Luther and “Double Predestination” Roger Olson

Posted on April 10, 2013 by shel

Luther and “Double Predestination”

April 10, 2013 By rogereolson

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.

Why Do We Call It “Good Friday” When….?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by shel

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/03/why-do-we-call-it-good-friday-when/

From Roger Olson Why Do We Call It “Good Friday” When….?

March 29, 2013

Why Do We Call It “Good Friday” When….?

Today is “Good Friday.” To many students whose schools are on holiday and to many workers whose companies close for a long Easter weekend, it’s “good” because they can sleep in, go shopping, take a trip or whatever. But my question today is whyChristians call it “good.”

Here’s an irony that causes me some cognitive dissonance whenever I attend a “Good Friday” service (which I usually do): We call it “Good Friday” but worship on it as if something terrible, depressing, sad and awful happened. Our “Good Friday” services tend to be dark, dour, minor key, funereal. At most we celebrate the Sunday coming (Easter)! “It’s Friday but Sunday’s Coming!”

But wait (I ask myself)! Why, then, do we call it “Good Friday?” Why not call it “Bad Friday?”

Whatever the opposite of celebration is, that’s what most “Good Friday” services are.

Okay, I can hear the thought some reading this are thinking: “But Jesus’ crucifixionwas a horrible event—from one perspective, anyway. We need to remember his agony, his suffering, the injustice of his execution, his feeling of being abandoned by his Father, etc. All that stuff is bad and sad and not to be celebrated.”

True—“from one perspective.” But at the same time, of course, we believe that the cross event was also a marvelous victory, a triumph, a defeat of sin, death and the powers of evil. So there’s another perspective to recall and emphasize—without the cross no one would be saved!

Again, I can hear people reading this thinking “What’s your point, Olson?” Here it is…

If we call today “Good Friday” we should also celebrate the cross event and not just remember the evil and suffering involved in it.

If not on Good Friday, when do we celebrate the cross? What day do we set aside to rejoice with thankful hearts for the cross like we do the empty tomb on Easter Sunday?

The contrast between how we worship on Good Friday and Easter Sunday is jolting. Itimplies that the crucifixion was a huge error, only an injustice, undeserved suffering. This is one fault I find in the “church calendar” and how it is traditionally observed. Ifevangelical churches (of whatever denominations) are going to observe the liturgical calendar, we ought to amend the way it has been observed—at least in this case.

Here is my suggestion: An evangelical “Good Friday” service should begin in minor key, somber, remembering our Savior’s suffering and death from the one perspectivementioned above. It was a horrible event, a grave injustice, an undeserved death at the hands of sinners. The lights should be dim, the cross draped in black, the hymns focused on Jesus’ agony. The Scriptures read should be about all of that. But, halfway through the service, the lights should go up! The Scriptures read should be about the victory of the cross over death and sin and hell and evil powers! The songs should be celebratory and joyful! We should sing “In the Cross of Christ I Glory!” That other perspective should dominate. This event was the turning point of history, the moment of reconciliation, the cause of our eternal hope!

That’s why we call it “Good Friday!” And only if we do that should we call it that.

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

Posted on February 22, 2013 by shel

Shel -Roger does a great job of pointing out the continual mis-identification of Arminianism/Free-will views of salvation with semi-Pelagianism by the Neo-Reformed crowd.

I am convinced that the identification of Arminianism with semi-Pelagianism has become a major polemical tool in the current resurgence of Calvinism among especially American (now spreading to other counties) young Christians. In other words, Sproul and other influential Calvinists present only two options: Calvinism and semi-Pelagianism and label the latter a denial of salvation by grace alone.

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

February 22, 2013 By rogereolson

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

Many years ago, as I was emerging out of my fundamentalist-Pentecostal cocoon into the larger world of evangelicalism (during seminary studies at an evangelical Baptist seminary) I was helped by the writings and teaching of several leading Reformed evangelical theologians. James Montgomery Boice, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and publisher of Eternity magazine, was one of them. Not only did I read his books and articles in Eternity; I also studied under him at seminary. He took a sabbatical from his pulpit to teach homiletics at my seminary—something nobody at that seminary seems to remember! But I still have the sermons I wrote for his class and his handwritten notes on them. (He gave them good marks.)

Another Reformed evangelical theologian who helped me was R. C. Sproul who wrote many articles for Eternity (a now defunct magazine I have discussed here before as especially helpful to me during my student years and the first publisher of my own writings—two book reviews written when I was still in seminary). Of course I knew Sproul was a Calvinist, but so were some of my close relatives. Back then there was no hostility between evangelical Arminians and evangelical Calvinists. While in seminary I served on staff of an independent Pentecostal-charismatic church that was thoroughly Arminian. We worked in close cooperation with Reformed churches on evangelistic and other endeavors. We sometimes joked with each other about our theological differences, but there was no sense from either side that one was “more Christian” or even “more evangelical” than the other.

While in seminary I found my interests focusing on Christian history and especially historical theology and I learned, among other things, that something called “semi-Pelagianism” is a heresy. The Second Council of Orange condemned it as such in 529. Even then, of course, I wondered why a Catholic synod of bishops held so much weight for Protestants, but I agreed that semi-Pelagianism is biblically in error as well as seriously out of step with both Catholic and Protestant traditions (even if many in both folds fall into it out of ignorance).

I think it was while reading Louis Berkhof’s systematic theology that I first encountered the idea that semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism might be lumped together. That was during seminary. But it wasn’t until I was in my doctoral studies that I first encountered a blatant identification of Arminianism as semi-Pelagianism. I was serving as youth minister and director of Christian education at a Presbyterian church and teaching an adult Sunday School class. Most of the people in the class had grown up Presbyterian. I chose to have them read and discuss Presbyterian theologian Shirley Guthrie Jr.’s (that’s a man) Christian Doctrine—a fine one volume presentation of basic Christian doctrine from a Reformed perspective. There I ran into it—James Arminius used as the example of a semi-Pelagian view of election. I knew he was wrong about that and told the class, but they were hardly interested as none of them believed in election anyway! (This was a “northern Presbyterian church” in the deep South and most of the good folks were not Calvinists in spite of the Westminster Confession of Faith.)

When I began teaching theology at an evangelical Baptist college I used Guthrie’s book as a primary text in an introduction to doctrine course. It was so readable and full of good illustrations that I thought students would like it and I could correct his errors in my lectures—which I did. But every semester I became more annoyed at his use of Arminius as the example of semi-Pelagianism that I considered using some other textbook. Eventually someone edited Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology (three volumes to one) and I began using that. When I ran into Guthrie at a professional society meeting, I very respectfully confronted him about his error. He said I should write to him about it and he would consider changing it as he worked on a revision that was already in progress. I did that and the revision treated the subject somewhat better although not entirely to my satisfaction.

Throughout the 1990s I kept hearing rumblings about a new stirring of Calvinism among young evangelicals and I began to experience it among my students, many of whom were attending Bethlehem Baptist Church pastored by John Piper. I received the first issue of Modern Reformation magazine in 1992. It was dedicated to criticizing Arminian theology and many of the authors identified it as semi-Pelagian. I wrote a letter to the editor (Michael Horton) arguing that true Arminianism is not semi-Pelagianism and he published it with a lengthy response. That began our now twenty-plus year conversation about this.

Sometime late in the 1990s I heard a taped talk by R. C. Sproul where he simply used “semi-Pelagianism” as a synonym for “Arminianism.” In that talk (I don’t know where it was given) he divided evangelicals into two camps—“Augustinians” and “semi-Pelagians.” He treated semi-Pelagianism as a legitimate evangelical option (in contrast to Pelagianism) while criticizing it for minimizing the sovereignty of God. I could tell that by “semi-Pelagianism” he meant Arminianism.

I began to formulate a plan to write a book about true, classical Arminian theology. Several publishers expressed interest in it and I went with my friends at InterVarsity Press. Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities has been well-received both here in the U.S. and in other countries. It is being translated into Portugese for the Brazilian evangelical audience this year. I continue to receive e-mails from around the world thanking me for writing it—some of them from Calvinists who admit that reading it convinced them that Arminianism is not what they had thought.

In 2009 I wrote to Sproul and gently corrected his identification of Arminianism with semi-Pelagianism. I offered to send him the book if he would read it. I received his reply dated July 17, 2009. He addressed me as “Dear Roger.” He wrote that “I do not identify semi-Pelagianism with Arminianism, but as you indicate in your letter, that I see it as a variety of semi-Pelagianism. … All Arminians are semi-Pelagians in the sense that we have a relationship of genus and species.” He went on to explain that what “differentiates all forms of Augustinianism from all forms of semi-Pelagianism at bottom is the question of the efficacy of prevenient grace.” According to him, Arminianism is semi-Pelagian because it denies that grace is effectual.

I sent Sproul a signed copy of my book and asked for his response. In it I argue that “semi-Pelagianism” is more than denial of the efficacy of grace for salvation; it is the affirmation of the human initiative in salvation—which Arminians deny. I did not receive a response, so I don’t even know if he read the book. (I have given it to several Calvinist acquaintances and asked them to respond. Most did not.)

I am convinced that the identification of Arminianism with semi-Pelagianism has become a major polemical tool in the current resurgence of Calvinism among especially American (now spreading to other counties) young Christians. In other words, Sproul and other influential Calvinists present only two options: Calvinism and semi-Pelagianism and label the latter a denial of salvation by grace alone.

But what about Sproul’s definition of semi-Pelagianism? I can say quite confidently that he is wrong. “Semi-Pelagianism” is not any denial of effectual grace (i.e., what is commonly called “irresistible grace”). Every scholar of historical theology knows that “semi-Pelagianism” is a term for a particular view of grace and free will that emerged primarily in Gallic monasticism in the fifth century in response to Augustine’s strong emphasis on grace as irresistible for the elect.

According to historical theologian Rebecca Harden Weaver of Union Presbyterian Seminary (Virginia), whose book Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Mercer University Press, 1996) is the only English language monograph dedicated solely to semi-Pelagianism that I am aware of, “semi-Pelagianism” is tied inextricably to the teachings of Gallic monastic critics of Augustine and most importantly (prototypically) John Cassian. Cassian and certain other Gallic monks (“Masillians”) argued that although God may initiate salvation with grace, for many people the initiative is theirs toward God. That is, God waits to see the “exercise of a good will” before responding with grace. This is what was condemned (along with predestination to evil) at Orange in 529.

“Semi-Pelagianism,” then, is the view that “The beginning of faith may have its source in the human agent, although it will not always have its source there.” Furthermore, to compound Cassian’s non-Augustinian view of free will and human initiative in salvation, he taught that “The free will, even in its fallen condition, is not totally unable to will the good” and “the emphasis [of Cassian’s doctrine] falls on vigilance, unceasing struggle, in the attainment of salvation.”

This is the standard definition/description of semi-Pelagianism. But in some Reformed circles it has been broadened out to include any and every denial of the irresistible efficacy of grace (for the elect). That’s too broad and it departs from historical tradition in identifying what semi-Pelagianism is. That would be like me using “supralapsarian” to describe all denials of free will. I would be quickly challenged and corrected by especially infralapsarians like Sproul.

I was disappointed that Sproul did not respond to my book. He asked for a copy of it and I sent it with the intention that he would read it and respond. It’s been almost five years now. Perhaps life circumstances have prevented it, but I would like very much to know what other Calvinists who have misrepresented Arminianism in the same manner have to say about my book and its central argument that Arminianism is notsemi-Pelagianism.

In the book I quote numerous Arminian theologians, from Arminius himself to Thomas Oden, to show that all classical Arminians believe that the initiative in salvation is God’s grace (prevenient grace) and that any good humans do, including the first exercise of a good will toward God, is so enabled by grace that there is no room for boasting.

Of course, even Calvinists who come to admit that Arminianism is not semi-Pelagianism will reject it. But my personal project in all this has not been to convert Calvinists to Arminianism; it has been to get them and Arminians to recognize what Arminianism really is in contrast to the widespread misinterpretations and misrepresentations of it.

Why I Love and Worship God

Posted on February 3, 2013 by shel

Why I Love and Worship God February 3, 2013 By rogereolson

Why I Love and Worship God

Often I’m tempted to think one of the most basic differences between me and some fellow Christians is why we love and worship God.

I love and worship God because of Jesus.

Pietist leader Nicholas Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf once said that if it weren’t for Jesus he wouldn’t believe in God. I wouldn’t go quite that far. I think there is enough evidence for a supreme being, an intelligent designer and creator of the universe, that I would believe in God even if I did not know Jesus.

However, if I did not know Jesus, I would not love or worship God.

Is that somehow wrong? Blasphemous? Heretical? Evidence of putting something or someone “above God?” That seems impossible if Jesus is God.

A basic item of Christian orthodoxy is that Jesus is God. To be sure, Jesus is not “all” of God in the sense of there being no persons of God other than Jesus. However, to posit a God who is unlike Jesus would seem to me to verge on heresy—at least.

Even very conservative evangelical theologians have said that saints of God before Jesus loved and worshiped Yahweh because of the promise of a Savior—the Suffering Servant God would sent to redeem them. Even then, through the prophets, they had an intimation of Jesus. God’s “steadfast love” was their rock for loving and worshiping him.

If you ask me whether I would love and worship God if I had never heard of Jesus I can’t answer you. Can you answer such a question? The reality is, I have known God through Jesus my entire life. I have never known God apart from knowing Jesus. When I think of God I have always thought of Jesus’ character, his love for me, his humiliation, his self-sacrificing death and glorious resurrection. Do I have a relationship with the Father and Holy Spirit? Yes, of course, but not apart from Jesus.

“If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (John 14)

So when someone asks me “Would you still love and worship God if it were revealed to you in a way you couldn’t deny that God is not at all like Jesus?” I interpret the question as asking “What if Jesus is not the revelation of the character of God?” Of course, first, I say “That’s impossible.” But to make my point about God being Jesus-like and no other, I play along with the purely hypothetical game and say “No.” That’s not at all the same as implying it’s possible and to say so is to reveal confusion about logic. A hypothetical answer to a hypothetical question never implies that one things it’s possible.

Am I then putting Jesus over God? Hardly. God is the one who put forward Jesus as the perfect revelation of himself. To suggest that one would continue loving and worshiping God if he were not like Jesus is to suggest a “hidden God” behind Jesus who is unlike him. Then what’s Jesus for?

Then, of course, we come to the question “What was Jesus like?” Ah, there’s another difference. I cannot read about Jesus in the New Testament and the earliest church fathers (who knew men who knew Jesus) and have a personal relationship with him and even begin to imagine that he only loved some of the people he encountered and only died for some people. That is not the Jesus I know.

So, I embrace my Calvinist brothers and sisters while grieving for their profound confusion and distorted images of God and Jesus. Of course, they (at best) do the same with me. This is no minor matter to be papered over with “Let’s just not talk about it and love one another.” Love one another—yes. Not talk about it? How can that be? “Speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) isn’t just about correcting heresy or confronting gross immorality. If I think what I believe is true and what a fellow Christian believes is in error, even if I think he or she is saved and a true disciple of Jesus Christ such that we can worship together and cooperate in all kinds of endeavors, how can I be silent about his or her error—especially if he or she brings up the subject?

Surely, if Jesus only mission was to die on the cross for our sins, the Son of God could have become incarnate as a thirty-three year old man (or whatever age) and been crucified. That he chose to be born and grow up and spend three years (we think) living among people and teaching and healing and casting out demons, that is, loving people in action, demonstrates that his life had a purpose, not only his death. What purpose? Well, in part at least, to demonstrate the heart of God. Obviously, then, God considered that people before Jesus, however, faith-filled they may have been, just didn’t “get it” when it came to understanding God truly. He had to come among them as one of them to show his character and will for human life.

It seems to me that people verge on heresy when they posit a God “behind Jesus,” a “hidden God” unlike Jesus. Or suggest that it is possible to know God truly apart from Jesus. (By “know God truly” I don’t mean “savingly.” I mean know his character truly.)

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

Posted on January 10, 2013 by shel

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.

Love America – But Don’t Worship It – Speak the Truth of Jesus to It

Posted on August 30, 2012 by shel

Shel Boese / Shelby Boese – I have spoken often saying: “I love America (The U.S.) – but I love Jesus more” at Mercy Church. I am always concerned with the Civil Religion version of Jesus in America. This article helps make that point clearer. I fear the Ds and Rs often worship their parties and their own version of Americanism.

Is Americanism the Fourth Biblical World Religion? (Partial Review of Peter Leithart’s Between Babel and the Beast)

August 30, 2012 By rogereolson

Is Americanism the Fourth Biblical World Religion? (Partial Review of Peter Leithart’s Between Babel and the Beast)

Some time ago I posted two reviews of Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine. At the end of the second one I suggested that he publish a sequel explaining his view of empire and especially Christianity and empire.

Well, perhaps that book has been published. This year (2012) Cascade Books (imprint of Wipf & Stock) has published Leithart’s contribution to its Theopolitical Visions series. Its title is Between Babel and the Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective.

I’m not sure yet (I’ve read all but the last part of the book) whether this book answers the questions I raised about Leithart’s vision of Christianity and empire in relation to Defending Constantine, but right now that’s not my interest.

I cannot recommend highly enough especially Part II of Between Babel and the Beast (henceforth BBB): “Americanism.” It’s an incisive critique of what David Gelernter has identified as the “fourth biblical world religion.” Leithart agrees with Gelernter and goes so far as to label America “a heretic nation.” (71)

Before saying more about BBB (and here I’m going to restrict myself to Part II), let me give a little background. A few months ago a local newspaper published a column by business guru and writer Mark Stevens. Here’s its original publication (on line edition):http://www.msco.com/blog/i-spell-god-with-stars-and-stripes/. (I’m typing this in Word and it’s hyperlinked; if that doesn’t show up when I copy and paste this into my blog, please hyperlink it yourself or cut and paste it into the address box of a web browser.)

Stevens’ theme was that his religion is America. If you peruse the web using key words like “Americanism” you’ll see that he’s not alone.

But Leithart’s message is not about people who explicitly affirm that their religion is America; it’s about how America has come to regard itself as “God’s New Israel.” But it’s even worse than just that. Here is one quote that will give you a sense of what Leithart is saying about America and Americanism: “America became an agent not of God’s kingdom but an instrument for the spread of American institutions and American culture, and there was a tendency to see America ‘basking in [God’s] permanent favor.’ … Throughout American history, orthodoxy has been strong enough to check the danger of deifying America itself—check, but not eliminate. But the intellectual structure is in place for Americanists to think those who worship America are offering service to God.” (72)

In a relatively short space and with comparatively few words, Leithart goes through American history, quoting American leaders and retelling the stories of America’s treatment of people considered a threat to its prosperity, with the result that one cannot deny the reality, throughout its history, of American exceptionalism. Leithart affirms that America is exceptional, but it has inflated its self-image and pride to monstrous proportions so that today, as at some times in the past, “American exceptionalism” means whatever America does is automatically right.

Now, lest anyone think Leithart (or I) is anti-American; he’s not and he makes that clear. He is decidedly for America and the best think a person can do for someone or something he/she is for is point out their flaws. (Remember the line of the patriotic song America the Beautiful that says “God mend thy every flaw?”) Leithart talks also about the great and wonderful American ideals and services to humanity. But those do not justify ignoring the heresy of Americanism.

Leithart says “We [America] are not the new Israel, nor the last best hope of mankind, nor the novus ordo saeclorum. Insofar as Americans have believed and acted on those convictions, we have been quite literally a heretic nation.” (82)

Sometimes Leithart’s rhetoric can be off putting even when his intention is exhilarating. Here’s a typical example: “Americanism is the monstrous Nephilim that people the earth when the sons of God intermarry the daughters of men. Americanist Christians are Joktanites who uncritically join Nimrod in building Babel. Americanism is ideology with the mythical power to bewitch a Babel into thinking it is Persia, a distorting mirror that might fool a predator into believing he sees the reflection of a cherub.” (82-83) Huh?

Now, I’m sure you have questions about Leithart’s message. I can do no better than strongly recommend that you get the book and read it—especially Part II. It’s prophetic, convicting, challenging, worth considering even if you don’t agree with everything the author says.

One thing I want to clarify for Leithart, lest anyone misunderstand, is that his main target of criticism is not America per se but American Christians, American churches, that have not only allowed this situation to develop but have actually contributed to it. He gives many examples. He doesn’t mention this, but one cannot help but think of the absolutely over-the-top church services of worship of America that take place all across the country on the Sunday before July 4.

I think I have met many Christians over the years whose real religion is America, not Jesus Christ. And that is the case not because they replace Jesus with America but because they insert America into Jesus. That is, they confuse the two so that Jesus becomes for them the American Lord—not Lord over America, but Lord who especially favors and sanctions America in everything it is and does.

Whenever the cross and the flag are merged, the heresy of Americanism is symbolized.

Some time ago I went to the web site of a major evangelical drug treatment program. The first thing I saw at their welcome page was just that—the cross and the American flag merged. That’s a symbol of the heresy Leithart is condemning.

So far Leithart hasn’t really talked about the solution, but the first step is obvious—Christians and churches must step away from American exceptionalism and even speak out against it insofar as it implies that America is always right and stands above basic principles of ethics such as just war and humane treatment of captives.

Next I will talk about Leithart’s own view of Christian empire, insofar as I am able to discern what that may be.

Preliminary Review of Defending Constantine – Roger Olson

Posted on July 21, 2012 by shel

Preliminary Review of Defending Constantine

Shel – Roger’s review is GREAT – Of course I would think so since Im a pentecostal-anabaptist. the comments on his website are well worth reading through too – Leithart has a clear church-state merged reformed agenda.

July 20, 2012 By rogereolson

I don’t usually review books before I’ve finished them and I wouldn’t do that for publication. But a blog is not the same as a formal publication; these are my “musings,” not my final thoughts on anything. The ideas I pose here are for consideration and discussion. I retain the right to change my mind in light of comments or further consideration. Once I submit a book review article to a journal and it’s accepted for publication, I have to be prepared to defend what I wrote. It’s “carved in stone,” so to speak. Not so here. That’s why I put the word “musings” in this blog’s title; these are my often tentative thoughts thrown up in the air like trial balloons to be shot down if necessary.

Lately I’ve been reading Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christianity by Peter Leithart (IVP 2010). “Defending Constantine?” The title caught my eye and piqued my interest. For years I’ve been teaching that there is no valid defense of Constantine, that he was not a Christian and that many church leaders were seduced into allowing him, a murderous tyrant who claimed the title “Pontifex Maximus” (head of the pagan religion of the empire), to influence if not control them. Of course, I’ve also always taught there were hold outs among the Christian leaders of the time, especially Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who dared to stand up to the emperor and challenge him (even in the streets of Constantinople!).

I wrongly assumed that Leithart’s defense of Constantine would be a calm historian’s correction of some misrepresentations of the first “Christian” Roman emperor and that I would learn and be challenged to reconsider some of what I have always thought and taught about him. To a certain extent, that’s true. However, there seems to be much more going on in the background of Leithart’s defense of Constantine. One thing that becomes progressively clearer as one reads the book is the author’s very strong anti-Yoderian (anti-anti-Constantinian) political theology. Yoder is Leithart’s main foil; he clearly believes Yoder has misrepresented Constantine and the church during Constantine’s reign in writings such as The Royal Priesthood.

I have now reached the halfway point in Defending Constantine and have some thoughts to share about the book. I remain open to correction; one should never form a definite opinion until the end of a book. So I will wait to reveal my final thoughts until then. Here, however, I will pose some questions and suggest some qualms I am having about the drift of Leithart’s argument.

At the end of Chapter 8 (p. 189) Leithart says something that truly shocks me. I am open to having my thoughts about Constantine corrected; perhaps he was not a cynical pretender to Christianity merely using the church for his own purposes. (But I think Leithart dismisses that possibility too cavalierly. He thinks it’s simply unlikely given some of Constantine’s public statements about Christianity including especially his “Oration” to his court about Christianity. Nothing Leithart has said so far, however, relieves my suspicions.)

What I am not open to reconsidering (at this point) is my strong belief that the political structure of church and state during Constantine’s reign was an egregious error. Of course, much depends on what one means by “structure,” but I take it to mean “arrangement”—whether formal or informal. On page 189 Leithart says, referring to some of Constantine’s and later “Christian” emperors’ acts toward the church and its leader, “All these were real, and often horrific, acts of unfaithfulness. But they do not imply a structural flaw. Once the emperor has kissed the Son, should he not honor the Son’s Bride?”

So what were Constantine’s admitted “horrific acts of unfaithfulness?” Leithart admits that Constantine was not a baptized Christian, but he clearly considers him nevertheless a Christian. One question I would like to ask him is whether he believes unbaptized persons, persons who could be baptized but decline or refuse, are really Christians. What does “Christian” mean in that case? Saved? Okay, but is that really sufficient to call someone a “Christian?” Clearly, given all the evidence Leithart marshals, Constantine considered himself a Christian and was considered a Christian by most Christian bishops and by thousands, perhaps millions, of Romans. So what? I would dare say most Germans during the 1930s considered Hitler a Christian becausehe was baptized. Leithart, in my opinion, so far, minimizes Constantine’s “horrific acts of unfaithfulness.” In my opinion, he lets him off the hook too easily and interprets him through the eyes of Eusebius of Caesarea who clearly favored Constantine and treated him almost as a saint and new savior.

Again, I ask, What were Constantine’s undisputed “horrific acts of unfaithfulness?” Well, I think I know what some of the worst ones were, but those haven’t been mentioned directly by Leithart yet. (So far he has only alluded to them as they have been mentioned by others.) One that Leithart admits is Constantine’s occasional persecutions of dissenting Christians, especially the Donatists. The Donatists were a group of Christians in North Africa who believed that the sacramental acts of lapsed priests and bishops were invalid. According to them, after the great empire wide persecutions by Decius and Diocletian, especially, priests and bishops who denied Christ and especially those who collaborated with the persecutors should be considered not Christians and their baptisms and ordinations invalid. Later, of course, Augustine developed his theory of ex opera operato against the Donatists. During Constantine’s reign, there was severe competition between the “Catholic” and Donatist churches and leaders in North Africa and it occasionally involved violence. Constantine clearly came down hard on the Donatists, persecuting and attempting to eliminate them as a church. Some of them were arrested and tortured and even killed because of some of Constantine’s edicts against them. (He did not order that they be killed, but his language against them clearly gave permission to local authorities to do that. If that’s not what he wanted, he surely would have moderated his language.)

And then there’s Constantine’s treatment of Athanasius. He exiled him. Leithart claims that Constantine did not “control” the church and uses Athanasius as evidence. But, in my opinion, Athanasius provides the proof that Constantine attempted to control the church and that’s the accusation Yoder and others make. How else should we consider an emperor exiling a bishop for criticizing him and his policies? I don’t know anyone, Yoder included, who claims that Constantine had total control over the church or that the church as a whole, without exception, allowed him to control the church. What Constantine did was attempt to have the final say in church matters—after allowing much deliberation and attempting to get “concord” among the bishops. Leithart admits that. Is there really that much difference? Isn’t this a quibble?

Back to the troubling end of Chapter 8 (p. 189). Leithart finally admits that Constantine and later “Christian” emperors committed “horrific acts of unfaithfulness.” But his main argument is that these “do not imply a structural flaw.” “Once the emperor has kissed the Son, should he not honor the Son’s Bride?” That statement raises many questions about Christian political theology that I hope Leithart will answer in the second half of the book. Here I’ll raise some of them myself.

The statement begs the question “Which ‘Bride’?’ Leithart admits that Christians were divided in Constantine’s time. Among others, there were the “schismatic” Montanists and Donatists. Who’s to say these were not parts of the “Bride” (of Christ)? What Constantine “honored” (imperfectly, obviously) was “Catholic” Christianity—the bishops he chose to regard as real bishops and their churches. Others he dishonored and even persecuted as did later “Christian” emperors.

How is that not a “structural flaw?” How is that not Constantinianism (in Yoder’s sense) and even Caesaropapism? True, as Leithart points out, it was the Donatists who first appealed to Constantine to settle their dispute with the Catholics in North Africa. But so what? Constantine should have refused (except insofar as violence needed to be stopped)? By taking sides in theological and ecclesiastical disputes, Constantine set a trend. He was not always consistent about it, but he clearly considered himself the final authority in church matters. And clearly many of the bishops agreed. When he died he was buried in the Church of the Apostles as if he were, as some bishops called him, the “the thirteenth apostle.”

When I had read about a hundred pages of Leithart’s book I began to get nervous and I remain nervous. I also remain open to having my nervousness alleviated in the book’s second half. My anxiety arose not from Leithart’s many corrections of misconceptions of Constantine (although I think he gives Constantine the benefit of the doubt too much too often). Leithart keeps asking (in various ways) what people think Constantine should have done differently given the cultural context in which Roman emperors were universally considered (?) the supreme leader of the empire including religion, and in which there were such deep divisions both within Christianity and between Christians and Jews and pagans.

This touches on a subject I’ve raised here before. To what extent should we let historical figures off the hook just because of the cultural context and the times in which they lived—especially when they claimed to be Christians and had their Bibles and read them? Should we excuse Zwingli for having the Zurich city council torture Hubmaier? By all accounts Zwingli stood in the torture chamber and demanded that Hubmaier, who had come to Zurich at Zwingli’s invitation for a debate assuming protection, recant his Anabaptist views. And, of course, Zwingli fully supported the drowning of Anabaptist men and women. Shall we say “Well, those were harsh times?” I don’t think so. Either Zwingli is in hell or he had to go through a purgatory-like process before entering heaven. If you don’t believe in anything like purgatory (even C. S. Lewis’ highly Protestantized version), I don’t see how you can avoid putting Zwingli in hell.

Shall we say that Constantine’s attempts to dominate and control the churches by force (Donatist and Montanist at least!) are excusable because that is what people expected of an emperor? How do we excuse his claiming to be Christian without baptism? How do we excuse his keeping the pagan title “Pontifex Maximus?” All kinds of arguments can be made to defend him, but doesn’t that just open the door to possibly defending any evil tyrant of history—because of the “times?”

What concerns me most is Leithart’s claim that there was no “structural flaw” in Constantine’s relations with the churches. Does he mean that would be the case today, as well? Is he defending the idea that “Christian” civil rulers should dominate or even attempt to influence churches and church leaders (about matters theological and ecclesiastical)? I can’t believe it.

This may seem a very minor point, but on page 181, in footnote 62, Leithart uses Rousas John Rushdoony as an authority. I have never seen that before in any scholarly work. Who even reads Rushdoony except Christian Reconstructionists?

So I looked up Leithart to see where he teaches. He is a senior fellow and dean of graduate studies at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho (or was when this book was written). I’ll leave it to you, my dear readers, to look it up and read its statement of faith. Read it carefully. This is also where Douglas Wilson is a faculty member. Google “Douglas Wilson” and “slavery.” I’m not implying anything about Leithart’s beliefs about slavery; I only mention it as a matter of interest. (I will say that if one of my colleagues wrote a pamphlet that even seemed to defend slavery as not entirely and without exception an evil institution I would have a talk with him or her. Maybe Leithart has done that. I hope so.)

Finally, I will say that I think Leithart’s treatment of Yoder throughout the first half of his book has been dismissive at best and insulting at worst. He finds a few historical mistakes in what Yoder wrote about Constantine and, in my opinion, implies that Yoder was simply ignorant of what he wrote about. But worse, I detect a strong bias against Yoder and the Anabaptist tradition in general in the first half of the book and that bias seems to me to be expressed in ungenerous ways.

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

Posted on July 12, 2012 by shel

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

See an additional interview with Roger Olson.

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.

Roger 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.

“Full Gospel?” Part 10 of Response to The Gospel as Center: Chapter 10 “The Holy Spirit”

Posted on May 11, 2012 by shel

Shel Boese / Shelby Boese – Roger does a nice job in this critique of also educating (I think it is a skill and gift of his). Enjoy! BTWcan you tell where I stand on these issues?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/05/full-gospel-part-10-of-response-to-the-gospel-as-center-chapter-10-the-holy-spirit/

“Full Gospel?” Part 10 of Response to The Gospel as Center: Chapter 10 “The Holy Spirit”

May 11, 2012 By rogereolson

Part 10 of Response to The Gospel as Center: Chapter 10: “The Holy Spirit”

The chapter’s author is Gospel Coalition member Kevin DeYoung, a minister of the Reformed Church of America.

Like many other chapters of The Gospel as Center, this one does not provide the fodder for controversy and criticism one might expect. For the most part it is a straightforward exposition of traditional Protestant doctrine of the Holy Spirit as person, God and distinct from the Father and Son. One statement with which I might quibble is that “the Son and the Spirit are [not] one in terms of their being.” (174) The author continues by saying their oneness is in their “shared redemptive activity.” However, unlike some neo-fundamentalists I know, I won’t jump on that but practice a hermeneutic of charity and interpret it as meaning nothing more than that the Son and Spirit are not the same person (as in modalism). I just think the choice of language is unfortunate and could be misleading.

The author continues by describing the work of the Holy Spirit as: convicting, converting, applying, glorifying, sanctifying, equipping and promising.

DeYoung clearly believes that conversion is solely the work of the Holy Spirit; he makes no mention of any human response that is not itself a gift of the Spirit. That is, of course, a symptom of monergism. This excludes from believing the full gospel all synergists, including evangelical synergists (Anabaptists and Arminians). This ignores, of course, all the biblical imperatives to believe and receive and repent, etc. When it comes to sanctification DeYoung offers at least a hint of personal involvement that is not already the Spirit’s sole work.

Many evangelicals will object to DeYoung’s insistence that there is no “second blessing” of Spirit baptism subsequent to conversion (179-180). For him, Spirit baptism is simply our union with Christ at conversion/regeneration. Every true Christian is already Spirit baptized. I think it is possible to read the New Testament differently. DeYoung equates Spirit baptism with being “baptized by one Spirit” into one body which many evangelicals interpret as water baptism, distinguishing that from Spirit baptism which is a second work of grace. He interprets 1 Cor. 12:13 as referring to Spirit baptism—something common to all Christians. It is possible to interpret that as referring to regeneration only and not at all to Spirit baptism as that is referred to in Acts.

All evangelicals believe that every true Christian received the Spirit at regeneration and were inserted into the body of Christ at baptism. SOME evangelicals (and not only Pentecostals and charismatics!) believe there is a second work of the Holy Spirit called being “filled with the Spirit,” the “enduement with power,” every Christian’s own “Pentecost.” Some of them believe it is always accompanied by the sign gift of the speaking in tongues. In my opinion, DeYoung’s treatment of this debate is shallow and dismissive of the second blessing tradition. He seems unfamiliar with that tradition’s concept of the second blessing as being “filled” with the Spirit. On the other hand, it would probably be best for that tradition to use only that language and drop baptism language for the second blessing. The problem is, as I often say, Scripture is not as clear about this subject as we would like.

Another area where I don’t so much disagree as think DeYoung’s exposition and argument are shallow is “The Holy Spirit Glorifies” (180-182). There he focuses entirely and exclusively on the Holy Spirit’s glorification of Christ. That does rightly come first. But he brushes aside in too cavalier a manner the Spirit’s glorification of believers (2 Cor. 3:8 and 2 Peter 1:4). As expected, he is only interested in God’s glory and not at all (so it seems) in God’s glorification of us which is a New Testament theme. The fullness of that is, of course, eschatological, and its purpose now and then is to unite us with God to his honor and glory but also for our transformation and glorification. I see no problem in highlighting that as the New Testament does. It seems to me contemporary neo-Calvinists are allergic to anything, even biblical passages, that refer to our glorification as if that would somehow detract from God’s.

Also as expected, DeYoung vilifies inclusivism as “horribly mistaken.” (182) But, once again, his exposition of it (because it is not really one thing!) is shallow and even distorted. Not all inclusivists believe non-Christian religions are means of grace for salvation. His argument against inclusivism is that it detracts from the glory of Christ. I don’t follow his reasoning there at all. As often, I detect in this discussion that a certain view of God’s glory is pitted against God’s love as if extended his love to those who never hear of Jesus Christ (in this life) somehow diminishes Christ’s glory.

Finally, DeYoung talks about the controversy between “cessationists” and “continuationists” and seeks to please both sides. He says they have more in common than they disagree about. (186) He says “One of the encouraging signs in the evangelical world is how cessationists and continuationists have been able to partner and worship together in recent years, realizing that their commonalities in the gospel are far greater than the issues that separate them with regard to spiritual gifts.” (186) Really? Where and when has that happened? Is he aware that the Southern Baptist International Mission Board and several seminaries have required missionaries and professors to sign statements that they do not speak in tongues even in private (as a personal “prayer language”) on pain of being fired?

I think cessationism is simply silly in that it is inconsistent with something most cessationists loudly proclaim—taking the Bible seriously as God’s Word for us today. What I wonder is how a group as devoted to biblical authority as The Gospel Coalition can include cessationists who clearly fly in the face of Scripture out of fear of fanaticism and/or (out of) accommodation to modern naturalism. I can’t think of any other reasons for it. Appeals to 1 Cor. 13:8-10 simply won’t cut it. “When the perfect is come” cannot refer to the completion of the canon. The other reasons DeYoung gives in support of cessationism (185-186) are equally insipid. Now, neglect of the supernatural gifts is not necessarily the same as theological cessationism. And that’s another issue. But to claim that cessationism is consistent with faith in Scripture as God’s inerrant Word seems to me illogical.

I grew up in a form of evangelical Christianity that proudly proclaimed itself “full gospel”—implying that other forms of evangelical Christianity (such as cessationism) are “partial gospel.” I now think that all forms of Christianity are partial gospel; there is no truly “full gospel” Christianity; we all have much to learn from each other about the full meaning and implications of the gospel. We all have various forms of truncated gospel. I weary of those who proclaim that they and they alone have the “full gospel.” However, cessationism does seem to me a good example of a theology that has consciously rejected a portion of the New Testament as irrelevant to today for no good reason and therefore obviously, at that point, has a truncated gospel and stands in need of correction. DeYoung fails in that.

Overall, I was disappointed with this chapter’s lack of emphasis on the interior work of the Holy Spirit and our believing and receiving response to the Spirit’s initiative and empowering presence. The emphasis falls mainly on the objective work of the Holy Spirit as if we (especially in conversion) are puppets or mere objects being taken over and controlled by the Spirit without our consent or cooperation. That is not, in my opinion, New Testament or true evangelical Christianity. I realize it is part of Protestant orthodoxy, but that’s just because it’s been around a very long time. To me and to a very large segment of evangelicalism, the neglect of our free participation in the Spirit’s work in conversion by repentance and faith is pernicious to the power of the gospel message.

A Few Thoughts about Science and Theology

Posted on May 5, 2012 by shel

Shel Boese / Shelby – Roger does a great job of presenting the moderate to conservative case regarding science and theology. I would add that philosophy (sorry to the current blind-faith physicists) also plays a similar role in pushing back on science and the nature of knowledge/discovery.

A Few Thoughts about Science and Theology

May 5, 2012 By rogereolson

I did not get to hear Alvin Plantinga when he spoke at my university a couple weeks ago. His topic was theology and science. He has a new book about it that I plan to read (when I have a month to digest it!).

Several people have asked me here about what role I think science does play in theology. That’s because I rejected as invalid “Dear Abby’s” claim that modern science has made the Bible’s view of homosexuality invalid. I said that science can’t do that.

The argument is that if science proves (as some allege has happened) that sexual orientation is biological/genetic, then we have to believe that same sex sexual behavior is morally right. The usual caveat is that it must be mutual and not coercive. And, of course, that it must be between consenting adults.

The reason this doesn’t touch the traditional Christian stance about sex outside of heterosexual marriage is that traditional Christianity has always taught that we are all fallen and born with sinful inclinations (orientations). Science proving that homosexual desire is biological/genetic wouldn’t affect that belief any more than science proving that men are naturally inclined toward sexual promiscuity would force Christians to alter their belief about sexual promiscuity. (One could go on and talk about alcoholism and numerous other conditions that may very well be biological/genetic but not therefore morally good to act on.)

The larger issue, of course, is whether you can ever derive an “ought” (moral imperative positive or negative) from an “is.” Science deals ONLY with “is.” Ethics deals with “ought.” The latter cannot be based on the former in a causal relationship. Certainly what is the case may have some bearing on decisions about what ought to be the case, but what is the case can never determine what ought to be the case. By definition “ought” goes beyond “is.”

Oughtness requires something transcendent to nature. Attempting to derive ought from is is called the “naturalistic fallacy.” Whether a certain sexual behavior is right or wrong cannot be determined by observing nature–even by observing what people do that they cannot help.

Illustration: Let’s suppose that the day arrives when science demonstrates conclusively that pedophilia is biological/genetic. I do not know of anyone who would argue that that would result in our having to conclude that adults preying on children is okay.

I have been told by scientists that it is just as likely that, in some people, alcohol addiction is genetic as that homosexual orientation is genetic. Yet I know of no one who argues that abusing alcohol (or abusing oneself with it) is good or right or even neutral. It’s a bad thing that people ought not to do.

None of this speaks to other issues such as what ought our attitude toward people who do what they ought not to do be. That’s a secondary issue. Nor does any of this speak to issues of punishment or treatment or anything like that. Those are all secondary issues that come up AFTER it is decided that a certain behavior is wrong.

My point here is not about homosexuality or alcoholism or any other specific orientation or behavior. It is only about the relationship between science and morality/ethics. It is simply a logical fallacy to think that what science discovers determines the rightness or wrongness of anything. There is an unbridgeable gulf between science that sticks to its sphere of research and proper methods and ethics. You cannot get from one to the other.

Now, having said that, I qualify that I am NOT arguing that ethicists (or theologians) ought to ignore science or vice versa. Of course not. The disciplines can and should communicate. Science needs ethics to guide how it handles sentient subjects in research, for example. And ethics needs science to tell it what is possible which can be helpful in determining proper punishments or treatments for (for example) criminals who do what they cannot avoid doing.

But simply to leap from the “fact” (the jury is still out) that homosexuality is biological/genetic to that same sex intercourse, for example, is morally acceptable is logically fallacious. At most all one could conclude (if one is a naturalist, for example) is that it is normal for some people. To go anywhere in determining moral rightness or wrongness one has to transcend what is natural or normal.

Now, there’s much more to this subject than what I have said here. For example, to what extent should theology adjust its doctrines based on scientific inquiry and proven conclusions? There I will appeal to and agree with Charles Hodge (who agreed with Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina) that theology cannot and should not ignore facts. Whenever science (of any branch) proves something (i.e., it becomes undeniable fact), theology must adjust to that. However, theology does not have to adjust to theories. All of that assumes that science stays in its proper boundaries. For example, that the earth revolves around the sun is fact and lies within the purview of science. Whether a certain behavior is right is not within science’s purview.

shelboese.org

news, thoughts, theology…

Category Archives: Roger E. Olson

Luther and “Double Predestination” Roger Olson

Luther and “Double Predestination”

Why Do We Call It “Good Friday” When….?

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

Why I Love and Worship God

Why I Love and Worship God February 3, 2013 By rogereolson

Love America – But Don’t Worship It – Speak the Truth of Jesus to It

Is Americanism the Fourth Biblical World Religion? (Partial Review of Peter Leithart’s Between Babel and the Beast)

Preliminary Review of Defending Constantine – Roger Olson

Preliminary Review of Defending Constantine

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

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

FIVE-POINT CALVINISM

LIMITED ATONEMENT

BASIS FOR LIMITED ATONEMENT

RESPONDING TO CALVINISM

LIMITED ATONEMENT AND THE NATURE OF GOD

Notes

“Full Gospel?” Part 10 of Response to The Gospel as Center: Chapter 10 “The Holy Spirit”

A Few Thoughts about Science and Theology

A Few Thoughts about Science and Theology