Category Archives: Theology
Here’s a New Spin on an Old Debate
Rey, who also goes by Beowulf2k8, has been challenging me on how free our free wills really are. Being Reformed, I hold that God can and does influence our free wills for good and for ill. Rey believes that if God influences us in that way, that we are not truly guilty of committing sin.
Let’s back a step up and look at this from a different perspective. John Piper, still thoroughly Reformed, has a different take here. Piper wonders, “Does God lead us into temptation?”
Piper feels that God guides our every step (Prv 20:24). The same Scripture that asks God not to lead us into temptation (Mt 6:13) also says that God doesn’t tempt us (Jms 1:13). He wouldn’t, but he doesn’t have to. As it turns out, every step we take is a temptation to do wrong. God leads us through temptations (cf. Mt 4:1), but he doesn’t tempt us.
Each temptation that God leads us through is an opportunity to glorify him by doing the Christian thing: not yielding to the temptation. Don’t pray for a life free of temptations. That’s unrealistic. Pray instead that you won’t yield to the temptations that will come your way.
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Rey says:
So, Calvinism teaches that God is the author and finisher of evil, thus making sin no longer sin but transforming it into obedience, and hence Calvinism is the most supremely evil position a person can take in theology.
How many times do I have to respond to this? Read my last post again. Better yet, have someone read it to you. Loudly and slowly. Until it sinks in. Look up any unfamiliar words. Try not to drool on the dictionary that you use for that.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, emphasis my own:
God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
Read the Scriptural proof of the last point: “nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” The verses cited are as follows (KJV instead of my beloved ESV):
- Acts 2:23: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.
- Matthew 17:12: But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
- Acts 4:27-28: For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
- John 19:11: Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.
- Proverbs 16:33: The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
Despite the fact that God foreordains all that will come to pass, he is not the author of sin. I don’t see how that can be made any more plain.
According to you, Cory, “What Calvinism does teach is that God has an eternal decree, from the beginning of time, that everything that would happen does happen.” So, your position is really not that man is the author of evil while God merely allows it to go on, but that God decreed each and every instance of evil that has ever happened to happen. You know that you are saying that God is the author and finisher of evil. BUT you also that saying such a thing is evil and blasphemous. Therefore, you try to say it without people realizing it, hoping that you can both convince people that God is the author and finisher of evil and yet also convince them that this isn’t what you are really saying, all at the same time. That is classic Calvinism, “God’s the author of evil, but you didn’t hear it from me, wink wink.”
What a load of crap! You have so failed to deal with the gradations of “foreordain” that your reply is of no value. As any idiot with a tenth-grade reading level can comprehend, I am saying that God allows evil as a negative decree and not as a positive one. Negatively allowing something falls well within the parameters of “foreordaining” the same, without making God the author of said event.
Your real argument is: “I don’t understand how God can decree every event on planet earth from the beginning and still expect us to accept blame for sin, so God has no eternal decree.” Then, you punctuate that argument with “neener neener!” and a raspberry. Next you’ll be asking me to pull your finger.
Amusing…
No matter how many times I say it, Rey keeps repeating the same error over and over again. So I have decided to write a post that keeps everything pure and simple, so that I (hopefully) won’t have to say this again.
Calvinism does not teach that sovereignty is the same as micromanagement. Calvinism does not teach that God is a Hollywood screenwriter who has written a screenplay that becomes life as we know it. Calvinism does not teach any of that stuff! Yet Rey continues to repeat these same errors over and over again.
What Calvinism does teach is that God has an eternal decree, from the beginning of time, that everything that would happen does happen. This can be either positive or negative, or some shade between.
If this decree is positive, it means that God declares what is going to happen, he purposes it and does it.
If the decree is negative, it means that God allows something to happen. Orthodox Calvinism views evil this way: it isn’t something that God positively does, it is something that he negatively allows for his own unsearchable purpose.
Hyper-Calvinism, on the other hand, does view evil as something that God creates in the life of the sinner. I’m no hyper-Calvinist.
There are many gradations in the action of foreordaining. It can be a positive thing that God purposes and does, or it can be a negative thing that God allows. It may also fall in-between the two extremes in a way that we don’t understand this side of eternity. God either purposefully does something, or purposefully allows something to happen. Either way, he is foreordaining it in a sense, and not micromanaging every detail.
So, please, Rey, stop repeating the error that I’m teaching that God micromanages everything. In fact, I have explicitly written against it in this latest series of posts sparring with you.
Is Free Will Subject to God’s Sovereignty?
Rey, otherwise known as Beowulf2k8, has leveled more criticism my way. He has two posts, here and here, that criticize my own Reformed view of the Bible. The second was meant as pure sarcasm, and as such I will not be addressing it. The first one I will address after I clarify a few things.
First, Rey did not adequately respond to Genesis 50:20. He said that Joseph was not an oracle of God, so therefore it represents his erroneous opinion of what God is doing in his life. I countered with the fact that Joseph was an oracle of God, evidenced by the fact that he interpreted dreams, and therefore his opinion in this matter would carry some weight. This statement of God meaning someone’s free will evil for the good of all is inconvenient to Rey’s position that God doesn’t influence human free will.
Second, Rey did not respond to the litany of verses that show God does influence human free will. Among others that can be cited, I specifically cited the following verses (emphasis mine):
- Exodus 4:21: And the LORD said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.”
- Joshua 11:20: For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses.
- Isaiah 63:17: O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways
and harden our heart, so that we fear you not? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. - Romans 9:18: So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Third, Rey does not contend with the litany of verses cited in favor of God making the decision for Christ for us (emphasis mine):
- John 1:9-13: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of a human decision nor of the will of man, but of God.
- 1Pet. 1:3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
- John 6:44: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
- John 6:61-65: Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”
- Acts 2:45-47: And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
- Acts 16:13-14: And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.
Fourth, Rey does nothing with my philosophical discourse on God’s foreordination. Rey merely continues to perpetuate the error that Calvinism teaches that God reduces human beings to puppets. He does this with no evidence from any Calvinist document that allegedly teaches this.
Who Has the Higher View of God?
The age-old problem is that if God has an eternal decree, then how is it possible that man has a free will? And yet both are taught in Scripture, so it must be the case that this is somehow true. Rey, also calling himself Beowulf2k8, makes light of this whole issue in a response to a video theologian John Calvin did for me here.
What Rey reveals is a low view of Scripture and a low view of God’s sovereignty. I know that Rey has a low view of Scripture based on this post, in which he claims that the Bible contains a contradiction. Instead of resolving it, Rey gives more weight to James because James wasn’t an adulterer or a murderer (as David quite clearly was). That’s the easy way out. The more difficult way out is to try to figure out what the proper way to understand both texts together would be.
Pastor’s Error
My pastor made a grave error during this last Sunday School at my church. My pastor is a proud Arminian, and I am a proud Calvinist. Therefore, we differ about things, and one of the chief things is predestination. He had an entire series in Sunday School a few months back dedicated to smashing predestination. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend so we couldn’t debate about it. Since I don’t know the content of those lessons, I won’t be able to explore them further here. However, I will be able to discuss the error he made this past Sunday.
My pastor was teaching on Revelation 21, the New Heaven and the New Earth. I’m a historicist, and my pastor is a futurist, so we could argue about interpretations of Revelation longer than we could about predestination. However, the specific error concerns the Lamb’s book of life in verse 27. Pastor says that the book won’t be “parsed out” until the end of time as we know it. Really? Let’s take a look at another verse that talks about the timeframe of writing, specifically, Exodus 32:32.
After seeing that the people had sinned by making the Golden Calf and bowing down to it, Moses intervenes with God and says, “But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written” (Ex 32:32, emphasis added). This is the same Lamb’s book of life mentioned in Revelation 21:27 (among other verses). Notice when the book was written–in the past. In other words, God has already written this book.
I wouldn’t build a case for predestination based on this verse alone, but it does strengthen the case when combined with the other biblical evidence for predestination.
Decision Theology and the Pelagian Heresy
Chris Roseburgh is not a Calvinist, but he is against the Pelagian heresy same as we are. Chris runs two excellent blogs, A Little Leaven and Extreme Theology. Extreme Theology has had two posts (here and here) that offer a great commentary on what is wrong with churches today. The first talks about “decision theology” and the second talks directly about free will and its connection to sin.
Again, Chris isn’t a Calvinist so he doesn’t speak of predestination to glory or shame when he speaks of decision theology, which is what the Calvinist would speak of. However, his post highlights some excellent Bible verses that show that we don’t have the free will to accept or deny Christ; in fact, it is the Holy Spirit moving within us that makes that decision possible. The Calvinist would call this “Irresistible Grace”–the “I” in TULIP. By denying the total depravity of man, even to accepting eternal life, churches today are preaching sermons that are not used by God to draw his elect to himself. And that is a tragedy.
We are to preach the gospel and repentance, but the sermons found in modern, seeker-driven churches are little better than self-help pop-psychology.
While the Calvinist believes that God’s elect will be found by him eventually, it is perhaps tragic that God won’t draw them sooner because modern preachers have the message all wrong.
In the second post, Chris makes the point that those set in the flesh cannot please God. Since the seeker-driven churches aren’t preaching biblical messages that will be used by God to draw his elect to himself, the people in those churches are very likely unregenerate. That isn’t to say that they aren’t trying to love God with all their heart, minds, and souls. But that isn’t what the Gospel is; that’s what the Law is. Since they are trying to follow God through works of Law, they are, in effect, displeasing to God.
Trying to make it to God on your own merit is the old Pelagian heresy coming back to haunt the church.
Am I Still a Calvinist?
James White had a thoughtful post on the 12th about the theological issues faced in deciding whether or not one is Roman Catholic. Reading that post, and listening to his extended edition of the Dividing Line here has made me re-re-evalutate my stance on the Reformed position.
Although I’ve been coming away from the Reformed position, it has been nagging at me somewhat. What about the problem of evil? How is it to be answered in light of Arminianism? The only answer that Arminians have is that evil exists becauase of free will. That means three things.
First, evil is senseless. If evil exists because we define it and carry it out, then this is simply senseless.
Second, evil is out of God’s hands. Because evil is there due to the free will of man, and God either can’t or won’t stop it, it means that God has, in some sense or another, washed his hands of evil completely.
Third, evil is pointless. As the happenstance of existentialism, if we are caught in something evil it is because of that reason and not for any other.
Now consider Chapter 3, paragraph 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith:
God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
From this, evil is not senseless or pointless, and it is not out of God’s hands. It exists alongside good for the purpose of glorifying God by God’s eternal decree. But notice the final thoughts of this paragraph: “neiter is God the author of sin . . . nor is the liberty or contigency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” Evil still exists by our free will, but our free will is subject to God and therefore he is still in control without being the author of sin. But sin is still included in his plan. And, guess what? We are still responsible for choosing that evil over good.
By Arminianism, sin cannot be included in God’s plan and is therefore out of God’s control. Well, not the God that I worship. Like the shirt says: CALVINISM: When a finite God won’t do.
I’m convinced that the truth of the matter lies somewhere in-between Calvinism and Arminianism. But for now, I’m afraid that I must remain on the side where God is in control of what happens on earth. I choose Calvinism.
This is likely to disappoint a great number of people who frequent this blog, like the commenter who goes by “rey” but is in reality “Beowulf2k8” from other Calvinist blogs and has his own rarely updated blog. My friend Caleb, who thought that I put the Westminster Confession above Scripture (and who might be mad at me for linking to him). I know this will disappoint the pastor of my church, since he, too, has a certain distaste for Calvinism (he spent an entire series in Sunday school–three weeks–preaching against predestination).
On the other hand, this will probably make other readers happy. Craig French, TurretinFan, and James White (if he reads this blog). Most readers probably won’t care too much. Hopefully this will solidify my apologetics, which have been faltering as of recently. Owing in no small part to my brief departure from sound theology, most likely.
To those I disappoint, sorry, but I’ve made up my mind. James White is right: Theology Matters. So, in answer to the question posed by the title, YES, I am still a Calvinist.
Statement of Faith II: The One True God
In The Jewish Approach to God, Rabbi Neil Gillman cited that Jews believe that God is echad, which means “one.” He spent an entire chapter discussing that concept at great length, and I will touch on a few brief points in this post.
First, there is the shema. Jewish men recite the shema daily. It is Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word for “one” in that passage is the Hebrew word echad, which implies more than just a number. It means more than, “God is a single unit,” although it means that, too. Echad means that God is uniquely God. God is unique because he is God.
So, now my atheist readers are raising an eyebrow and saying, “Ha! You worship three Gods: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! How does that jive with ‘God is one.’ Christianity loses, atheism wins!” Well, dear atheist reader, I’m going to try to explain it to you. Wipe the drool from your lower lip and continue reading.
I have outlined in this post that there is a fundamental difference between the polytheism of Indian religions like Hinduism and the monotheism of Christianity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each echad–uniquely God–while retaining their individual identities. Some atheists assert that we are worshiping three Gods in One. We are not: we are worshiping three Persons in one God.
Nothing about “personhood” suggests that it must be unique to an individual essence or soul. One could easily make the argument that an essence or soul could have multiple persons attached to it. That is not the case with humans, God’s image-bearers. Our essence contains only one person attached to it. Not the case with God; his essence carries three Persons attached to it: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Why, if we are God’s image-bearers, then do we only have one person attached to our souls while God has three? Would it not make sense that we should have three persons attached to our soul? Well, that is actually a very good question, and tough to answer. Scripture is silent in this regard, so we must be careful when attempting to draw inferences from it. The best, and most reasonable, explanation is that God chose to attach only one person to a human soul instead of three. That is our ontology, the way that God made us, and why he didn’t make us another way is simply a mystery.
One last point bears touching on before I close the discussion of the Trinity. As Richard Dawkins put it in The God Delusion, rivers of ink (and blood) have been wasted trying to explain the Trinity and Dawkins complains that much of it remains a mystery. So I ask, “Why the double standard?” Science accepts abiogenesis as a potential theory about the origins of life, despite failing in every way to substantiate it. The origin of life remains a mystery. Yet many hold out that one day, we will substantiate abiogenesis and solve the mystery of life. Why, I ask again, are you allowed to have mysteries of science, but I am not allowed to have mysteries of faith? I am doing the same thing as you are doing with abiogenesis, but for that you label me a “fundie” or “deluded.”
In The God Delusion, Dawkins explains that a certain agnosticism is warranted when the evidence is scant. Just like atheists can remain agnostic about the origin of life and still be called reasonable, we can call the Trinity a mystery and still be reasonable.
God, though three, is really one (echad). This is one of the great mysteries of faith, and instead of filling us with skepticism it should fill us with wonder. The wonder of echad is that God is the only God (see Is 44:6).
2 Thessalonians 2:11 Illustrated
Atheist Revolution’s VJack has a very interesting post about whether or not atheism is voluntary. Atheism, it seems to VJack, is “less voluntary than many other beliefs.” It seems that atheism is something that someone is left with after exploring all other beliefs.
VJack says:
Sitting here today, knowing what I know, experiencing what I have experienced, living the life I have led, I am not sure that I could now convince myself to believe in the Christian god or associated dogma even if I desperately wanted to do so. It is as if I have passed a point of no return. (source, emphasis added)
I think that it is interesting that he chose that particular phrasing. Because the Bible teaches that there is, indeed, a “point of no return” for the faithless. Consider this:
The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 The 2:9-12, emphasis added)
This means that, eventually, God will allow you to believe what you choose to believe about him. And moreover, he will send you a powerful delusion so that you will always believe that, no matter what happens. This is God’s judgment on the sinner.
It seems that VJack has crossed a line, and now can no longer believe in God. This is very sad news. VJack has, through his life, brought a strong judgment from God upon himself.
It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love VJack. Quite the opposite–God loves everyone, including VJack. It means that VJack can still repent of this and turn his faith to God, and God will welcome him with open arms. Unfortunately, VJack’s own words seem to preclude this possibility, and God has judged accordingly.
The line has been drawn. I hope VJack knows what he’s doing.
Back Rome Again 