Category Archives: Neo-Reformed-Fundamentalism

WHY BEING A CALVINIST IS AWESOME by Jc_Freak

Posted on by
1
Email

Why Being a Calvinist Is Awesome by Jc_Freak http://www.jcfreak73.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/why-being-calvinist-is-awesome.html

[This is satire. Everything said here is meant to be funny.
I am fully aware that what I am saying is an exaggeration.]

I’ve given up. After much struggling, I’ve finally have been convinced by robust arguments of the Young, Restless and Reformed. Now I can enjoy all of the benefits of my better understanding of the Bible, like:

  1. I get all the cool teachers: I can just enjoy everything Piper, MacArther, and White have to say. Not to mention historically I can claim Calvin, Luther, Augustine, Edwards, Pink, etc. Sure, I may loose leading Christian apologists such as William Lane Craig, John Lennox, and Ravi Zacharias, and I may loose John Wesley, C S Lewis, and all but one of the early church fathers, but its not who they are, or what they teach, but they’re popularity that matters.
  2. Being both proud and humble at the same time: One of the great things about being Calvinist is that no matter how much better, or smarter, or more godly I may be to the other people around me, I don’t have to worry about losing my humility because of how aware I am of God being greater than I am.
  3. Calvinists have their own code: It is fantastic that words like soveriegnty, election, and grace mean something completely different when I use than when the rest of the world uses them. It’s our own code language, and since when was that not fun?
  4. I get to be a serious theologian while only having to learn 5 terms: I can learn TULIP and its basic collorlaries in a couple of days. Who cares that I have not thought out all of the implications. That’s what the cool teachers are for. I can simply be confident that they have answered all the questions that really matter and then just quote them. After all, the Calvinist answer is always the best answer
  5. I’m the only one that’s allowed to claim mystery: It’s only a contradiction if its in someone else’s theology.
  6. Being thoroughly biblical:I care about basing my beliefs solely on the Bible. That is why I only read and quote Calvinist authors.
  7. Balanced theology: Unlike Arminianism, Calvinism carefully balances all of the issues. That is why we have Hypercalvinism on one-side, and Arminianism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Semiaugustinianism, Semipelagianism, and Pelagianism on the other side. We’re smack dab in the middle!
  8. Being against the flesh: We want to believe in free will, because of our sinly impulses. Calvinism shows its integrity of going against those worldly impulses by denying it, unlike Hinduism, Islam, Atheism, Gnosticism, and Plato and Aristotle.
  9. A better name: When was the last time “Calvinist” was confused with a nationality? And it’s recognized by spell check.

I couldn’t think of a 10th reason. Anyone else who can think of a really good 10th reason why being a Calvinist is awesome, please mention it in the comments below.

Email

Luther and “Double Predestination” Roger Olson

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Luther and “Double Predestination”

April 10, 2013 By  

So, my article on “election” was published in Christianity Today’s January/February issue (2013). Predictably, a letter responding was published in the current issue of CT (April). The letter writers (a Lutheran pastor in Iowa) takes issue with my claim that Martin Luther held a view of election similar to that of the Reformed theologians Zwingli and Calvin. The writer says (“The Way to Election,” pp. 55-56) that Luther did not believe in “double predestination” He describes my claim as “a serious mischaracterization” and argues that Luther “rejected the idea of God’s electing to condemnation.”

So, to refresh my memory, I have been reading Luther and Luther scholars for the last few days. Here is one article available on line that presents a persuasive argument that Luther did believe in double predestination: http://www.contra-mundum.org/essays/mattson/Luther-predestination.pdf . Here, as elsewhere on line, the following statement is attributed to Luther (and the sole source cited is Lorraine Boettner who doesn’t cite “chapter or verse” in Luther’s Commentary on Romans):

“All things whatever arise from, and depend on, the divine appointment; whereby it was foreordained who should receive the word of life, and who should disbelieve it; who should be delivered from their sins and who should be hardened in them; and who should be justified and who should be condemned.”

So, yesterday I read through Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (trans., J. Theodore Mueller, Zondervan, 1954). I did not find that quote there. However, the volume lacks the all important Preface (!) so I read that at CCEL.org. Here is a statement I found there:

“St. Paul teaches us about the eternal providence of God. It is the original source which determines who would believe and who wouldn’t, who can be set free from sin and who cannot. Such matters have been taken out of our hands and are put into God’s hand….” (This may be found in the Preface where Luther is previewing Romans 9.)

However, in the main body of the Commentary Luther, in the chapter on chapter 8 and on page 115 of the volume cited above, Luther writes thus about predestination:

“A fourth objection [to the doctrine of election as Luther believes it is taught in Romans] is this: God hardens the will of man so that he desires to transgress the divine Law all the more. Hence, God is the cause of why men sin and are condemned. This is the strongest and most weighty objection. But the Apostle meets it by saying that so it is God’s will, and that if God so wills He does not act unjustly, for all things belong to Him as the clay belongs to the potter. He thus establishes His law in order that the elect may obey it, but the reprobates may be caught in it, and so He may show both His wrath and His mercy.”

Now, of course, someone (perhaps the letter writer) may argue that this was written in 1515 and therefore hardly represents the mature Luther’s thinking about the matter. Well, neither I nor the letter writer said anything about WHEN Luther believed in or didn’t believe in double predestination. In Table Talk Luther virtually forbids any discussion of predestination because it leads into all kinds of speculation and fear. So the issue is not WHEN Luther believed or did not believe in double predestination but whether Luther EVER believed in it.

Here is a quote from Alister McGrath: “Luther explicitly teaches a doctrine of double predestination….” (Iustitia Dei, Second Ed., p. 203)

I own this marvelous book entitled What Luther Says (Concordia Press, 1959). It contains pages of quotes from Luther about election. None of them explicitly express double predestination, but the editors (two Lutheran theologians) include a footnote that says “Luther had not always spoken like this. [viz., that there is no explanation for why God does not save everyone when he obviously could] While lecturing on Romans in 1515-1516, he was still teaching particular grace and predestinated reprobation…and his earlier lectures on the Psalms, 1513-1515, reveal the same point of view….” (p. 455)

Finally, I come to Luther’s debate with Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will. I don’t see how anyone can read this 1525 essay and not come away thinking Luther believed in “single predestination” rather than double predestination. Here Luther distinguishes between two aspects of God–God “hidden” and God “revealed.” It is imperative to pay attention to this distinction when talking about what Luther believed God does and does not will and do. It is part of God’s revealed will (“God revealed”) that all be saved. (All references here are to the following edition: Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation [The Library of Christian Classics] eds. Rupp, Marlow, Watson, Drewery [Westminster Press, 1969].) But the “hidden God” wills and works everything. Commenting on Ezekiel 33:11 (which Erasmus used to argue that God does not will the condemnation of anyone) Luther writes that “It is this that God as he is preached is concerned with, namely, that sin and death should be taken away and we should be saved. … But God hidden in his majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life, death, and all in all. … God does many things that he does not disclose to us in his word; he also wills many things which he does not disclose himself as willing in his word. Thus he does not will the death of a sinner, according to his word; but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his. It is our business, however, to pay attention to the word and leave that inscrutable will alone….” (p. 201) (Lest anyone quibble here, the context makes clear that by “death” in this passage Luther is referring to eternal death, condemnation, hell.)

Later Luther writes about why God does not change the wills of wicked people when he could. “It therefore remains for someone to ask why God does not cease from the very motion of omnipotence by which the will of the ungodly is moved to go on being evil and becoming worse. … Why does he not…change the evil wills that he moves?” (p. 236) Here is one place where Luther’s nominalism/voluntarism pops out: “He is God, and for his will there is no cause or reason….” (p. 236)

Throughout the essay Luther ridicules and blasts belief in free will. And he makes abundantly clear that everything that happens, no exceptions, are willed and brought about by the hidden God–even evil. HOWEVER, people can argue that Luther did NOT believe God foreordains evil or sin or condemnation BECAUSE (although they rarely mention this) Luther DID deny that to “God revealed.” At least some of the time, and certainly in his response to Erasmus, Luther viewed God as Janus-like–with two “faces.”

So, it seems right to me to say that, for Luther, when speaking about God hidden in his majesty, God the all-determining reality, nothing escapes God’s foreordaining will and power–including reprobation. When people who know Luther well claim that he did NOT believe in double predestination, they MUST be talking about Luther’s “God revealed in his word.”

When I say that Luther believed in double predestination I mean (!) he believed God hidden in his majesty, the deus absconditus, foreordains and brings about (even if only indirectly through withdrawing his preserving grace) every sin and evil will and act of every creature including the reprobates’ condemnation.

Admittedly, later in his career, Luther shied away from this and stopped talking in that way and came close to forbidding “speculation” about predestination.

Email

What Would Jesus Make of “Passion” (Conferences)? Guest Blog by Austin Fischer

Posted on by
1
Email

A repost from Roger’s Blog January 9, 2013: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/what-would-jesus-make-of-passion-conferences-guest-blog-by-austin-fischer

What Would Jesus Make of Passion? by Austin Fischer (Teaching Pastor, The Vista Community Church, Belton/Temple, Texas)

 Hooray Excellence!

 At the moment I’m writing this, there are 60,000 college students gathered inside the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. They are singing worship songs, listening to sermons, and gathering what will no doubt be a massive offering that will go towards combating human trafficking. It’s pretty unbelievable stuff, but the Passion conferences specialize in the unbelievable.

Cutting edge media, excellent musicians, famous speakers. If we’re going to be candid, it’s refreshing to see something “Christian” also be something of such exceptional quality. You could invite an agnostic friend to it and not blush at the prospects of asking him to pay a couple hundred bucks to attend something that feels like a home-school prom. I like excellence, you like excellence, we all like excellence, and I think Jesus does too. Hooray excellence!

That said, as I was reading the tweets of a number of my students who are at Passion, a question kept bouncing around inside my head. Maybe I was asking it of God or maybe God was asking it of me—I often can’t tell the difference. But either way, the question was, “What would Jesus make of Passion?”

Now I know, I know. The question is both loaded and brutally anachronistic, but it just kept asking itself to me. Spoiler alert: I have no idea what Jesus would make of Passion. But here’s some stuff I threw up against the wall. Maybe some of it sticks.

Thought #1…Temple = Georgia Dome

I remember the first time I went to a Passion conference. I was a senior in high school and together with my youth pastor and a few friends, we made the trek to Sherman, Texas. And from the beginning, the trip had a certain vibe to it, a vibe I’ve since learned is the anticipation of pilgrimage.

Religious pilgrimages—as far as I can tell—stretch back to the beginning of human history. There’s something primeval and elemental about the act of going on a journey to a place where we believe we will encounter something transcendent. In the Hebrew Bible, we see God commanding the Jews to make yearly pilgrimages to “appear before the Lord God” (Exodus 34:18-23). Once the Temple was built, these pilgrimages would culminate there, the place where heaven and earth came together. Indeed for a Jew, the Temple was the holiest place in the whole universe. They traveled there because God was uniquely there.

And by way of crude parallelism, it would appear that what the Temple was for an ancient Jew, the Georgia Dome is now for many young-adult, American evangelicals. They take a yearly pilgrimage to the Dome because they feel it is a place where God is uniquely present.

“Cleansing” the Temple?

So what do we make of this? The first thing that came to my mind was Matthew 21 and Jesus’ “cleansing” of the Temple. I put cleansing in quotations because contra popular belief, NT scholars point out that Jesus is not cleansing the Temple so much as he is shutting it down. Flipping over the tables of the money-changers and seats of the dove-sellers (21:12)—these are not acts of purification but condemnation. The exchanging of pagan coins for Jewish coins and the selling of animals for sacrifice were both essential for Temple worship. The Temple didn’t need rehabilitation. It needed to die.

But not because God hates buildings; rather, the Temple needed to die because Jesus was replacing it. Jesus was a one-man, walking Temple; the place where heaven and earth came together and God was uniquely present to his people. As N.T. Wright says, “What the gospels offer us is a God who is in the midst [of us] in and as Jesus the Messiah…Jesus himself is the new Temple at the heart of the new creation…And so this Temple, like the wilderness tabernacle, is a temple on the move, as Jesus’ people go out, in the energy of the Spirit, to be the dwelling of God…”[1]

Now from one angle it’s tempting to connect these dots. Jesus shut down the Temple because he was replacing it. The Georgia Dome has become a new Temple. Jesus would walk into the Georgia Dome and flip over the merch tables and slam Chris Tomlin’s guitar, Garth Brooks style. And while that sort of simplistic reasoning certainly won’t do, I do think it raises some interesting questions regarding the pilgrimage/Temple mentality that so clearly permeates the Passion ethos. So here go a few thoughts…

(c)hurch

Jesus didn’t shut down the Temple because it was evil. He shut it down because it was obsolete and no longer needed. God was doing a new thing, was making himself present to his world and his people in a new way, and the Temple didn’t have a place in this new creation. God was now present to his people through the Spirit and was present to the whole world through his Spirit-filled community = the church. And I put church in lower case on purpose. Local churches made up of normal people doing normal things…this is the God-appointed medium of God’s presence and grace to the world. Not a Temple. Not a yearly pilgrimage. And dare I say, not a trip to the Georgia Dome.

To be sure, many Passion attendees love their local church and their pilgrimage to the Dome is a noble period of spiritual refreshment. But I don’t mind going out on a limb and suggesting that for a great many attendees—perhaps the majority—Passion is the most spiritual moment of the year. It is the standard by which all other spiritual moments will be judged. They’ll have to wait a year to feel this close to God again because it’ll be a year before they’re back here, singing the resounding chorus to an awesome song, having just listened to a sermon from their favorite celebrity pastor, all while their eyes are dazzled by the glitz and glamour of it all. It will be a chore to wade through the ordinariness of actual church life for another year.

As I once told a college student, if Passion is the most spiritual moment of your year, a.) I feel bad for you…b.) you’re not going to be able to love and serve your actual church.

And that’s because your actual church actually has to be the church. It has to deal with crying babies, botched song transitions, average sermons by not-famous people, and a budget for the year that is half that for 4 days of Passion. It’ll never measure up and so you’ll probably bail and look for a church that will feed your Passion addiction (if only Passion could be a church…or wait…it is ;) or you’ll stay and complain and never put down any real roots.

I inhabit and am thus aware of a rather small sliver of reality that I know as my life, and speaking from here, this is not hypothetical. I work with college students, I watch it happen, and I deal with the aforementioned phenomena. For the longest time, I didn’t quite know what to call it and I still don’t. But I know it involves a skewed understanding of the spiritual life in which a streamlined, hyper-spiritualized gathering has replaced the gritty reality of incarnation, of learning to be a human, among other humans, through whom God is reconciling the world to himself. It invigorates the spiritual life to be sure, but it does so by immersing them in something that just doesn’t seem to bear much resemblance to the real world.

And so as ironic as it may sound, maybe what Passion is doing is not progressive or ground-breaking so much as it is, well, antiquated. That’s hyperbolic to be sure but maybe, just maybe, Passion needs to make sure it doesn’t build something that Jesus already tore down. And I really hope it doesn’t build it on top of the church.

Thought #2…Going Vegan in a Steakhouse

Maybe you don’t buy the “Passion or church” thought above. Maybe you think you can have your cake and eat it too. I’m not so convinced most people can, but moving on, thought #2 is something I hope we can all agree on, even though it is uncomfortable.

So I’m told that at the beginning of this year’s Passion conference, Louie Giglio got up, surveyed the energy and buzz of 60,000 students packed into the Dome and said, “Is this not incredible?” He went on to talk about how Passion has become a global movement, impacting millions of lives and followed that up by telling the story of a student who had been addicted to drugs, but as a result of last year’s conference is a year clean. Louie then said, “The testimony of these days in the Dome will be, ‘I know that He is the Lord,’ and ‘I know He can do immeasurably more because He did it in my life,’ and ‘I don’t need an event, I don’t need a Dome, I need Jesus’.”

“I don’t need an event. I don’t need a Dome. I need Jesus.” Amen! See, Louie and company know it’s about Jesus and not an event. But let’s allow ourselves to sit with the irony for a moment. Louie stands before a crowd of 60,000 people, in the Georgia Dome, talking about how this is a global movement, telling a story about how this event helped a guy be sober for a year…and he says, “I don’t need an event, I don’t need a Dome…” But Louie, you’re in the Dome, at an event, hyping the event. We hear you saying something about not needing a Dome, but it’s hard for us to take you seriously when your face is being projected on that 5-story tall LED screen suspended in the middle of the Dome.

Perhaps it’s something like taking a group of people to the best steakhouse in town, providing them with a buffet of the finest cuts available, all the while telling them that eating meat is wrong and we should all go vegan. You can talk to people about the virtues of going vegan all day long, but as long as you’re feeding them steak, I doubt they’re really listening to you. And perhaps even more importantly, I question whether you really want them to listen to you.

Means = Message

There is a more technical way to say all of this: your means is your message. When delivering a message, our words are not the only things that communicate. Everything communicates, and in particular, the “way you do things” communicates, perhaps the loudest. I’ll borrow an example from an excellent book.

Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken were the pastors at one of those suburban, fast-growing, soon to be mega-churches. Fearing they were bordering on becoming a “seeker-sensitive” church, they started really emphasizing discipleship from the pulpit. But they noticed it wasn’t changing the culture of their church. It was still trending towards consumerism and impotent discipleship. What was the problem? In their own words, “We couldn’t merely change the words we used to communicate the gospel because there were too many other messages ingrained in the Oak Hills culture that would contradict our words.”[2]

In other words, you want to make sure you’re creating disciples and not voyeuristic consumers? Then you’re going to need more than words spoken in a context that contradicts everything you’re saying. It’s naïve to think we can hook people with a massive, consumer experience, and then not expect them to act like consumers. As Carlson and Lueken say, “Our attractional methods are not neutral. We are training people as we attract them.”[3]

Some Conclusions

So what would Jesus make of Passion? I don’t know. I think he’d enjoy hearing 60,000 people singing to him. I think he’d love a massive offering taken up to combat human trafficking. I think he’d rejoice in the refreshment and repentance taking place. And as mentioned earlier, I think he’d enjoy the excellence of it all. These are—in and of themselves—indisputably good things. But I’m not sure what he would think about the new Temple we’ve constructed, the celeb-pastor cults, or the Passion fever. But deconstruction is easy, so how about a little reconstruction.

I suggest this: Do some massive downsizing for Passion next year. Minimal media, no celeb-pastors or musicians. Get people who are good, just not famous…they’ll cost less. Maybe just leave the regular lights on. Maybe you could charge $50 instead of $200. By my calculations, that’s somewhere around $10 million dollars you’ll save the attendees. Then, challenge everyone who attends to put that $150 they saved at Passion towards their local church’s budget. Or if they really hate their local church and don’t believe in it enough to give $150, then give it to Compassion, International Justice Mission, etc. And then maybe Louie could stand up in the Dome in front of 60,000 people and say, “I don’t need a dome, I don’t need an event, I just need Jesus”, and we’d actually be able to hear him.

And one more thing. We Christians do have an unfortunate tendency to be cynical towards things that are doing well—especially when it’s not “our” thing. Whatever the psychology behind it, it’s all too easy to be swept away by some latent notion that if it’s Christian and successful/excellent than there must be something wrong with it. The success and excellence of Passion should be something we rejoice in. But success and excellence—from a truly kingdom perspective—are things only achieved through ruthless self-evaluation and continual repentance. Like most things, I don’t think the Passion conferences are all black or all white. Like most of us, they do some good things and bad things. So here’s to exposing the hype and nourishing the good.

 

 

[1] N.T. Wright, How God Became King, 239.

[2] Carlson and Lueken, Renovation of the Church, 57.

[3] Ibid., 67.

Email

Freewill/Arminian View of Romans 9 – Greg Boyd

Posted on by
Reply
Email

shel – Boyd does a nice job of summing up Romans 9 from a free-will perspective.  Enjoy! (Most bolding in paragraphs is mine).

The Deterministic Interpretation of Romans 9
Many people believe that Romans 9 demonstrates that God has the right and power to save whichever individuals he wants to save and damn whichever individuals he wants to damn. I’ll call this the “deterministic” reading of Romans 9, for it holds that God determines who will be saved and who will be lost.

On first glance, it may seem that the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 has a strong case. For in this passage Paul explicitly says that God “has mercy on whomever he chooses and he hardens whomever he chooses” (vs. 18). He then illustrates God’s sovereign election by referring to God’s choice of Isaac over Ishmael (9:7-8) and of Jacob over Esau (9:10-13). Regarding this latter choice Paul writes:

“Even before [Jacob and Esau] had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) [Rebecca] was told, ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’

As it is written,
‘I have loved Jacob,
but I have hated Esau’” (Rom. 9:11-13).

Without regard to anything Jacob or Esau did, God chose to “love” Jacob and “hate” Esau. Hence, Paul concludes, God’s choice of people “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

The support for the deterministic interpretation seems to grow even stronger as Paul goes on to depict God’s relationship to humans as a relationship between a potter and his clay. God has the right to fashions us, his clay, however he sees fit. And this is precisely what he does, according to Paul.

“Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Rom 9:21-23).

According to the deterministic interpretation (Shel: determinists= Calvinism, Reformed/Neo-reformed, new-puritans), Paul is teaching that God simply fashions some vessels for destruction in order to display his wrath and power and other vessels for mercy in order to display his mercy. He hardens the former and has mercy on the latter. And this hardening and granting mercy is not based on anything God finds in the vessel. It is simply based on God’s free decision. If this seems unfair, as it undoubtedly does, Paul’s response is simply to invalidate the sentiment: “[W]ho indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” (Rom 9:20).

So, the case for the deterministic interpretation initially looks strong. Nevertheless, I think it is mistaken. Indeed, I shall argue that a central point of Romans 9 is to argue the exact opposite of the conclusions drawn from the deterministic interpretation. For, in contrast to the deterministic interpretation, God is not an arbitrary, deterministic deity. He rather is wisely flexible in his dealings with humans.

I will offer six arguments in response to the deterministic interpretation.

1. The Absoluteness of Christ and the Universality of God’s Love
First, as with all theological issues, we must begin and end all our reflections on the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one and only Word of God (Jn 1:1), the image of God (Col 1:15) and the perfect expression of God’s essence (Heb 1:3). He supersedes all previous revelations and can be superseded by none. He is the definitive revelation of God.

The deterministic interpretation of Romans 9, I believe, is in tension with the God we find revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus dying on the cross for his enemies reveals the essence of what God is like — God is love. In contrast to this, the deterministic reading of Romans 9 forces us to conclude that this is only partly true of God, for it only applies to some people (viz. God’s “elect”). Behind the beautiful portrait of God in Christ, we find a deity who is unilaterally determining some to be saved and some to be damned, all for “his glory.” This means the revelation of God in Christ is pen-ultimate. It doesn’t really reveal the heart of God. Calvary conceals God as much as it reveals God.

If we rather resolve that Jesus is our definitive picture of God, and that this picture cannot be placed alongside of or qualified by any other, then we must conclude that there is something amiss with the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9. For Christ reveals, and the biblical witness confirms, that God’s love is universal, his love is impartial, his love is kind, and his love desires all to be saved (e.g. I Jn 4:8; Duet 10:17-19; 2 Chron 19:7; Ezek 18:25; Mk 12:14; Jn 3:16; Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:10-11; Eph 6:9; I Tim 2:4; I Pet 1:17; 2 Pet. 3:9).

2. Has God Broken Covenant?
Second, the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 assumes that Paul is concerned with individual salvation in this chapter. But, in point of fact, this is not the issue Paul is addressing. The expressed issue Paul is addressing is whether or not “the word of God had failed” (Rom 9:6). That is, had God’s promise to be the God of the Jews and to have them as his covenant people been rescinded?

The question was a burning one for Paul, for to many Jews this shocking conclusion seemed to follow from what Paul was preaching. Most Jews of the day understood God’s covenental faithfulness toward them to depend on two things: their nationality and their obedience to the law. If what Paul was preaching was true, however – that is, if salvation was available to anyone, including Gentiles, simply on the basis of their faith — then neither a person’s Jewish nationality nor their obedience to the law counted for anything (cf. Gal 5:12). It seemed that the uniqueness of the Jewish identity and calling had been undermined.

Even worse, it now seemed to be working against them. Because they strove for righteousness based on the external observation of the law (works) instead of faith, they were now being hardened – as evidenced by the fact that so few believed in Jesus (Rom 9:31-32). This meant that, if Paul’s Gospel was true, the very ones whom God made covenant promises to were now being hardened! Hence it looked like “the word of God had failed.”

This is the question Paul is addressing in Romans 9 (as well as in chapters 10 and 11). It’s a question of God’s fidelity to Israel as a nation and the basis by which God makes anyone a covenant partner. It has nothing whatsoever to do with how God elects individuals to salvation.We are misguided if we try to use this passage to answer this question.

3. Election to Vocation, Not Salvation
The way Paul answered this objection also shows that his concern was with God’s relationship to a nation, not with individual salvation. Paul refuted the idea that God’s covenant promises had failed by showing that God’s covenant promises were never based on a peoples’ nationality or external obedience to the law. Rather, Paul argued, God had always exercised his sovereign right to choose whomever he wanted to choose.

Paul illustrated his point by referring to God’s choice of Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau, made without any consideration for their attributes or merits (9:8-13). Both examples underscore God’s right to choose whomever he wishes, for both choices were made ahead of time and both were wholly unexpected. Moreover, both choices reversed the role of primogenitor, both concerned individuals who were not exemplar in their character, and most surprisingly – and telling — Isaac was supernaturally conceived.

In offering these examples, Paul was defending God’s right to choose whomever he wants and to do so by any means he chooses. Hence, Paul is arguing, it shouldn’t be shocking to Jews if God now chooses to enter into a covenant with Gentiles simply on the basis of their faith. He’s always been a God who could do whatever he wanted. At the same time, it is important to remember that in using Isaac and Jacob to illustrate God’s prerogative to choose whoever he pleases, Paul was not concerning himself with the eternal destinies of people. His concern was solely to show God’s sovereignty in electing people to a historical vocation.

To underscore God’s sovereign prerogative, Paul emphasized the arbitrary way God brought about a chosen people, through Isaac and Jacob, whose mission was to serve God and the world by being a nation of priests (Isa 61:6) and a “light to all the nations” (Isa 42:6; 49:6; 60:3). They were to be the means by which all the nations of the world would be blessed by hearing about the one true God (e.g. Gen 12:2-3; 18:18; 22:18; Ps 67:1-2; Isa 2:2-4; 55:5; 61:9-11; 66:19-20; Jer 3:17; Rom 4:12-18). Their election as a nation was always primarily about service, not individual salvation.

Paul emphasized the arbitrariness of God’s choice of the Jews to unsettle those who thought God’s word had failed because he had rendered their nationality and external observation to the law obsolete in Christ. Throughout Romans 9 through 11 Paul was at pains to show that God’s goal all along had been to reach out beyond the borders of Israel and win the whole world (Rom 9:25-26, 33; 10:10-21; 11:11-12). Indeed, Paul insisted God was yet going to attain his goal. But since Israel as a nation had rejected the Messiah, Paul argued, God was now going to use their blindness rather than their obedience to achieve it (Rom. 11:11-32).

In any event, we are reading far too much into Romans 9 if we think that Paul was suggesting that Ishmael or Esau—or anyone else not chosen in the selection process by which God formed the Jewish nation (e.g. all of Joseph’s brothers?) — were individually damned. Paul is simply not concerned in this chapter with individual destinies. Indeed, he uses the examples he does precisely because they represent more than individuals: they represent nations. In choosing Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau, in other words, God was illustrating his choice of Israel (the descendants of Isaac and Jacob) over the Moabites (the descendents of Ishmael) and the Edomites (the descendents of Esau). Again, this didn’t mean that all Moabites or Edomites were eternally lost. It just means that these nations were not chosen for the priestly role in history for which God chose the Israelites.

This national focus is emphasized in the fact that the Old Testament passage Paul cites to make his point about Esau (Malachi 1:2-3, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau” [Rom 9:13]) is explicitly about the country of Edom. Some might suppose that God’s pronouncement that he “loved” Jacob and “hated” Esau shows that he is speaking about their individual eternal destinies, but this is mistaken. In Hebraic thought, when “love” and “hate” are contrasted they usually are meant hyperbolically. The expression simply means to strongly prefer one person or thing over another.

So, for example, when Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26), he was not saying we should literally hate these people. Elsewhere he taught people to love and respect their parents, as the Old Testament also taught (Mk 10:19). Indeed, he commanded us to love even our enemies (Mt 5:44)! What Jesus was saying was that he must be preferred above parents, spouses, children, siblings and even life itself. The meaning of Malachi’s phrase, then, is simply that God preferred Israel over Edom to be the people he wanted to work with to reach out to the world.

Hence, there is no justification for interpreting Romans 9 as though it were trying to teach us anything about how God saves or damns individuals.

4. Paul’s Summary and Free Will
A fourth argument that demonstrates the error of the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 concerns Paul’s summary at the end of this chapter. Whenever we are struggling to understand a complex line of reasoning such as we find in Romans 9, it is crucial to pay close attention to the author’s own summary of his argument, if and when he provides one. By all accounts, Romans 9 is a difficult, complex and highly disputed passage. Fortunately, Paul provides us with a very clear summary of his argument in this chapter (vss. 30-32). Unfortunately for the deterministic interpretation, it appeals to free will as the decisive factor in determining who “receives mercy” and who gets “hardened.”

Paul begins his summary by asking, “What then shall we say” (vs. 30)? If the deterministic interpretation was correct, we would expect Paul to answer by saying something like, “The sovereign God has determined who will be elect and who will not, and no one has the right to question him.” As a matter of fact, however, Paul doesn’t say anything like this. He rather summarizes his argument by saying:

“Gentiles, who did not strive for righteousness, have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; but Israel, who did strive for the righteousness that is based on the law, did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works” (vss. 30–32).

This is extremely significant. Paul explains everything he’s been talking about throughout Romans 9 by appealing to the morally responsible choices of the Israelites and Gentiles. The one thing God has always looked for in people is faith. The Jews did not “strive” by faith, though they should have (cf. 10:3). They rather chose to trust in their own works. The Gentiles, however, simply believed that God would justify them by faith. This theme recurs throughout chapters 9 through 11. As a nation, Paul says, the Jews “were broken off because of their unbelief…” (11:20, emphasis added). This is why they have been hardened (Rom. 11:7, 25) while the Gentiles, who sought God by faith, have been “grafted in” (11:23).

We see that God’s process of hardening some and having mercy on others is not arbitrary: God expresses “severity toward those who have fallen [the nation of Israel] but kindness toward you [believers] provided you continue in his kindness” (11:22). God has mercy on people and hardens people in response to their belief or unbelief. And he is willing to change his mind about both the hardening and the mercy, if people change. If Gentiles become arrogant and cease walking by faith alone, they will once again be “cut off.” And if the Jews who are now hardened will not “persist in their unbelief,” God will “graft them in again” (Rom. 11:22-23).

To the Jews who trusted in their national identity and/or external obedience to the law, this hardening seemed arbitrary. Hence Paul chides them by asking, “[W]ho indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” (Rom. 9:20). But, as Paul makes abundantly clear throughout Romans 9-11, the hardening was in fact not arbitrary. It was perfectly consistent with the criteria of faith God has always worked with. He gives mercy in response to faith and he hardens in response to unbelief. It’s not the other way around. People don’t have faith as a result of God having mercy on them, and people don’t have unbelief as a result of God hardening them.

Yet, to Jews who remained convinced that their national identity and/or good works were the basis of God giving mercy, it now seemed like God was arbitrarily hardening them and arbitrarily extending mercy to the Gentiles.

5. The Flexible Potter and Willing Clay
Fifth, if read in the light of its Old Testament background, Paul’s analogy of a potter working with clay doesn’t imply that the potter unilaterally decides everything, as the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 suggests. Indeed, in the Old Testament passage that makes the most use of the potter-clay analogy, it has the exact opposite meaning.

In Jeremiah 18 the Lord showed Jeremiah a potter who was working on a vessel that didn’t turn out right. So the potter revised his plan and formed a different kind of pot out of it (Jere 18:1-4). In the same way, the Lord said, since he is the potter and Israel is the clay, he has the right and is willing to “change his mind” about his plans for Israel if they will simply repent (Jere. 18:4-11). Indeed, the Lord announced that whenever he’s going to judge a nation, he is willing to change his mind if the nation repents. Conversely, whenever God announces that he’s going to bless a nation, he will change his mind if that nation turns away from him. In other words, the point of the potter-clay analogy is not God’s unilateral control, but God’s willingness and right to change his plans in response to changing hearts.

The passage fits perfectly with the point Paul is making in Romans 9. While some individual Jews had accepted Jesus as the Messiah, the nation as a whole had rejected Jesus, and thus rejected God’s purpose for themselves (cf. Lk 7:30). Hence, though God had previously blessed Israel, he was now changing his mind about them and was hardening them. Ironically, and shockingly, the Jews were finding themselves in the same position as their old nemesis Pharaoh. He had hardened his heart toward God, so God responded by hardening him further in order to raise him up to further his own sovereign purposes (Rom 9: 17). So too, Paul was arguing, God was now hardening the Jews in their self-chosen unbelief to further his sovereign purposes. He was going to use their rebellion to do what he had always hoped their obedience would do: namely, bring the non-Jewish world into a relationship with him (Rom 11:11-12).

Even here, however, the sovereign potter remains flexible. If the Jews will abandon their unbelief – clearly God’s hardening is not determinative or irrevocable – the potter will once again refashion his plan and graft them in. Conversely, if the Gentiles ever abandon their belief and become prideful – clearly God’s mercy is not determinative or irrevocable – the potter will once again refashion his plan for them and cut them off (Rom 11:12-25).

In any case, we see that the point of the potter analogy is the opposite of what the deterministic interpretation would have us believe. Paul’s point is that the sovereign potter has the right to revise his plans in response to the clay, which is exactly what God was doing to the nation of Israel. And, however arbitrary his revisions may appear to Jews who trust in their nationality or good works, they are in fact perfectly wise and just revisions.

This sheds light on why Paul responds to the charge that God is unfair by quoting God as saying, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy” (9:14, cf. 18). He is not suggesting that God gives mercy or hardens people without any consideration of the choices people make. To the contrary, as has always been the case, the people God chooses to have mercy on are those who have faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. And the people God chooses to harden are those who don’t “strive for [righteousness] on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works”(vs. 30–32). But to Jews who insisted that God must choose people based on their nationality or works, God’s right to have mercy on whomever he wishes – even if they have nothing other than faith going for them – needed to be emphasized.

It is also significant to note the original context of the Old Testament quote Paul is giving. The Jews had just turned away from God to worship idols while Moses was receiving the ten commandments on Mt. Sinai – the terms of the covenant God was initiating with them (Ex 32:1-6). God responded by telling Moses he was planning on destroying the Israelites and starting over with Moses alone (Ex 32:9-10). Because of Moses’ intercession, however, the Lord changed his mind and gave those who were willing a chance to repent (Ex 32:14-35). The flexible potter refashioned his plan.

In a tender dialogue between God and Moses that followed this episode, the Lord allowed Moses to behold some of his glory, telling him “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Ex 33:19). The Lord was saying that, to people of faith like Moses, he gives mercy, while to people like the Jews who rebelled – and like Pharaoh – he gives judgment. By choosing to have faith or to rebel against God, individuals decide which they will receive. They determine whether God will fashion them into a vessel of mercy or a vessel prepared for destruction (Rom 9:21-23).

This also explains why Paul says that God “endured with much patience” the vessels he was preparing for destruction (Rom. 9: 22). Why would God have to “endure with much patience” rebellious people if he was the one making them rebellious in the first place? Why would he go on to say, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (10:21, quoting Isa. 65:2) if he was the one molding them to be disobedient? And why would a God of love intentionally fashion people to rebel against him and bring destruction on themselves in the first place?

In point of fact, the potter endures with much patience the vessels that are being prepared for destruction because it was not his original will to fashion these people in this direction. He would love for all “disobedient and contrary people” to come to him, and so he is patient with them. But so long as they persist in their unbelief, they are clay that can only be fashioned into a vessel fit for destruction.

6. It’s About Wisdom, Not Power
This leads to my sixth and final point. When Paul responds to the charge of injustice by asking, “who… are you, a human being, to argue with God?” (vs. 20), he is not thereby appealing to the sheer power of the potter over the clay. He is rather appealing to the sovereign wisdom of the potter in refashioning clay in a manner that fits the kind of clay he has to work with. When “clay” yields to his influence and has faith, he fashions a vessel of honor. When “clay” becomes “spoiled” (Jere 18:4) and resists his will, he fashions a “vessel of ordinary use” that is being prepared for destruction.

Again, this fashioning looks arbitrary to Jews who believed that they were the “vessel of honor” by virtue of their national identity or good works – Jews who did not “strive for [God’s righteousness] on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works” (Rom 9:32). It is to these people, expressing this sentiment, that Paul sarcastically asks, “Who are you…?” In truth, God’s fashioning is not arbitrary at all. It is based on whether or not one is willing “to seek” after the righteousness of God that comes by faith, not works (9:30–32; 10:3–5, 12–13; 11:22–23).

Conclusion
On the basis of these six considerations I conclude that the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 is as misguided as it is unfortunate. It is misguided not only because it misinterprets Paul, but because it fundamentally clashes with the supremacy of God’s self-revelation in Christ. And it is unfortunate because it tragically replaces the unsurpassably glorious picture of God as Jesus Christ dying on the cross for undeserving sinners with a picture of a deity who defies all moral sensibilities by arbitrarily fashioning certain people to be vessels fit for eternal destruction — and then punishing them for being that way. It exchanges the picture of a beautiful God who reigns supreme with self-sacrificial love and flexible wisdom for a picture of a God who reigns by the arbitrary exercise of sheer power.

I unequivocally affirm that the sovereign God “has mercy on whomever he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whomever he wants to harden.” I would simply add that the “whomever” he has mercy on refers to “all who choose to believe” while the “whomever” he hardens refers to “all who refuse to believe.” The passage demonstrates the wisdom of God’s loving flexibility, not the sheer determinism of God’s power.

Email

What’s Wrong With Calvinism, Part 2: The Heart of the Matter

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Shel – While we let the debate rip at Mercy Church on the issue of Calvinism/Arminianism – I am personally a freewill-arminian.  I believe God created out of love and that God loves ALL persons and God’s essential nature is love and the Trinity has true relational dynamic of loving persons.  Moreover I believe all who die and go to hell do so because of THEIR choice – not God’s.

Love that he takes on DA Carson and A. Pink!

Jerry L. Walls, “What’s Wrong With Calvinism, Part 2: The Heart of the Matter”

From the video’s You Tube page:

Part two of a series of theological discussions in which Dr. Jerry L. Walls explains what is wrong with Calvinism. Having explained Calvinism clearly in part one of this series, Dr. Walls now gets at the deepest issues that separate Calvinism from Arminianism/Wesleyanism and explains why Calvinism is intrinsically, fatally flawed.

Email

Yes, Calvinism Really Teaches That

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Shel – Greg summarizes it nicely…

Yes, Calvinism Really Teaches That from ReKnew by ReKnew

I am sometimes accused of caricaturing Calvinism when I make claims like:

  • Calvinism teaches that God SPECIFICALLY WILLS and TAKES DELIGHT IN every evil event in history as well as each person who will suffer eternally in hell.
  • Calvinism teaches that God ordains every single evil thing that people do IN SUCH A WAY that God is all-holy for ordaining these evil acts while the people who do the evil acts God ordained them to do are sinful for doing them.
  • Calvinism teaches that God has a “sovereign will” that ordains and delights in evil and a “moral will” that is revolted by the evil his “sovereign will” ordains. This is why I have claimed that God’s “moral will” must hate God’s “sovereign will” if Calvinism is in fact true.

I believe this brief article demonstrates that I’m caricaturing nothing. And let me just say, with all sincerity, that I deeply respect John Piper’s willingness to “say it straight” and to be logically consistent. Check it out if your interested.

(By the way, if you’re interested in an alternative interpretation of the verses Piper cites to support his determinism you can find them in the Q&A section of this website).

Peace,

~Greg

Email

Is God’s Love Limited to the Elect? Rebutting a Calvinist Challenge to the Gospel

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Is God’s Love Limited to the Elect? Rebutting a Calvinist Challenge to the Gospel

The doctrine of limited atonement is probably the most hotly debated of the five points of Calvinism among evangelicals. It is also Calvinism’s Achilles’ heel; without it the other points fall.

By Roger E. Olson

The recent renaissance of Calvinism among evangelicals has brought to the fore the issue of the scope of Christ’s atoning death on the Cross. Many evangelical Christians simply assume that Christ died for all — that He bore the sins and suffered the punishment for every sinner. For the last four centuries, however, there has been a minority report among Protestants. Most Calvinists, followers of the French Reformer of Switzerland John Calvin (1509–64), have taught that Christ only bore the punishment for the sins of the elect — those unconditionally predestined by God for salvation. Contemporary Calvinists (they often prefer we call them Reformed Christians) call this doctrine “particular redemption” or “definite atonement.”

Among the contemporary evangelical defenders of limited atonement are, most notably, R.C. Sproul and John Piper. Sproul (b. 1939) has been an influential evangelical apologist and Reformed theologian for much of the last half of the 20th century. From his base in his Ligonier Ministries he has spoken on the radio, traveled to speak at numerous apologetics and theology conferences, and written many books — most of them dealing with God’s sovereignty from a strongly Reformed perspective.

Piper (b. 1946), pastor of Minneapolis’ Bethlehem Baptist Church, and founder of Desiring God Ministries, also travels widely and speaks at large gatherings of evangelical Christians — including the Passion conferences attended by thousands of mostly Southern Baptist teens and twenties. He is a prolific author whose books, includingDesiring God: Confessions of a Christian Hedonist (1986), have sold millions of copies. Like Sproul, Piper is a passionate promoter of five-point Calvinism.

FIVE-POINT CALVINISM

Five-point Calvinism is belief in the doctrines symbolized by the TULIP acrostic: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. Calvinists created the acrostic about 1913, but the “doctrines of grace” it represents date back to Calvin’s successor — Theodore Beza (1519–1605) — principal of the Genevan Academy (a Reformed seminary in Geneva, Switzerland, founded by Calvin). Limited atonement stands at the center of this theological system. Sproul, Piper, and many other contemporary, influential evangelical theologians tenaciously hold and defend this position.

LIMITED ATONEMENT

What does limited atonement or particular redemption mean? According to Sproul, who prefers to call this doctrine “purposeful atonement,” it means that God intended Christ’s death on the Cross to secure the salvation of a definite number of fallen human persons — those unconditionally chosen by God. Like other Calvinists, Sproul argues that Christ’s substitutionary death (i.e., God inflicted on Christ the punishment for sins deserved by sinners) was of sufficient value to save everyone, but God only intended it to save the elect. In the most important sense, Christ only died for the elect and not for everyone.

For Sproul (and others like him), this doctrine is not dispensable; it is part and parcel of the TULIP system that they believe alone does justice to the sovereignty of God and the gift nature of salvation. One argument Sproul uses, following the Puritan theologian John Owen (1616–83), is that, if Christ died for everyone alike, then everyone is saved. After all, so the argument goes, it would be unjust of God to punish the same sins twice — once by laying the punishment on Christ and another time by sending the sinner to hell.

Piper is equally passionate about limited atonement. Like Sproul, he does not consider it a minor point of theology. In an article entitled, “For Whom Did Christ Die? And What Did Christ Actually Achieve on the Cross for Those for Whom He Died?”1 Piper argues that it is not the Calvinist who limits the Atonement but the non-Calvinist who believes in universal atonement. The reason: Those who believe in universal atonement must say Christ’s death did not actually save anyone but only gave people opportunity to save themselves. Or they must embrace universalism.

Piper continues by arguing that Christ did actually die for all people but not in the same way. All people benefit from Christ’s death by, for example, receiving certain blessings in this life they would otherwise not have — but only the elect receive the benefit of salvation from it.

This doctrine of limited atonement is probably the most hotly debated of the five points of Calvinism among evangelicals. Evangelical theologian Vernon Grounds, former president of Denver Seminary, lashed out against the doctrine. Pointing to John 1:29; Romans 5:17–21; 11:32; 1 Timothy 2:6; Hebrews 2:9; and 1 John 2:2 he wrote, “It takes an exegetical ingenuity which is something other than a learned virtuosity to evacuate these texts of their obvious meaning: it takes an exegetical ingenuity verging on sophistry to deny their explicit universality.”2 Needless to say, many evangelicals, including some Calvinists, find this doctrine repugnant.

BASIS FOR LIMITED ATONEMENT

Before explaining why this doctrine is repulsive, it will be beneficial to look at the reasons why many Calvinists think so highly of it and promote it so passionately. Once again, what is this doctrine? It is that God intended Jesus’ death on the Cross to be a propitiation (substitutionary, atoning sacrifice) only for the sins of the elect — those God has selected to save apart from anything He sees in them or about them (other than His choice of them for His glory and good pleasure).

Why would anyone believe this?

Proponents of limited atonement point to several Scriptures: John 10:15; 17:6, and similar verses in John 10–17; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 5:25–27; Titus 2:14.

Calvinists use John 10:15 to support their teaching: “The Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Many other verses in John say much the same — that Christ laid down His life for His sheep (i.e., His disciples and all who would come after them).

Calvinists also point to Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” They assume “us all” refers to the elect.

Ephesians 5:25–27 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Calvinists believe this passage, like many others, refers only to the church as the object of Christ’s cleansing sacrifice.

Titus 2:14 reads: “Who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” Calvinists believe that Paul, the author of Titus, seems to restrict the saving benefits of Christ’s death to “his people” which they equate with the elect.

Calvinists assume these verses and others like them teach that Christ died only for those chosen by God for salvation. But these verses do not teach Calvinistic beliefs. Nowhere does the Bible explicitly teach this Calvinist doctrine.

Calvinists read into these passages their belief that Christ only died for the church, for His people, for His sheep. These verses do not say Christ did not also die for others. And, as we will see, there are many passages that clearly teach Christ did die for everyone.

There is another reason Calvinists believe in limited atonement. If Christ died equally for everyone, they aver, then everyone is saved. They argue that those who believe in universal atonement face two unavoidable but biblically untenable options: either Christ’s death saved everyone or it saved no one. This argument is, however, fallacious. Universal atonement does not require universal salvation; it only requires the possibility of universal salvation.

It is possible for the same sins to be punished twice and that is what makes hell so absolutely tragic — it is totally unnecessary. God punishes those with hell who reject His Son’s substitution. An analogy will help make this clear. After the Vietnam War, President Jimmy Carter gave a blanket amnesty to all draft dodgers who fled to Canada and elsewhere. By presidential decree they were free to come home. Some did and some did not. Their crime was no longer punishable; but some refused to take advantage of the amnesty and punished themselves by staying away from home and family. Believers in universal atonement believe God allows sinners who refuse the benefit of Christ’s cross to suffer the punishment of hell in spite of the fact it is totally unnecessary.

Perhaps the most rhetorically powerful reason given for limited atonement is that offered by John Piper (and other Calvinists before him) who says in For Whom Did Christ Die? that those who believe in universal atonement “must say” that Christ’s death did not really save anyone but only gave people an opportunity to save themselves. This is totally fallacious reasoning.

Arminians (those who follow Jacob Arminius in rejecting unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace) believe Christ’s death on the Cross saves all who receive it by faith. Christ’s death secures their salvation — just as much as it secures the salvation of the elect in Calvinism. It guarantees that anyone who comes to Christ in faith will be saved by His death. This does not imply they save themselves. It simply means they accept the work of Christ on their behalf.

RESPONDING TO CALVINISM

It’s difficult to resist the impression that Calvinists who believe in limited atonement do so not for clear biblical reasons but because they think Scripture allows it and reason requires it. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but at least some Calvinists such as Piper have criticized others for doing the same.3 Piper criticizes others for allegedly embracing doctrines only because Scripture allows them and logic requires them. It seems to many non-Calvinists, however, that believers in limited atonement do exactly that. Lacking any clear, unequivocal biblical support for this doctrine, they embrace it because they think Scripture allows it and their TULIP system logically requires it. After all, if election is unconditional and grace is irresistible, then it would seem that the atonement would be only for the elect.

Scripture contradicts limited atonement in John 3:16,17; Romans 14:15; 2 Corinthians 5:18,19; Colossians 1:19,20; 1 Timothy 2:5,6; 1 John 2:2. Everyone knows John 3:16,17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Typically, Calvinists respond that in these verses “world” refers to all kinds of people and not everyone. However, that would make it possible to interpret all the places where the New Testament reports that the “world” is sinful and fallen as meaning only some people — all kinds — are sinful and fallen. The Calvinist interpretation of John 3:16,17, seems to fit Vernon Grounds’ description of the faulty exegesis used to defend limited atonement.

First John 2:2 is another passage we cannot reconcile with limited atonement: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” This passage completely undermines the Calvinist interpretation of “world” in John 3:16,17 because it explicitly states that Christ died an atoning death not only for believers, but also for everyone. Here “world” must include nonbelievers because “ours” refers to believers. This verse makes it impossible to say that Christ’s death benefits everyone, only not in the same way. (Piper says Christ’s death benefits the nonelected by giving them temporal blessings only.) John says clearly and unequivocally that Christ’s atoning sacrifice was for the sins of everyone — including those who are not believers.

What about 2 Corinthians 5:18,19? “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Calvinists sometimes argue that this passage supports limited atonement. After all, if God was in Christ not counting everyone’s sins against them, then everyone is saved. Therefore, they say, “everyone” must mean only the elect. But that’s not true. When Paul says that God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s sins against them, He means if they repent and believe. In other words, the Atonement did reconcile God with the world so He could forgive; it satisfied the demands of justice so reconciliation is possible from God’s side. But it remains for sinners to accept that by faith. Then full reconciliation takes place.

Colossians 1:19,20 says, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” It is impossible to interpret “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven” as referring only to the elect. This passage refutes limited atonement. So does 1 Timothy 2:5,6: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.” The only way a believer in limited atonement can escape the force of this passage is to interpret the Greek translated “all people” as somehow meaning “all kinds of people,” but that is not an interpretation allowed by the common use of the phrase in Greek literature outside the New Testament (or elsewhere in it).

Many Scriptures clearly indicate that Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was meant for everyone; that His substitutionary punishment was for all people. But there are two seldom discussed New Testament passages that absolutely undercut limited atonement: Romans 14:15 and 1 Corinthians 8:11. In these verses, Paul sternly warns Christians against causing people to be destroyed for whom Christ died. The Greek translation of the words “destroy” and “destroyed” in these verses cannot mean merely harmed or injured. Clearly Paul is warning people that it is possible to cause people for whom Christ died to go to hell (by causing them to stumble and fall by showing off one’s own liberty to eat meat sacrificed to idols). If TULIP Calvinism is correct, this warning is useless because this cannot happen. According to Calvinism, the elect, for whom Christ died, cannot be lost.

The weight of Scripture is clearly set against limited atonement. Calvinist interpretations of these and similar passages remind one of the sign outside a blacksmith’s shop referring to its artistic work with metals: “All kinds of fancy twisting and turning done here.” However, the problem with limited atonement goes beyond a few verses that Calvinists cannot explain without distorting their clear meanings. The greatest problem goes to the heart of the doctrine of God. Who is God and what is God like?

LIMITED ATONEMENT AND THE NATURE OF GOD

If God is love (1 John 4:7) but intended Christ’s atoning death to be the propitiation for only certain people so only they have any chance of being saved, then “love” has no intelligible meaning when referring to God. All Christians agree that God is love. But believers in limited atonement must interpret God’s love as somehow compatible with God unconditionally selecting some people to eternal torment in hell when He could save them (because election to salvation and thus salvation itself is unconditional). There is no analogy in human existence to this kind of behavior that is regarded as loving. We would never consider someone who could rescue drowning people, for example, but refuses to do it and rescues only some as loving. We would consider such a person evil, even if the rescued people appreciated what the person did for them.

Calvinists typically handle this in one of two ways. Some say that God’s love is different from our love. But if it isthat different, it is meaningless. If God’s “love” has no similarity to anything we would call love, if it resembles hate more than love, then it loses all sense of meaning. Then when a person says God is love he might as well be using a nonsense word like “creech” — God is creech. Also, where did God better demonstrate His love than in Jesus Christ? But is Jesus Christ’s love for people arbitrary and hateful to some? Or does Jesus Christ in His love for all people reveal the heart of God? Calvinism ends up having to posit a hidden God very much unlike Jesus Christ.

Another way Calvinists handle the love of God and try to reconcile it with limited atonement and double predestination (the two are really inseparable) is to say that God loves all people in some way but only some people (the elect) in all ways. Piper, for example, exalts the love of God for everyone — even the nonelect.4 He says that God bestows temporal blessings on the nonelect — meaning as they move toward their predestined eternal torment in hell. John Wesley, responding to a similar claim by Calvinists in his time, quipped that this is such a love as to make the blood run cold. Another response is that this simply means God gives the nonelect a little bit of heaven to take with them on their journey to hell. What kind of love is this — that gives temporal blessings and happiness to people chosen by God for eternal suffering in hell? After all, if Calvinism is correct, there is nothing blocking God from choosing all people for heaven, except, some say, His own glory. Some Calvinists say that God must manifest all His attributes and one attribute is justice that makes hell necessary. Again, however, that won’t work because the Cross was a sufficient manifestation of God’s justice.

Limited atonement makes indiscriminate evangelism impossible. A believer in limited atonement can never say to any random stranger or group: “God loves you and Christ died for your sins and mine; you can be saved.” And yet this is the very life blood of evangelism — telling the good news to all and inviting all to come to Jesus Christ with repentance and faith. Many Calvinists are evangelistic and missions minded, but in their evangelism and missions they cannot tell everyone within the sound of their voices that God loves them, Jesus died for them, and He wants them to be saved. They can proclaim the gospel (as they interpret it), but they cannot solicit faith by promising salvation through Christ to everyone they meet or to whom they preach.

Limited atonement is the Achilles’ heel of TULIP Calvinism; without it the other points of TULIP fall. If God is truly love, then Christ died for everyone that all may be saved.

 

Richard L. DresselhausRoger E. Olson, Ph.D., professor of theology, George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University, Waco, Texas. He authored Against Calvinism: Rescuing God’s Reputation From Radical Reformed Theology.

 

Notes

1. http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/piper/piper_atonement.html

2. Vernon C. Grounds, “God’s Universal Salvific Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed., Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1975), 27.

3. John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Portland: Multnomah, 2000). See the lengthy footnote about Pinnock’s allegedly faulty hermeneutics, 70–74.

4. Ibid., 48ff.

Email

How to Believe without Being Fundamentalist

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Shel Boese / Shelby Boese – When we talk about “third-way” christianity I am often referring to Anabaptism,  Rogers’ article also moves in this direction too.  This paragraph is worth the whole read because it sums up the crazy-making out there and the struggle those of us who hold to the authority of the Bible as expressed within orthodox faith face.

The result is that many people who are not prone to fundamentalism can’t find an evangelical church that preaches and teaches the gospel and essential Christian doctrine without apology or compromise (Shel: welcome to Mercy Church!). So they join a fundamentalist or neo-fundamentalist church and get sucked into that ethos or just endure sermons and lessons that harshly condemn anything other than rigid, narrow, absolutistic conservative Protestantism and that promote as “biblical truth” things like youth earth creationism, TULIP Calvinism, restriction of salvation to the evangelized, dispensationalism, etc. Or, they join a liberal church that promotes a culturally accommodated version of Christianity in which therapy and social transformation totally replace doctrine and virtually anything goes in terms of beliefs and lifestyles.

How to Believe without Being Fundamentalist May 13, 2012 By rogereolson

How to Believe without Being Fundamentalist

Because of the prevalence of fundamentalism (and what I have here called “neo-fundamentalism”) in American religious life, many moderate Christian pastors struggle with how to preach and teach Christian truth, doctrine, without being absolutistic, narrow, presumptuous and exclusive. I receive questions like that all the time and it seems to be a question hanging “in the air,” so to speak, in many, if not most, moderate Christian churches and educational institutions.

I have been critically reviewing chapters in The Gospel as Center. I often have the impression that these authors, all members of something called The Gospel Coalition, have a fundamentalist mentality. That is, they approach and exposit doctrine from within a fundamentalist ethos. In varying degrees they treat truth as black and white (absolutistic). Beliefs are either “gospel truth” or heresy. (There are, of course, exceptions to this. One came up in the chapter I most recently reviewed. It had to do with tolerance of both cessationism and continuationism. However, the author condemned belief in the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second definite work of grace as “horribly mistaken.” That kind of language is, to me, fundamentalist. It was the kind of rhetoric used by fundamentalist forces that tried to keep Pentecostals out of the National Association of Evangelicals when it was formed in 1942.)

One way I describe fundamentalism (as an ethos) is its tendency to shift most beliefs from the “opinion” and “doctrine” categories into the “dogma” category. (I’ve explained these three categories and their inevitability and importance in detail in several of my books.) That is to say, beliefs most Christians view as important but not essential get re-placed in the category of essentials of the faith (“fundamentals”).  One example of that in the current neo-fundamentalist phenomenon is monergism.

In this climate, dominated as it is by neo-fundamentalists and (in the social and political arenas) the religious right, many moderate to progressive evangelicals struggle with how to preach and teach Christian truth. Some even struggle with the idea of truth itself. The result can be the reduction of Christianity to a spirituality consistent with anything and everything. I have spoken in churches that would not consider themselves “liberal” that have deacons or elders who do not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, miracles, etc. They are afraid to deal with them, that is, exclude them from leadership positions, lest they come across as fundamentalistic.

In this atmosphere of absolutism and fear the traditional evangelical middle, what I call moderate evangelicalism, is disappearing. Oh, it’s not gone; it’s just not as prominent as it used to be. The result is that many people who are not prone to fundamentalism can’t find an evangelical church that preaches and teaches the gospel and essential Christian doctrine without apology or compromise. So they join a fundamentalist or neo-fundamentalist church and get sucked into that ethos or just endure sermons and lessons that harshly condemn anything other than rigid, narrow, absolutistic conservative Protestantism and that promote as “biblical truth” things like youth earth creationism, TULIP Calvinism, restriction of salvation to the evangelized, dispensationalism, etc. Or, they join a liberal church that promotes a culturally accommodated version of Christianity in which therapy and social transformation totally replace doctrine and virtually anything goes in terms of beliefs and lifestyles.

So what is the disappearing middle ground I talk about and seek? It holds firmly and uncompromisingly to Jesus Christ as God and Savior and lovingly excludes from leadership persons who claim to be Christians (are may very well be saved) but who do not believe in the divine Lordship of Jesus Christ or his sole Saviorhood.  At the same time, people inhabiting this middle ground admit that they do not know or fully understand all that this confession means, that they are not privy to God’s own mind so that they can explain how the incarnation works. But THAT Jesus Christ was and is God incarnate is part and parcel of authentic Christianity.

People inhabiting this middle ground do not look around for Christians who do not agree with every slight interpretation of the incarnation and condemn them as heretics. For example, one conservative evangelical theologian-philosopher I know argues that the kenotic theory, that the Son of God set aside his attributes of glory so that he did not always know he was the Son of God from heaven, the second person of the Trinity, and that his power to do miracles was a gift from the Holy Spirit rather than his ability to use his deity, is heresy. I suspect that if that theologian-philosopher explained to most evangelicals who read and listen to him what HE believes about the incarnation (viz., that Jesus was omniscient even as a baby) they would be shocked and ask him what Luke 2:52 means.

My point is that it is possible to hold firmly to, proclaim and teach, the incarnation of God, the deity of Jesus Christ, even a full bodied doctrine of the Trinity, and not do it in a rigid, narrow, absolutistic way. One mark of fundamentalism and neo-fundamentalism is going beyond belief in and proclamation of the incarnation to insistence on a certain theory of how it worked as essential to the incarnation and deity of Jesus Christ.

We can say lovingly and unapologetically that we believe in Jesus Christ as God and Savior, the only Mediator between God and humanity, without including in that confession interesting but non-essential theories of how that can be the case. We can share with each other and non-Christian inquirers our theories (e.g., kenoticism) without implying that they do not “really” believe in the incarnation or the deity of Christ unless they agree with us. In other words, we can have our secondary doctrines and interpretations without absolutizing them. (Actually, I know very few if any people who do this with the kenotic theory of Christology. More commonly it’s the other way around—neo-fundamentalists tend to confuse their own theory of Jesus’ deity and humanity, the incarnation, which usually is something called the “two minds theory,” with belief in the incarnation itself so that people who do not agree are suspect of not even believing in the deity of Jesus Christ.)

Surely it is possible also to preach and teach that Jesus is the one and only Savior of humanity, Lord of creation, redeemer, friend, without insisting that people who have the disadvantage of never hearing his name have no hope of being saved through him. Now that might be your opinion and you might share that in a teaching situation, but only neo-fundamentalists feel the need to preach that (restrictivism) as part and parcel of the gospel itself.

If a person lacks confidence that Jesus Christ is God and Savior, the one Lord of everything, the only Mediator between God and humanity, friend of the friendless and hope of the hopeless, then he or she should not be in the Christian ministry. Does that sound fundamentalist? If so, then you’re confused about what Christianity is. There’s nothing fundamentalist about holding fast to belief in the incarnation and even insisting on belief in it as intrinsic, essential to mature Christian life and faith.

The same MUST be said about universal sin and need of redemption, salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection alone by means of God’s grace alone through faith. The same MUST be said about miracles, especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The same MUST be said about every person’s need for repentance and faith as trust in Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, for reconciliation with God and a right relationship with him. These are not the private preserve of fundamentalists. Fundamentalism appears when these essentials of Christian belief are loaded with non-essential theories and when Charles Hodge’s (or some other Protestant orthodox) systematic theology is equated with the gospel itself.

Who are some balanced, sane, moderate evangelicals to read in this regard? I recommend John Stott (e.g., Authentic Christianity), Donald Bloesch (e.g., Essentials of Evangelical Theology), Alan Sell (e.g., Doctrine and Devotion), Stanley Grenz, (e.g.,Created for Community). There are others, of course, who strike the right balance, but these have been among my guides in seeking balanced evangelical Christianity that avoids both fundamentalism (and neo-fundamentalism) and theological liberalism.

Email

Be Like Jesus – Not a Politician: Why I Simply Do Not Care How Babylon Defines Marriage

Posted on by
Reply
Email

Some thoughts rolling around my head on this issue…

1) Its wrong to die on any political battlefield that puts wall between people and Jesus.  I agree with the political point that Rachel Held-Evans makes here about winning the culture war but loosing a generation: http://rachelheldevans.com/win-culture-war-lose-generation-amendment-one-north-carolina

2) Jesus’ kingdom is NOT OF THIS WORLD.  Political change does not change people truly, it does not change hearts nor does it even create the desire for change, two things the Spirit of Jesus in the church and the human heart experiencing compassion through someone else does.  We are about life-change starting now by salvation through Jesus outrageous love and the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit in Theosis – the fullness of which comes in the life of the world to come after death (or the end of the world as we know it). If my politics slam the gates of the kingdom of God on you BEFORE I ever get to introduce you to Jesus through my life, faults and grace – I’ve failed you.  Ney, I’ve failed my Lord.

excursus: Note Jesus consistently rejected aligning with political parties and even religious parties in his day (note no separation of church and state at all in his day – but advocates of various levels of enmeshment and political action to deal with Rome).  This also meant that he could call people to follow him from the violent zealots to the Helenized.  Do our churches have that kind of appeal – so full of Jesus that some from the most extreme ends of the spectrum are willing to make their politics secondary to Jesus?  NOT if you keep making the Civil Religion Jesus the center instead of the Jesus of the Bible and the Living Resurrected Lord Jesus who is present by the Holy Spirit in the Church!

 

The New Testament tells us the nation that God blesses is HIS nation, the holy Nation of those bought by the Blood of the Lamb.  All kingdoms of the world are simply tools, under the influence of Satan and yet used by God.  They are passing.  There is no “Christian nation” defined by ballots, borders, bullets or bombs.  NOW yes there are Christian influenced nations and policies – but at the end of the day they are not the Kingdom of God – they are not EVER to be thought of as an extension of His kingdom nor of the church.

Civil religion Christianity is an idol and a cheap knock off that will always leave you angry, fearful, and under the sway of politicians, pundits and demons.  It’s also a huge idol in America, and in much of the American church – effectively drawing people away from the real deal.

(FYI this is why in part I am not Mormon or Muslim – Religions that teach the sword is directly connected to their power.  That coercion is acceptable as a tool – and therefore the goal should be to establish a Mormon or Islamic Shariah-based state.  Jesus EXPLICITLY rejected the state/politics as the way to make society better.)

3) Political issues are used by Satan to get the church off mission and onto another mission.  America is best place to live so far.  But it’s still a form of Babylon – perhaps the best kind of Babylon there can possibly be – but still at the end of the day it’s a Babylon.  We are to bless it and work to make it a better place – but our first call is to follow Jesus – that’s the best way to make America a better place.

Be like Jesus -NOT like a politician.  (repeat this to self three times).

AND before all you lefties think I’m preaching to your choir – it applies as much to you as the fundamentalist right!  Many of you are as blinded and co-opted by civil religion as the hard-right is.  Do I need to whip out all the media and hollywood “messianic” swooning from the 2008 election as a recent over the top crazy example? (Or the leaked newsweek cover for 5/14 of the rainbow haloed pres?)

4) How the church defines marriage HAS NEVER BEEN the purpose of marriage definitions in the state/legal area.  Marriage is a covenant in the church BUT its a contract in the world.

5) IF you are going to “defend marriage” through ballots, borders, bombs,  then we REALLY should be working on laws that end divorce and strongly prosecute any alienation of affection, repeal all “no-fault” divorces, go after adulterers with prison time, and generally insist on tracking everyone’s sexual activity.   Focusing on 1.7% to 10% of the population through defining marriage as a one man/one woman – is just a grand distraction from the real enemies of marriage.  (Those are in your heart – what laws will change YOUR heart? hmm…  )

6) Now for a (not so ?) radical suggestion: I believe (perhaps!) the church should work at REMOVING all legal forms of Marriage.  Marriage is NOT a civil contract – it is spiritual and religious.  Therefore should be protected as worship is and who religious groups can hire is, but not sanctioned by the law.  Instead we can advocate for legal civil union/domestic partnerships for all people defining contractual obligations when such arrangements go south and to protect children from destructive/abusive situations.

Quite frankly I say this in most weddings that I perform that as a follower of Jesus and ordained by His church for it’s service, “In the eyes of the state marriage is simply a right to sue someone you would not otherwise be able to if you have a break up.  In the eyes of God/the Church marriage is a covenant – it’s about entering into a new and enduring kind of relationship – what you will do – not so much about something you appeal to.”

So perhaps the best response is on Three-fronts:

1) Begin understanding that Biblical marriage is not about the state – and in fact a counter-intuitive move would be to encouraging believers to no longer pursue legal marriage (perhaps just a domestic partnership to still participate in the system – until we can make marriage no longer a legal category) – believers however ABSOLUTELY should be married by the church community – we should make celebrating covenant marriage and christian sexuality a higher priority.  

2) Work to build up marriages through teachings, helping people create healthy relational and sexual boundaries, getting serious about lust, porn, sexual slavery/trafficking, and loving people outrageously when they are not where the church is on the value of exclusive covenantal  relationships and Christian sexuality.

3) Work on a third-way view of sexuality – the liberals AND the fundamentalist-conservatives both get this one VERY wrong.  From Fred Phelps to Dan Savage – foaming their hatred and misrepresentation of the Bible and sex – we have got to get real.  I written much on this before.  But the church should not be sucked into the current soft science view of orientation or sexuality. The whole H or LGBTQ approach is couched in western soft sciences that are shifting and will look different another 50 years from now.  So let’s not go all funde or liberal – let’s step back and look at the texts as if they might be teaching us something we are not hearing.  I believe they are.

Love is the path to holiness.  Political posturing is not.

 

Email