Bullinger and The Man who Thought he was a Robot

Invincible Ignorance:

Years ago when I was in post-grad philosophy, a few of us were in a tutorial, and the term “Invincible Ignorance” was tabled. Its not meant as a pejorative term, but as a way to describing an attitude of willful defiance. You’ve all heard the story, for example, of the man who thought he was a robot. His doctor tries every argument to convince his disbelieving patient otherwise. Finally the doctor says “do robots bleed?” The patient says “no.” The doctor then mercilessly pricks the patient, and blood droplets appear. Startled and in total amazement, the patient cries out: “Robots do bleed.” I have paraphrased the old story for sure.

So we are back to our opponent and his claims regarding Bullinger. Now the assertions being made by our opponent are on a par with our defiant patient in the story above.

Our opponent has made a claim that comes to this, when Bullinger, for example, uses the term ‘world’ he does not literally mean world. His arguments for this naked assertion in essence, come down to this: Because the Arminian (1620s) and Amyraldian (1640s) debates had not occurred yet, the early Reformed felt no need to be “careful” about their terms, and so we cannot assume that by their language they literally meant all the world . (This of course presupposes the claim that they were somehow unable to state or have an opinion on the extent of the expiation as per its substitution and sin-bearing.) Our opponent therefore claims we must assume that by “world” they meant it in a non-exhaustive sense.

What can one say to this?

Well, firstly, it is nonsense. The discussion now has well and truly gone into twilight mode. Let me posit a few common sense rejoinders.

1) Just because a topic was not debated, does not mean a given person could not have had an opinion on a given subject. Or that they could not have explicitly meant what they quite apparently said.

For examples, we would be stupid if we said that prior to Augustine, the early church had no settled understanding of eternal security, or before Athanasius, the early church had no proper understanding of the deity of Christ, that they had no need to be careful in their terminoloty. Or that we could not make warranted inferences from these men before the issues were debated.

2) However, we do know the topic of limited atonement was debated in Bullinger’s time. It was clarified by Prosper in the 5thC. It was debated again by Gottschalk in the 9thC. It was settled and clarified again by Lombard in the 12thC. Lombard’s synthesis was reaffirmed by Thomas in the 13thC. We know that Bucer debated it in the 16thC, in some form or another. We know that Trent condemned limited atonement in the 16thC. So the issue was known to the Reformers.

We also know unlimited expiation was being defended in the 1570s by Kimedoncius no less: against the Socinians and Universalists. That indicates the issue was already getting attention before then, in order to warrant Kimedoncius’ dedication of an entire book to the defense of the doctrine. We know that Ursinus is defending, what Richard Muller calls a non-speculative hypothetical universalism against the Socinians (recall Richard Muller identifies Ursinus, along with Bullinger and Musclus as holding to this form of non-speculative hypothetical universalism).

3) Our opponent has assumed the onus or burden of proof here, as he must show that they never could have spoken of the extent of the expiation in literal or actual universal terms, denoting all mankind literally. Of course, his problem is, if just one example of an exhaustive use of “world” could be found, his whole thesis is imploded. That is why he has got to such absurdities.

4) It actually works against his own position. That is, his position becomes self-contradictory and irrational. For when he wants it, he can say here and here they did mean world in an exhaustive sense, either the whole world, or of the elect. Take his citation of Knox. Clearly “whole world” means all mankind, because for some almost magical reason, our opponent is able to say, ‘here Knox means ‘exhaustively’ the whole world.’ However, when it comes to Bullinger’s identical use of the phrase “whole world,” our opponent asserts the contrary.

5) He has no public rules by which he determines when and where each instance of “world” means all mankind or some non-defined entity. He just picks and chooses at will. Robots anyone?

6) He completely misleads his readers about the fact that Bullinger et al, did in fact go to lengths to define “world” as all mankind, the whole human race etc. As an aside, we see similar explicit attempts by men such as Musculus (click here) and Calvin (click here) where they define their terms like world and human race to mean the whole of it, all of it.

But now let us grant that our opponent might have a case if Bullinger had merely referenced “the world.” The problem is, though, this is not the case.

Its not rocket science. Its not the fog our opponent wants to bring down over our heads. Bullinger uses many helper terms. I will not multiply the citations here. I have listed dozens of them already: click here. If the reader clicks over to the main file page, he or she will see Bullinger use helper terms such as “all the world” “the whole world,” “all the sins of the world,” even “all the sins of all the world.” What is more, he will use equivalent terms interchangeably, “all men,” “all mankind” “all sinners” “all the sinners of all the world” and “all men of all ages.” At some point, the honest reader has to admit the Bullinger’s true position on the extent of the expiation. To read the entire Bullinger file click here.

At some point, the patient must realize he is not a robot… you would think.

But more importantly, at some point, common sense tells the honest thinker, its time to walk away from the man who foolishly thinks he is a robot.

David