- Therefore Socrates is mortal.
So, Herr Tullian Tchividjian is saying that the answer to suffering is not “reason” . . . but a “suffering” savior. Tullian is overtly saying that Reason is NOT a method to solve human problems.
I suspect that Herr Tullian is really hoping that his followers are so enamored with the alliteration that they never stop to apply reason to the tweet. Because if they did apply reason they would immediately ask: “What do you mean by answer?”
I’d bet money that Tullian Tchividjian really wants everyone to ignore the word “answer.” An answer is a means of resolving, fixing, or ending a problem. How does “suffering” resolve, fix or end “suffering” exactly? What syllogism do you have to employ where that is reality?
Of course suffering does not fix suffering any more than cancer fixes cancer, or being burned in a fire fixes being burned in a fire, or drowning somehow saves someone from drowning. The cancer patient needs a doctor who is NOT suffering from cancer. The burn victim needs a firemen who is NOT burning. And the drowning man needs a life guard who can breathe to save him.
Duh?!!
So how does a suffering savior provide an answer to human suffering?
Since we know that Tullian Tchividjian is abandoning reason on principle and looking for suffering to provide answers, we may never know but if I had to guess, the typical “answer” given by Neo Calvinist shills is that pain is all part of God’s Sovereign plan. This is a tidy “answer” that lets them punt their syllogistic premises into the abyss of “mystery.”
Alakazam poof! No more intellectual responsibility.
I’d bet money that Herr Tullian’s definition of “answer” is really you accepting suffering as the metaphysical primary because Jesus suffering is the metaphysical primary. This, of course, means that there is no solution to suffering; there is no resolving, fixing or ending suffering. There is only humble acquiescence to suffering.
Is it possible that Herr Tullian Tchividjian, Presbyterian wunderkind, has walked over to the Pentecostal dark side and is now ready to start proclaiming healing, faith and the full gospel. Is it possible that he joined the ranks of Kenneth Copeland, and Jerry Savelle and the late Oral Roberts and is ready to start preaching Mark 11: 23,24 and 25?
Healing IS an “answer” to suffering in the literal definition of solution. So, is Tullian Tchividjian making the move to becoming a faith healer? Is this tweet his warning shot across the bow of the Neo Calvinist dispensationalist world that Charismatic gifts have now been bestowed into Herr Tullian Tchividjian hands?
How long before John F. MacArthur writes another book Tullian Tchividijian Chaos?
LOLOL . . . that would be hilarious but his tweet would still be wrong. The correct doctrinal presentation for that would be something like: “The answer to our pain isn’t found in a syllogism but a Savior—-a resurrected and anointed Savior.”
Or maybe it would say:
“The answer to our pain isn’t found in a syllogism but the Holy Spirit —-one who is called along side to help.”
You get the idea.
But let’s continue with the use of reason to see if reason can actually be an answer to suffering.
Well, let’s see.
Syllogism
- Polio paralyzes people
- Jonas Salk developed a vaccine (using reason)
- People no longer suffer from polio
Ok, so that is a little loose with the syllogism but you get the point. The fact of the matter is that reason is central to answering human suffering. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment is when Reason was first elevated to a primary in human existence. It is no accident that the following three hundred years has been marked by the greatest decrease in human suffering—both individual suffering and collective suffering—in human history. It is no accident that where reason remains the primary tool of human existence, human suffering continues to be alleviated.
It is also no accident that the Age of Reason/The Enlightenment is when Luther and Calvin’s doctrine suffered its first major societal challenge and people could reject Luther’s Sin and Suffering metaphysical primary. It is no accident that the elevation of reason was central to ending the Churches stranglehold on knowledge, and its stranglehold on government. The result was human freedom. The result of freedom was unrestrained reason employed by free men who ultimately found real solutions to human suffering. And in every instance it was the deductive and inductive methods practiced by men of reason who found the ways to resolve people’s pain and suffering.
Here is reality:
- Reason employed by free me IS the primary method for finding solutions to suffering.
- The evidence is the endless list of medical and technological advance that have saturated the world.
Only the rationally depraved can blithely dismiss the reality before them. And make no mistake Herr Tullian Tchividjian is rationally depraved. Do you honestly think that when Herr Tullian Tchividijian walks into the doctor’s office with one of his three kids he expects to hear the doctor say: “You know Tullian, today I am abandoning syllogisms, so your real answer is just more suffering like Jesus?”
Are you kidding me?
Hell no! (too proof text Paul) Herr Tullian would expect the doctor to employ all of his deductive skills to identify the cause of the suffering and then provide a real ANSWER!!!!
Tullian Tchividjian’s Twitter bromide is a mindless madness. And thank God men like Tullian Tchividijian, have been given access to social media because they cannot hide their vile, suffering loving, death worshiping souls from people who actually think.
Absolutist: def. One who takes every statement of one’s opponent as being an absolutely accurate and complete expression of the other’s thought. And then lampoons the folly of the straw man thus created.
If the shoe fits, asshole.
And by the way, you have yet to show an example of an object without mass that interacts with gravity. If you cannot do so, then all your energetic hand-waving cannot exempt you from your folly.
From the Wikipedia article on Mass: “The tentatively confirmed discovery of a massive Higgs boson…”
I suppose Argo would hold that such a boson must be “extremely large.”
Context, asshole, context.
This is a perfect example of how science does not consistently apply its own ideas, and how difficult it is (or, in some cases, impossible) for some people to question that inconsistency.
Since gravity itself defies observation, and yet is said to somehow independently exist (a fallacy in its own right), it must be considered absolute (having no boundaries). And if it is absolute, NO object can be immune to the inexorable effects of gravity, be the object massive or massless, or possessing any other property.
Idiocy masquerading as wisdom.
Giving Argo the benefit of the doubt, what can be the basis of his certitude?
1) He believes that the Universe can be best understood as being CONSISTENT.
2) Therefore, any truth-claim must answer to the REQUIREMENT OF CONSISTENCY.
3) So, any truth claim that appears to be internally inconsistent is judged FALSE.
4) However, any human attempt to define TRUTH must be an approximation, a best-guess.
5) Therefore, ANY TRUTH CLAIM (regardless of the author) is FALSE.
6) This includes TRUTH CLAIMS by ARGO.
7) ERGO, ARGO’s METAPHYSIC is internally inconsistent, and therefore FALSE.
8) Conclusion: ARGO’s METAPHYSIC results in an INFINITE LOOP of FALSEHOOD.
9) And Argo is stuck in that loop.