HOW ENOCH LED TO A DR STRANGE MEME

Some background to the creation of the attached meme.

It is commonly acknowledged that 2 Peter 2 and Jude reference 1 Enoch in their mention of ‘angels sinning’. For those not familiar with it, 1 Enoch takes the ‘heavenly beings’ view of the Sons of God in Gen 6:1-4 and greatly elaborates on their activities. In particular, they sin by procreating with human women and corrupting humanity with forbidden destructive knowledge & technologies (kind of like what people say about aliens now, but I digress!). For this they are punished with imprisonment. Even Jesus and Revelation possibly reference 1 Enoch which has the lake of fire for rebel angels.

This has led to the debate over whether 1 Enoch should be considered part of the inspired canon. Or maybe only parts of it are true, the parts that the New Testament cites – after all, 1 Enoch also has things that surely cannot be accepted like Enoch being the Messiah!

One notion is that Peter and Jude are using 1 Enoch’s material as a ‘sermon illustration’ – much like Jesus’ parables, referencing commonly known stories or experiences to make a theological point, but without assuming any of it actually happened. In modern times, preachers often do this with pop culture – for example, referencing the latest movies or series. This doesn’t mean that they consider the events of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones to be actual history!

Which leads me to Dr Strange, because his looking into the outcomes of 14,000,605 possible futures has often been used by Molinists as a way to explain God’s Middle Knowledge.

And looping all the way back to 1 Enoch now… If 1 Enoch should be considered canonical just because several New Testament books reference it, then the sheer amount of Molinist referencing of Dr Strange should eventually get the MCU canonized!

DETERMINISM = EDWARDIANISM

Context: Tim is talking about his book, which derives from his thesis done in a strongly Reformed college and submitted to a staunchly Calvinist board – so if anything was amiss in his research and claims about Reformed writings, they’d have shot it down!

42:00 Quote, not a few of the proponents and critics of the Reformed doctrine of free choice and divine willing have confused the specifically soteriological determination of the Reformed doctrine of predestination with a divine determinism of all human actions, end quote.

43:26 You know I surveyed everybody from Augustine to Aquinas and the pre-Reformation and then I started with, I went from Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin, all the way through to Dort. And then I did post-Reformation and studied Jonathan Edwards. Seems to me that the only one of them who consistently and clearly affirmed Exhaustive Divine Determinism was Jonathan Edwards. So I think many of these EDD folks who we see today, I want to call them Calvinists, I call them Edwardians because they really seem to oppose much of what Calvin, not to mention Luther and Melanchthon and others said.

45:24 The name that always comes out in trying their best to form a coherent doctrine of determinism is Edwards. Which funny enough was very philosophical in his approach to it. I mean, so you know you’re not fighting a bunch of Biblical theological arguments for determinism off of Edwards, you’re gonna get some good philosophy.