Undeception

Here’s a little thought experiment.

Let’s say you heard tell of a ruler of a foreign country who decreed that all citizens of his country who broke even one of that country’s laws deserved to be, and henceforth would be, locked up and tortured for the rest of their lives.

Additionally, he took the most revered, humble, and law-abiding citizen up on his offer to take all the blame and punishment for all crimes great and small that were perpetrated by a select group of citizens, a group chosen neither by the severity of their crimes nor by any discernible merit on their part (the others were out of luck).

This left pardoned jay-walkers and murderers alike to roam the street and continue doing what they wanted with virtual impunity, although it was hoped that many would turn over a new leaf out of gratitude and the promise of a fatter retirement check. Everyone else would be tortured the moment they committed the most minor infraction, which was hard to avoid given that the laws of the land were intricate and formulated in direct opposition to basic human nature.

What would your response be to such a report?

1. “Injustice! Barbarism!”
2. “The real story here is grace. The demands of the law must be satisfied. Transgressors know what’s coming to them before they commit a criminal act. Justice must be served. The guilty must by no means go unpunished. After all, there’s nothing in Scripture that this violates, and his authority is guaranteed by Romans 13. But what grace the ruler shows by executing vengeance on the innocent, saving (some) from their punishment!”
3. Something else?

Would the report about this ruler’s policies seem more believable or less so if you discovered through close observation that the king otherwise seemed to be a good, tenderhearted man whose ideology and policies were upheld by fair-minded folk to be the very model of fairness? What if, after your own examination, you concluded that his other demonstrations of kindness and even personal affection for his people were unparalleled throughout the world? What if his pardoned citizens upheld his chief virtues to be “justice” and “grace”?

C.S. Lewis once said (on another subject), “…nonsense remains nonsense, even when we say it about God.”

I realize I’m taking on a few different evangelical narratives here, especially penal satisfaction, eternal conscious torment, and election. I also realize that many of my brothers and sisters on an entirely different theological page will answer none of those questions I posed, but will first scramble to make fine distinctions between this hypothetical ruler and God. To them I say: you know very well what I’m getting at, and if you dismiss the legitimacy of my analyzing your doctrine of God’s justice in this way, then it shouldn’t be a problem for you to come right out and honestly answer these questions within this hypothetical  construct. Right? Would such a ruler be a good, just, wise, and merciful ruler?

If you answer, “Your analogy is crude, limited, fanciful, and breaks down at various points,” I will congratulate you. I think this is exactly what happens when we try to weave together the various human approximations of the meaning of the atonement and salvation found in the NT and hold to our construct as the only inviolable doctrine.

Michael Patton, a man I respect immensely, has just reminded his readers that, “The palatability of a doctrine does not determine its veracity.”

This is a principle based in logic, of course. As a case in point (which was probably also his post’s inspiration), he brings up many Christians’ emphasis on the love of God disproportionate to their acknowledgment of the wrath of God. He defends the Reformed view of God’s nature and character by his playfully caricatured example of an objection:

“God’s love? Oh yes, give me two helpings of that. God’s wrath? Pass. I don’t have enough room and it does not sound good. God’s grace will be great, but I will have to skip the atonement—too bloody and odd. Predestination? Sovereign election? No way!”

In the end, he admits that, “For the most part, I find Christianity very palatable. Grace, love, righteousness, our future hope, the restoration of all things, etc. are all doctrines that I would gladly take from a smörgåsbord. But,” and this is his main point,

when it comes to things that are not quite so palatable and lovely, I must take them too as my final authority is not that which is reasonable to my taste buds, but that which God has revealed in His word.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. That sentiment is fully consistent with a view of Christianity that views the Bible as the final, crystalized, and most importantly complete version of all truth, revealed personally by God. But if we are more consistent in the typical Evangelical belief in “progressive revelation”, which despite arguable limitations correctly acknowledges mankind’s understanding of God as a trajectory, jet-powered and steered by the example of His Word, Jesus of Nazareth, we find less justification to ignore the nuanced sense of God found in the New Testament even in the interests of bowing to the authority of texts that speak of God as a wrathful deity perpetually on the warpath against those who transgress His moral code.

There are certainly plenty of those texts. And let’s be clear: the Old Testament repeatedly describes God as merciful, overflowing with lovingkindness and tender mercies, and in the New Testament we do indeed hear much of a coming judgment said to be officiated by Jesus himself. But who can doubt that the understanding of God in the New Testament has developed more fully into a God for all humanity and not only Israel, a God who sends His shepherd out to seek and save the lost?

“Ah, but there is still judgment against sin, even in Jesus’ own teachings.” The point I am making does not erase the wrath of God, but it does focus it on things other than mere abstract moral transgressions or ritual violations, and instead seems to target particularly those things which are harmful. Can we miss the fact that the judgment described in the Olivet Discourse is characterized as a punishment of specifically those who, even despite their outstanding morality and fidelity to prescribed rituals, utterly fail to fulfill God’s primary mission for them, which is revealed to be ministering to God by working in the interest of compassion? An intolerable system that fleeced the poor and obstructed the worship of the needy seems to have been the source of Jesus’ sole example of “wrath” in the Temple. (Note also that those endlessly tortured in the lake of fire in Revelation are not disobedient humans, but otherworldly forces of evil who have offended God most grievously by leading humanity away from Him.)

In a guideline largely alien to the Old Testament, Christians are told that they must imitate God’s character as nearly as possible. Yet although we are sundry times called to do so specifically by loving and forgiving one another, we are never told to be wrathful, to hold people to standards too high to reach, or harbor unforgiveness of those who have actually committed grave sins. We are instructed to be holy as He is holy, but are never led to demand holiness from one another except for the purposes of restoration. Paul tells the Corinthians to judge within their congregation, to be sure, but remediation is stated as the goal for church discipline in 1 Cor 5.5. If we are to judge those “inside” our community (v.12) in the hopes of eventual reformation, is it unthinkable that God should exercise His judgment on those “outside” (vv. 13) for the same reason, and more successfully?

So even if Michael Patton agrees with many other theologians among the Reformed that there are Scriptures that depict God as intent on inflicting a singularly loveless, hateful pain upon those who offend His standards, shouldn’t any theologian trying to understand God’s heart use the whole tenor and testimony of Scripture in order to do so? Are we not justified in being loathe to characterize God as a tyrant, individual scriptural illustrations of God’s anger notwithstanding? Should we put God’s love on par with God’s wrath as though one arm were extended to embrace the wayward son and the other to pitilessly strike him down?

Here I am being influenced by, or perhaps rather I am finding my lifelong suspicions unexpectedly articulated in, the ideas of George MacDonald. This passage from his sermon Justice (already referenced on this blog) makes the point that God would prefer us to err, since err we must, on the side of the most loving view of God we can imagine:

The lord of life complains of men for not judging right. To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of God. To uphold a lie for God’s sake is to be against God, not for him. God cannot be lied for. He is the truth. The truth alone is on his side. While his child could not see the rectitude of a thing, he would infinitely rather, even if the thing were right, have him say, God could not do that thing, than have him believe that he did it. If the man were sure God did it, the thing he ought to say would be, ‘Then there must be something about it I do not know, which if I did know, I should see the thing quite differently.’ But where an evil thing is invented to explain and account for a good thing, and a lover of God is called upon to believe the invention or be cast out, he needs not mind being cast out, for it is into the company of Jesus. Where there is no ground to believe that God does a thing except that men who would explain God have believed and taught it, he is not a true man who accepts men against his own conscience of God. I acknowledge no authority calling upon me to believe a thing of God, which I could not be a man and believe right in my fellow-man. I will accept no explanation of any way of God which explanation involves what I should scorn as false and unfair in a man. If you say, That may be right of God to do which it would not be right of man to do, I answer, Yes, because the relation of the maker to his creatures is very different from the relation of one of those creatures to another, and he has therefore duties toward his creatures requiring of him what no man would have the right to do to his fellow-man; but he can have no duty that is not both just and merciful. More is required of the maker, by his own act of creation, than can be required of men. More and higher justice and righteousness is required of him by himself, the Truth;–greater nobleness, more penetrating sympathy; and nothing but what, if an honest man understood it, he would say was right. [emphasis mine]

This reminds me of one observation highlighted by Rachel Held Evans in her delightful new book Evolving in Monkey Town. “His ways are higher than our ways” is an oft quoted justification for claims made about God’s inexplicable behavior. What Evans notes is that this verse actually showcases God’s desire to show mercy, once that verse’s context within Isaiah 55 is identified: “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are you ways My ways,’ declares the Lord” (vv. 7-8). Evans explains:

Isaiah 55 provides an entirely different framework for thinking about God’s justice, because it suggests that we have it backward — the mystery lies not in God’s unfathomable wrath but in his unfathomable mercy. God’s ways are higher than our ways because his capacity to love is infinitely greater than our own. (p. 136)

And if this weren’t enough dynamic quotes for one post, I can’t resist recapitulating another that I posted as an entire entry a few days back, this time re-situated amongst the thoughts that prompted me to publish that entry in the first place. It’s from none other than the true father of the Reformed, St. Augustine, who nonetheless understood these points I have made and voiced them more succinctly and profoundly by far:

Whoever thinks he understands divine scripture or any part of it, but whose interpretation does not build up the twofold love of God and neighbor, has not really understood it. Whoever has drawn from scripture an interpretation that does fortify this love, but who is later proven not to have found the meaning intended by the author of the passage, is deceived to be sure, but not in a harmful way, and he is guilty of no untruth at all.

Without assuming, as the inerrantist must, that every Scripture speaks univocally, we may still recognize a clear emphasis upon love and forgiveness throughout the NT that we should not feel guilty about focusing on. In the Synoptics, Jesus is depicted identifying the greatest commandments as a love for God that is somehow codependent upon love for our neighbor; in John, the “new” commandment Jesus gives is to “love one another” as exemplified by his own love; in Paul, the greatest of all virtues – above faith itself – is “love” for one another after the model of God’s selfless love toward us; the author of 1 John feels comfortable defining God’s very nature in this way: “God is love”; another well known and perhaps only apparently contrastive description of God is found in Hebrews 12.28, where He is described as a “consuming fire” — but surely we must see in that metaphor the OT motif of a fire of refinement that eats away the impurities for the purposes of purification, not destruction.

If after all God’s wrath is a force of His nature dueling with His love, not subject to His love as MacDonald insisted, then surely we will be forgiven for upholding the noblest view of Him possible, that of a God who is, at bottom, Love personified — especially since such an understanding is securable by the deafening testimony of Scripture. Beyond our beliefs or our incredulity, our faithfulness or our failings, the greatest of these is still love.

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 he certainly rejects the Calvinist doctrine of election and predestination, he still refuses to embrace what he considers to be overwrought and unconvincing alternatives such as a corporate election, pleading ultimate ignorance:

Election is true, but is shrouded in deep mystery. It is one of the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. 29:29). Calvinists and Arminians both err when they make precise statements about the nature of election. God has not told us whether or not there are conditions attached to it and we should not venture into it with such bold assertions.

Now, while I’m fully in favor of admitting ignorance and not pretending certainty where none exists, I think that some of the mystery surrounding election and predestination is due more to misleading, uninformed readings of the NT than to an innate, intractable ambiguity there. In another display of reasonable thinking, the article’s author remarks, “Perhaps further theological works by thoughtful Christians will reveal a more satisfactory resting place for our convictions.” I happen to think that the understanding of election I’ve come to is fully credible and consistent with a fair treatment of the texts of Scripture, so I’d like to offer the following as a supplement to his otherwise extensive critique of Calvinism.

Recently I noticed a friend on Facebook referencing Exodus 33.18-19:

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

What probably piqued his curiosity (I conjecture — he made no comment) was the last sentence of this interesting passage, which was quoted by Paul in Romans 9.15 as part of a passage that has been famously championed by Reformed Christians to support the doctrines of predestination to life and reprobation.

While someone might be tempted, by way of synecdoche, to reference the Ex 33.19/Rom 9.15 quotation as a way of affirming God’s choice to save some and damn others, we should note that the negative aspect is wholly absent in the original Exodus passage: we have no clear indication that God’s remark, meant only to highlight His goodness manifesting as mercy, was intended to imply the converse of that mercy. Yet notice Paul’s creative use of this verse in Romans 9 to do something like that, when he sets up a contrast with God’s mercy and His dealing with Pharaoh, synthesizing the two in the statement, “Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (v. 18).

At any rate, Exodus 33.18-19 taken on its own terms is a far cry from ‘double predestination’. Here the emphasis is on broadening, not arbitrarily circumscribing, the scope of His merciful dealings with humanity. I believe that this is the key to election as articulated by Paul.

Only those insistent upon ignoring Paul’s overarching argument can find a subdivision of all humanity into two classes, “saved” and “damned” in Romans 9-11. We shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that the “vessels of honor, vessels of wrath” passage ends at Romans 9.22. On the contrary, Romans 9 through 11 is a sustained argument culminating in chapter 11: his point is that the “hardening” of Israel described in chapter 9 was only undertaken as a temporary measure and as a means to extend mercy to more, namely the Gentiles:

Again I ask: Did [the Jews] stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring! . . . Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. (Romans 11.11-12, 25)

Paul is saying that God only “hardened” the hearts of “natural”, ethnic Israel as a means to extend His grace outside ethnic Israel. Only recognizing this greater argument allows us to understand Paul’s justification of God in 9.18: “Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy – including that scoundrel Jacob and those scoundrels the Gentiles, like it or not – and He hardens whom He wants to harden – even His own chosen people, like it or not.”

But it doesn’t end there for those whose hearts He had hardened: “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you [Gentiles], provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (11.22-23). This again shows continuity with Jeremiah 18, the background passage of the potter and the clay analogy in Romans 9, in which the potter refashions rather than discards the “marred”, uncooperative clay.

To recap, Paul’s argument is that God’s mercy is so great and unrestrainable that, at least in certain times in redemptive history (e.g. Esau vs. Jacob, Pharaoh vs. Israel, natural Israel vs. the believing Gentiles), He will even “harden” the hearts of some of His own people if by doing so it will further His redemptive plan. Yet even those “cut off” will be restored upon their repentance (presumably posthumously).

“Ok, that sounds good for Israel. But what of Esau? Pharaoh?”

Well, laying aside the not-insignificant fact that such stories are not even likely to have actually occurred historically, perhaps we should turn to Paul’s conclusion to his argument in 11.32:

For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

So what if He ends up extending mercy to all? Returning to the original intent of Exodus 33.19, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

For Paul, the mere thought elicited a beautiful spontaneous doxology in the closing verses of that chapter (11.33-36):

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Ok, this is the beginning of a series I’ve been meaning to start up for quite some time.

My mission: I’m going to post a lyric that attempts to make theological/philosophical observations I find interesting. I may or may not choose to highlight my own specific thoughts on the subject (but you’ll probably be able to get some idea from looking at the post tags).

Your mission: Tell us what you think of the message of the lyric. For instance, tell what you think the lyricist(s) observations were, what you think of those observations, or how well they performed lyrical artistry in this song. Don’t concentrate so much on why you do or don’t like the artist/musical genre, etc.

Electric Train

written by Larry Tagg, recorded by Bourgeois Tagg on Bourgeois Tagg

In the beginning…I had nothing to do
I was all alone in a big empty room
So I decided to build myself an electric train
It took six days’ time, things were never the same

Monday I built the track
It looked straight but it came right back
‘Cause it curved so slow if you leave from here
You go far as you can go and you’ll be back in a year

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out that day
Saturday could be a big mistake

Chorus:

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out for Saturday
That day could be a big mistake

Friday I took my train
I shined it, I greased it, I shined it again
I set the groove of the wheels on the rail
But it only moved when I pushed it myself

So by Saturday evening I wasn’t alone
‘Cause I took it and gave it a mind of its own
It’d grease its own wheels, it’d make its own way
I said to myself, “This train is gonna run ’til judgment day.”

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out that day
Saturday could be a big mistake

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out for Saturday
That day could be a big mistake

Sunday was my day of rest
I sat back and watched it go
It went backwards and forwards, it went too fast
It heated up the track ’til it started to glow
And pretty soon the rails were fried
My electric train jumped the track
And there it was, it lay on its side
All twisted and burnt black

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, you gotta make it straight
Friday, Saturday, next time no Saturday
That day was a big mistake

I’ll make it again, work out the kinks
You can’t win with a train that thinks