Opus 2026-315: Who Decides?

The debate over the conflicting concepts of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will continue on many fronts.  People who believe in free will also believe in God’s sovereignty.  The other side claims that man is still responsible, which to me implies free will.  Some of the disagreement is over semantics.  Some is foundational.

All would agree that God makes provision for our salvation.  This involves grace.  If you are a Calvinist you may have the understanding that Arminians don’t believe in grace or the fact that we are saved by grace.  All Christians do.  I have even approached Roman Catholics and they have not problem with that.  God is the one who extends saving grace.  That is not the question.  The question is, “Why does He extend saving grace?”  The Calvinist believes that it is an arbitrary decision by God and the input of the sinner is determined by God.  Arminians believe that God, again through His grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, gives sinners the ability to chose to believe and desire to live as God wants them to.

I am responsible for the initiation of my salvation.  I am the one who must decide to believe.  I am the one who must continue to belief and live in obedience.  If God just plugs a faith chip into my brain and it takes over from there the results are the same that God could have gotten by having me be born in heaven without the mess of life.  In fact you could take four of the five Solas and put them back on the shelf.  If I don’t have to make a decision then let grace do the whole thing.

God is reliable for the implementation of my salvation.  He started it by creating the world and Adam in His image.  When Adam brought sin into the world God kept introducing steps that would lead men back to God.  For a long time the sacrifices in the temple were said to bring atonement.  I feel that was just a type as a shadow of Jesus shed blood on the cross.  God provided the perfect sacrifice.  He provides the indwelling Holy Spirit.  He has seen to it that we have the written word.  God is willing to take every step with us but we must be willing to take those steps. 

I am sure the debate will continue.  Ultimately it doesn’t matter if I am right or wrong as long as I am trusting in the sacrifice of Jesus to be adequate for purging my sins and understand that His resurrection was the promise of mine.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-310: Sound Bite Religion

I have been attempting to listen to a debate between Steve Gregg and James White on Calvinism.  I am currently half way through the second of five sessions.  I am not sure if I will finish.  I find the Calvinistic view of God as Sovereign to be a caricature.  I agree that God is sovereign but that should be defined in the sense that God reveals Himself, not in a way that fits the box the Calvinists want to force Him into.

If there is no free will and salvation is totally a coin toss that God enjoys then what is the point of all this?  What keeps being ignored or twisted away is the fact that if God arbitrarily chooses who will be saved the other side of the coin is that He also arbitrarily chooses who will be doomed to eternal damnation and torment.  I think the term is “double predestination”.  If that is the way it works then having Jesus die on the cross is some sort of masochistic ritual that serves no function.  Why go through the agony of becoming sin on our behalf if you could just wave your magic wand and bestow salvation by fiat?  

I will concede that being a mere human what might seem arbitrary to me is carefully thought out by God.  At the same time He did make us different than the animals.  We are created in His image.  Adam and Eve were without sin.  God used to walk the garden with them.  I don’t see any way around the necessity of God making them sin if He is the sovereign that Calvinists describe.  In that scenario they had no choice.

I could probably set my phone up to greet me as Lord and Master every time I opened it.  I would find it amusing because I know I am not.  If I programmed it to do so and felt like somehow that brought glory to me I would become the God of the Calvinists.

White took John 6:36-40 and lifted out verse 37,

(Joh 6:37 KJV)  All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Based on that he build a case that only those sent by God could be saved.  In the heat of a debate that sounds like a case but he totally overlooks that the verse gives no reason why God sent some and not others.  All you have to do is back up two verses and you find,

(Joh 6:35 KJV)  And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Notice it is no longer a matter of whom God chooses but who comes and who believes.

It is always dangerous to start with your favorite paradigm and squeeze your Bible verses into that mold.  I assume that I suffer from the same malady but I am trying to start with the word and build my theology from that.  It is often a lonely road and it is worse when I am surrounded by people who love sound bite religion.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-058: Stake Anyone?

It is interesting the way new ideas will pop up at different places simultaneously.  It is either coincidence or just that you were seeing them without being aware of them.  Currently it has been around the term “New Perspective.”  I am still not sure that I grasp the nuances but it is making some people go Rambo so it must have some interesting aspects.

As I first approached the term I was reading a book on theology called Reconsidering Key Biblical Ideas.  I was finding that the authors were mentioning a number of points I had been coming across.  I always like it when someone endorses my thinking.  After investigating some key points they dropped the term on me on page 39.  Okay.  A new theological term in a book about theology.  No big deal, or so I thought.

Shortly after becoming aware of the term the You Tube algorithm dropped a bit of click bait that had three theologians discussing the idea.  I could tell from the names, which I knew, and the way the title was written that there would be some disagreement.  “Disagreement” is a mild term.  
They drew you in by a clip of an interview of a scholar named N.T. Wright.  I have seen his name around but have not read anything he has written.  He fit into that category in my head of “Basically reliable but open to confirmation”.  What he said went along with the book.  The they switched to a different clip with a group of about seven men sitting on a platform and at the end was a man named R.C. Sproul.  I am familiar with Sproul.  I used to be on his mailing list and received a monthly newletter from his organization, Ligonier Ministries.  I knew I did not agree with him on some issues because he was a full-fledged Five-Point Calvinist.  In spite of that there was I lot I topics I could learn from him on.  

That acceptance ended when I was listening to a pod-cast in which he declared war on all Christians who did not embrace the total Reform theology.  Literally, he declared war.  He was taking off the gloves and going after the jugular.  I don’t remember the exact words, this was at least 20 years ago, but that was his point.

When the moderater asked him in this clip what he thought about N.T. Wright his response was, “He is a heretic.”  This was not one of those semi-humorous statements that we throw out when someone disagrees with us.  His accusation and the memory of his previous statement brought to mind the attitudes of John Calvin back in the days when they were burning heretics and drowning
Anabaptists.  He was deadly serious.  I keep forgetting that there are people like that out there.

I will continue reading the book and its “heresy”.  Part of that is because I totally reject Sproul’s theology.  If I had to pick a heretic I would choose him and the theology of John Calvin.  I would, however, stop far short of burning at the stake.

Forster, Roger and Marston, Paul.  God’s Strategy in Human History, Volume II, Reconsidering Key Biblical Ideas.  England:  PUSH Publishing, 2013,

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-024: Calvin: A Pleasant Surprise

As I get older I am constantly reminded of how lacking my education has been.  I am reading a lot of things I should have read years ago.  I am not sure it would have done me any good.  I don’t know that I was mature enough.  If I am not mature enough now I never will be because there isn’t much time for me to hone my intellect.

Why bother?  One of the concepts that was pointed out to me by my reading, I think it was C.S. Lewis, is that I am not preparing for this life.  I am preparing for eternity.  A small variation does not make a lot of difference over a short period but over a few million years the distance from the target is astronomical.

I have begun reading the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin.  I have been criticizing Calvin for years.  I figure it might be time to read what he has to say.  I don’t know how far I will get but I am off.

Book 1, Chapter 1 was well translated and easy to read.  I came across several statements that made me think or at least nod my head.  Here is on from paragraph 2,

“ For, since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself. And since nothing appears within us or around us that is not tainted with very great impurity, so long as we keep our mind within the confines of human pollution, anything which is in some small degree less defiled delights us as if it were most pure just as an eye, to which nothing but black had been previously presented, deems an object of a whitish, or even of a brownish hue, to be perfectly white.” 1/1/2

He is talking about the sinful nature in man.  Not only do we not know what righteousness is, we don’t want to know.  Good enough is good enough and the measure of good enough is ourselves.  Our flawed perception is why we need straightedges, levels, thermometers and so many other measuring devices.

I hate to admit it but Calvin might be interesting.

homo unius libri