Undeception

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.

In the last post, I argued that the “adoption as sons” Paul refers to in Ephesians 1 as the object of predestination was tied to something going on in Paul’s day. A major emphasis of the New Testament is the tension between fleshly Israel and the children of the promise.

• Jesus’ parables show this tension between the unfaithful among ethnic Israel and those who will inherit the Kingdom; e.g., the jealous faithful elder son who envied his father’s acceptance of the faithless prodigal son.
• In Acts we see Peter having to be persuaded in a vision that the Mosaic Covenant was no longer binding and that non-Jews could partake in the inheritance of the Spirit; nevertheless the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 12 has James the Apostle deciding in favor of upholding the customs of the Law.
• Throughout 1 Corinthians (cf. Rom. 14), Paul begs the “strong” believers to show forbearance to the “weak”, who are said to be struggling with the non-observance of the Law and the freedom in the Spirit.
• Paul angrily decries an influential sect of Christianity that condemns those who don’t follow the Law and claims that justification is possible by adherence to it, rendering Christ’s sacrifice useless.

Romans is very much concerned with the same subject. Romans 8 has Paul highly anticipating the sons of God being “revealed”. Obviously, he is referring to the resolution of the question of the Law-keepers and those who recognize the freedom that comes from having God’s purposes written on their hearts and the Spirit of God who enables them to please Him. The first-century Christians, Law-observing and non-, amidst the persecution by the Jewish leadership, were all breathlessly awaiting the vindication of God. This persecution is why Paul ends the chapter with the following stirring, reassuring words:

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 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? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died-more than that, who was raised to life-is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Do you see the importance of context and audience relevance?

Concluding my discussion of Romans 8, I will observe that verses 29-30 serve as another linchpin passage for Calvinists: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” [I'm going to refer you to the article I linked to above to address the philosophical issue of foreknowledge necessitating determination; suffice it to say that this is fallacious, constructed as a way to justify Calvinistic determinism.] The thing they seem to ignore is the preceding verse that qualifies it: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Read it in order now: God is working things together for those who love Him, and those (of that sort) that He foreknew, He proceeded to predestine, call, etc.

Romans 9

Now, just because there is a chapter break at 9 doesn’t mean that there is a break in thought or subject matter. Paul continues to talk of the ethnic Jew in relation to the new way of Christ. In this and the following chapters, his main point is to show how God’s promise to Abraham is available to those not physically descended from him. He starts by mourning the lack of acceptance that ethnic Israel showed for their Messiah, especially because he recognizes their important role in salvation history (vv. 1-5). His next statement sets up the theme of the next few chapters: “It is not as though God’s word had failed.” Paul feels that he must explain how God could be justified in bypassing some of the race and allowing “the adoption as sons…the divine glory, the covenants…the promises” to pass onto Gentiles.

This is crucial: the purpose of the following section is to justify how God could arrange redemption history in His own way. In fact, primarily he is trying to show how God could be justified in allowing those filthy Gentiles in. Remember this when reading verses 14-18:

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

The reason He hardened Pharaoh was in order to glorify and extend His name’s renown, and thereby to extend the opportunity for His redemption. Verse 23 explains that the purpose of the “objects of His wrath” was so that the “objects of mercy” would be aware of the riches of God’s glory. And this was accomplished with Pharaoh’s hardened heart: as evidenced throughout the Psalms and the Prophets, the miraculous deliverance of Israel from Egypt was the quintessential story passed down from generation to generation that demonstrated God’s power, provision, and faithfulness to His covenant; this story was used to convince more of Abraham’s natural seed throughout the centuries to be faithful to the faithful Lord of the Exodus. The purpose of His hardening was not to limit His mercy, but to broaden it by advancing the purposes of His plan of redemption and fulfilling His promises to those who love Him.

So yes, God does exercise ultimate control over the will of His creation: this is not in dispute. God is able to override any single person’s desires in order to accomplish His greater will, which, as we should recall from Peter, is not “that any should perish”. This is a far cry from the teaching that no one has any freedom to choose at all, God sovereignly making every decision for each individual and only allowing the impression of free will.

This in Romans 9 seems unrelated to my contention that faulty eschatology has contributed to a faulty understanding of election. Indeed, these arguments against Calvinist predestination can stand alone from eschatology. But there is a component of what I have just presented that I want to draw from in my next installment, which continues Paul’s teaching in Romans 9 through verses 27-28:

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”

Technorati : calvinism, eschatology, predestination, theology

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