Archives for “Sovereignty”
One of Calvinists’ staple arguments in favor of monergism is the inference that positing God as relying, in some sense, upon our decision to participate in salvation is actually a demotion of God, a heinous and (usually) heretical inversion of man’s sovereignty over that of God’s. On Facebook today, a Calvinist posted the following statement:
It is no less blasphemous to proclaim Allah to be god than to proclaim the one true God to be a slave of your own will and whim.
I’m pretty sure he meant to state it in reverse order: it was an attack on non-Calvinists rather than Muslims. I think his point was that those who “proclaim the one true God to be a slave…” are no better than Muslims.
- The authority of Scripture This is the sixth of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. Preliminary Remarks The purpose of these next few posts is to examine my perspective of the...
- Baptism: taking Scripture and tradition seriously Polycarp at The Church of Jesus Christ and I seem to be travelling the same paths lately (does this indicate that I’m finally a part of the Church of Jesus...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
[Let me preface the main post with an acknowledgement of the obvious: I haven't been around these parts for quite a while, and for a number of reasons. First of all, I have described before my tendency to pursue one train of thought for long periods of time. Lately, it's been political theory, and although I was bringing a bit to this blog for a while, it began to seem that the blog was losing integrity. I decided to move all my political rants to Twitter and, to a limited extent, Facebook. Another major reason is that I have stated my position on most subjects that interest me, and I haven't found the motivation to rehash those topics in a way that's not being done more interestingly elsewhere. If I can't bring something new to the table, I'd just as soon not bother.]
I have been musing lately about how my stance on the creation/evolution controversy would impact other areas of theology if applied consistently. The stance I’m referring to is my conviction that viewing the history of the natural universe as a string of miraculous interventions into nature is hopelessly misguided. I have argued that the atheistic science apologists and the fiat creationists find themselves in agreement on a falsehood, namely that there’s either a natural or a supernatural explanation for the physical phenomena of the cosmos. While agreeing in principle with those two groups, the God-of-the-gaps philosophy known as Intelligent Design tries to bridge the gap a bit and posits an admixture of natural and supernatural explanations that end up sounding arbitrarily inconsistent: the leading ID advocates accept common descent as predicted and confirmed by the scientific method but paradoxically insist that the theory of evolution is insufficient to explain natural phenomena without the aid of Someone/something (nah, just Someone) else whose interventions must remain unrecoverable by the scientific method. One is left wondering where the natural explanations stop and the supernatural ones begin, or even why one must stop for the other to begin.
Related posts:- My position on the origins question Josh recently commented on another thread, “I want to hear your explanation of the origin of life on earth. I have heard the positions you are against. So how did...
- Mohler on theistic evolution In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states, I have...
- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
Jeremiah 18 and Romans 9: a shared metaphor
In talking with Calvinists, there is always one passage that they pull out that in effect tells Arminians/non-predestinarians to “shut up and color.” This passage is the potter/clay metaphor of Romans 9. Most bible scholars acknowledge that Paul’s potter metaphor was drawn, at least in part, from Jeremiah 18. Here’s the relevant passage (Rom 9.18-24 NET):
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who has ever resisted his will?” But who indeed are you – a mere human being – to talk back to God? Does what is molded say to the molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special use and another for ordinary use? But what if God, willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath prepared for destruction? And what if he is willing to make known the wealth of his glory on the objects of mercy that he has prepared beforehand for glory – even us, whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
Contrast this with Jeremiah 18.5-12: Read more…
Related posts:- Disputing Calvinism: vessels of temporary, conditional wrath? I wanted to share this excellent article that answers, mostly via Scripture, many if not most of the arguments of Calvinism. In an admirable show of the author’s critical thinking, while...
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- The jealousy of the Jews and the fullness of the Gentiles Something jumped out at me several days ago when I was reading Acts 13: it reminded me of Romans 11. And well it should. After all, Acts was written by...
In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states,
I have not said that one can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution. It is entirely possible to be a confused Christian or a confused evolutionist . . . or both. Nevertheless, the dominant theory of evolution — the theory as taught and defended by the world’s leading evolutionary scientists — explicitly rules out any supernatural design or interference at any point in the evolutionary continuum. That fact alone makes the theory incompatible with any legitimate affirmation of divine creation or of biblical theism.
I am frankly amazed that one so learned and esteemed should display such an obvious oversight concerning the most fundamental of the philosophical and theological grounds for theistic evolution (TE). Even in the purest form that affirms absolute naturalism and denies overt divine intervention in the process, theistic evolution affirms that God alone is responsible for setting the universe as we know it into place, but that the “divine creation” occurred by laws He and He alone created and set in motion. It does not rule out supernatural design but rather views God’s design as taking place at a higher level of sovereignty. The universe was created and life developed into human life because God purposed that they do so. TE in its fullest form does indeed rule out “interference at any point in the evolutionary continuum”, or rather, it renders such interference superfluous. The Author of nature did not need to step in and manually execute the actions of the Creation subroutine after He struck the “enter” key to run what He had already carefully programmed.
Related posts:- The place of God’s providence in my theology I have been musing lately about how my stance on the creation/evolution controversy would impact other areas of theology if applied consistently. The stance I’m referring to is my conviction...
- Theodicy and evolution Cliff Martin continues his interesting discussion of the apparently conflicting ideas of the loving Christian God and the God who ordained the sometimes brutal processes needed for evolution. I see...
- Intelligent deception One of today’s posts on Science and the Sacred is called An Artist or An Engineer? The author argues that we shouldn’t expect the precision of an engineer in creation...
As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice. One cannot rationally hold a robot responsible for the destruction it wreaks if it merely follows the software intentionally programmed to make it destructive. Yet the Bible throughout calls people and nations into account for their own choices and decisions.
In Romans 9, Paul gives two examples of “vessels of destruction”, Esau and Pharaoh. Reformed theologians will often argue that these vessels only have the appearance of choosing wicked behavior: in actuality, they (like everyone else) have no free will to choose; my position is that they had the actual ability to choose, and if God were left out of the equation, their nature and character was bent so that they could only hardly have chosen any other way than they did This may seem a trifling distinction in practice, since if God creates people in full knowledge of what good or evil they will do, if He chooses the “hardware” with which they make their decisions, it’s hard not to see that God is passively determining the path of certain people one way or another. However, do not forget that He is said to not be willing that any should perish (2 Pe 3.10), that He takes no delight in the death of the wicked (Ez 18.32), and that “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Ti 2.4). Taking these passages into consideration implies that, as a rule, He supplies mankind with “hardware” that could go either way, and only occasionally has He stacked the deck one way or another, as it were. I explained in Part 2 why Pharaoh, for instance, was chosen to be a vessel of destruction; Paul is very clear that vessels of and honor and destruction were chosen only for the purpose of fulfilling “His purpose in election” (Ro 9.11). What is this purpose?
Read more…
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- Election and Adoption Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it...
- The jealousy of the Jews and the fullness of the Gentiles Something jumped out at me several days ago when I was reading Acts 13: it reminded me of Romans 11. And well it should. After all, Acts was written by...
I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it from my posts!), so I went ahead and posted it. Here’s a continuation.
What I’m trying to do is present an audience-relevant view on certain passages that have, since Augustine and continuing in the Reformed tradition, been taken out of context and made into what is known as the Calvinist doctrine of election.
On the outset of this one, allow me to cut to the chase for some of you. I do not have a problem believing that God can, and that He in fact has, predestined certain individuals for life and some for destruction. I’m not one who says that God cannot determine someone will for them, or at least provide the circumstances that will tilt someone toward one choice or another. However, is every decision by every human determined by God? This is clearly not so, as a multitude of Scriptures clearly indicate. Here’s something I ran across that presents many of these passages along with some good old fashioned logic.
Many Calvinists aware of these passages feel constrained nonetheless because of certain passages such as Ephesian 1 and Romans 9 that explicitly talk about predestination based on God’s election. The Reformed doctrine of election is the solution to a puzzle with many pieces missing; tragically, many of these pieces are right there in Scripture but result from the misunderstanding of other doctrines. I think the key misplaced piece is eschatology. I am laying a lot of groundwork before expounding my understanding of election. That’s because we can’t view these Calvinist proof-texts in isolation from their original context.
Related posts:- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- Disputing Calvinism: vessels of temporary, conditional wrath? I wanted to share this excellent article that answers, mostly via Scripture, many if not most of the arguments of Calvinism. In an admirable show of the author’s critical thinking, while...
As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of people of the Reformed persuasion, and I am astounded at the intellects of some of the people wholly sold on a teaching that requires so much nonsense ad hoc philosophy and theology in order to sustain it. In order to make the Calvinist God “sovereign” as they understand that concept, people such as John Piper have to redefine “love” — you know, the love that God says He is and that He requires us to have one for another — to mean its polar opposite: selfishness. All this to prop up an unscriptural understanding of the quite scriptural doctrine of election.
The confusion is magnified because of bad eschatology. This next couple of posts will address eschatology and the doctrine of election at the same time. Sound like fun?
John McPherson, in his article called “A Biblical Perspective on Election”, pulls out one of the most famous proof-texts for the Calvinist take on election, Ephesians 1:4 and 5. Let me supply his annotated version of this passage (vv. 3-12) in context, and I want you to see if you can grasp our point before I spell it out.
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; 9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: 10 That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: 11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
Did you catch the importance of that last sentence? It defines the “we” and “us” everywhere throughout the passage: Paul was referring to his first-century, firstfruits audience!
Leaving that aside for the time, we are going to talk about Paul’s use of the term “adoption”. What is going on in Ephesians 1?
Related posts:- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Election and Adoption Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it...
- The Millennium and the Resurrection of the Dead I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following....