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“One White Lie Will Send You to Hell For All Eternity” . . . and other stupid statments
by C Michael PattonAugust 18th, 2009
462 Comments
Repost from the great crash 0f 08
I have heard this since I was a very young Christian. It seemed somewhat reasonable as it was explained to me by pastors in sermons and by Christians as they explained the seriousness of sin. Their theology goes something like this:
All sin is so bad that even the smallest of sins deserves eternal punishment in hell. It does not matter if it is losing your temper at a lousy referee, not sharing your Icee, or speeding 36 in a 35, every sin deserves eternal torment in Hell. Why? Although it may seem unreasonable to us (as depraved as we are), it is fitting for a perfectly holy God who cannot be in the sight of sin, no matter how insignificant this sin might seem to us. In fact, there is no sin that is insignificant to God. Because He is infinitely holy, beyond our understanding, all sin is infinitely offensive to Him. Therefore, the punishment for all sin must be infinite.
I have to be very careful here since I am going against what has become the popular evangelical way to present the Gospel, but I don’t believe this is true. Not only do I not buy it, I think this, like the idea that all sins are equal in the sight of God, is damaging to the character of God, the significance of the cross, and I believe it trivializes sin. Let me explain.
First off, I don’t know of a passage in the Bible that would suggest such a radical view. It would seem that people make this conclusion this way:
Premise 1: Hell is eternal
Premise 2: All people that go there are there for eternity
Premise 3: Not all people have committed the same number or the same degree of sins
Conclusion: All sin, no matter how small, will send someone to hell for all eternity
The fallacy here is that this syllogism is a non-sequitur (the conclusion does not follow from the premises). Could it be that people are in Hell for all eternity based upon who they are rather than what they have done?
Think about this. Many of us believe that Christ’s atonement was penal substitution. This means that it was a legal trade. God counted the sufferings of Christ and that which transpired on the Cross as payment for our sins, each and every one. Therefore, we believe that Christ took the punishment that we deserved. But there is a problem. We are saying that we deserve eternal Hell for one single sin, no matter how small. I don’t know about you, but I have committed enough sins to give me more than my share of life sentences. I have committed sins of the”insignificant” variety (I speed everyday) and significant variety (no description necessary!). So, if Christ were only to take my penalty and if I deserve thousands upon thousands of eternities in hell, why didn’t Christ spend at least one eternity in Hell? Why is it that he was off the Cross in six hours, payment made in full? Combine my sentence with your sentence. Then combine ours with the cumulative sentences of all believers of all time. Yet Christ only suffers for a short time? How do we explain this?
You may say to me that I cannot imagine the intensity of suffering that Christ endured while he was on the cross. You may say that the mysterious transaction that took place was worse than eternity in Hell. I would give you the first, but I will have to motivate you to reconsider the second. Think about it. Do you really believe that the person who has been in hell for 27 billion years with 27 billion more times infinity would not look to the sufferings of Christ and say, “You know what? Christ’s six hours of suffering was bad. It is indeed legendary. But I would trade what I am going through any day for six hours, no matter how horrifying it would be.” You see, what makes hell so bad is not simply the intensity of suffering, but the duration. Christ did not suffer eternally, so there must be something more to this substitution idea and there must be something more to sin.
I believe that Christ did pay our penalty. I believe that hell is eternal. But I don’t believe that one sin sends people to hell for eternity. Sin is trivialized in our day. Sin is first something that we do, not something that we are. In other words, people think of God sitting on the throne becoming enraged (in a holy sort of way) each time that someone breaks the speed limit. It is only the cross of Christ that makes Him look past the eternally damning sin and forgive us. Don’t think that I am undermining the severity of sin, but I am trying to bring focus to the real problem that has infected humanity since the Garden.
The real problem is that we are at enmity with God. From the moment we are born, we inherit the traits of our father Adam. This infectious disease is called sin. This disease issues forth into a disposition toward God that causes us to begin life with our fist in the air, not recognizing His love for us or authority over us. It is rebellion. While this rebellion does act according to its nature, the problem is in the disposition, not so much the acts. When we sin, we are just acting according to the dictates of our corrupt nature. But the worst of it—the worst sin of all—is that we will never lower our fist to God. We are “by nature, children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and as a leopard cannot change his spots, so we cannot change our rebellious disposition toward our Creator (Jer. 13:23).
This disposition is that of a fierce enemy that cannot do anything but fight against its foe. Paul describes this:
Romans 8:7-8 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
We are of the “flesh,” therefore we commit deeds according to the flesh. Does this mean that the person in this state does no good at all? Well, it depends on what you mean by “good.” Can an enemy of God love his neighbor? Of course. Enemies of God can and do all sorts of acts that the Bible would consider virtuous. But from the standpoint of their relationship with God, they cannot do any good at all (Rom. 3:12). Giving a drink to someone who is thirsty with the left hand while having your right hand in a fist clinched toward heaven does not count as “good” before God. Why? Because we are in rebellion against Him. This is our problem.
This I propose is the only sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity.
It is important to understand that hell not is filled with people who are crying out for God’s mercy, constantly hoping for a second chance. People are in hell because they have the same disposition toward God that they had while they were walking the earth. They do not suddenly, upon entrance into Hell, change their nature and become sanctified. They still hate God. People are in hell for all eternity, not because they floated a stop sign, but because their fists are still clinched toward God. They are not calling on His mercy. They are not pleading for a second chance. They are in hell for all eternity because that is where they would rather be. It is their nature. As C.S. Lewis once said, “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.”
Christ, on the other hand, was the second Adam. He did not identify with the first either in disposition or choice. He gained the right to be called the second Adam who would represent His people (Rom. 5:12ff). He is not spending eternity in Hell because he was never infected with the sinful nature which caused him to be at enmity with God. His fist was never clinched toward the heavens.
Will one white-lie send someone to Hell for all eternity? No! To say otherwise trivializes sin and makes God an overly sensitive cosmic torture monger. Sin does send people to Hell. People will be punished for their sins accordingly. But the sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity is the sin of perpetual rebellion.
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462 Comments
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Interesting thoughts. I have had similar thoughts regarding such ludicrous statements.
I am not sure that I agree with you on the relative pain of Christ’s suffering. However, it’s a very interesting point. Most interpreters make the claim that Christ’s suffering was equal to that of every would-be-damned sinner who receives grace. But is that claim biblical? People can make the argument that God demands an equal punishment because he is just, but it is also easy to see your point of the difference in the duration of suffering, regardless of the extent of the pain. In the end I wonder if it is even possible for us to know this side of eternity the extent of the suffering of the Wisdom of God (maybe we will never fully comprehend it even in his presence).
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[...] Parchment and Pen » “One White Lie Will Send You to Hell For All Eternity” and other stupid sta…. [...]
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Interesting questions, though I would say:
How can we know?
Nowhere in the Bible is it explicitely explained.
We don’t know what hell is, if it is, and who will get there.
What happens after death, we just don’t know it.
We can only hope that Jesus will save us.
Btw. there is a logical flaw in your argumentation:
You wrote: “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.”
But earlier you wrote: “You know what? Christ’s six hours of suffering was bad. It is indeed legendary. But I would trade what I am going through any day for six hours, no matter how horrifying it would be.”
How does this fit?
And where do you get if you can open the doors of hell from the inside?
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I agree with this post that men and women go to hell because of who they are and not because of what they do. However, isn’t rebellion and telling a white lie the same thing? They are both things that we do because of who we are, right? Or are you saying that the sin of rebellion and being sinful are the same thing? It seems to me that rebellion is a result of our sinfulness.
My two cents . . .
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Very interesting article, an excellent point especially in relation to those who accuse God of being “an overly sensitive cosmic torture monger” I dont think we as evangelicals have historically done a good job understanding or representing sin to ourselves or the world.
One verse that comes to mind that I am curious about is Luke 16:19-31 about the Rich man and Lazarus. It would seem that after he died the rich man realized his life was wasted and wanted to warn his brothers (evangelizing from Hell?) about the penalties of living as he did. Would you say that he had a change of heart post hell or is he still shaking his fist at God at this time as well?
Great challenging article.
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The way I’ve always heard it stated was that the sin that sens a person to hell is the sin of rejecting Christ, not any of the other sins that infect us. It’s not the adultery, murder, or the broken speed limit that sends a person to hell. A person gets to hell by doing something far more gruesome in terms of holiness. That thing is rejecting Christ.
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‘This disease issues forth into a disposition toward God that causes us to begin life with our fist in the air, not recognizing His love for us or authority over us.’
Do people have an innate tendency to seek out God? Is there a God-shaped hole in people?
‘But the sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity is the sin of perpetual rebellion.’
Are Muslims in perpetual rebellion against a god they pray to 5 times a day?
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I see Michael is gradually producing a series on ‘Stupid Statements.’ Seriously, I think it’s a good theme.
If Hell is the place where people who rebel against God end up, then they are just getting what they want. But we and God have to be sure they are really rebelling and are not simply like a dead infant who has never expressed himself in the matter. Sure, all are born corrupt and with an inclination to sin, but that is what Christ reconciled on the cross.
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Is there anyone, anywhere, who honestly thinks that they have committed only one sin?
Every imagination of the thoughts of the heart is evil continually (see Genesis 6:5). All evil, all the time. There is none who seek after God (see Psalm 14, Romans 1-3).
As a friend of mine is fond of saying: “When Adam fell he didn’t sprain his ankle, he broke his neck.”
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The question “how can Christ pay infinite punishment in a finite amount of time?” was answered for me in this way:
- Man’s sin is against an infinite God so even one sin deserves infinite punishment.
- Because man is finite then the only way he can pay for sin is to suffer for eternity.
- Because Jesus is infinite, his death is capable of paying the price for infinite sin within a finite amount of time.
I agree with your point that man is damned because of his sinful nature, not necessarily because of any sins. However how did man come to have a sinful nature? because of one sin. And most people would say that eating an apple off a forbidden tree is a petty offense.
So I disagree with your main point that “one white lie will send you to hell for all eternity is a stupid statement.”
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Michael,
I like this article a good bit. I’ve been doing some of my own thinking on Hell lately – just had a post on Dante’s Inferno. It’s interesting that Dante certainly saw Hell as eternal, but also saw degrees of punishment relative to just how deep the corruption runs in a person. What the damned suffer is precisely the sin that they cherish – they are punished “by” their sins and not as much “for” their sins. Of course I take serious issue with Dante at some key points.
But I did want to ask a question here. You channel C. S. Lewis here, but yet you yourself are a Calvinist. We can lament that hell is shut from the inside, that the hearts of men are turned away from the love of God (and thus experience his love as torment and wrath), but you as a Calvinist believe that this too is God’s preference. For the sake of the glory of the created work, some must resist his love and suffer damnation. I am not a Calvinist, and so have no trouble attributing Hell to the will of man turned away from God, but you are, and must therefore ultimately attribute it to God’s decrees before all worlds. How do you reconcile this?
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Did God really decree that the hearts of Muslims who pray 5 times a day are turned away from the love of God?
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Michael,
Ezekiel 18:20 says that the soul that sins shall die. I will admit that is in a context of more than one sin. However, it doesn’t state that there must be more than one sin. What do you do with a Scripture like that?
And after all, it was one sin in the garden of Eden–eating the forbidden fruit–that brought about the death of the whole human race to start with.
So I am just not at all sure that I can agree with your conclusions here on this one.
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I would like to make a couple of thoughts. You wrote
“So, if Christ were only to take my penalty and if I deserve thousands upon thousands of eternities in hell, why didn’t Christ spend at least one eternity in Hell? Why is it that he was off the Cross in six hours, payment made in full? Combine my sentence with your sentence. Then combine ours with the cumulative sentences of all believers of all time. Yet Christ only suffers for a short time? How do we explain this?”
I seem to recall reading one theologian who explained this as
“The finite suffering of an infinite being would seem to be equivalent to the infinite suffering of finite beings.” I always thought that seemed to be a decent explanation. Food for thought if you had not looked at it that way before.
A second thought would be on the significance of sin. While you are spot on in saying that some sins are greater than others, I think people make the statement about white lies to affirm, in an exaggerated manner, that even if you could only be guilty of ONE sin (an impossibility). you would still be guilty before God and worthy of death – consequently, that means an eternity in hell. People have a tendency to quantify most things including sin but the Bible avoids this and says that sin singular is the problem.
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It’s not supposed to — CMP was making up the “I would trade this” for the sake of refuting the claim that Christ’s suffering was infinite. His point was, I believe, that the claim is simply implausible; that anyone would prefer a short pain of high intensity to an everlasting pain, no matter how minimal.
His point was NOT that people in hell actually have a choice to trade places with Jesus on the cross; we don’t have that choice either (not in THAT sense).
-Wm
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I don’t think that Christ was intending to narrate a true story there — I think he was communicating a point, the one at the end of the story: the living won’t change by miracles if they won’t change in response to God’s testimony in the Law. (You could also extract the truth that the dead can’t change, but I don’t base that point of doctrine on this one parable.)
-Wm
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Two questions, two answers: (1) no, (2) yes.
Yes, all people hunger for God, and know that God exists. Romans 1 tells us how and why. But no, people do not respond to that hunger by seeking God, but rather by suppressing the truth in unrighteousness; by creating gods; by worshiping creatures rather than the Creator. CMP cited some other verses on this topic.
I should add that this doesn’t mean people don’t try to be good; we try many things. The problem is that because we naturally avoid God, our righteousnesses are actually centered on avoiding God — this is the fundamental reason why Isaiah compares them to unclean things in Isa 64:6.
No. But they are in rebellion against the triune God of the Bible, Who created them. They seek to assure their salvation by means of their own works, without any help from God.
-Wm
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rayner markley writes,
I disagree. WE don’t need to be sure of anything except our own relationship with God. We can and should leave the fate of other people to the wise and omniscient judgment of God, who knows for sure who is and who is not rebelling against him.
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I am a Calvinist, and so I have no trouble “attributing hell to the will of man turned away from God.” If a man goes to hell, it’s because his will is turned away from God.
Let me turn your quote around, though.
I am not a believer in _libertarian free will_, so I have no trouble attributing the eternal nature of hell to the fact that a man’s will is capable only of choosing what that man desires; thus, every man who goes to hell stays there because he will never will anything good.
As a believer in libertarian free will, how can you justly explain the eternal nature of hell? What if some man’s free will chose to follow God? Wouldn’t hell then become unjust?
There’s nothing to reconcile; man’s will is in accordance with God’s eternal decree. This is parallel (not the same, of course) to how Macbeth’s will is in accordance with Shakespeare’s will, even while both Shakespeare and Macbeth are acting to fulfill their own ends through the story: one is murdering and suffering the consequences, while the other is telling a story of justice.
What you’re actually asking us to reconcile is something you don’t state: you’re suspicious, I suspect, how we could believe that God could possibly eternally decree a specific man’s damnation. Let me explain what we do and don’t believe.
1. We don’t believe that God “fates” people to go to hell no matter what they do.
2. We don’t believe that God fixes man’s nature after creating him to not believe in Him, thereby being condemnable and going to hell.
3. We do believe that God creates a man who is by nature unable to believe in Him, but is able to enjoy God’s creation — even though he’s doomed to hell for his unbelief.
I believe that God’s creation is self-justifying; that it’s good for God to create things, even things that will suffer or not know full joy. It’s good for God to create rocks (who are naturally unable to rejoice) and starfish (who are naturally unable to reason about God) and sinful men (who are naturally unable to praise God), because otherwise those things would not exist, and would not experience the wonder of God’s good creation.
-Wm
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Wm Tanksley,
In response to your fist two points above:
That is exactly what at least some Calvinists believe: that God in all of eternity past decreed that some men would be reprobate–and doomed to an eternity in hell–with nothing whatsoever that they could do about it.
There were extensive quotes given and articles linked in the recent discussion on the “Calvin, love him or hate him” thread. They were from John Calvin himself and from John Piper and that is precisely what they were saying.
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Yes, God is the only one whose judgment counts and the only one capable of giving perfect judgment. The sense in which we have to be sure is when we declare a doctrine and preach it to someone. So what does rebelling against God mean? It isn’t rebelling against our doctrines or our preaching. It’s rebelling against the efforts of the Holy Spirit to reach people, and we have no way of knowing just when that is happening.
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Look at it — the entire passage is about how God will condemn people for their own sins, not for the sins of their fathers. It’s not about how many sins people have to commit; it’s about whose sins people will be punished for.
Not exactly. “Sin entered the world, and death through sin; so death passed upon all men, _for all have sinned_.” My death didn’t come by that one sin of Adam; the death came to each of us because of each of our sins. This reading agrees with Ezekiel above — one soul sins, THAT soul dies.
This doesn’t really connect with CMP’s point; he’s talking about how the really eternal sin is precisely an eternal sin: disregarding and avoiding and hating God forever.
-Wm
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Michael
I think you are trying to reason using a set of presuppositions that need to be radically modified.
As I was reading your post, I couldn’t figure out how babies escaped hell, since it is based on who we are. Babies are born with the disease you reference.
Wm. Craig has done all of us a favor by noting that the only sin in question is the ‘eternal’ sin, the sin of unbelief. One must assert a rejection of God.
Hence, babies are clear. And the only reason people could remain in hell for eternity is if they continued committing the eternal sin. But was happens if people in hell choose to turn from their eternal sin. The Bible has no comment on this.
For me, I have no way of fathoming God’s rejection of anyone turning to him, at any time.
Two things are accomplished now. 1. God’s mercy and love are seen functioning for all eternity toward those in hell (better, the lake of fire), and 2., apologetically speaking, it quiets the unbelievers who claim God is unloving and unmerciful, evil if you will. No, the eternal nature of being in hell is not put back on the unbelievers!!!
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William,
You said, “Not exactly. “Sin entered the world, and death through sin; so death passed upon all men, _for all have sinned_.” My death didn’t come by that one sin of Adam; the death came to each of us because of each of our sins. This reading agrees with Ezekiel above — one soul sins, THAT soul dies.
Read down a few more verses to Romans 5:15, “But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.”
That verse says plainly that it is by the transgression of one man, Adam, that all died.
This also seems to be restated in I Corinthians 15:21-22: “For since by a man {came} death, by a man also {came} the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”
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Doesn’t James 2:10 (“Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has becomes guilty of all”) reveal that one offense is sufficient for total condemnation?
I suppose my question is invalid if using this verse to extrapolate what judgement would arise from such an offense is beyond the scope of the passage since subsequent judgement is not referenced.
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Did Adam die because he sinned, or because he didn’t eat from the tree of life, which remained a possibility?
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Could it be that people are in Hell for all eternity based upon who they are rather than what they have done?
Not meaning to derail this topic but this statement stirs another sacrosanct idea of mine i.e., the age of accountability. If people are send to hell for who they are then it should not matter if they have reached a particular age or not. It is almost an assault on our sense of compassion and sensibility to think that an infant or a toddler, that is cute beyond believe can be send to hell when they haven’t done anything to deserve it, (yet).
I know the proponents of the “age of accountability” will point to a couple of places in Scripture that tend to support this view, but I think the more explicit passages supports original sin and we are born in sin. I am not saying that all infants and toddlers will be send to hell, but it is not an automatic given.
What are your thoughts on this?
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St. Paul says (in essence) that if you have broken one Commandment, you have broken them all.
It is not the sins (specific) that we ought focus on, but rather our SINFUL CONDITION that we should realize.
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cheryl,
I did not read the Calvin thread but I’ve read and followed Piper for awhile and other leading Calvinists. I don’t think any of them would say what you are suggesting they are saying, that is, Calvinists believe in double predestination. This is a common misconception of non-Calvinist about Calvinism.
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Rayner,
“but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:17
Sounds to me like it was from eating the fruit.
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Some thoughts…
-As I think someone in this comment stream already said (I mostly skimmed the comments), there’s no reason Jesus would have to spend an eternity paying for human sin if we really believe that he’s God. His life is worth infinitely more than the lives of humans. If every human deserves eternal punishment for every sin, that doesn’t mean it God is incapable of paying for all sins in six hours.
-I agree with you that the root problem is our inner rebellion against God, but I also think that rebellion manifests itself in the for of actual sins. I would like to see some Scripture to back up your general point. There are many, many passages that talk about God punishing people for their sins, but I don’t know of any that sound like your argument (but there might be some).
-It sounds like it would be impossible for someone holding your view to believe that infants who die could be saved. I’m interested to know your take on this.
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My apologies for the typos. I should have proofread.
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I get your point in this, Michael. It’s like what Jerry said. The “stupid statement” looks like someone can be good and steal a pencil and be sent to hell because that person stole a pencil. There is no one like that.
I believe that hell is a place of eternal regret, pain, suffering, desolation, anger, contempt, anxiety, panic, etc. Not a party, not a fellowship of those who hate God. No kind of hope or comfort will ever be available.
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“Stupid” is a bit extreme for something that’s a part of the doctrinal standards of most Reformed churches in the Scottish tradition.
From the Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q. 84. What doth every sin deserve?
A. Every sin deserveth God’s wrath and curse, both in this life, and that which is to come.
From the Westminster Larger Catechism
Q. 152. What doth every sin deserve at the hands of God?
A. Every sin, even the least, being against the sovereignty, goodness, and holiness of God, and against his righteous law, deserveth his wrath and curse, both in this life, and that which is to come; and cannot be expiated but by the blood of Christ.
Full version of this comment here.
-TurretinFan
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Turr,
I agree with those statements. This post does not say the stupid statement is that a single sin does not incur the wrath of God, but that a single sin does not send one to hell for all eternity.
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Concerning babies….
I am a Calvinist, you must remember. While I am not going to build a theology around the idea that we must protect in our own judgement the salvation of those who have yet to reach the “age” I do believe that if God so chooses to save a baby, he has every right to apply Christ’s blood to them thereby removing their “original guilt.”
Remember, I define salvation first as God’s sovereign act of redemption that is monergistically applied to the person, not the person own free will. I know that there will be much disagreement with this among many of you and that is fine…don’t want to go there. However, this is perfectly consistant with a Reformed soteriology. In fact, it is a cornerstone of it.
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God can (and does) save little infants.
He is the One who does the baptizing. He commanded that we baptize, and He never commands us to do anything where He won;t be present in it for us.
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CMP,
Maybe I am being dense here, but if you agree with both statments from the catechism quoted above that every sin, even the least, deserves God’s wrath and curse in this life and in the one to come, I don’t understand how you can say that one sin does not send one to hell for eternity. Is that not what his wrath for the next life entails? Could one be sent to hell for only a part of eternity for one sin? (Assuming of course that one could commit only one sin in a life time which it is obvious one can not do.)
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Most people in the Reformed camp (of which I consider myself a part) that I have heard explain infant salvation say that babies have not come to a point where they can commit willful sin. That is why I wondered about your view.
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Anyone that has ever watched two infants fighting over a rattle or other toy has witnessed the original sin that each and every one of us is born into.
They need to be saved from that sin every bit as much as we do.
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Hmm, if infants need salvation, and salvation is monergistic, and Christ’s death can save an infant who does not understand language nor the preaching of the cross, it is logically equivalent that Christ’s death could save a jungle native who does not hear the gospel. That is, lack of ability to understand language or to hear the gospel is not an impediment to salvation. Other things, possibly, could be an impediment, but not the failure to hear the gospel.
regards,
#John
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I fail to see how you are equating God’s wrath (i.e. righteous indignation) with eternal punishment. How do you make that step.
Sin deserves punishment, but not necessarily eternal punishment. Just like when my kids disobey, it deserves punishment, but not etermal.
The argument here is that that only thing that deserves ETERNAL punishment is eternal rejection.
By the way, the story of the Rich man and Lazarus never has the rich man repenting nor repentant. Either way, the point of the parable is to teach about how the worldview of the Pharisees (i.e. rich people are closer to God—”Abraham’s side” and poor people are far away from God). In the end, the Rich man was far from God (i.e. “Abraham’s side”) while the poor man was close to God.
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Also, the idea about breaking part of the law amounts to breaking it all does not speak to this issue as we are talking about eternal punishment. When James and Paul speak such, they are combating the idea that one could keep the letter of the Law and disregard its spirit (i.e. principles). If you break any part of the principles (i.e. hate), you have broken the whole (i.e. murder). It is neither equating the sins nor speaking to the longevity of their punishment.
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The Bible tells us that “the Holy Spirit speaks to us in sighs too deep for words.”
So yes, just in the same way John the baptist leaped for joy while still in the womb, infants can certainly have faith, faith given to them by God.
And yes, God can save and give faith to whomever he please, even a jungle living native who has never heard the name Jesus.
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It is true, John, that God could save anyone he desires, but the Bible makes it somewhat clear, in my opinion, that acceptance of the Gospel is necessary for all those who are able to understand. Romans 10:9-15. Therefore, the native has ability to believe, the infant does not.
However, again, I do agree that God COULD save whomever he desires.
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None of us has the ability to understand (the things of God) until we are reborn…from above.
“We love, because He first loved us.”
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BTW: I do happen to believe that God saves all the mentally unable, whether infant of otherwise. I certianly cannot prove this from Scripture, but I do believe that I have decent grounds for allow for such in my theology…Especialy since I am a Calvinist!
Arminians, however, in order to allow for the salvation of infants must do some pretty fancy footwork
to make it so Adam’s sin does not apply to us until we sin in the same likeness, then it is imputed to us. Otherwise, if human volition is necessary and faith is the primary key, infants are not saved…
Having said that, I don’t want this thread to go in the direction of whether infants are saved.
The question is “Will one white like send you to hell for all eternity.” I will put up a poll. Look for it on the right.
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OK!
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CMP,
You said, “I fail to see how you are equating God’s wrath (i.e. righteous indignation) with eternal punishment. How do you make that step.”
You said that you agree with the statements of the catechims that state that any sin deserves God’s wrath in this life and in the life to come. If His wrath in the life to come isn’t in hell, what do you believe it to be?
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Cheryl,
I do believe that it is hell. But notice how carefully the statement is worded. It does not say that every sin is deserving of God’s eternal wrath.
My statement above says that the atonement was penal. If it was truly penal, then there is a since in which actual sins can be paid for in hell (i.e. the punishment meets the crime). That is why there is different degrees of punishment in hell (Luke 12:47).
However, I do believe that hell is eternal for every one who goes there. Why? Because every sin deserves eternal wrath. No. That would deny penal substitution. But because people are eternally in rebellion against God. They never stop sinning. They are alway haters of God and do not want to be in his presence if that means repentance.
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I have not read all the comments but I thought condemnation came by one man, Adam. In Adam we all die. White liars, murders, gossips from the smallest of sinners to the greatest we are who we are because of Adam’s sin even if we do not commit the same sin Adam committed. I think I agree it is not the white lie that sends us to hell for all eternity but that we are dead in sin and, as you said,we are at enmity with God. This is why we need to be born again. On top of this I think that men are now condemned by their rejection of Christ, which is just a continuation of their hatred of God. This is the condemnation that light is come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light.
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Michael, I wonder what you would think about Kalomiros’ essay The River of Fire. He is Eastern Orthodox, and far FAR to strident in his denunciation of Western theology, but I think he makes some really interesting points.
Take this section:
Now if anyone is perplexed and does not understand how it is possible for God’s love to render anyone pitifully wretched and miserable and even burning as it were in flames, let him consider the elder brother of the prodigal son. Was he not in his father’s estate? Did not everything in it belong to him? Did he not have his father’s love? Did his father not come himself to entreat and beseech him to come and take part in the joyous banquet? What rendered him miserable and burned him with inner bitterness and hate? Who refused him anything? Why was he not joyous at his brother’s return? Why did he not have love either toward his father or toward his brother? Was it not because of his wicked, inner disposition? Did he not remain in hell because of that? And what was this hell? Was it any separate place? Were there any instruments of torture? Did he not continue to live in his father’s house? What separated him from all the joyous people in the house if not his own hate and his own bitterness? Did his father, or even his brother, stop loving him? Was it not precisely this very love which hardened his heart more and more? Was it not the joy that made him sad? Was not hatred burning in his heart, hatred for his father and his brother, hatred for the love of his father toward his brother and for the love of his brother toward his father? This is hell: the negation of love; the return of hate for love; bitterness at seeing innocent joy; to be surrounded by love and to have hate in one’s heart. This is the eternal condition of all the damned. They are all dearly loved. They are all invited to the joyous banquet. They are all living in God’s Kingdom, in the New Earth and the New Heavens. No one expels them. Even if they wanted to go away they could not flee from God’s New Creation, nor hide from God’s tenderly loving omnipresence. Their only alternative would be, perhaps, to go away from their brothers and search for a bitter isolation from them, but they could never depart from God and His love.
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Yes, Cadis, I agree.
Also, I do want to make it clear that I am not saying that God’s wrath only comes because of the one sin of unbelief. God’s wrath comes because of our sins (plural).
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
6 He will render to each one according to his works:
(Rom 2:5-6 ESV)
But the eternal punishment is present because of our nature and eternal rebellion, even if all the sins we committed on earth are at some point “paid” for in a penal sort of way.
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CMP,
I think I understand better what you mean. Still not sure I really agree with you, however.
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“CMP,
I think I understand better what you mean. Still not sure I really agree with you, however.”
Cheryl, I actually do that that this is a sin that just might send you to hell for all eternity.
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Wonders, not bad.
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Micahel,
The only thing I might push back on (besides the whole Calvinism thing) is this idea of a little white lie, etc. Not because of the evangelical “not quite perfect != perfect” thing, but rather because we are more than what we know. There are no insignificant moments or choices – for all we know with modern science, the only real meaning in the entire universe lies within them. And what a universe is man! Somehow I know that there truly is a sense in which the slightest impiety to God or callousness to a neighbor from such a magnificent creature must merit everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. There is an ironic dignity to Hell – that the heart of man really is infinite, and thus accomplishes heights of good and depths of evil beyond the tepid expectations of modern culture. I revere humanity too much to be a universalist.
So, while I think I agree with you, I also think there is truth hidden in the stupidity. Not that God wills anything but our salvation (there I go being non-Calvinist again), but more of Lewis in the Weight of Glory – if only we knew what we really were, and what our choices really DID!
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Wonders,
You said that any impiety towards God or callousness towards a neighbor must merit everlasting punishment. That is what I have always been taught and have believed. Not, however because humans are such a magnificent creature, but because God is so utterly holy Himself.
And the verses stating that the wages of sin is death and the soul that sins shall surely die are ones that have been used to back up that belief.
Death is, of course, in this understanding, eternal death.
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If the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement is correct and Christ paid the exact penalty for sin, then we are only to conclude that sin doesn’t condemn one to hell for eternity or else Christ would still be in hell.
13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.
Since he remains faithful even if we are faithless and cannot deny himself it would seem that if anything would keep us in hell for all eternity it would be unbelief. Salvation is by grace through faith so the converse would be condemnation due to disbelief.
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Wonders, you are always much too profound for me my friend. I could not really understand what you said, but I bet it is truly good
However, I would back YOU up a bit and say that I as a Calvinist DO believe God will the salvation of all people…I just don’t think he makes it so for all people for some mysterious reason hidden in the deep council of the Godhead.
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I think explicit rebellion is the result of our sinfulness; but “our sinfulness” is precisely our implicit rebellion. Not all of us shake our fists at the sky and curse God; but we all place ourselves above God in our own hearts.
When we give money to the poor while God isn’t first in our hearts, our righteousness of sacrificial giving is sin — because our giving money is the result of our rebellion and idolatry (putting something before God).
-Wm
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One of the most sobering thoughts I have about judgement is that there will be many people who think they are going to heaven but find out different.
“Many will say to me, Lord did I not do good works?”
Exceedingly sad.
Also, seems that we will be permited to give a defense before the Lord.
I already know what I am going to say if permitted to speak: “Lord, you died for me.”
I think that will be enough.
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Stan,
Good thoughts.
I do believe that the Lord wanted to give us something tangible (from outside of ourselves) to give us the assurance of our salvation.
I believe that is why he instituted the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. In these things, he gives us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.,..totally apart from anything we do, say, feel, or think.
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To think I have been a believer for 30 years and have never heard such a clear explanation.
PS
Michael, this is rapidly becomming one of my favorite blogs. The pastor/elders and web minister of our church love it too.
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You’ve pulled a very minor point out of my text, but I’ll address it briefly.
I was talking about fatalism, which is the false belief that God dooms us without regard to anything we do and against our will. Calvinism rejects this utterly and uniformly.
The problem with the quotes you pulled is that they mistake compatibilism for fatalism. Compatibilism is the observation that free choice is completely compatible with determinism (in general); specifically, that our free choice is completely compatible with God’s ability to know our choices before we make them (even from eternity past). Fatalism differs from this crucially in that it would allow God to set our behavior without having to set our will — we would therefore wind up doing something without actually intending to do it.
To use your terms, God decreed that some men be reprobate, and doomed to an eternity in hell, BUT they could “do something about it” simply by repenting; but they will not because they are in rebellion against God.
To tie this back to the subject of the original post: when a person is condemned to hell, the only possible reason God has to condemn them forever is that God knows that they will never repent.
Therefore, we reach two things:
1. The everlasting condemnation proves that they were condemned for an ongoing sin, not for a past, never-repeatable sin.
2. The everlasting condemnation proves that God knows that they will never stop doing that ongoing sin — if they were to repent, God would forgive them (He loves doing that).
-Wm
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That’s beautiful. It’s also completely and utterly without possibility of salvation, though — isn’t it? If hell is eternal after death, why should repentance before death change your eternal destiny? It would seem that one single sin against a human would condemn you forever.
It also seems to suffer from a lack of need for God — sin is defined only in the context of man, and even a perfect relationship with God wouldn’t allow God to forgive sin against man.
-Wm
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I think this fallacy is simply a logical outgrowth of having only two destinations in the afterlife. You’re either blissfully saved, or horribly damned.
One or the other.
Therefore, it’s only logical to trivialize the differences in degree of damned-ness. If you’re damned already, then who really cares how big or little the sins were?
I mean, I agree with what you’re trying to do here Michael. But the problem is the underlying worldview more than anything else.
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That’s a tough problem. The Bible doesn’t address it in any way, and every denomination seems to have their own answer. They include:
1. Covenantal membership: children in the New Covenant are covered by the New Covenant until they rebel against it.
2. All babies go to hell. Ouch.
3. All babies go to heaven. Okay, but why?
4. We don’t know, but we’ll find out later that God’s been just.
I don’t know enough to back any of them. The last one looks nice, but I do like the definiteness of #1 (but that’s an awful reason to believe something).
I don’t think anything in the Bible requires asserting any proposition in order to be condemned.
the Bible is very clear that God loves to accept repentance and turn from His promised wrath. He’s used promises of judgment many times in order to cause people to repent. (Remember how annoyed Jonah was by that?)
The problem is that God hasn’t simply promised “wrath” or “judgment”; He’s promised that it’s everlasting. So it seems necessary that there be no repentance.
Are you implying that you believe that people will repent in hell, and thereby have their sentences “commuted”? If so, can you support it by some means other than simply thinking that it would be nice if it were true?
I’m not sure you’re claiming this — I truly can’t tell.
Where’s that in the Bible?
This doesn’t work well for me — I’ve previously tried telling someone that I don’t hold the doctrine he thinks I hold; people usually aren’t willing to believe it without proof. So if many Christians believe that hell is everlasting and there’s no escape, simply claiming that it isn’t won’t be enough; you have to show that the Bible requires that hell be otherwise.
What do you mean?
-Wm
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North American christianity often reifies sin. At a popular level, many fail to observe the use of literary technique in the Bible’s discussion of sin, and so talk of sin as if it really were some kind of substance. But sin is not a substance; sin is what people do. Once done, it is gone and no longer observable; the historical moment has past.
However, sin proceeds from, is indulged in, is performed by, actual people. What the “white lie” is indicative of, when it occurs, is the person who tells it and her nature. It is the person who goes to hell, not the sin, because of the kind of person that she is.
The little white lie is irrelevant because everyone is going to hell unless God intervenes. Augustine had no problem with unelect infants going to hell, and Calvin had no problem with God predestining the fall of all humankind and their consequent initial sinful state.
“Again they object: were they not previously predestined by God’s ordinance to that corruption which is now claimed as the cause of condemnation? When, therefore, they perish in their corruption, they but pay the penalties of that misery in which Adam fell by the predestination of God, and dragged his posterity headlong after him. Is he not, then, unjust who so cruelly deludes his creatures? Of course, I admit that in this miserable condition wherein men are now bound, all of Adam’s children have fallen by God’s will. And this is what I said to begin with, that we must always at last return to the sole decision of God’s will, the cause of which is hidden in him.” (Calvin’s Institutes, 3:23.4)
“Yet predestination, whether they [the objectors] will [admit it] or not, manifests itself in Adam’s posterity. For it did not take place by reason of nature that, by the guilt of one parent, all were cut off from salvation…. Scripture proclaims that all mortals were bound over to eternal death in the person of one man [Adam] (cf. Rom. 5:12 ff.). Since this cannot be ascribed to nature, it is perfectly clear that it has come forth from the wonderful plan of God . . . Again I ask: whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God?… The decree is horrible indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree . . .” (3:23.7)
“Still, it is not in itself likely that man brought destruction upon himself through himself, by God’s mere permission and without any ordaining. As if God did not establish the condition in which he wills the chief of his creatures to be! . . . For the first man fell because the Lord had judged it to be expedient; why he so judged is hidden from us. Yet it is certain that he so judged because he saw that thereby the glory of his name is duly revealed.” (3:23.8)
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In light of Calvin’s statements (in my above post), CMP’s following statements make no sense: “It is important to understand that hell not is filled with people who are crying out for God’s mercy, constantly hoping for a second chance. . . . They are in hell for all eternity because that is where they would rather be. It is their nature. As C.S. Lewis once said, “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.”
Um, no. According to Calvin, people are in hell because that is where God has, before time, determined and ordained that they will be. According to Calvin, it is as false, to state that they are in hell because that is where they want to be, as it is to say that people are in heaven because that is where they want to be. People are in heaven because God ordains them to be there, and in hell because God ordains that too. In the face of the real horror of such a conclusion, Calvin is satisfied with saying, “I don’t get it either, but God said it, so shut up”.
“The reprobate wish to be considered excusable in sinning, on the
ground that they cannot avoid the necessity of sinning, especially
since this sort of necessity is cast upon them by God’s ordaining. But
we deny that they are duly excused, because the ordinance of God, by
which they complain that they are destined to destruction, has its own
equity [or justice]—unknown, indeed, to us but very sure.” (Calvin’s Institutes, 3:23:9)
“Then after starting the objection, Is God unjust? instead of employing what would have been the surest and plainest defense of his justice—viz. that God had recompensed Esau according to his wickedness, he is contented with a different solution—viz. that the reprobate are expressly raised up, in order that the glory of God may thereby be displayed. At last, he concludes that God has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. 9:18). You see how he refers both to the mere pleasure of God. Therefore, if we cannot assign any reason for his bestowing mercy on his people, but just that it so pleases him, neither can we have any reason for his reprobating others but his will. When God is said to visit in mercy or harden whom he will, men are reminded that they are not to seek for any cause beyond his will.” (3:22:11)
“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.” (3:21:5)
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John, not so much cutting and pasting please.
Calvinism allows for tension in human responsibility and divine sovereignty. Just because there is some sense that God willed people to hell, this does not mean that the instrumental and responsible cause is not their own will.
However, let’s not get off the subject of the original post.
Will one lie send someone to hell for all eternity. I don’t think so. There is no biblical or theological basis for saying such in my opinion. People are in hell for all eternity because they are eternally antagonistic to God. Why? Because it is their nature to be such. Why didn’t Christ spend eternity in hell? He did not have the condemned nature.
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Michael, I am also a Calvinist, but we know there is no homogeneity even among Calvinists.
I don’t have a problem with God monergistically saving some babies, but my point was that He does not. Just as not everyone is saved because they are not a member of the elect, neither are all babies elected. Why would we apply sovereign election to adults who were born in sin and not to babies who were also born in sin. This is just a theological pet peeve of mine.
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I cannot help in all rational and biblical honesty but reject the evangelical theology that all sins are eternally damning and that
Christ bore the punishment for these sins. No matter how you look at it, it makes a mockery of justice and God to be a monster.
Christ’s death is best understood as a symbolic sacrifice to end all sacrifice and not as the “wages of sin” in any penal substitutionary sense.
The metaphors which make penal substitution look loving all have in mind a mediator (Christ) protecting us from a great unavoidable Evil (Hell). This is to miss out on the fact that the great unavoidable evil in the penal model is God the “loving” Father who just cannot bring himself to forgive us without seeing some punishment.
Why have evangelicals missed out on all the forgiveness in the Bible which occurred pre-Cross, apart from sacrifice, dependant necessarily and sufficiently on repentance (ala Ezek 18). Moreover why, if Christ’s blood is sufficient for Christians, do they need to repent or stop sinning?
Nay, only God is absolute, and He can forgvie at his discretion apart from any word, principle or law – even his own. God is constantly changing his mind and repealing punishments and it’s His personal Truth and Justice which rule not any formulation thereof.
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Wm
First, I do not believe that personal sins have any relationship to condemnation. No sin is imputed to the individual committing the sin. Here is 2 Cor 5:19… In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them…
Remember, God has condemned all so that he can have mercy on all (Rom 11.32).
On babies going to heaven
Here’s two verses that illustrate this…
2 Sam. 12:23 But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Am I able to bring him back? I will go to him, but he cannot return to me!’”
David states that his son will be in heaven. Why? Because there was no basis for his condemnation.
“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud wailing, Rachel weeping for her children, and she did not want to be comforted, because they were gone.”
But notice how this vs is concluded in Jer 31
31:16 The Lord says to her,
“Stop crying! Do not shed any more tears!
For your heartfelt repentance will be rewarded.
Your children WILL RETURN from the land of the enemy.
I, the Lord, affirm it.
The children were murdered, but ALL will return. Again, there is no basis for their condemnation. Why? People are condemned BY THEIR WORDS… Matt 12.37!!
What is also critical to note – we now have TWO condemnations to deal with, one at birth, and one upon asserting something.
I don’t think anything in the Bible requires asserting any proposition in order to be condemned.
See previous comment
Are you implying that you believe that people will repent in hell, and thereby have their sentences “commuted”?
Yes. God so loved the world… and wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. This love and desire for all to be saved is not given a time limit (but, I don’t believe in the Calvinistic system, not at all). The reason anyone is in hell is because they believe not (Matt 12.37: this is an assertion) on the Jesus Christ. [This is the eternal sin… for as long as one rejects God’s offer of salvation, they will remain in hell. This was my point when I quoted Wm. Craig. I think this really does settle the issue by reconciling all factors.
Also… John 3:18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, BECAUSE he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
Finally, what did I mean by this… No, the eternal nature of being in hell is not put back on the unbelievers!!!
The ‘not’ should be ‘now.’ And the point is that people in hell remain there FOR AS LONG AS they maintain their rejection of God’s offer of salvation.
All Calvinists should read the book Who Can Be Saved, by Tiessen. Here is a Calvinist trying to think this issue through. His conclusions are startling, and yet he doesn’t go far enough.
Bottom line… I do not associate personal sins with eternal condemnation. As stated above, personal sins were imputed to Christ on the…
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Eddie,
Many will stand before Him and say Lord, Lord, we have done such ans such in your name, and He will say to them, “depart from me, I never knew you.”
What’s that all about then?
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What a way to start a morning! Reading this post and all the responses! For what it’s worth, all references to C.S. Lewis’ theology on the afterlife should take into account that C.S. Lewis followed faithfully in the steps of George MacDonald, who allowed for salvation even from hell if only the sinner would repent. This I have trouble with, because it really does seem from Scripure that the only ‘chance’ one has is in this lifetime. However, it seems to me that both Calvinists and Arminians and all shades on both sides and in between sooner or later come up against the mystery that all the logic and reason in the world cannot go beyond, for if it could than we would be equal to Him and that we can never be, even in eternity. It therefore becomes us to get down on our knees in humble adoration and then get up and preach the everlasting gospel. I hope to do this on Sunday but for today, there are beans in the garden and blueberries on the hill that need to be picked. Was it on this site Michael that I read something about the theology of the mundane? Blessings everyone!
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Michael. I enjoy your posts, but I just really disagree with this one.
I think you’re making an assumption that all people in Hell suffer the same punishment. I don’t. I think there are degrees of suffering and how much you suffer will be in proportion to the effect of sin in your life. (And I don’t believe all sins are equal either. I think Jesus made it clear when he told Pilate that the one who handed you over to me is guilty of a greater sin.) Yet I think we need to see what sin is. Here is a starter list I put together. What does sin deny of God?
It denies his omnipotence in saying he can’t force his law.
His omniscience in saying he knows not what is best.
His omnipresence in saying he sees not.
His omnibenevolence in saying he isn’t truly giving us our good.
His truth in denying that he is being honest about what is good for us.
His holiness in that we think we can live differently than we ought and be okay.
His justice in saying he won’t do right.
His wisdom in saying his way is not right.
His sovereignty in saying he has no right to rule.
We could go on.
Now you say one lie won’t send someone to Hell. What will it do for them? Will they be allowed to enter into Heaven with one unforgiven sin? If supposedly Christ forgave all sins except one, could we enter into Heaven?
I don’t see how and in conclusion, I ultimately see all sin as to a different degree wanting to make the same claim. It’s divine treason and the sinner seeking to make himself God.
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Nick,
Thanks for the comments. I agree that there are degrees of suffering, but my point in the post is that the worst part of the suffering of hell cannot be its intensity (however one were to qualify that), but its longevity. Therefore, even the least amout of “lashes” in hell is unimaginable because it is eternal!
No one who goes to hell will ever get out…therefore we must explain this. Why is hell eternal? What I am saying is that the answer “Even the smallest sin is deserving of infinite punishment” is unbiblical and, in my opinion, greatly misrepresents the character of God. The better explaination is that everyone who goes to hell goes their as sinners and as rebellious. Therefore, they never get out. It is not because of the infinite offense of going 36 in a 35, but because of the infinite offense of their perpetual rejection of God. They are in hell for all eternity precisely because they are children of the first Adam and choose to remain such.
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Thanks Michael. I think we are probably looking at infinite and eternal as the same. I think the punishment of Hell would be eternal even for one sin. I do not think it would be the same however as that of several sins. (Assuming one little sin rather than say one mass murder over a dozen little white lies.)
Yes. Everyone who goes there is rebellious and in fact, prove their sinfulness because then, they are not guilty of one sin. They are guilty of that sin and guilty of the sin of rejecting forgiveness. They would rather cling to that sin than cling to the one who can forgive them. It is loving that sin more than God and then ultimately, loving self more than God.
As I ponder it then, there cannot be just one sin in this sense. If one dies without repentance, one is not guilty of one sin but a multitude of sins.
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Why are we assuming “eternal” means a never-ending time period on a progressive timeline? Why assume that someone in hell is going to be their for the rest of their endless existence?
I would think that modern advances in cosmology and quantum physics would make us a little more careful about assuming a linear afterlife.
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Marc, your comments are awfully dismissive of a very strong community of exegetes who would disagree. The ease of your dissuasion makes it hard to engage with you too seriously (without being dismissive of your comments!!)
However, I don’t want the thread to go this way, but I will say that your opinions really could not be squared with Pauline thinking on the subject. Paul was very particular about this very point that the cross was a satisfaction (in some way) of his own righteousness.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it–
22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
(Rom 3:21-26 ESV)
Notice, the cross includes those who preceded it. God’s forbearance was only possible because the cross was a part of the decree to life for all people. Paul’s point is that without the cross God would not be righteous in saving anyone.
Therefore, God can’t just decided to save people without a satisfaction of his righteousness through the cross any more than he could just decide to cease to be God.
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Sorry about the length of the copy and pastes, but I thought it important to go back to the source documents of Calvinism. Calvin had no need for any “intermediate” causes but was comfortable with stating that God sent them to hell for His own reasons, which He is not inclined to tell us.
The quotes from Calvin, as well as the rest of my posts were to the effect that the “little white lie” posting by CMP is both irrelevant and illogical (?and therefore stupider than the proposition that a single white lie will send one to hell?).
According to Calvin, someone’s presence in hell is founded on God’s ordaining and not on lies, whether they be white or black or grey.
Furthermore, one would not utter a white lie unless one had the sort of nature that would put one into hell in the first place. Everyone is born with and has the type of nature that will result in white, gray, and black lies. Everyone is destined for hell prior to the telling of a white lie. Only those who are ordained for heaven get to skip hell.
So, (apparently contrary to) CMP, a person who sins only once by telling one white lie will be sent to hell forever. The caveat being that one is not sent to hell “because of” the lie but because of the ordination of God. The white lie is merely an external evidence of the sin nature and sinful heart. One is never sent to hell for any sin, nor for any accumulation of sin. Everyone is either destined for hell by the ordaining of God, or destined for heaven by His ordaining. Both classes of people sin, and their ultimate destiny is not dependent on how many sins they commit, nor on how bad those sins are. Moreover, according to Calvin everyone from birth possesses the type of nature that results in hell unless God pulls one out of the fire. So CMP turns out to be correct, but not because of the “white lie” issue, but because there is no single sin of any kind that will send one to hell.
So, hypothetical person “A” who sins only once in her entire life, by telling a white lie, is going to hell–but going to hell because that is where God has ordained her to go. Hypothetical person “A” has a doppleganger “B” who also only sins once in her entire life by telling a white lie–but “B” is going to heaven because that is where God has ordained her to go.
[my quotes from Calvin's Institutes are in my posts 69 and 70]
CMP’s response in his post 71 (“this does not mean that the instrumental and responsible cause is not their own will”) is a red herring and not relevant. The so-called instrumental causes are also ordained by God and occur because of His ordaining them. The occurance of the so-called instrumental causes merely reveal what God has ordained, and they “belong” to the individual only because they occur through the individual’s material and non-material components.
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Lutheran theology states (what the Bible states) that “God died for and fagives the whole world.”
And that He desires ALL to come to faith.
Some do come to faith, and many do not.
When we are saved, we give all the credit to God.
When we are lost, WE take all the blame…not God.
Different than Calvinism…but we believe it is Biblical.
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Steve, that is not different than Calvinism, only a particular form of Calvinism…not mine.
John, you are still only critiquing a particular interpretation of the Calvinistic system including a particular interpretation of Calvin.
What you seem to have a problem with is Supralapsarianism. That is the only way your critique will apply. Does not mean you have accomplished anything with regard to this thread since even supralapsarian would allow for the human perspective of the instrumental cause and deem theological discussion about such necessary and appropriate.
I, however, and not a supralapsarian, so it is very easy for me to be a Calvinist and hold to the position of this blog. In fact, most Evangelical-Calvinists are not supralapsarian, but either sub- or infra-.
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Lapsarianism (when and whom God predestined in relation to the fall / lapse) is irrelevant to my comments, because neither my comments nor the original post are concerned with whether God chose some specific people to be saved before or after he ordained the fall. Infralapsarianism (infra / after the fall; the Fall was planned, but it was not planned with reference to who would be saved). The Synod of Dort (1618) sided with infralapsarianism (Canons of Dort, First Point of Doctrine, Article 7), and the Westminster Confession of Faith also teaches the infralapsarian view.
Hence, according to the infralapsarian view God planned (i.e., logically planned; there is no time dimension) that humankind would fall prior to (i.e., logically prior to) the decision to save or damn any individuals. That is, logically decree of the Fall must precede predestination to salvation or damnation because one must first need to be saved from something.
Thus infralapsarianism precisely fits the argument I made. We are first, logically, all damned and going to hell. The white lie is a red herring. We go to hell whether or not we tell a white lie, and whether or not the only sin we have ever done was a white lie. We are destined to hell when in the womb and prior to any acquired (consciously willed) sin, such as a white lie.
I am supported in what I say by Calvin himself:
“The orthodoxy, therefore, and more especially Augustine, laboured to show, that we are not corrupted by acquired wickedness, but bring an innate corruption from the very womb. It was the greatest impudence to deny this. . . . Surely there is no ambiguity in David’s confession, “I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” (Ps. 51:5). ” (Institutes, 2:1:5)
“We thus see that the impurity of parents is transmitted to their children, so that all, without exception, are originally depraved. . . . We must, therefore, hold it for certain, that, in regard to human nature, Adam was not merely a progenitor, but, as it were, a root, and that, accordingly, by his corruption, the whole human race was deservedly vitiated.” (Institutes, 2:1:6)
“There is nothing absurd, therefore, in the view, that when he was divested, his nature was left naked and destitute that he having been defiled by sin, the pollution extends to all his seed. Thus, from a corrupt root corrupt branches proceeding, transmit their corruption to the saplings which spring from them. The children being vitiated in their parent, conveyed the taint to the grandchildren; in other words, corruption commencing in Adam, is, by perpetual descent, conveyed from those preceding to those coming after them. The cause of the contagion is neither in the substance of the flesh nor the soul, but God was pleased to ordain that those gifts which he had bestowed on the first man, that man should lose as well for his descendants as for himself.” (Institutes, 2:1:7)
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Thanks John. We are simply going to have to agree to disagree here…For you are really losing me in your argumentation and I don’t agree that I cannot be the type of Calvinist that I am and not profess what the original post says. Your arguments sound like you don’t know what I was arguing for. This is probably my fault as I may not have been very clear.
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Thanks Michael. Originally I though I disagreed with your post. Then I thought I agreed with it, but not for the reasons you gave. Then I realized that underlying your reasons was a more basic understanding of human nature and God’s saving intervention. So, yes, I do agree with you that one white lie will not send us to hell.
My point is that the whole focus on the white lie issue is misplaced and irrelevant (and therefore, as you put it, stupid). We are all destined to hell unless God saves us. Destined from in the womb, and before we acquire any consciously willed sins such as white lies. It is inevitable that we will do the white lie because of the hell sending defect that we have from birth.
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CMP,
I have quick observation about your assertion that Evangelical Calvinists are by and large not supralapsarians. Maybe I’m misinterpreting their quotes, but it seems to me that a lot of the big names in Evangelical Calvinism, such as John Piper, are supralapsarians.
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Marc,
I have a little trouble following you. You say something like this:
My mind naturally goes to Hebrews, where it discusses the sacrifices of the Old Testament–whether they could ever save, and their relationship to Christ. Particularly Hebrew 10-11. If your idea that sacrifice is powerless is what God is teaching us, why is there no hint of it? Why does it say precisely the opposite, when it explains the sacrifices of the Old Testament vs the sacrifice of Christ?
It says that they could never take away sins; that much agrees with you. But it doesn’t give your explanation for why! It doesn’t say sacrifice is meaningless. On the contrary, it points to the power of Christ’s sacrifice, and how the saints of old actually needed us. They’re linked to the body of Christ.
Ezek. 18 doesn’t leave out sacrifices because sacrifice is unnecessary; it leaves it out because the sacrifice of Christ is what grounded the forgiveness of everyone, for all time!
I’m thinking of 10:12-15
Christ’s single sacrifice is what saves for all time. That seems to be the same thought in chapter 11, where it says,
Taking away sins, being perfected, and being sanctified are all treated together here.
The Bible grounds forgiveness of everyone at all times in Christ’s sacrifice. God acts true to his attribute of justice and his attribute of love and his attribute of mercy, all without compromise of any. He doesn’t set aside justice in order to forgive, he satisfies it.
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Not to derail the conversation, but though I still hold to the Penal Substitution model I have as of late questioned this model of the atonement to some extent. I think perhaps the issue for me is it has become in many circles the only way in which the atonement is viewed despite that both the Bible and church history have talked about it from a number of different perspectives. The concept of a substitutionary atonement wasn’t articulated until Anselm in the 11th-12th Century and penal substitution wasn’t articulated until Calvin in the 16th Century. Prior to this the vast majority of the church including those in the Early Church held to a ransom model of the atonement. Now this doesn’t make the Penal Substitution model wrong or anything, but it does give me pause at the idea of thinking this is the only way the atonement should be viewed.
I think I’m slowly coming to the point C.S. Lewis was at in Mere Christianity when he wrote,
“We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.”
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Michael, space does not allow a full exposition of my views but I assure you: I’m aware of your perspective and arguments, I really am, they are very widespread, orthodox and well expounded. They’re just not making any sense sense rationally or biblically and it’s no wonder thinking people reject it.
The idea evangelicals offer, and you seem to share, is that there is some sort of overarching LAW which even God is under which demands punishment for crimes making the cross the means by which he can forgive us. This is the “Deep Magic” Aslan refers to in the Narnia books.
Aside from the fact that God obviously forgave and forgives apart from and before the cross Paul does not say in Rom 3:25 “He did this to maintain/legitimate his righteousness in passing over sins” but in order to “show”. This has lead me in the direction of the symbolic cross which shows love and confirms forgiveness but does not necessarily and sufficiently effect it. Simplistically, Christ paying (the Father?) for our sins implies out forgiveness was bought and not granted by Mercy or Grace. Yet Mercy triumphs Grace does it not?
Obviously much more needs to be said but I think we really need to start asking if Jesus death was the necessary and sufficient condition for our and others (particularly OT) forgiveness. Rationally this is hard to maintain, Biblically it’s far from clear and relies on an uneven reading of even Paul, glossing over key passages like Rom 2 which have to be taken ironically or hypothetically (v10 or 13 for example).
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Marc,
Since evangelicals emphatically reject the idea that God’s character of justice is somehow “over” him (anymore than his character of love & mercy is “over” him), why would you expect this argument to have any force?
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Jugulum, I agree with Hebrews that animal sacrifice could not take away sin. I see animal sacrifice as not the means but the sign of reconciliation in the OT, reparation if you will.
I must take issue with those who quote “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” missing out that the same verse applies this “law” specifically to Torah and not universally to all humans. Caesar sacrificing a goat would achieve and, by the same reasoning, us Gentiles, not being under Torah are not obliged to offer sacrifice making it questionable whether Jesus death had any atoning effect. We would need to take a detailed look at Romans and Galatians and see when Torah is mean and when a general and universal “law” is meant to see the difference.
The main point I want to make is that God does not forgive Israel apart from their repentance on the basis of animal sacrifice alone. The Babylonian exile or the AD70 destruction are spectacular examples of God not desiring blood sacrifice but true repentance and obedience. God always forgives repentant sinners because he is merciful. The cross seems to be a symbolic way of confirming this promise. It is no mercy for a judge to forgive a trespass yet demand payment by another. Calling Jesus God doesn’t solve this dilemma.
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Marc,
Perhaps to clarify and agree with what Jugulum said. I don’t think God’s character for love can be emphasized enough, yet at the same time it can’t be emphasized to the exclusion of other characteristics that make God God. The Bible tells us that parts of God’s character are that he is holy and just. Thus the idea that God demands justice for wrongs committed doesn’t come from a law outside of Himself but from His own character as a just being. There certainly are Abelardian Exemplary elements to the atonement, but again to view it solely through this lens I think both cheapens the atonement and misses it’s full glory.
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Marc,
Regarding the idea of a law over God, I apologize for my last comment… It was short, and a bit snarky. (I wrestle with a tendency to become snarky any time I’m in a quick exchange of comments. Which gets me into trouble sometimes. I need to be slower in my replies.)
So, I’ll ask for gracious interpretation on your part–please try to read it divorced from its brevity or tone of challenge. I want to be less confrontational, but I’m very earnest about the point.
Michael’s clarification was very helpful.
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Marc,
Regarding Hebrews.
It seems like your first paragraph is interacting with me, but then you go off in another direction. I didn’t say anything about Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”.
I can’t detect anything in your comment that interacts with my point–which was about the connection between Heb 10 and Heb 11, and the stated connection between the sacrifice of Christ and the “sacrificeless” purification of the Old Testament people you’re pointing to. I would ask you, please reread my comment, and either address it for the first time, or clarify how you think you already did.
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Going back to CMP’s original post, and looking over my posts in which I was working through his thinking, I find that I am with CMP up to and including his comments that “Could it be that people are in Hell for all eternity based upon who they are rather than what they have done?”, “I am trying to bring focus to the real problem that has infected humanity since the Garden” and up to “The real problem is that we are at enmity with God. From the moment we are born, we inherit the traits of our father Adam”.
Given what I have posted on the damning damage suffered by our pre-born selves, and the supporting quotes from Calvin, it seems clear that on a Calvinist understanding of the matter we are indeed ordained and sent to Hell for who we are rather than for what we have done (and thus, having been dissed by Adam, Adam is not my homeboy).
Where I think I diverge from CMP is in and after his statement that “From the moment we are born, we inherit the traits of our father Adam”. I think that on a Calvinist understanding (and, since Arminius followed Calvin in all things except the four ULIP, I assume an Arminian understanding is no different), we would have to assert that we inherit something from Adam from the moment we are conceived (actually, our inheritence would start earlier, in Adam himself, since our DNA was physically in his sperm and rib, and potentially our unformed soul as well).
But is “rebellion” the correct way to describe this damage? Calvin calls it “corruption” and “depravity”. While all conscious or willed sin is a rebellion against God, the same cannot be said about what affects us from conception. Our depravity which we have from conception and which renders us fit for hell and unfit for heaven, is not a “rebellion” but a “corruption” or “ruin”.
“After the heavenly image in man was effaced, he not only was himself punished by a withdrawal of the ornaments in which he had been arrayed—viz. wisdom, virtue, justice, truth, and holiness, and by the substitution in their place of those dire pests, blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and unrighteousness, but he involved his posterity also, and plunged them in the same wretchedness. This is the hereditary corruption to which early Christian writers gave the name of Original Sin, meaning by the term the depravation of a nature formerly good and pure.” (Institutes, 2:1:5)
“As Adam, by his ruin, involved and ruined us, so Christ, by his grace, restored us to salvation. . . Adam, therefore, when he corrupted himself, transmitted the contagion to all his posterity. For a heavenly Judge, even our Saviour himself, declares that all are by birth vicious and depraved, when he says that “that which is born of the flesh is fleshy” (John 3:6), and that therefore the gate of life is closed against all until they have been regenerated.” (Institutes, 2:1:6; . Emphasis added)
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Regarding the comments about sovereignty and love
There are differences between sovereignty and love that give love a greater and stronger preeminence over sovereignty.
Love precedes sovereignty both logically, efficaciously and temporally.
Before creation, there was nothing to be sovereign over (and by creation I include creation of time and matter and spiritual beings other than God). However, there was love, because the triune members of the Godhead loved each other.
Moreover, when John says that God is love, it seems to carry a weight or sense of identity more than of ascription. That is, it is more like saying that “Jesus is God” than it is saying that “God is omnipotent”. On the other hand, saying “God is sovereign” is more like the latter than the former.
Regards,
#John
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Regarding the eternal issue (both wrt the punishment endured by those who go to hell and that endured by Christ on the cross), the people I know who argue it often argue that, if you want to put it into mathetmatical terms, Christ, as God, would suffer infinitely (not speaking of duration) on the cross. The physical pain was rough, ofc, but paled in comparison to the being cut off from the Father. His punishment was applicable for more than one other since he was divine.
I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m not sure the Bible gets that explicit about it. A lot of it is putting different passages together and connecting the dots in a way that makes sense to some.
Like I say, I’m not sure. I do think the cross is spoken of as various things (e.g., ransom, sacrifice, substitute, etc.). I think they are truly those things, though I think sometimes we may press it further than is warranted.
Aside from all of that, I think you make a good point. Even when you look at the OT Law, the punishments are generally proportionate to the crimes. The nature of those who reject Jesus in the gospels jibes well with the idea of hell being populated with those who stubbornly refuse to embrace Jesus.
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Michael, I really do know what you’re saying having heard it many times in many different ways. However, think about what we have come to when “justice” becomes a synonym for “must punish sin”? This is essentially the evangelical take on God’s justice.
Perhaps this is a linguistic bias resulting from us having 2 words (justice and righteousness) where the Greeks, Hebrews (and Germans) only have one. In our Anglo-Saxon minds Justice is tit for tat (crudely stated) and righteousness is about doing right. So we think God is only just when he punishes each and every crime.
However God’s justice is actually the same as God’s doing right. The question is whether unavoidable punishment for sin fits in with “doing right” – God’s righteousness. Surely mercy is “doing right” apart from punishment sometimes (i.e. when repentance is there). If that were not the case, we would have no basis for forgiveness. Each wrong done to a person MUST be avenged. Indeed only Christians would be expected to forgive and pagans would be “doing right” in avenging each and every offence.
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Jugulum, I’ve long since realised that people, especially theologians, can affirm a doctrine and yet deny it’s implications so no, I don’t expect my argument to knock down any towers of thought. It’s just nonsense that God cannot forgive without blood is all.
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Jugulum, regarding Hebrews, I find it a difficult passage because I cannot see any rational correspondence between animal sacrifice and forgivenes. Surely the intended audience had no problem but that was because they were Jews.
Nevertheless, I don’t see the need to re-interpret the Bible in terms of an isolated passage. If I did that I could choose Rom 3:20 over Rom 2:13 (or Deut 27:26) depending on my whim.
You say Heb 10:12-15 does not hint at the ineffectiveness of Christ’s sacrifice. Well, it certainly does not affirm it (unless you equate “made perfect” with “obtained forgiveness”). Shockingly it does affirm that animal sacrifice is INeffective which is hard to square with the Pentateuch. The whole point of Levitical sacrifice is it’s cleansing effect, it’s there in the Bible that it removes sins. Here’s the dilemma: why do Jews think levitical sacrifices are effective only to be told by the author that they’re not. Did they confuse the sign for the means?
And are we not facing the same dilemma: we think Christ’s blood necessarily and sufficiently cleansed us but we’re in for a Great Shock. The God who desires mercy not sacrifice, repentance not atonement before whom all will stand and give answer (2 Cor 5:10) and who “will give to each person according to what he has done” (Rom 2:6).
You write:
Interesting that evangelicals don’t treat them together… First comes forgiveness and justification then the long process of sanctification and perfection. The only solution is to spiritualise these things and say: before God, i.e. in the heavenly realms, we are perfect. You also have to see Christ’s atonement working backwards in history. The whole construction hangs on too many irrational assumptions and ad hoc axioms.
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God expects us to forgive freely without the offending party either repenting to us or making an sort of reparation for the wrong.
If God can expect that of us, surely it is legitmate for us to ask whether God can, does, or should forgive us without demanding some sort of payment for our sin.
Indeed, if payment is made, what is there left to forgive?
Here is an interesting comment made by Brian McLaren when he was interviewed by Leif Hansen:
“Brian McLaren: Yeah. And I heard one well-known Christian leader, who—I won’t mention his name, just to protect his reputation. Cause some people would use this against him. But I heard him say it like this: The traditional understanding says that God asks of us something that God is incapable of Himself. God asks us to forgive people. But God is incapable of forgiving. God can’t forgive unless He punishes somebody in place of the person He was going to forgive. God doesn’t say things to you—Forgive your wife, and then go kick the dog to vent your anger. God asks you to actually forgive…. And there’s a certain sense that, a common understanding of the atonement presents a God who is incapable of forgiving. Unless He kicks somebody else.”
On the other hand, N.T. Wright, in his Romans commentary:
“No clearer statement is found in Paul, or indeed anywhere else in all early Christian literature, of the early Christian belief that what happened on the cross was the judicial punishment of sin. Taken in conjunction with 8:1 and the whole argument of the passage, not to mention the partial parallels in 2 Cor 5:21 and Gal 3:13, it is clear that Paul intends to say that in Jesus’ death the damnation that sin deserved was meted out fully and finally, so that sinners over whose heads that condemnation had hung might be liberated from this threat once and for all.”
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[...] Michael Patton dispels that myth here. The real problem is that people trivialize sin. Sin isn’t first what we do. Sin is first who [...]
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Where does God say any of that? If it’s true, why do you think God put all that stuff about restitution in the Law — and why did David seem to think that meditating on the Law would reveal truths about God’s character? For that matter, why should we go to our brother when he has something against us (Matt 5:23) — why shouldn’t we just keep doing what we were, and let our brother freely forgive us?
I think “God expects us to forgive without repentance or reparation” is simply an error without basis.
-Wm
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I agree with Calvin’s exegesis on this point; but whether one agrees or not, CMP isn’t obviously disagreeing with Calvin. In fact, I think any person willing to agree with Calvin must in fact agree with Michael at least on this point: that nobody goes to hell or stays in hell without preferring it to the alternative. The alternative is to think that the Bible teaches fatalism: that God dooms people to hell or heaven regardless of their desires. No, God condemned us all to hell because of our desires, not against them. When by the blood of His Son He raised some of us to glory He does so by giving us a new heart, so that He can save us from hell in accordance with the desires of that new heart.
But this is all in accordance with our desires — except for that gracious act in which He makes us alive from the dead.
-Wm
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This sort of thing can only be said by a person who has never been deeply wronged — and a person who’s forgotten most of history, including the horrendous massacres of the last century.
-Wm
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Can you reconcile that reading with Paul’s words in 2 Cor 5:10? I can: Paul was talking about the work of Christ while He was on the earth. Elsewhere, Christ has a different work.
Unless you want Paul to contradict Paul, you have to read this in context: “all” refers to the peoples — Jews, Greeks, other nationalities. It doesn’t refer to individuals. This is the pattern throughout Rom 11.
None of that is what David says.
This doesn’t say that the children were murdered; it says they are in the land of the enemy. In verses 2 and 7 it specifies that this prophecy is for those who survived the hand of the enemy, not for the dead.
This is the last verse you give, and it’s the only one that you even pretend speaks to your point of some kind of judgment by proclamation. The problem is that there’s no way it means what you want it to.
First, it doesn’t say people are ONLY condemned by their words; rather it says that their words prove what sort of being they are, good or bad. The metaphor given is the fruit of a tree: good fruit or bad fruit proves good tree or bad tree. This supports CMP’s claim here, by the way: we will be condemned not for a petty sin (or an idle word), but for who we are.
Second, it doesn’t say that people will be judged by a positive proclamation in which they assert a proposition about God’s existence; rather, it says that they will be judged by every idle word. This doesn’t rule out God’s ability to judge by other means, but it certainly utterly rules out your claim that only the strongest verbal assertion is enough to condemn a person.
-Wm
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Marc,
I’m trying to make sense of what your saying and I can partially see where your coming from and at other times I’m having difficulty. I can see where your having problems with the subtitutionary view, but I’m not sure how the exemplary view works with scripture.
For instance (I’m sure this has been quoted before) 1 Corinthians 15.3 states the following
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”
To me this passage seems pretty black and white in rejecting the concept of a purely exemplary death on the Cross (not saying their aren’t exemplary elements to the Cross). The weight of the words indicates some type of transaction is going on. Now this doesn’t necessarily indicate that the penal substitutionary view is correct. Certainly the Classical Substitutionary, Moral Government, Ransom/Christus Victor models would wholly affirm this verse. I wonder if you’ve ever done any reading on the Christus Victor/Ransom view of this issue. This was the view of the Early Church and I think it has a lot to offer, though I don’t think it should be taught exclusive of substitution personally.
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First of all, producing fruit, good or bad is all about us, and what we do, not about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. If we are going to have Calvinism as our only standard,, let’s stick to that, otherwise we are being double minded when we are challenged to prove our faith is workable and open to everyone. If is only about Calvinism, and nothing else, why bother doing as Jesus said, and spreading the gospel to all nations?
How can it be, as Wm Tanklesy says, that it is all in accordance with our desires and stiil be about God’s grace first?
As a person who is not is not a Calvinist, I have wonder at that obvious duplicity.
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Michael, I’m going to sign off this discussion with a word and a an article I wrote. The word is, Bring me any verse which supports what I admit is Orthodox Evangelical belief and I’ll bring you 2 which deny it and need to be twisted into the Reformed mould.
Here’s my big question for the week: Is Protestant Christianity Biblical and Faithful to Jesus?.
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Marc, sorry to hear you go.
What you’re describing is the tactic of scripture-storming, where one ignores all the exegeses your opponent brings in favor of slapping down “prooftexts” that appear to say something related to the topic. It’s easy to just assume a verse supports you and slap it down, then claim your opponent is “twisting” it when they carefully analyze what it’s actually saying. Meanwhile, you’re slapping down a few more “prooftexts” and not responding to their analysis.
But this is irresponsible and lazy. It completely disregards the authority of scripture to speak on its own terms and on its own subjects, and places the arguer as the editor. Truly respecting the scriptures means wrestling with the meaning by diving deep into each passage, allowing questions to be asked and answered — not throwing passages at each other as though our current context fully defined each passage.
-Wm
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Do you know what you’re accusing me of? Look up the definition, please. (I’m not offended because I suspect you meant to use a different word.)
-Wm
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Are you serious? Christianity is all about Christ, His sacrifice on the cross, and God’s acceptance of that sacrifice through the resurrection. If it were about us, what significance would the resurrection have — wouldn’t Christ’s example in life be sufficient?
The Bible repeats this point many times over: it is not up to the one who runs, but to God who has mercy; we are ordered to show fruit of our salvation not because we are good, but because “it is God who works within us both to will and to do His good pleasure.” We’re told that the one who doesn’t have specific fruits (for example, love or obedience) doesn’t know God at all, while everyone who has them, has them because of God.
I admit one thing: producing fruit IS about us, because it shows truly what we’re all about. But when it shows what we’re all about, it’ll show one of two things: either we’re all about us, or we’re all about God.
-Wm
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“I admit one thing: producing fruit IS about us, because it shows truly what we’re all about. But when it shows what we’re all about, it’ll show one of two things: either we’re all about us, or we’re all about God.”
That is not true at all.
We as Christians are a mixed bag.
We are sinners and saints.
“We walk by faith abd not by sight.” The flesh (what we do) is of no avail.
The Holy Spirit produces the fruit in us. It IS NOT about us.
This fruit-producing, spiritual navel-gazing project is what produces self-righteous Pharisees.
We ought concentrate what Christ has done for us and the freedom that God has to forgive sinners.
If we insist on being fruit inspectors, we ought inspect ourselves first and stop there. We won’t like what we find, I will guarantee that.
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What is that supposed to mean? What do you mean by “Calvinism” there? Is there some cult you’re picturing in your mind that venerates the Institutes? Do you imagine that all “Calvinists” belong to it? I think you’re referring to the group of people who accept what some Reformed scholars call “the doctrines of free grace”; we commonly call that “Calvinism”, but we aren’t called Calvinists because we worship Calvin’s works, but because Calvin stated that particular position well, and exegeted it thoroughly, so that his name became associated with it. I’d like to refer to myself by another name, honestly, but if I told you I’m not a Calvinist you’d quite reasonably see that as dodging your accusation, because the term has become a cultural shorthand for this set of beliefs.
Surely it’s important that the almighty, holy, and righteous God commanded it.
If that’s not enough for you, please note that God works through means; He punished David through the actions of his son, He brought about the resurrection through the specifically prophesied betrayal of Judas, and He brings about salvation to each of us through our hearing someone else speak the gospel. If we obey God and speak the Gospel, God will glorify himself through us; if we disobey him someone else will have the privilege.
You don’t have to be a Calvinist to see the importance of this.
-Wm
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Re my posts 70 & 97 and Tanksley’s post 106
Tanksley wrote, “The alternative is to think that the Bible teaches fatalism: that God dooms people to hell or heaven regardless of their desires. No, God condemned us all to hell because of our desires, not against them.”
Well, yes and no, and irrelevant. True, those that go to hell do not have the desire for Jesus or salvation. However, (1) they had their desires from before birth (depravity), (2) God ordained the desires they would, did, do and will have, and (3) God chose not to regenerate them and give them the desire for Jesus and salvation (he did not elect them). Our desires are irrelevant to our destination because God ordained our desires from before the creation of the universe. People can only go to heaven if they are elect, and of all the people God created, He only chose a few.
So, because God ordains all desires and ordained the fall He is the effective cause of someone’s going to hell. There is no possibility that it could be otherwise for the person going to hell. People do not have the capacity to change what God ordained, and cannot change their inherent, before birth rejection of salvation.
The Calvinist view, by its nature, is fatalistic, in the sense that God has foreordained everything that will every happen and nothing can change what He has foreordained. Nevertheless, Calvinism does seek to make sense of human moral responsibility through a theory of combatibility between God’s ordaining things but holding us responsible. It’s theory of compatibilistic “free” will for humans is not, however, the same thing as libertarian “free” will; they are completely different concepts.
Regards,
#John
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“IF WE”
Sounds like quid pro quo.
“What is it to do the work of the Father”, they asked Jesus.
“Believe in the one who He has sent”
He’s after faith.
Our obedience is the problem…not the answer to the problem.
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That’s the most gracious thing about our salvation: it’s not in the one who works or the one who desires, but in God who shows mercy. God did not save us because there was something inherent to us that was good; no Christian will look on the unsaved at the last day and say “I was better than you, because I chose God.” We will praise God for His mercy in reaching out to us with His active salvation, the salvation that starts by replacing our hearts of stone with living hearts that desire the living God.
There are a lot of people who just presume the Catholic definition of “grace”, as this kind of “stuff” that God pours all over us that somehow saves us. But that’s not what grace means in Greek; it means “kindness”, “favor”, and “something that brings joy”; it doesn’t refer to a substance, which means that “by grace” doesn’t mean that this thing we can only call “grace” acts on us to save us. When God saves us “by grace” it means that God saves us because He is kind; it doesn’t mean God pours something called “charis” on us that mixes with our faith to form salvation.
This is why the doctrine of salvation by God’s grace brings glory to God — because it’s all about the kindness/gift/favor credited exclusively to God. The grace that God shows to us doesn’t become our grace; grace is not the sort of thing that a dead saint can store up for living saints. It’s all God’s kindness/gift/favor/grace.
Whenever we see the word “grace”, we should ask what gift God’s actually given us that shows His kindness/grace. In Eph 2 the gift is making us alive although we’re children of wrath. In 1 Cor 15:10 it’s a transformation in character that allows Paul to “work harder than them all”. In Eph 3:8 it’s enlightenment as to the nature of salvation.
Rom 11:6 supports this by pointing out that grace wouldn’t be grace if salvation was by works — this doesn’t make sense if grace were a thing in itself, but it makes complete sense if you know that grace is *kindness*.
In this case, the reason that it’s in accordance with our desires and all about grace is that it’s merely the kindness/grace of God that we desire Him. If not for His unilateral action, we’d still desire hell far more than Him.
-Wm
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Re evangelism and mbaker’s post 110 and Tanksley’s post 116
Calvinism does entail the belief that nothing we do will change the number of the elect. So mbaker’s comment that evangelism is pointless does make sense, because it’s true. However, Calvinism also includes the belief that God ordains the means of salvation and has ordained that we should preach the gospel. Calvinism brings all scriptures into play, and since some scriptures state that we are commanded to preach the gospel and evangelise we must therefore be obedient and do that.
Hyper Calvinism is usually thought of as pursuing on the logic of TULIP without integrating other scriptures. On the basis of TULIP alone, evangelism is pointless and a hyperCalvinist would not evangelise. However, when other scriptures commanding evangelism are included, a Calvinist would evangelise even though the number and identity of the elect was determined before creation.
Note that preaching the gospel is irrelevant to salvation, though. Both the unelect and elect will hear the same gospel preached, but only the elect will be saved. The difference is that God regenerates the elect so that they will respond. And God has foreordained that those whom He will elect will hear the gospel.
Of course, if one went through one’s entire life never ever sharing the gospel, that would be because God ordained / foreordained that. Nevertheless, even though that was ordained by God, God will still hold responsible the person that never shares the gospel. The word covering this belief (God ordains and we are still responsible) is compatibilism.
Regards,
#John1453
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Marc,
Your probably aware of this, but some of your comments are dangerously close to Pelagianism. Maybe I’m misreading you, but you seem to be saying that salvation, justification, and sanctification are all about us and that no help from God is needed. The idea that humans could come to God with no help or intervention from God was declared heresy very early in church history during the schism between Augustine and Pelagius. Even an Arminian like myself who believes that people can freely accept or reject God believes that we have the ability to do those only because of God’s enabling grace.
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Wm T,
I was merely asking you a question about the Calvinistic point of view, which John#1453 caught, and has answered. I am glad to know you believe evangelism isn’t pointless, and Christianity is about Christ, not just a certain point of view.
I probably fall more in the compatibilism category, as far as believing that God enables people to find Him, but I do not buy the TULIP theory because I believe it makes Christianity nothing more than an exclusive club. One thing I cannot understand from that point of view is why Christ had to die on the cross, if everyone who is going to heaven is already predetermined by election, and not by folks doing as the Bible instructs (John 3:16) and simply believing in Christ as their Lord and Savior.
To tie this in with the subject of the post, for me this creates another ‘stupid statement’, to use CMP’s words, that I am constantly having to grapple with, which from the impression I get here those who don’t believe as Calvinists do, may not be part of the elect. These are real questions people ask when they hear such things about predestination and limited atonement. They know that we are all sinners, and think because of that they may not be chosen after all, even if they accept Christ, confess their sins and repent of them.
Do you understand the reason for my question now? What if someone has faith, but isn’t chosen for heaven?
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Heh. It’s a pleasure to agree with you, steve. Please keep in mind, however, that my statements have context. You just yanked a comment from the middle of a post in which I expressed how salvation is NOT about us.
But salvation does, contrary to what you imply, involve us. If it did not, either CMP would be wrong because our “petty” sins WOULD condemn us, or God would just let us into heaven in spite of sins and without any change in us.
This is incoherent: fruit-producing is the opposite of navel-gazing. Christ cursed the fig tree for a lack of fruit.
Concentrating on Christ’s finished work that produces salvation is not exclusive with concentrating on working out our salvation.
-Wm
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William,
He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.
He causes the good fruit, not our efforts.
The scriptures are replete with this language as well.
I choose to trust in Him to do in and through me what He wills.
So many doers will hear “depart from me I never knew you.”
Maybe because they will be so focused on what ‘they ought be doing’, and not trusting completely in what the Lord has done, is doing, and will yet do.
Just a thought.
Thanks, William.
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John, I think you understand Calvinism very well; but you’re ignoring the meaning of the word “fatalism” — or at least the meaning I choose to give it — when you contradict my post above. (I’m smiling when I say that!)
Fatalism implies not merely that a higher power than us determines the ultimate outcomes; it also implies a resignation that we should all feel because what we want truly doesn’t matter.
But this is antibiblical. What we want truly will matter. It will not matter to the elimination of God’s sovereignty; rather it will matter because of God’s sovereignty over what we want.
Piper comes in for a lot of criticism, but he does a good job of explaining why our desire, for God or against Him, matters so much (at least once you get past the controversialist title of “Christian hedonism”).
When “the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the LORD,” God does not need to suspend the laws of aerodynamics, gravity, and semielastic collisions in order to get the decision He wants from the dice. Nor does he have to suspend the randomness of quantum fluctuation. He created them, He rules them, and He works through them.
While I’m on this topic, let me quote a different message, in which you say: “Note that preaching the gospel is irrelevant to salvation, though.” Again, this is antibiblical: the Bible specifically says that preaching the Gospel is relevant to, and in fact necessary for, salvation. You can’t have one without the other. The fact that God is sovereign over salvation doesn’t mean that salvation doesn’t utterly depend on preaching the gospel — because God is sovereign over the preaching of the gospel.
-Wm
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I just really and truly wish someone, anyone, could explain to me how our desires and choices can really matter when God has already determined what they are going to be????
He says from eternity that you or I are going to be a specific type of person, destined either for heaven or hell according to the Calvinist view under discussion. Since he has determined what kind of a person we are going to be, he has also determined what we are going to do and how we are going to respond. So….He is sovereign and there is no way that we can do other than what He has determined we are going to do. How in the world then can our choices be our own when he made them ahead of time for us and we have no say in the matter?? How can we possibly do anything else other than what he has determined? And if He has determined what we will do and that some of us will go to heaven and some to hell, how in the world can you say that it is not our decision or have anything to do with us if we are elected to heaven but has everything to do with us if we are reprobated to hell??? There is a total lack of logic and consistency there.
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Another question–Am I maybe confusing two strains of Calvinism in my last question? As I was looking back over some past comments here, I am wondering if that may be the case.
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Re Tanksley’s post 125 on fatalism and Calvinism
Fatalism may lead to people feeling resigned to their fate, but resignation is not part of the definition or scope of fatalism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines “fatalism” as follows:
“Fatalism is the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. It may be argued for in various ways: by appeal to logical laws and metaphysical necessities; by appeal to the existence and nature of God; by appeal to causal determinism. When argued for in the first way, it is commonly called “Logical fatalism” (or, in some cases, “Metaphysical fatalism”); when argued for in the second way, it is commonly called “Theological fatalism”. When argued for in the third way it is not now commonly referred to as “fatalism” at all, and such arguments will not be discussed here.”
According to Calvinism, God foreordains everything that comes to pass, down to the hairs on our head, the falling of sparrows, the lifting of our pinky, and what we get dressed in each morning. There is nothing that we can do to change what God has foreordained not only before we existed but even before the universe existed.
If we could never choose and do other than we chose and did, how can we be responsible for out actions? Calvinism’s answer is twofold: (1) compatibilism, and (2) we have to live with the contradiction because God’s ways are higher than ours and we will never understand it (at least this side of heaven, if ever).
Of course, Arminians and others answer the question of responsibility for our actions (moral and otherwise) via the concept of libertarian free will (which Calvinists reject).
Calvinists also assert that we should not be resigned to our fates because (1) God commands us otherwise (e.g., evangelise even though the elect are predetermined), and (2) we cannot know what our fate is. That is, if I knew I was fated to die tomorrow in a car accident, I might feel and act resigned ot my fate. However, if God has predetermined / foreordained that I will die tomorrow in a car accident, but I do not know that, then I can feel and live without resignation.
As for whether what we want matters, Calvinism’s response is that they matter (1) because God gave them to us, and (2) we possess them personally as part of our physical and spiritual being. Of course one may respond that those desires cannot really be mine in any significant way if I am not the first or prime mover in the creation of my desires (i.e., if they are not the result of libertarian free choices). Calvinism replies, “get over that, that’s not how the world operates”.
Tanksley sneeks in the word “random” in “randomness of quantum fluctuation”, but there is nothing random at all, ever, in the Calvinist world. Things may appear random to us, from our perspective, but not to God. The God who controls the fall of a sparrow also controls the quantum fluctuations.
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Well, no matter how many times Calvinism says, “get over that, that’s not how the world operates,” to say that I am responsible for the choice of how I lift my little finger today if God foreordained it before the universe existed and there is nothing that I can do to change it, that makes us puppets of God’s as far as I can tell. There is no way that I can be said to really make a choice to lift my pinky today when God said millenia ago that is exactly what I would do today at whatever hour, minute, and second that he determined it would happen and that there is nothing at all I can do to change that action. Sure, He is God and is sovereign and I guess if He chooses to make me responsible for what He has determined I will do, no questions asked, He can do that. But that certainly has nothing of any kind of fairness or justice to it that can be understood by human beings in any way, shape, or form we are used to defining those terms.
And yes, in the end, as far as I can tell, it makes God ultimately responsible for each and every wrong and sinful act that is ever committed on this earth if He has said that they will happen and no one can do anything other than what He has decreed.
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Cheryl, that is exactly the problem I have with Calvinism. If everything is preordained by God then does that mean God has created folks to sin, and deliberately go to hell? I cannot wrap my mind around the concept that Christianity simply is a rigged deck, in which the sinner’s fate is predetermined without mercy or chance of repentance. And why would we be called to repentance, if there were no chance of that being accepted?
These are the same folks who argued on another thread that God can’t sin, so if He can’t sin, and scripture says He is a holy and just God, why would He deliberately create sinners with no chance of regeneration? Seems to me that would not be saving grace at all but a cruel chess game, and we would be the pawns.
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mbaker,
“…..a cruel chess game, and we would be the pawns.”
The same analogy was in my mind this p.m. A chess game indeed where the pawns that have been deliberately caused to be the losers of the game are then gathered up by the maker and player of the game and thrown into a fireplace that burns forever!
This just isn’t at all the picture of God I see in most of the Bible and is not the picture of Jesus I see while He was on earth. I think there simply has to be a better way of trying to make sense of the verses that speak this way in the Bible to make them harmonize better with the rest of the Word than the explanation Calvinism puts forth.
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Wm, sorry to edge in here again, late for the parade but the resurrection is surely not God’s acceptance of the sacrifice but his vindication of Jesus Messianic (and more) claim. If it is that it is without precedent – can you think of a single example of a dead animal being raised to life as proof that God accepted the sacrifice?
In eschatological terms, the resurrection is far more effective than the cross, it’s the ultimate sign that God’s Yes to the World is more powerful than His No. Grace over Justice, Love over Hate. Life over Death.
It is because of the resurrection that our faith has value, not because of the cross. If Christianity was all about Atonement, Cross plus some ghostly ascension would have sufficed. Or is God a God who likes neat tricks?
We tend to preach “if Christ has not been crucified, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” but Paul said “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins”.
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God and rolling the dice and moral responsibility
Tanksley stated, “God does not need to suspend the laws of aerodynamics, gravity, and semielastic collisions in order to get the decision He wants from the dice.” (his post 125)
Yes and no. Since God knows and ordains the movement of each atom, and ordains all of the physical laws of the universe, He can control the dice by the physical conditions he sets at creation. He can set things up initially so that He gets the rolls he wants–that is, He can create the universe in which, without His further intervention, you roll the dice on June 11th and get snake eyes, or he can create a universe in which you roll the dice on June 11th and get a “1″ and a “5″.
On the other hand, He can also create a universe in which you would roll a “1″ and “5″ without His intervention, but He does intervene so that the dice roll out as a “2″ and “4″. Of course, He would have planned to intervene in that universe.
When most people look at the world, or read the Bible, or engage in introspection, it appears that people do indeed have libertarian free will, and that such libertarian free will is necessary to a “real” life, to responsibility for actions, and to moral responsibility. Thus, for example, when one reads in Deuteronomy that God commanded the Israelites as follows: “30:19 Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!”, one would think that the Israelites have a real libertarian free choice of life or death. So what do we make of Genesis 31 where God tells Moses that he knows that the Israelites will sin?
A Calvinist says “no, God has ordained their choice from before the creation of the universe”. Indeed, Calvin himself wrote, “When, therefore, they perish in their corruption, they but pay the penalties of that misery in which Adam fell by the predestination of God, and dragged his posterity headlong after him. Is he not, then, unjust who so cruelly deludes his creatures? Of course, I admit that in this miserable condition wherein men are now bound, all of Adam’s children have fallen by God’s will. And this is what I said to begin with, that we must always at last return to the sole decision of God’s will, the cause of which is hidden in him.” (Calvin’s Institutes, 3:23.4)
In contrast, an Arminian or Libertarian would answer that God knows the future without determining /ordaining it.
Consequently, the “white lie” issue does not even make sense from a Calvinist viewpoint. God preordained that Adam would fall, and preordained that all people, everyone, would fall with him and be in sin destined for hell. This was ordained before creation, so of what relevance is a single white lie? The question does not even make sense from an Arminian viewpoint. The question only makes sense if one is a Pelagian.
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But suppose you tell what seems to be a very, very small lie or deception … which has huge consequences?
Suppose you, on a bad day, dishonestly deny health care to a poor person … who otherwise would have invented the vaccine that would have saved the world from two billion deaths?
Therefore, we were urged to be faithful in small things.
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Sin is known through the Law, and the Law given through Moses was not given to the world at large, except perhaps by proxy thorugh Israel. Even so, Romans says that the world at large still has a conscience and retains some knowledge of right and wrong, so nobody really has an excuse. But when Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law, I believe He meant more than just living a sinless life on earth. I think He meant that His sacrifice on the cross would satisfy all of the requirements of the Law that we cannot possibly fulfill. Yes, He is our penal substitution, but even better, He fulfilled the “writings contrary to us”, so that it was nailed to the cross with Him. Now, praise God, we live not by the Law, but by Grace!
Sin is hitting wide of the mark – when Adam and Eve became accountable for knowing right and wrong, they were responsible for hitting the mark each and every time. The Law shows us just how impossible that is without God’s help.
Remember God is love. Try to understand what forgiveness really is!
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Also, even though Jesus warned people not to sin, He also made it clear that our hearts are corrupt from the inside out, regardless of how perfect we are in ceremonial obsevations, etc.
I think the point is that “sin”, taken as a whole body of failure, is the sad legacy from Adam and Jesus wanted us to see how hoplessly lost we are without Him. The argument of “one little sin” sending us to Hell is incongruent with the knowledge that we are all immersed in it from birth; reductio ad absurdum, I think.
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C. Barton.
Amen!
People ought not be so concerned about the ‘worst’ that they do, but rather they ought be more concerned about the ‘best’ that they do.
For that is not good enough, either.
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Sure! Imagine you have a young son, and he tries to emulate you, but he just doesn’t “get it” all the time. As long as he keeps his eye on you, he will learn more and do better. That’s kind of what I think it is like.
Paul said that we should put sin behind us – do ya think God is a little excited about our eternity with Him? Yay!
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As for Islam, well, many who traced the roots of this religion tell us that Allah is the name of an old pagan moon god, which is why the crescent moon is its symbol. It’s better to look beyond the ceremonial observances, however pious they seem, and get to the core: Jesus said that anyone trying to get into the Kingdom of Heaven without Him is just a thief. Jesus is truly the only way, and let us remember Col. 2:9 which reveals that God (the TRUE God!) was fully in Jesus while He walked the earth. So, you have to take Jhwh and Jesus together, or not at all.
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Further thoughts on agreeing and disagreeing with CMP
The “white lie” concept that CMP is reacting to is a Pelagian concept, which is not surprising given the pelagian content of much of the preaching in North America.
In Pelagian thought the sin of Adam belongs to him alone and does not belong to humankind in general, as an essential aspect of its post-Adam nature. In this view a first (temporally) sin exists but an original sin does not exist. We are born innocent and have a moral existence in which our sin-guilt is not a natural event (i.e., the result of being born a descendent of Adam), but must be an event of freedom. Everybody must commit their own sin in order to be a sinner. Descent from Adam doesn’t make one a sinner.
In this Pelagian view, no one is going to hell unless one commits a sin, and Christ, who lived a sinless life, is the paradigmatic example of the possibility before each of us of living a sinless life.
Consequently, in the pelagian view, one white lie would be sufficient to send one to hell (and so CMP is wrong).
But CMP is correct in identifying the pelagian falsity of the white lie view (though he does not identify it as such). The falsity lies not in the concept of one sin sending us to hell (which is true from the Pelagian perspective), but in the falsity of the Pelagian perspective itself.
If we all have a sin nature, and sinfulness, inherited naturally from Adam (by way of inherited flesh or spirit or both), then we are doomed to hell from the get go. And here is where CMP goes off the rails a bit, at least from a reformed perspective (whether Calvinist or Arminian, because both adhere to total depravity). The rebelliousness of which CMP writes is not an individual sin so much as it is a state of being, a kind of nature. Though one could say that the sin of rebellion is repeated every second that we live unsaved, it would be more accurate to say that it is our very nature that is separated from and in opposition to God.
Furthermore, and apart from and in addition to any conscious rebellion we are doomed to hell before we ever commit any individual sin. The depraved nature that each of us inherits from Adam dooms us to hell before any overt acts of rebellion.
Thus, it is incorrect to state that there is any specific sin that sends us to hell; and hence incorrect to even point to the sin of rebellion. One white lie will not make a difference: we’re going to hell anyway.
Finally, from a Calvinist perspective we’re in hell not because we want to be there, but because we are not elect. Hell is the default position for all of us.
Regards,
John
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#John,
Please clarify something for me if you would. Very recently on another thread on this site, you argued against the Calvinist position and stated that you rejected it. Now on this thread, you sound like you are arguing for the Calvinist position and that you are supporting it. Have you changed your thoughts on this matter?
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Certainly we know the wages of sin is death, but it must also be pointed out here that if the Calvinist point of view is correct, it wouldn’t matter anyway. If we are doomed not be chosen for heaven before we are born, and that stands no matter what we do, then it would seem that we are not condemned to hell by simply being born with an inherited sin nature, or for telling a lie, but because we were not chsoen as part of the elect in the first place.
Sorry, but I fail to see much difference in that position and what you are describing as pelagianism, as far as final consequences go.
I don’t see, under those circumstances, that accepting Christ’s life, death and resurrection here on earth would make any difference at all.
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Hmmm . . . could be, I guess. I like to remember that Abraham was credited for his faith, before the Law, and before Jesus’ magnificent sacrifice.
Could it be that God was redeeming people way back then?
And what about Enoch, who had the Heavenly elevator ride?
It is God who decides, and He made it clear He wants us to be with Him. Now that His gift of salvation (John 3:16) is formally announced, we all can be with Him if we choose! God’s story in the Bible is self-revelatory in nature. He did all the work to get our attention, even when we didn’t care. That sounds like all are called to grace to me. NO ONE is excluded without a free choice. Period.
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Cherylu
Nope, not a Calvinist. Rather,
1. I’m trying to better understand Calvinist theology.
2. One of the best ways of arguing against Calvinism is just to expose what it actually says.
3. As one can see from the reactions to the quotes from Calvin, etc., Calvinism has a seriously deficient view of God’s relationship to us and a deficient view of love. The apostle John wrote, “God is love”, not “God is justice”, “God is glory”, “God is sovereign”, or “God is a punisher”. Before creation there was nothing to be sovereign over, no justice to dispense–but there was love. There was love among the members of the Triune God. It was out of love that God made the universe. Christ Himself said that the two greatest commandments were to love God and to love others as ourselves. The greatest commandment was not to glorify God. Consequently, John Piper is way off base with his glorify God schtick.
Regards,
#John
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John1453:
There’s an old gag that says, “Daily beatings will continue until morale improves – The Management”. Which delightfully illustrates the need for Spirit-led love and obedience. Just another way of saying that the Law kills, but the Spirit makes alive, and as we walk in love we naturally glorify Him who made us to be like Him.
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Thanks #John,
I thought that was the case. But I wanted to be sure something hadn’t changed. It can be hard having a conversation with someone when you don’t know which side of an issue they are really on! I also thought that if any one was reading this thread that hadn’t read your rejection of Calvinism on the other thread that they would probably think you were one too!
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John1453,
In doing a study of what it means to love God, I found that over and over in scripture, it simply means to obey. Does that definition affect your point? Does obedience glorify God in a sort of inseparable way?
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Further reflections and shifts in thinking
The white lie concept works in the context of pelagianism, wherein one is morally neutral until one commits a conscious sin, even one, such as a white lie. However, on further thought, it does not seem to me that pelagianism is at issue in North America. Rather, it seems to proceed from the revivalist preaching before and after the time of Jonathon Edwards, and from sermons like “sinners in the hands of an angry God” and from a misunderstanding of penal substitutionary atonement.
The white lie concept has been popularized in the Jack Chick tracts, where nearly every one ends with something like this ending from the tract, “The Accident”:
Dr. Carlton: Have you ever told a lie, my lord?
Lord Winthrop: Of course . . . Who hasn’t?
Dr. Carlton: Then the Word of God says you are scheduled for hell.
Narrator: All liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone . . . Rev. 21:8
Lord Winthrop: Dr. . . . I’m frightened . . . How could I possible get my soul cleaned?
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0080/0080_01.asp
The white lie concept is not inherently wrong, for it is true that no one who commits a sin can be in the presence of God without Jesus Christ. The problem with the concept, however, is that is only a partial truth; it is not the whole truth.
Furthermore, anyone we talk to about Jesus will have sinned many times before our conversation with them. Sometimes the people we talk with have not or do not acknowledge their sinfulness. In such a context, it would be appropriate to use illustrations to bring home to them their sinfulness. The white lie could be such an illustration, though I doubt it would be the most effective one.
Regards,
#John
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Being human is not a sin anymore than being God is a sin. If my nature is a sin, so is His. Fair is fair. If we are really born at enmity to God and he is allowing or causing this to happen, then he is as much at enmity with us by His nature than we are at enmity with Him by our nature. If we are really born at enmity to God and He is causing this to happen as his punishment of Adam’s sin, then He is as much at enmity with us by His nature as we are at enmity with Him by our nature. We both are then equally guilty, and shall not the equally guilty just mutually forgive one another if they are rational?
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“That a mass murderer who repents will go to heaven, while a virtuous atheist will go to hell simply for not believing in God.” The major problem with believing in Johaninism and Paulinism rather than Synopticism. In the Synoptics (Mark’s inauthentic ending 16:9-20 not being counted) salvation is by keeping the moral commandments, as Jesus tells the rich young ruler when he asks “(Good) Master, What (good thing) must I do to inherit/obtain eternal life?” and Jesus gives him a list of six moral commandments. When those are not kept perfectly, Jesus blood and prayer for forgiveness come in according to the Synoptics, but never do we find a statement that unless you believe in Jesus you will be lost, which as far as the gospels are concerned is only in the gospel of John. The objection that Jesus told the rich young ruler he lacked something is overcome by knowing how to read, since what Jesus said was (according to Luke and Mark) “You lack on thing: Sell all your stuff and you will have treasure in heaven” and according to Matthew “If you want to be PERFECT, sell what you have and you’ll have treasure in heaven”–so what did he lack? Treasure in heaven, not eternal life. He had eternal life by keeping the moral commandments, but he was going to be poor in heaven for not having sold all his possessions. Again, when Jesus adds at the end “THEN come follow me” it is clear that Jesus is attempting to commission him as an apostle, which is why he asks him to sell everything and THEN follow him (Peter adding that “we” the apostles have done so). What he lacks is not salvation but treasure in heaven and the ability to become an apostle.
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Sorry for dropping out — I was busy helping my newest (third) son into the world.
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Congratulations, William!
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What a blessing, William! May your family enjoy this new one greatly.
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I’d like to understand what you mean by this. Do you mean an “exclusive club” in the sense that the members can select or reject applicants? Do you mean “nothing more” in the sense that accepting TULIP means that you reject every other Christian doctrine? (Forgive me, I’m sure neither of these are what you actually mean, but I wanted to point out that your actual meaning was obscure…)
The biggest error here is a false dichotomy: you assume that either heaven is determined by election, or folks must believe in Christ. But both can logically be true at the same time — one can be selected by God and then specially treated in some way to allow one to believe. John 6 is an example of a passage which strongly supports that.
Let’s don’t mince words: that’s schismatic of them. Who precisely is making that statement, and in what words? You’re making a strong accusation of a very serious error.
Why would TULIP be especially bad for one such as that? The corresponding discomfort in Arminianism is that one might not believe strongly enough, or might have forgotten about a sin before confessing it. The problem here isn’t in TULIP or Arminianism, but in an unbiblical misunderstanding thereof. The solution isn’t to switch to the other “side”, but to see what the Bible teaches.
Rhetorical question: What if someone comes to Christ, but the Father didn’t draw him? Will he be raised up on the last day?
Straight answer: Your question is based on the false premise that someone can have saving faith without being chosen for heaven.
-Wm
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So near, yet so far. You still think that “our efforts” aren’t caused by God. The good fruit is caused by our willing and our doing, and the Bible explains that we should be full of awe at this, because God is the one working in us “both to will and to do His good pleasure.”
So: He causes the good fruit by means of our efforts, which in turn He causes.
-Wm
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Re post 54 comment on Arminianism
Tanskley wrote, “corresponding discomfort in Arminianism is that one might not believe strongly enough, or might have forgotten about a sin before confessing it.”
However, neither of those two points are a true and so they are not a correct description of Arminianism.
Regards,
#John1453
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William,
I don’t know, maybe you have never thought about this. But honestly, what do you think it would be like to fear, as the person in the above comment mentioned, that maybe you were not one of the elect? To know beyond doubt that you are a sinner and that as such you deserve hell and that maybe God has destined you to go there with no hope of what Jesus did ever applying to you? To know that if that is true, there is absolutely no hope for you and that you will never get to heaven? That you only have an absolutely terrifying eternity in hell ahead of you? And that absolutely nothing will ever, ever change that fact? That maybe nothing you have experineced so far in your life that you have thought to be genuine Christian experience was real after all because maybe you are not one of the elect? Those thoughts are terrifying and I will admit that I experienced at least some of them when I was first exposed to Calvinism. And they still cross my mind at times.
How can someone who believes in Canvinism ever to assured of their salvation? After all, part of TULIP is perseverance of the saints. How will they know if they are elect or not until they die and stand before Him? How can any one of you now know that you will actually persevere until the end? I just don’t get it.
And as the person above mentioned, TULIP can be a problem because of these very issues.
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Someone might confess to God sins in particular but salvation is not dependent on ceremony, as in the OT regulations. If we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive and to cleanse us from unrighteousness.
I don’t know any responsible parents who allow their baby to cry for hours with a wet diaper. We care for our babies from the heart: so does God – he cleans us up every time and perhaps we are a little wiser the next time around. If not, we will encounter His discipline, but He does NOT withdraw salvation or forgiveness because of our efforts or lack thereof.
Also, the epistles from John were addressing gnosticism which had crept into the church, so that John’s mention of confession of sin, and that Christ came in the flesh, were targeted at specific heresies coming from the gnostics. Even though John’s words have general value to us today his words about confession, I presume, cannot be expanded into a general doctrine of conditional forgiveness.
Also, the Bible tells us repeatedly that God does not reject anyone who comes to Him; this is evidence that the narrowest definition of predestination is incorrect.
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John, I apologize for not mentioning _first_ in my post that the reason these correspond is that they’re not true. You listed two common misunderstandings of Calvinism and blamed Calvinism for them; I explained that there are also misunderstandings of Arminianism.
-Wm
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Please don’t put words in my mouth, William. You are making a lot of unfounded assumptions. It will be sufficient to state your case without the personal asides. I am simply asking questions about why so much of Calvinism seems to hinge upon election/ predestination, and why and how that fits in with Christ dying on the cross for our sins, and how it all ties in with the subject of this post.
As for me, I have been in various forms of ministry for over 25 years, so I do have some understanding of the Bible, so please try not to be quite so harsh and condescending in your answers. We are all simply trying to understand your position here, while trying to keep on topic. Thanks.
FYI, I know that I am saved because I have accepted Christ as my Savior, regardless of what Calvinism or Arminianism or anyone else says.
And BTW, congrats on your new family addition.
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mbaker, I was trying to ask what you meant, not trying to put words in your mouth. I truly don’t know what you meant. I know it’s not one of those things, and I said so.
If you don’t want to explain yourself there, more power to you. Could you interact with the rest of my post?
-Wm
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William,
Not to start a problem here, but I’m wondering why you always seem to go through other’s posts and argue with them line by line, but never clearly state your own position. I’m sorry you didn’t/don’t understand my meaning, but apparently some of the others here did. I really don’t understand how I could make the questions any clearer.
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mbaker, I don’t know why you don’t know what my position is… But by and large, this isn’t the right place to hash my position out. We’re here to interact with each other over the original post. I have to admit that responding “line by line” is something I do, and it’s not the best mode of replying; but it’s easy to do. And when you make a reply that covers a lot of topics, replying line by line helps make an otherwise diffuse reply much more coherent.
Finally… I did fear that I understand your meaning (for the phrase “I do not buy the TULIP theory because I believe it makes Christianity nothing more than an exclusive club”); it wasn’t an rejection of TULIP based on argument or data, but based on imagined social consequences. I’d like to recommend that you learn more about it before you reject it on those terms. Alternately, you could explain what you actually meant; I’m open to correction, and I’d rather NOT believe that’s what you meant.
Compatibilism (with which you agree) applies very well to this topic because in a compatibilist model, one’s actions stem from what one actually is, not from a hypothetical freedom. We lie because we are children of the father of lies. We sin because we are slaves of sin. Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags because we do them as part of a rejection of God’s glory. After we’re redeemed, born again, and adopted, we love because we’re children of God, and do righteousness because we are slaves of righteousness — and our deeds are truly righteous because our desire is for God. “Telling a white lie” won’t send us to hell, but being enslaved to sin will.
-Wm
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Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t the sort of thing you want determine the sort of thing you get? Why should God create — for example — lambs, and then offer them meat? God didn’t ask our permission before He created us, nor did He ask before He made us humans rather than bears, teacups, or angels. As a human, we’re a type of being that has everlasting destiny; and we get to choose that destiny based on our reaction to God in this life.
I understand and sympathize that you don’t like one of the possible destinies; but God created hell as well as heaven, and it’s a good thing.
Yes. He says that, and creates you and I as the sort of human who wants that destiny more than the alternate.
This sounds exactly like Paul’s objection in Rom 9:19. Isn’t that suggestive of some similarity to what you’re hearing from us, and what Paul was trying to teach?
Also, it’s not true that we have no say in the matter. We have precisely the say in that we choose what we desire. We don’t get to set our own desires in general — but how (by what causal force) could we possibly accomplish that?
Well, you’re right; that argument is shoddy (as presented). Our final destiny, like our duties on earth, is given to us based on our capabilities and gifts. It has everything to do with us in the sense that it’s perfectly appropriate for the sort of being we are. And it has everything to do with God in the sense that he’s the Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge.
There has to be symmetry, and I admit that the argument as presented lacks it. (I’ve probably given that argument myself, so I’m not blaming you for the bad presentation.)
-Wm
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A philosophical encyclopedia is an excellent way to narrow and set the terms of a discussion, but it’s an awful way to tell what an ordinary speaker meant. The dictionary meaning of fatalism includes resignation, and the error of fatalism in theology means that one believes that because God is sovereign and/or provident, that one should resign oneself to that and not strive for results.
As phrased, this is a simple non sequitur. Why would being able to do otherwise make us more responsible for our actions?
That’s correct, but FAR from complete. You also missed the fact that our fate is determined through the means of our desires and actions. If my desire is to sit here resigned, that is a solid sign that I’m NOT saved.
Very nicely stated.
Indeed. Question: are you actually claiming that the universe includes more than one prime mover (consider the meaning of “prime mover”)? Do you think that objection has any meaning?
We are not our own creators. We didn’t choose our parents, our genetics, or most of our upbringing. Those factors account for some 60% of socio-economic outcomes, according to separated-twin studies. Do you think those do NOT determine desires?
I see no reason to disbelieve in randomness. God works through randomness; He said so. I don’t know whether the universe includes truly nondeterministic things, as the most plausible models of quantum theory require; if it does, God works in and through that randomness, just as He does through the nonrandom laws He’s…
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In post 132, Marc:
Marc, please feel welcome to correct me quickly when I misspeak. Thank you; I was wrong, and your correction is appreciated.
-Wm
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That also fits with my personal view of miracles — I believe that they’re done to speak to us, not merely because God needed them in order to finish His work.
Everyone knows we have free will. Few people actually try to distinguish between that and libertarian free will — when you actually think about it, the latter is not physically testable, and thus is impossible to distinguish from non-libertarian free will.
LFW advocates normally blur the difference, not out of dishonesty but because LFW is a sophisticated philosophical concept, not a product of everyday experience.
Note how the LFW advocate inserts the word “libertarian” when the Bible implies nothing of the sort: no “you could do otherwise.” In fact, God knew they, as a group, couldn’t. This passage shows that there was a pair of options, not that the sons of Israel were in some kind of libertarian equipoise between the two.
Reading “free will” into this is correct. Reading “libertarian free will” goes far beyond the testimony.
-Wm
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Wm,
“Also, it’s not true that we have no say in the matter. We have precisely the say in that we choose what we desire. We don’t get to set our own desires in general — but how (by what causal force) could we possibly accomplish that?”
That is just one of the areas where your understanding of Scripture and mine are very different. That understanding makes people robots/puppets of God’s since they have no way to change what He has preprogrammed them to be.
It makes His statement that “God is love”, and the verses that tell of God’s pleading and desire for all to be saved utter nonsense if He has made most people with no possibility of that ever happening.
His statement that, “God is love”, becomes an ironic and bitter joke for those people. How is the world can a God that describes Himself as “Love” deliberately create a mass of humanity for the express purpose of suffering an endless, horrific, completely unthinkable torment in a place He says was created for the devil and His angels? And a place that He tells us is to be avoided at all costs? Very strange kind of love that is!
Because He has stated that He is “Love”, and that He does want all to come to repentance, pleads with us to be reconciled to Him, and says He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, I continue to think that there must be some other understanding or way to harmonize Scripture than the way the Calvinist system of theology does it.
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Wm,
You also said, “There has to be symmetry, and I admit that the argument as presented lacks it. (I’ve probably given that argument myself, so I’m not blaming you for the bad presentation.)”
I have read on several other Calvinist sites that have plainly stated that there is no symmetry here, that one is given undeserved mercy and the other only what He deserves. And I have had a discussion on another site with Calvinists that have stated that those that go to hell are only getting what they deserve, that God has simply, “passed them by”, and not offered them the mercy that He does the elect, who by the way, also deserved hell.
So obviously, there is a great deal of difference even among Calvinists themselves in their understanding of these issues.
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Sorry for my multiple posts in a row here. I was trying to edit my last one and got interrupted by the phone and the time ran out.
I wanted to say that those other Calvinists I have read say that there is no “double predestination”. That some are chosen–predestined or elected– for heaven, but the others are not predestined for hell. They are merely getting what they deserve, which the elect also deserved. But God chose to have mercy on the elect. Hope I am presenting that correctly.
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Of course, the Bible also tells us that nobody comes to God unless God draws them.
-Wm
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From # 64 above:
“Yes. He says that, and creates you and I as the sort of human who wants that destiny more than the alternate.”
The destiny being spoken of here was either heaven or hell.
William, are you saying that you honestly believe that people want to be tormented endlessly in hell for ever? That God created them to desire that?
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Egalitarianism is a good thing. We are all fundamentally equal as humans. But God is not equal to us; what is true about us is not necessarily true about God.
This assumes that we are coexistant with God; that God somehow violated the rules of our nature when we violated the rules of His nature. But that’s not true; God is self-existent, and we are not. God’s nature is the foundation of the universe; ours is not. And finally, God did not violate our nature by creating us; rather, He actualized it. Without Him, we would not be.
-Wm
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I John 4:8 states that, “God IS love”. The definition of the word love used here according to Thayer’s Lexicon is, “1) affection, good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love.”
That being the case, what kind of “love” is it to destine or decree someone to spend an eternity of utter torment in hell with no hope of ever changing that decree?!? In effect, “I love you SO much that I am gifting you with an eternity of horrible torture in hell!!”
Something seems to me to be terribly wrong with that picture.
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I John 4:8 states that, “God IS love”. The definition of the word love used here according to Thayer’s Lexicon is, “1) affection, good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love.”
That being the case, what kind of “love” is it to destine or decree someone to spend an eternity of utter torment in hell with no hope of ever changing that decree?!? In effect, “I love you SO much that I am gifting you with an eternity of horrible torture in hell!!”
Something seems to me to be terribly wrong with that picture.
(I’m sorry if this comment comes through twice. I tried to post it before and it said for some reason that it went to moderation. Wanted to try it again before the conversation moves on completely.)
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Cheryl, first, I really appreciate the spirit of mercy and encouragement I see in this question. I have wondered, and I have helped a few others through this type of crisis, one of whom was (and remains) an Arminian.
I see that you’re vacillating a little. You say “maybe God has destined”, but then you switch to “absolutely no hope”. Maybes and absolutelies don’t mix. If you can hear the message, you can be saved.
Yes. And before I understood any doctrine of grace, I had those terrifying moments when I wondered whether I’d crossed the line from a little backsliding to total unsavedness. This is a problem of Pelegianism, of course.
A friend of mine is confident he’s a Christian (he is), but looking back he wonders what would have happened if he’d died during his period of severe backsliding. From that, he goes to wondering whether he can really be sure he’ll always be saved — he’s told me that if God offered to take him up to heaven now he’d have no choice, because he doesn’t know whether he’ll retain his salvation. This is a problem of Arminians who reject Perseverance (not all do) — and note that Paul didn’t have this problem when he said “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”
Perseverance until death is a sign of salvation, but so is perseverance until *now*. If you believed in the message of the gospel, and it bore fruit in you, and that fruit remains to this day, you are saved. Now, mark that one of the fruits is a desire for good works, so if you don’t feel that you should either yearn for it or concede that you’re not saved, and in fact don’t want to be.
-Wm
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This is your misunderstanding of my belief, not either of our actual beliefs.
If you allow yourself to define “love”, that’s what it means. If you allow an atheist to define it, it’ll mean that God shouldn’t have created ANYONE (and he’s bitter about it). If you allow the Bible to define it, you’ll see that God shows His love in specific ways — for example, making us into children of God, or sending His only Son to die; all of those ways are redemptive and sacrificial.
God’s love isn’t a gooshy feeling that He has toward everything in general. It’s a living, active thing. As Lewis said: it is “fiery, sharp, bright and ruthless, ready to kill, ready to die, outspeeding light.” We don’t say that God is love because we know he feels it; we say it because He acted.
If your definition of Love holds, it would have to hold for all men, and would require God to Love them all into heaven. Why not? What is stopping Him?
In 1 John 4, where we see the snippet “God is love”, we also see the context that we should love in the same way — and who are we commanded to love? Not everyone, but rather all Christians. Isn’t John asking us to imitate God?
No, God’s love doesn’t create a debt that requires Him to save us; if it did, our salvation wouldn’t be by grace.
-Wm
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I never said that God’s love required Him to save all men. What I said was that the definition of love, which is what God said He is–and yes He is asking us to imitate Him–doesn’t fit with deliberately creating people to be eternally tortured with out any opportunity of any thing else. That doesn’t mean that He has to save some one who is deliberately wicked and rejecting His message. But to deliberately create some to be such with no chance of being any other way is not acting in love.
You mentioned that you just had a new born son. Would you consider yourself a loving parent if you and your wife deliberately planned to conceive that child, carry him to term, and also planned before He was conceived to then treat him after birth in ways that could only be described as utter torture for the rest of his life?? Of course not, that is not acting in love.
I can not see how a God that says that He IS love–that love is His very essence– can possibly create a large share of His creatures for the ultimate purpose of torturing them eternally. That goes totally against ANY definition of love that I can imagine.
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Saying that we are free simply because we get what we want, when, in fact, it is God who deliberately programmed us with those wants is to posit a definition of the word “free” that I think most people would reject.
And it does absolutely nothing to convince me that evil is my own fault and not God’s.
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Yeah, if you program a robot to go out and kill people and be a thief and that robot doesn’t have any way to do anything else but what you have programmed it to do, how can the ulitimate cause of the robot’s criminal activity be any thing other than you who have programmed it as such?
And if God “programmed” some to be sinner’s who have no desires to do anything other than to sin, how can the utlitmate cause of that person’s sin be placed anywhere else than with God?
That is another reason that I believe the Calvinist understanding has to have gone wrong somewhere.
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I said “more than the alternative.” Yes, unregenerate people would rather spend their everlasting life in the torments of hell than give due adoration to God.
I wasn’t trying to imply that they’d choose hell if given a blank slate — although the place they’d build for themselves would certainly become hellish. Some theologians have hypothesized that this is indeed the case — that the horrors of hell are actually a limit on the true horrors that we could build ourselves, if left without limits. But that’s speculation.
-Wm
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“Agape” doesn’t appear in surviving Greek texts outside of the Bible (as a noun; it does occur as a verb, although it’s rare). (It first appears in the Septuagint.)
The question, therefore, is what meaning the Bible gives to it. And crucially, 1 John 4:8 seems to apply it only to loving fellow Christians. Now, we know that we’re commanded to love others elsewhere; I’m not saying that we shouldn’t or God doesn’t. But in this verse, “God is love” is only applied as a model for loving other Christians. I claim that “God is love” doesn’t mean that God can’t create as He wills, even when some of His creation isn’t destined for as much glory as the rest.
On judgment day, suppose an unrepentant atheist stands and screams that exact question at you. How do you answer, given that this person’s state — he’s now certainly facing what you declare here would be impossible for a God of love.
-Wm
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William,
“On judgment day, suppose an unrepentant atheist stands and screams that exact question at you. How do you answer, given that this person’s state — he’s now certainly facing what you declare here would be impossible for a God of love.”
Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to me that you may be missing my point entirely here. My point is not that an unrepentant atheist should not go to hell. One more time–My point is not than an unrepentant athiest should not go to hell. My point is that by any definition of love that I know of or can imagine, it is not an act of love to create a person solely for that purpose. The suffering that person will experience in hell for eternity is no less real because God decreed that he is to go there by making him the kind of person that will be an unrepentant atheist, is it?
Remember my analogy of you and your wife conceiving a child for the express purpose of tormenting and torturing him all of his life?
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“Remember my analogy of you and your wife conceiving a child for the express purpose of tormenting and torturing him all of his life?”
Wm,
Cheryl is right. I think this a good analogy, and hopefully you won’t cop out by saying “God’s ways are higher than ours” since most of us already accept that.
The real question here is not being answered: why would God love someone who considers themselves an “elected” Calvinist more than someone who doesn’t know the difference? Sounds like that is based purely upon a personal belief in Calvinism than a biblical one. Please explain to us the difference.
Is our sole criteria for being condemned to hell resting on that alone? It seems to me most Calvinisists think so, because of THEIR belief in prior election.
Give us some real scriptural back up, please.
Thanks.
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Why is the robot’s activity criminal (and charges are justly lodged against you)? Answer: because the robot is committing those against other humans, against whom you have no right to direct those encroachments. If you made robots commit those encroachments against other robots which you also built, would you be committing a crime?
I don’t think so.
But another point: please admit that this argument — again — echos Romans 9 with uncanny accuracy. You’re saying that God would be unjust to have mercy only on some and not on others (Rom 9:14-15), and you’re protesting that God shouldn’t find fault with us if we can’t resist His will (Rom 9:19). Paul answered those; I shouldn’t have to.
-Wm
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William,
You say I John 4:8 only applies to loving fellow Christians. That is the application that he is making there, yes. However, “God is love,” is still a statement defining who God is. Just because it is applied to loving fellow Christians here, does it necessarily follow that the meaning of “God is love,” is that God only loves Christians? It seems to me that to understand the verse that way may very well be a case of eisigesis.
And by the way, Romans 13:10 uses the same word for love as is used in I John in reference to loving our neighbor. Our neighbor is not necessarily just a fellow Christian, now is he? So I think your whole argument falls apart here.
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William,
“I claim that “God is love” doesn’t mean that God can’t create as He wills, even when some of His creation isn’t destined for as much glory as the rest.”
Now there is the ultimate in understatements!! Saying that some will not receive as much glory as another when one is destined for eternal blessing and the other for eternal torment seems to me to be an utterly ludicrous comparison to say the least!
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I am not arguing that Romans 9 does not say what it does. What I am saying is that I am not at all certain that the Calvinist understanding of what it is saying and the way Calvinism tries to harmonize it with the rest of Scripture is correct.
And you have yet to tell me how it could possibly be that a God who describes Himself as “love” could possibly be acting in accordance with that love by decreeing that most of the humans He created will be tormented in the lake of fire that burns forever. Don’t forget my observations in #85 above.
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I’ll answer the rest in a while… This you say is the “real question”, and I’m aghast.
When did anyone here say that salvation is determined by one’s Calvinistic rigor? How did this become “the real question”? When was it originally asked (since you allege I’m not answering it)? What did I say to raise it?
This is the strangest question I’ve seen here in a while.
-Wm
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Nevertheless, I would like to see it answered scripturally.
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mbaker: the question doesn’t appear to have a basis in scripture or reality. The question itself. It’s loaded, contrived, and incoherent. It implies that someone believes an obvious and immediate contradiction.
Oh, and you seem to be demanding that I prove this contradiction from the Bible.
What?
-Wm
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Theologically, it is possible to get a very different answer from the starting point of “God is all-powerful” than from the starting point of “God is perfect love.”
I think this may be the primary error Calvin made in crafting his theology.
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Wm,
Please don’t be rude, because you don’t understand why a question is being asked. It is definitely a real one that folks ask about Calvinism.
If you don’t take it seriously, perhaps someone else here could explain why some Calvinists seem so convinced that they are the elect and others are not. It just seems to me from some of the posts so far that the impression has been given that while one white lie won’t send you to hell, being a non-Calvinist will.
If you don’t think it is a fair question, by all means don’t interact with it.
Actually, I’m interested to hear more from Seth R. about Calvin’s theology in that regard.
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Well, full disclaimer for readers who don’t know: I’m a Mormon.
Five point Calvinism is pretty much like theological anti-matter for Mormonism, and we basically reject the entire TULIP. Many Mormons tend to be more Arminian in outlook. But a growing number are embracing open theism (or “openness theology”).
This is just something I’ve noticed while debating other Christians. The primary motivating force behind a Calvinist’s entire theology is usually the preservation of God’s omnipotence. God must be all-powerful – “otherwise how can I trust him?”
Another disclaimer: Calvin is the most controversial theologian that people have never read. That would include me. But from what I’ve read from other about him – both pro and con – it seems that God’s omnipotence and omniscience are the most important driving concerns.
Thing is – the definition of omnipotence and omniscience that Calvinism uses are highly abstract and make a lot of assumptions about the ontology of the universe. Assumptions like creation ex nihilo, for instance. Or that ultimate power requires the power to annihilate. Calvinism proceeds from these assumptions and crafts an impressive theology that is both highly logical, and well-supported scripturally.
But since the assumptions it proceeds from are faulty, the results are skewed. Since Calvin reads the scriptures with an aim towards establishing a maximally powerful God, a different selection of scriptures stick out for him than would otherwise. And the whole thing is then just simple logic:
1. God is the most powerful being possible in any world or universe.
2. This requires that God be the first and final cause in the causation chain.
3. Meaning we, and everything else in the universe are contingent upon God.
4. So we get our being from God.
5. For God to be maximally powerful, he must be maximally knowing – he has to know both past, present, and future perfectly.
6. This means he knew what he was doing when he commanded us into existence.
7. He also had to know how we’d turn out.
8. This means that he knew exactly how we would end up when he was IN PROCESS of creating us.
9. That must mean he has predestined some for salvation and others for damnation.
10. To claim anything else would mean God is not omnipotent and omniscient. It would basically make him either an ignorant, or incompetent craftsman of humanity.
From this chain, predestination is really just good logic. I have to say, as much as I dislike Calvin, the theology is quite impressive. Logically, it works very well indeed. Arminianism has a hard time countering such logical progression – especially since it shares many of the same premises as Calvinism (like creation ex nihilo).
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But if you change the premises, Calvinism loses much of its potency and just starts to look distasteful.
Forget about getting an abstract being of ultimate power. Start instead from the Bible passage “God is love.” What would be needed for God to be the perfect embodiment of love?
First – Love must be shared. It cannot be purely self-directed. We know this from how God has expressed his love in Jesus Christ – “that God gave his only begotten son…”
Second – Love must be freely given by both parties. It cannot be coerced or forced. This is something we all know. If I brew up a magic love potion to make a girl fall desperately in love with me, would you say I’d found true love? Or would you reprimand me for forcing something which cannot be forced? Coercion destroys love.
From these two observations, you ask what sort of being God would have to be, and what sort of beings we would have to be.
I think when you pursue this line of thought to its logical conclusion, most of the TULIP falls apart. Total Depravity doesn’t work because there has to be something within us capable of choosing God (a good act – in and of itself). Unconditional Election doesn’t work because it introduces force and coercion into what was supposed to be a freely entered relationship. Limited Atonement isn’t something I feel I have a good enough grasp on to say much about, so I’ll leave that one. Irresistible Grace is right out because it’s basically the equivalent of the magic love potion I was talking about. No coercion allowed. Predestination doesn’t work either for the same reason.
Keep in mind – the entire TULIP is quite logical if you are talking about a God who is maximally powerful (and you make a few philosophical ontological assumptions about existence). The Calvinist God has no greater aim or purpose than to enjoy himself. After all – “what could possibly be better than me?” Human beings must be subordinated to this ultimate aim in every way. Under such a model, we frankly don’t need to care if humans are free or not. As long as they make God look good, they serve their purpose.
But if you start from what we know of love, and posit God to embody it perfectly, then this self-centered and manipulative being just won’t do.
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Yeah, Seth, as I have been discussing with William, the love issue is one of the places where it seems to me that the whole Calvinist theology breaks down. There is just no definition of love that I know of that would cover God’s actions in that theology.
However, I also believe God is all powerful. But why does being all powerful have to preclude God making the decision to allow His creation to make a choice of their own without it being completely determined for them from before creation? Isn’t that similar to a human parent with their child? They have the right to set the ground rules for that child and the right to completely enforce them. (I realize this analogy will break down, because unlike God, we can’t “make” our children do some things if they don’t want to. However, I think it is still close.). However, without losing our authority as parents to do so, we can still give that child his own choices in some matters.
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Thanks, Seth for a good explanation. I think you understood my question, and presented both sides of the coin very well.
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I think you’re right — you phrase it differently below, and it’s significant. My apologies, and I’ll discuss your point as I understand it now.
I have a few different responses.
First, God’s Love is not his only purpose and attribute. His holiness, justice, glory, longsuffering, and mercy are also in view, and He promises to reveal them to us. Thus, God’s love is not his only actuating motive.
Second, nobody’s talking about creating a person solely for the purpose of tormenting them. I’ve always said that there are other purposes to hell — and in fact, it’s pretty horrible to imagine that God is condemning people to hell (whether before or after their sin) “solely for the purpose of tormenting them.” There _must_ be something more.
Third, the problem of suffering is “no less real” on earth as it is in hell. Only the duration changes.
That would obviously be wrong. But God created us knowing that we would suffer — many of us VERY seriously, but all of us suffer. And yet He created us. Read the Psalms to see some of the laments of people put through suffering and crying out to their creator. See Job’s cry wishing he’d never been born.
But God came even closer to fulfilling this analogy. He sent His own Son — conceived, in fact, for this purpose — not only to suffer like we do, but with the purpose of killing him by torture in His prime years.
Your analogy includes the element of creating for the sole purpose of tormenting, but this is your own invention; Calvinism doesn’t make that claim.
-Wm
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“Second, nobody’s talking about creating a person solely for the purpose of tormenting them.”
That’s true. But a logical conclusion from Calvinism is that God creates some people for the purpose of damning them.
But not solely, I will give you that. God may have a plan for them to do other things before they are damned – just like he intended in the first place.
However, while this does make God a more efficient being (getting multiple different uses from the same human), I don’t see how this makes him a loving one.
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William,
Maybe I have been phrasing it wrong when I say, “creating them for no other purpose than tormenting them forever.” My point is that by decreeing that they go to hell before the creation of the world, before they were even born, and giving them absolutely no out in the matter, as far as they are concerned, THAT is the end result.
And yes, the problem of suffering on earth is far different than the problem of suffering in hell. And I don’t think by any means that it is just a problem of duration. I don’t think any suffering a person endures on this earth compares to the lake of fire that burns forever. (Unless of course they are very seriously burned–there may be some comparison there.)
And yes, we all know that God has other attributes besides love. However, I honestly don’t see that any of the ones you have mentioned above would require that God decree before the foundation of the earth that a large proportion of His creation would be doomed to an eternity in hell with no chance of anything else happening to them in order for Him to show us those characteristics. There are plenty of opportunities for us to see them all around us on a day to day basis even if God gave people choice in things. Everyone simply is not going to choose Him!
And lastly, again God has said that He is love. If you ARE something, doesn’t whatever you are permeate whatever you do even if other attributes of who you are will come into play also? How in the world does love come into play in the long run (eternity) at all for the people that, according to Calvin, are decreed before the world was even created to spend an eternity in hell? I just don’t see that as an expression of God’s love to them–an expression of that attribute of God–in any way.
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Seth,
I don’t think I have commented on this statement of yours, “Saying that we are free simply because we get what we want, when, in fact, it is God who deliberately programmed us with those wants is to posit a definition of the word “free” that I think most people would reject.”
I agree with you 100%. (Kind of interesting to find myself agreeing with you in a discussion instead of being on the opposite side of an issue!)
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Yes; and that statement still must be read in context. Nowhere in the Bible is “God is love” used to justify loving everyone we come in contact with; it’s used only here, and here it justifies loving the brethren.
You’re absolutely right; that would be eisegesis. I don’t draw that conclusion from this verse (nor from any verse — it’s not present in the Bible, thus not true). However, this verse is our only source for claiming that Love has a special place among God’s attributes, and when read in context, it does not justify claiming that God’s love necessarily extends to all men in the same way.
Because God’s love doesn’t extend to all men in the same way, your argument requires more support than simply citing “God is love.”
Not in this way. You’re pulling ideas far out of context. This would be valid only if God’s love is known to be manifested in the same way to all men; but the Bible is clear that God’s love shows itself in different ways to different targets. For example, God’s love means to Christians that we can be called the sons of God; to the world as a whole it means that God gave His Son so that whoever believes will not perish; but what does God’s love mean to the one who rejects God?
Actually, Rom 13 is an odd choice for you, as it provides a negative definition of love — essentially, “do no wrong.” 1 Cor 13 is a more thorough definition, but Luk 10 is the best for your case, as it not only shows an example of sacrificial love, but even explains that the target of neighborly love is broader than we’d like to think. How do you think Luk 10 applies to God’s love?
-Wm
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Most Arminians do deny that it refers to individual election. My trouble isn’t with your interpretation of Rom 9, but rather that the questions you ask me are apparently the exact same ones Paul asks in order to clarify what he’s teaching in Rom 9, right after Paul teaches the doctrine I’m explaining.
It’s uncanny — Paul teaches a doctrine and anticipates a specific response, and then when I teach the doctrine (as I read it), I get the exact response Paul anticipated. Doesn’t this hint that I’m reading and teaching Paul correctly? If so, don’t you think that Paul’s answers have some bearing on your questions?
Will you stand by this judgment in light of Christ’s words in Matt 7:13-14 and Luk 13:22-30, or Paul’s (quoting Isa 10:22) in Rom 9:27? How about Revelations, which declares that all the Earth will worship the Beast, and everyone who worships it will be condemned to the lake of fire?
These are not disputed points: God DOES in fact declare in the Bible that the majority of people will go to hell. I don’t have to tell you “how” it’s possible; you need to accept that it’s possible because it’s what God’s revealed about Himself.
-Wm
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I think you’re assuming that Calvin followed a process that he did not in fact follow. Calvin got his theology through exegetical study, as you can read in his Institutes, not through philosophy. Calvin didn’t try very hard to make his results philosophically strong; most of the talk about the sovereignty of God and all the talk about free-will compatibilism comes from later authors, not Calvin.
Starting with “God is love” or “God is all-powerful” will lead you to an idol. Starting with the Bible — God’s revelation — is the only way to find God.
-Wm
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WM,
That simply begs the question.
You can’t just tell me “Calvin didn’t have any preconceptions – he just went by the Bible” and actually expect me to take you seriously, can you?
I’ve had Calvinists do this to me before. Whenever the conversation doesn’t go well, they just start mouthing “well, we’re just following the Bible – so there!”
Well, I don’t think you are.
So there.
Really, the rest of your back and forth here has been much more reasonable. I expect a little better from you than a grandstanding exercise in question-begging.
But, since I’ve already admitted to not having read the Institutes, I’m willing to admit that you may well be right that a lot of the other stuff was added by later authors. Point taken on that limited issue.
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What did I say that was rude?
No it’s not — it’s a question that people ask about Christians. All of us, especially the arrogant ones.
It’s perfectly obvious that I take it VERY seriously.
Do you think you’re saved? Do you think there are others who are not? Do you ever evangelize? Doesn’t that prove that you think you’re among the saved and they aren’t? (These are purely rhetorical — the answers are obvious.)
None of this excuses arrogance, but I don’t see where that accusation is based here.
Please cite anything that could give that impression. It’s a pretty serious claim, and would definitely be both heretical against all Christianity, and self-contradictory within the context of the doctrines taught by TULIP.
I’ll definitely apologize and retract anything I said that would lead to that conclusion. I can’t just admit guilt without a fair trial, though. At least let me see the charges brought against me. I can’t recant if I didn’t know I said it.
Oh, it’s very much a “have you quit beating your wife” type of question. In this case, you accuse me of not answering the “real question”, but you’re unable to explain why you think anything I’ve said ever led to that question.
And not interacting would be foolish — you’re accusing me of preaching that only Calvinists go to heaven. For me to not contradict that would be allowing you to affirm it.
-Wm
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Willam,
I never said that most people won’t go to hell. But there is dfference in God knowing most people will go to hell and stating it as a fact and in determining ahead of time that they will go there and there being nothing they can do about it.
And I am not disputing what Romans 9 says. What I am disuputing is the way that Calvinists interpret it in the light of the rest of Scripture and the way that God has revealed Himself in the light of the rest of Scripture. There is some very severe tension there that I don’t think Calvinism has necessarily solved by way of it’s interpretation at all.
You say, “it does not justify claiming that God’s love necessarily extends to all men in the same way.” And what I am saying is that I don’t get how it can be showing love in any way, shape or form to create a bunch of people–indeed most of the population of the world with a set final destiny of torture in hell. The few years of enjoying a bit of good on this earth that Calvinists would agree is God’s love to all people (as I understand it) is so far outweighed by the totality of their existence in eternal torment, that I can not for the life of me see how that constitutes love.
What do you do with a Scripture that declares that Jesus wept over Jerusalem? Sounds to me like He loved them. He also declared that He longed to gather them together but they would not. If He longed to gather them, did He not love them? And He also said they would not. Sounds like they had a choice in the matter to me.
You know, when it comes right down to it, I don’t think carrying on this conversation any more is worth either of our efforts. We come at this whole thing from such a different understanding that I don’t see how it is going to be of benefit to go on with this. Maybe I will change my mind, but that is how it seems to me at the moment.
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I probably need to add a clarification to my statement above, ” Sounds like they had a choice in the matter to me.”
I just need to say again, as others here have also, that I don’t see how it is having a “choice” if the decision on what they will choose has been made for them before the creation of the world and they can make no other decision at all. That is not then their choice. It is God’s choice for them–He made it and they are only doing what He said they would do have to do.
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Wm,
Suggest you go back and read CMP’s:
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2009/05/calvinists-lets-calm-down/
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I’m responding to your specific charge that Calvin’s mistake was starting with God’s sovereignty rather than God’s love. Calvin definitely made mistakes, but that wasn’t one of them; the theology which took his name is based on his thorough exegesis, NOT on philosophy.
Demonstrably false: Calvin was exegeting the Bible. Whether he did so correctly is a different matter, and well worth debating.
How can it be right for you to presume Calvin’s motivations, and wrong for me to correct you on them?
I don’t know what you mean by “added”.
Later people used other means to attempt to explain TULIP, including philosophy and argument from the nature of God or the nature of man; Calvin used the Bible, and generally didn’t touch the philosophy.
I’m not saying Calvin approached the Bible as a blank slate; of course you’re right that such is impossible. Nor can I claim Calvin used no philosophy; again, that’s impossible and even undesirable. My point is that Calvin didn’t justify his theology by means of philosophical extensions and arguments; he worked directly from Biblical exegesis. If you’re going to attack him — go for it — attack what he actually did.
If you want philosophy, I’d recommend Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will (available as PDF there!). That doesn’t start out with God’s sovereignty either; but that’s because it’s primarily a look at the nature of man’s ability to choose. I’ve seen it edited to remove all reference to God, and it still stands up as a decent work (although missing some important parts).
-Wm
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OK, got it. That clarifies things for me.
I just got done with a conversation with another 5-Point Calvinist who kept ignoring my points and insisting that he wasn’t putting any “lens” on the Bible and just “telling the plain language.” So maybe my irritation with him clouded the conversation here.
To your point that Calvin started with “the Bible” – I would ask:
Which part of the Bible?
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mbaker, I’m sorry, but we can’t continue on — you’re holding something against me, and you refuse to tell me what it is. Until you tell me what I’ve done to offend you, please consider this topic closed. I don’t like doing this, but I’ve spent too much time and energy trying to get you to tell me what you think is wrong.
Perhaps you’re holding me personally responsible for any wrong committed by any Calvinist anywhere?
-Wm
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Wm,
I agree you and I can’t continue on. I am holding nothing against you, or anyone. I just feel that you attack me personally, rather than attempting to interact courteously with my posts, and I don’t care for that sort of thing.
So I will say goodbye to you as well, and God bless.
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Re Tanksley’s post #164, “Also, it’s not true that we have no say in the matter. We have precisely the say in that we choose what we desire. We don’t get to set our own desires in general — but how (by what causal force) could we possibly accomplish that?”
Since our desires are established / preordained by God, we have no capacity to change them. Even our choices are ordained by God. According to TULIP Calvinism God ordained our creation, our fall and only to elect a few. In what relevant way do we have a choice or say in the matter? None, except for the weird way in which contemporary Calvinists (mis)define “choice”. Calvin himself was more straightforward: you’re going to hell, God didn’t elect you, suck it up because you can’t talk back to God, nor can you know why he didn’t choose you.
Oh, I get it. If I planned for my wife to tie up my kids and toss them off the sailboat into the water, and then I reached over the side an pulled out one of them, and then sat and watched the rest drown, THAT wouldn’t be loving. BUT if God did it, that would be loving. Because of course His love is so different from the love of those made in His image, that it’s loving for Him to watch His images go to hell. Excellent. Awesome. I can hardly wait until I get to heaven and have my faulty sense of love fixed and then I can sit on a cloud and watch (with love in my heart) all those who are suffer on the other side of the abyss, in hell.
BTW, if Calvin was such a great exegete, how is it that he believed in infant baptism, but most of the current crop of TULIP Calvinists do not? I doubt that the fact that he wrote before the passing of several hundred years of learning about the Greek and Hebrew languages, and additional understanding and learning about the Bible and exegesis gives him better insight into the meaning of the Bible.
Tanksley keeps referring to randomness. I’ve addressed his inconsistancy and error in my posts 128 & 133, but in any case I fail to see how referring to randomness at a subatomic level has any relevance to human decision making and their ultimate destiny.
Regards,
#John
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False. The reason we don’t change our desires is that we don’t want to change our desires. Why would we? They’re what we desire.
TULIP doesn’t speak to whether God ordained the fall. Some Calvinists believe that He did, some don’t. The rest of this is what all orthodox Christianity believes.
Compatibilism is a very old solution to the problem of free will. If you’d like to study the issue, it’s very interesting; I recommend it. It’s certainly not a closed issue, contrary to your claims.
False. Calvin didn’t claim to know who God elected. Other than that, you’re quoting Paul, not Calvin.
No, that’s not what I said. What I said is that God’s revelation shows us many things about Himself; we can’t reject one simply because of another.
Are you a universalist? That is, do you believe that in the final analysis, nobody is going to hell? Your diatribe is a condemnation of all Christian theology of hell, not of Calvinism.
I didn’t say that. I said that he _was_ an exegete, and that his work should be judged on that basis. I don’t think that should be controversial.
Trivially: neither position is unambiguously supported by exegesis. Both are implied by side-meanings.
-Wm
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What? I mentioned it once, in passing, and replied once to your comment about it. How does that constitute “keep referring to”?
Post 128 mentioned randomness in the last paragraph with a completely unsupported claim that Calvinists can’t believe in randomness (which I reported to be incorrect with a brief explanation). Post 133 doesn’t have anything to do with randomness, doesn’t mention the word at all.
I have no idea why you’d think that it does. DO you think that it does? I don’t.
Randomness has no more relation to God’s providence and sovereign rule over the universe than gravity or Maxwell’s law or human free will: they’re all facts of the universe, and they’re all part of how He provides for them.
-Wm
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“The reason we don’t change our desires is that we don’t want to change our desires. Why would we? They’re what we desire.”
Very circular kind of argument.
And who made us with those desires?
Why not make us with different ones?
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Wm,
Good grief, I feel like we are going around and around in hopleless circles here.
You said, “False. The reason we don’t change our desires is that we don’t want to change our desires. Why would we? They’re what we desire.”
And why is it we have those particular desires? Because according to Calvinism GOD GAVE THEM TO US. And He gave them to us without any way of us changing them–we are what we are because He made us that way and there is nothing we can do about it. So of course we don’t want to change our desires–we can’t. And we did not choose our desires–He did.
So He gave us our desires, decreed from eternity past what they will be and we have to be just as He said. And now we are at fault because of the desires that He created us to have?? And we are punished eternally for the desires He created us to have?? And this is the way God loves us?????
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And to add to that, you can’t see that ultimately then it is God’s fault in this scheme of things that we carry out wrong desires when He has given us no other option but to do so??
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I didn’t intend to say that “Calvin started with the Bible.” I find that an odd thing to say, except perhaps to emphasize that his arguments tended to start with what the Bible said rather than with what philosophy dictates (we’ve done the opposite here). I said that Calvin was primarily an exegetical student of the Bible; that’s what most of his writings were about.
Thus, if we wish to criticize Calvin effectively, looking at his actual exegeses would seem to be the most effective way to do it.
-Wm
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RE: Comment #219
Yes, and if so does that make a holy God responsible for sin? This is the dichotomy I see about TULIP Calvinism. On the one hand it suggests that a God who is omnipotent and sovereign makes the decision in advance on who will go to heaven, and we have no choice in the matter. Yet somehow, without any choice, sinners choose to sin. And our desires are ours.
Calvinists claim they don’t believe in double predestination by God- i.e. that He condemns those He doesn’t choose before creation to hell in advance. If the only two places there are to go to after we die are heaven or hell, and God alone selects only those in advance who will go to heaven, where do the others go? Do they go to hell simply by default?
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This starts out on the wrong foot. It defines God’s entire character based on a sentence fragment taken out of context, and it ignores the entire rest of the Bible based on an extrapolation to infinity of our ideas about the abstract concept expressed in that sentence fragment.
It’s as bad as the Calvinist who tries to define God’s entire character based on Christ’s statement that no sparrow falls apart from His will.
You’d probably best study your opponent better… You don’t know what most of TULIP is.
Well said; the problem is that the Bible says MANY times that there is nothing in us capable of choosing God. It says that all of our righteousnesses are as bloody rags, not merely unacceptable but utterly repugnant.
No, that’s not what it means; unconditional election means that God chooses us for redemption in spite of how bad we are. There’s no element of coercion there.
The Bible doesn’t use the image of a love potion; it uses the image of a second birth and of being brought alive from death. The action of irresistible grace isn’t to “force” us to love God; it’s to bring our spiritual being from death into life, and from slavery to sin into freedom.
Going into heady philosophy for a moment: if God is ultimately Love, then God is also ultimately lovely. Anyone who knows Him would naturally love Him; anyone who didn’t must have something wrong. If God were to repair that wrongness, would it be because of compulsion that we love Him? No; it would be because of the nature of Love and of God.
The “P” in TULIP is “perseverance of the saints”, not “predestination.” And saying that something doesn’t work isn’t the same as showing that it doesn’t work. In particular, “predestination” is actually in the original text of the Bible — if it “doesn’t work”, the Bible is simply wrong.
-Wm
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Some Calvinists do seem to believe in double predestination by God. I have read quotes that seem to make that plain. I think some of them were quoted on the other thread where this was being discussed recently. Can’t remember the name of that thread at the moment.
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Hmm, despite several posts that tried to keep a focus on CMP’s original comment, this thread seems to have spun off into a discussion of TULIP Calvinism in relation to white lies and other matters. As with my last few posts, I’ll go with the flow.
I agree with Seth’s post 217 and Cherylu’s post 218: Tanksley’s argument is circular. I’ll add that it is does not even make sense. Why is it that (according to TULIP Calvinsism) we don’t want to change our desires? It’s because we inherited (i.e., have no control over and are not responsible for) a sin nature that does not want to change our desires. We can’t change our desires unless God first regenerates us (part of election). Moreover, isn’t not wanting to change desires a desire in and of itself? and part of our God given and ordained nature?
TULIP Calvinism does speak to the fall: it assumes / presumes that all are fallen, depraved (like, totally) and need election in order to be saved. Since God ordains everything, that includes the fall. Hence Calvin himself writes: “Again I ask: whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God?… The decree is horrible indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree . . .” (Institutes, 3:23.7)
And,
“As if God did not establish the condition in which he wills the chief of his creatures to be! . . . For the first man fell because the Lord had judged it to be expedient; why he so judged is hidden from us. Yet it is certain that he so judged because he saw that thereby the glory of his name is duly revealed.” (3:23.8)
When I paraphrased Calvin, I meant “you” in the generic second person plural sense. Under Calvinism, no one can know if they are elect, which is why it does not provide any present assurance of salvation.
Before Jesus launches into the parable of the good Samaratin, a questioner asks Jesus, “and who is my neighbor?” This is not an innocent question, but motivated by his desire and Jewish (mis)understanding to draw as small a circle of love around him as he could. Jesus responds with the story of the Samaritan (a racial and religious group hated by Jews) who sees on the side of the road a Jewish victim of a mugging, and goes well out his way to help him, even to the point of incurring personal expense. Jesus’ point is that even this hated Samaritan had more a sense of God’s love than these “pious” Jews (a priest and a Levite) who did not hesitate to step over a countryman in need. Effectively, Jesus tells “Let your hated enemy show you what love is”. TULIP Calvinism is like having someone else tell the story, but instead of the Samaritan, Jesus comes along and kicks the beat up person in the ditch (hell) while exclaiming, “You’re not elect”.
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The interesting thing about this statement is that both of us agree on what God’s actual actions are — God is doing the exact same things in Arminian theology as for Calvinistic.
So why do you think they’re wrong for Calvinism, and not for Arminianism?
It doesn’t. If all we had was philosophy, we’d never settle the matter by thinking about God’s attributes. Being all-powerful allows Him to do things that take more thinking than we can possibly do
. That’s why I don’t use that argument.
On the other hand, the Bible is very clear that man chooses to hate God and MUST choose to love God, and that God selects those He will save. You can set these up in utter opposition if you want, but if you do that you’re arguing against the Bible. It’s much wiser to find a way to NOT oppose them.
I’m not anti-philosophy, by the way; I just think that God’s attributes are a little out of our reach. Reasoning about man’s free will is much more approachable, which is why I feel at liberty to adopt the framework of free-will compatibilism (even though the Bible doesn’t speak directly on the topic).
-Wm
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Thank you for the corrections WM.
The learning is why I value reading this blog.
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Wm,
“The interesting thing about this statement is that both of us agree on what God’s actual actions are — God is doing the exact same things in Arminian theology as for Calvinistic.”
What?!? He most certainly is not. Many people end up in hell in both theologies. But in the one they are not decreed to go there before the world began with absolutely no way to escape it and with out the possibility of Jesus death ever being applied to them. In the other theology they go to hell because they have deliberately rejected Jesus’ offer of salvation. Not because God decreed before the creation of the world that they would go there with no other possible choice available.
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Do you not believe that this IS the end result? Many people ARE going to hell, of their own free choice, as the end result; some are elected and predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, saving them from hell. If you think that’s awful, I understand; but you have to abandon the Bible.
You seem to know a lot more about the suffering in hell than I do. Is your knowledge accurate? If it’s not, then might you possibly be wrong?
What’s the practical difference between Him decreeing from the foundation of the earth and Him prophesying from 2000 years ago? This seems like nitpicking. If decreeing is forbidden, why is prophesying allowed?
I think this is intended to answer my immediately previous question. But it doesn’t get you out of the quandary. God knew what He was creating; if it was really going to be such a horrible situation as you’re describing (keep in mind — we both believe in the same situation!), wouldn’t the loving thing to do be NOT creating at all? Do you really think God’s wincing at the horror of what He’s done?
And if God worked the way you say, how come He doesn’t work all things together for everyone’s good, instead of only for those who are “called according to His purpose”?
I don’t know or have an answer for how hell shows the love of God. The Bible doesn’t make it seem like a place where there’s any revelation of love. Given that, I hesitate to join your declaration that…
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Okay, Wm, now it sounds like you are trying to down play the horror of hell in order to make what God has decreed for many people to be less terrible.
I only know what the Bible says about hell. Jesus spoke of it as a place to be avoided at all costs. Why then does He decree that some have to go there with no choice given? He spoke of it as a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. Sounds horrible beyond belief to me. In Revelation it is referred to as the Lake of Fire that was created for the devil and his angels.
Maybe you don’t think a place to be avoided at all costs and a lake of fire where the fire is never quenced and the worm never dies as a not so terrible place to go. If you do, you certainly have a very different idea of what is terrible and what is not than I do and than most of the Christian population of the world have as far as I can tell.
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Two side points:
But you are disputing it — that’s my point. Your questions are the same disputes that Paul thought he had to deal with in Romans 9. You can talk about harmonizing and bringing concordance between passages, but you can’t do that at the expense of each of the passage’s actual, explicit meaning.
Yes, I know you claim that my arguments contradict the implied meaning of “God is love”. My answer is that this is only an _implied_ meaning, and it’s an implication stretched out into infinity; hardly a reliable place for our minds to work. Your arguments _directly_ contradict Romans 9, and they do so by your own admission in the same terms Romans 9 uses.
And yet — once again — you agree that this is what God actually did, and does, and will do.
Read that again. He’s speaking to “you who persecuted the prophets”, and he says that He wished to gather “your children”, not “you”. He doesn’t say that He wished to gather those who persecuted the prophets, but rather those who were misled by those who persecuted the prophets.
And they certainly did have a choice in the matter!
-Wm
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“And they certainly did have a choice in the matter!” That is what I say, but Calvinism says they don’t as they are only doing what God said they had to do.
And there are lots of things said in the Bible that have an actual, explicit meaning that if not understood in the totality of the Biblical teaching can be very misunderstood and misapplied.
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Re Tanksley’s post 225
“Man . . . MUST choose to love God”
Ahhh, true, but according to TULIP Calvinism humans (I like to be explicitly inclusive of women where possible) can only choose to love God if God first regenerates them. A regeneration never discussed in the Bible, but argued by Calvinists to be true because it’s the only way they can make sense of their doctrine.
Bottom line is that under Calvinism we have God demanding that humans do something (love Him) that they are utterly incapable of doing because He ordained that they would be born totally depraved, and Jesus following after the levite and priest kicking them to the curb for failing to do so (i.e., love God). Absolutely masterful.
Calvinism’s way out of this perverse love by God (I love you so much that I’ll ordain you’re birth into sin, ordain that you would commit your own sins to boot, and then toss you into hell for eternity) is to postulate that God must exhibit His attribute of wrath. Kinda ignores the fact that before the creation there was no wrath nor judgment but only love, the love between the persons of the triune God. “So,” says the Triune God, “what’s lacking in all this lovey dovey that we have going on here in eternity? Oh yeah, wrath and judgment. Let’s get it on with some ‘o that good stuff. Let’s make humans with souls and damn them to depravity and eternal hell. Hmm, but we can’t forget the lovey dovey part, so let’s keep a few of them around here too”.
And that leads to my favourite hymn, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that damned a wretch like him (not me, I’m going up). He once was lost and now still is, was blind, and now, he’s blind. . . . When he’s been there 10 billion years, bright shining in the flames, he’s no less time to scream in pain than when he’d first begun.” Yes, the damnation of souls, according to Calvin and his followers, is one of the best ideas that God ever had (i.e., best idea for showing His glory and wrath). As Tanksley states, “God created hell as well as heaven, and it’s a good thing.”
Those Calvinists sure are wonderful, turning lemons into lemonade. Kinda gives a Martha Stewart flavor to salvation.
Re posts 74 – 86 on 1 John 4:8
Like Cherylu, I fail to see how Tanksley’s answers were responsivel to her point. Her point, which I agree with, is that love for each other is grounded in who God is. Who is God? Love.
But I keep forgetting the Calvinist response. If a human walks along the road after the levite and priest he should, like the good Samaritan show love and bind up his wounds. That’s love for us puny humans. But if Jesus walks along the road and sees him, and decides not elect him to the binding up of his wounds, then He can show love and boot him into the ditch. That’s love for the majestic God of 1 John 4:8.
The difficulty for TULIP Calvinism is that is locates the eternal damnation of people in God Himself and calls that decision…
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Wm,
Would you like some examples of a few other Scriptures that seem to have “a literal, explicit meaning” that if not understood in context with the rest of Scripture or understood as an illustration, etc. would lead people into some very preposterous or erroneous theologies?
How about this one for starters? It is, by the way, one of the ones that I spoke of when I said that Jesus told us hell is to be avoided at all costs. Here it is:
“If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Mt 5:29
I don’t think too many people probably think He actually means to pluck out your physical eye there, do you? But as I understant it, some have taken it very literally.
What about this one: “Anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26
If a person took that one by itself by it’s explicit, literal meaning without looking at the rest of Scripture, wouldn’t one think they were to, “to hate, pursue with hatred, detest”, (from Thayer’s), everyone in his immediate family?
Or here is a goody: “So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” John 6:53
And then there are all of the verses that state very plainly that if you believe in Jesus you will be saved. Because of them, many people absolutely insist that repentance is not necessary for salvation. While of course the Bible states in other places very plainly it is.
See why I say you have to take these verses in Romans 9 in context with the whole Bible and harmonize them with the rest of the Bible? If that isn’t done with all teachings in the Word, we can get way off base very quickly.
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Re Cherylu’s post 233 and Interpretation
My posts above are in no sense intended to be a mocking caricature of Calvinism, but rather a pointing out of the real nature and implications of TULIP Calvinism. Like Cherylu, I find that Calvinism puts the Bible through some incredible contortions when dealing with such scriptures as 1 John 4:8, John 3:16, etc. Many of their interpretations are ones that are not held by hundreds of millions of Christians, and are ad hoc interpretations driven by the need to preserve a theological system.
Cherylu in #233 makes some very good points, to which I would add the following:
Calvinists point out that all humans “are dead in [their] trespasses & sins.” Eph. 2:1. But, if we follow the same route of interpretation, then what about Romans 6, where it says that “in the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” If being dead in sin means one can’t respond to God then does being dead to sin mean that the Christian cannot respond to sin?
The beloved apostle writes in John 6:44, “no one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (a fave verse of Calvinism). He also uses that same in John 12:32, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto myself.” If draw is the same word, and God is both omnipotent and doing the drawing, how does Calvinism answer the obvious question: why are not all humans saved?
Even more problematic is the historical and current misinterpretation of Romans by Calvinists. Calvinists ignore the relevance of the first chapter to Paul’s overall argument, and go completely off the rails by the time they reach chp. 9. Calvinists do not provide an adequate grounding for their belief that Paul discusses individual salvation and election. In the historical context of Paul, he continual does battle with Jews and Jewish christians who cannot accept gentiles as equal brothers and who cannot believe that God really has divorced them as an unfaithful nation.
Paul also show’s that God has not lost control over salvation-history because of the continued disobedience and unfaithfulness of Israel. He is not thrown back onto some contingency plan, a Plan B as it were. Paul argues that gentiles truly have been grafted into the vine, into the one people of God. Nevertheless, gentiles cannot lord it over the Jews and their failing. If we stand back a bit to get perspective, we can note Romans 9 contains one the New Testatment’s many summaries of the history of God’s interaction with the nation of Israel. Paul begins with Abraham, continues with Rebekah, Isaac and Jacob, then brings up Moses and the exodus, and finishes with the prophets. He traces the promise through partial fulfilment, the failure of Israel, and its predicted (and fulfilled) exile and restoration.
Through all of this, the culmination of God’s plan in the Messiah was always envisaged by God. Paul does not talk about salvation in a vacuum…
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# John,
And I would like to add one more point to what you said here: “Calvinists point out that all humans “are dead in [their] trespasses & sins.” Eph. 2:1. But, if we follow the same route of interpretation, then what about Romans 6, where it says that “in the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” If being dead in sin means one can’t respond to God then does being dead to sin mean that the Christian cannot respond to sin?”
What about this verse then: “He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” II Cor 5:21
This verse plainly says that we have been made the righteousness of God in Him, (present tense). Now we know that the righteousness of God can’t sin. So following the Calvinist rule of interpretation, if we can not respond to God in any way while we are dead, does it not then follow also that we can not respond to sin, i.e. sin, while we are the righteousness of God?
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I don’t blame you; I felt the same way. Then I read this comment (of yours) and I saw what I’d missed before. Sorry; I didn’t get what you were saying, although you were clear. I believe the waste of time on this one issue was my fault.
Yes. Calvinism also says that we had to get our desires from somewhere: and since we have a beginning, our desires must be formed by either heredity, environment, or miracle.
Arminianism says they’re formed by a self-working miracle, out of God’s control. Calvinism says they’re formed by God.
You keep using this argument; it’s a distraction, not the core. We physically CAN change our desires anytime we want. The trick is that because they’re our core desires, we don’t want that. But again, this is a distraction: the real meat of your argument is the charge that Calvinism makes God an evil robot master (my words, not yours; you’re more polite than that).
Exactly; because without desires, we couldn’t choose our desires, because we would have no motive to choose one set of desires over another. Could God allow us to choose our core desires without choosing anything for us? Wouldn’t the result be that our desires were whatever random chance threw in our vicinity?
I don’t see any Biblical cause to say God decreed our fall from eternity past. I think if Adam hadn’t fallen, God would have provided a glorious salvation. I respect people who do believe that, but it’s philosophical, not Biblical. If we hadn’t fallen, we wouldn’t have depraved natures.
No. He loves us in a more amazing way: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is what the Bible says. Not everything God does is an expression of love towards every person. Jacob: Love, Esau: Hate.
-Wm
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The reason we don’t change our desires isn’t that they’re stuck that way. The reason is that we can’t possibly want different desires than we actually have. “Not wanting to change desires” is not a desire; it’s the absence of a desire. If we ever had a desire to change desires that desire would be gone as soon as we took action, because our first action would be to change our desires (including the desire for change).
If someone can show me that in the Bible, I’ll believe.
Yes. And yet none of the Reformed confessions followed Calvin in this, although many followed him in almost everything else. (Calvin was being philosophical here rather than exegetical.)
This I agree with, because the Bible does clearly say that nothing happens apart from the will of God. There are no accidents; it’s all providence. The difference between the quotes is that one assigns the fall to God’s decree before time, and the other simply says that God willed it when it happened (and possibly before).
This isn’t relevant; no Christian system provides sufficient insight into the mind of God or man to determine salvation. If there were such a thing, it’s certain that we’d use it to become lazy. What the doctrine of Perseverance does give is the certainty that if we know we believed in Christ, and He did in the past change us, and we do now experience ongoing conviction and desire, that God will certainly continue that same work in us.
We all go through dry spells; but if in those dry spells we wish they weren’t dry and wish we could want Christ… Well, C.S. Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy” and “Pilgrim’s Regress” tell it well; those dry times are sometimes the clearest and most certain ways to see the desire for Christ, because there the desire exists unhindered by its satisfaction.
If during the dry spells you don’t wish you could want Christ, THEN you should commit yourself to fervent, concerned prayer.
If you don’t… Well, then you have GOOD reason to doubt your salvation.
-Wm
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Re Tanksley’s post 236
Tanksley states, “Arminianism says they [our desires] are formed by a self-working miracle”. I’m not sure what is meant by that; Arminians would certainly not describe it like that. WmT, could you expand on that, please?
Tanksley states, “We physically CAN change our desires anytime we want.” It is not clear what is meant by “can”, or why physicality is at all relevant. “We”, being mere humans, cannot change what God has ordained, including desires. Furthermore, in relation to salvation, Calvinism teaches that we have no desire, cannot have any desire, for God until after he first regenerates us, after which we can then respond to Him with the faith that He gives us.
Tanksley writes, “Wouldn’t the result be that our desires were whatever random chance thew in our vicinity?” The answer is, of course, “no”. The question as posed presents the fallacy of the excluded middle, that is, it presents two alternatives as if they were the only two, when in fact they are not and there are multiple options.
Tanksley writes, “I don’t see any Biblical cause to say God decreed our fall from eternity past.” However, Tanksley believes that God ordains even the fall of a sparrow and the number of hairs on our heads. In the Calvinist view, God ordains everything, which as a side effect provides the grounds for why He knows what will happen. Tanksley is simply being inconsistent here, apparently to avoid the implications of his belief system.
Tanksley writes, “Not everything God does is an expression of love towards every person. Jacob: Love, Esau: Hate.” I see that Tanksley admits that Jesus, being a good Calvinist, would boot the injured man into the ditch on account of his not being elect; at least the samaritan won’t be bothered with finding anyone on the road. Anyway, that would be why Calvinists have problems with John 3:16 (for God so loved the world . . .) and similar verses. Unlike other faith traditions Calvinists have to go through exegetical contortions and engage in eisegesis (reading their meanings into a verse) to make these verses fit their system.
As Tanksley states, “God created hell as well as heaven, and it’s a good thing.”
Going back to Romans, the commonly accepted interpretation of Romans 9, among current scholars, is that it is referring to election in a corporate sense and that the various persons are representatives / literary stand-ins for the nations that descended from them. Calvinists still hold out against this view, for obvious reasons, or argue that the chapter is both corporate and individual in relation to election and predestination.
regards,
#John
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John, you got really needlessly snarky in that message. I can only see one paragraph that I can reply to with charity, so here goes.
Pardon, but the regeneration is thoroughly discussed in the Bible. It’s referred to as the second birth, bringing alive, release from slavery to sin, drawing by the Father…
I totally understand if you’d like to dispute Calvinism’s claim that those things _mean_ regeneration, or that they precede faith. That would be a good discussion. But you can’t legitimately simply _deny_ that regeneration is present in the Bible.
-Wm
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William,
I will have to say that a good share of your post 236 left my head spinning and wondering what you really meant by that.
However the statement that we can change our desires any time we want to makes no sence at all to me in view of the Calvinist position that we can do only what God has decreed that we will do. Therefore, if He has decreed that we have one set of desires, how can we then change them? This argument is not just a distraction. I honestly don’t see how this can be. How in the world can we change what God has decreed we will be? And if we could change them, then there would be no reason at all to think of God as, to use your words, “an evil robot master”.
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This is what I love — hermeneutics of the Bible. Let’s go. we’ve both already exegeted 1 John 4:8, so I suppose I need to respond to your analysis first.
My main complaint with your exegesis of 1 Jon 4:8 is that it entirely skips establishing context, and instead immediately applies the raw paragraph without any context to a philosophical problem. In short, it’s not an exegesis in any way; neither is it eisegesis. It’s best described as prooftexting, in which you take a string of words that appear to say what you want, define the words according to your wants, and declare the case closed. The actual meaning of 1 joh 3:8 is seen in context: God’s love inspires and causes love towards the brethren. This passage doesn’t tell us any limits on God’s love, but it certainly can’t tell us that God’s love is displayed to those not of the brethren.
Now, John 3:16. “God so loved the world, that he gave…” This translation is a little misleading; other versions say “This is the way God loved the world…” The Greek uses the word we read as “so”, but it doesn’t have the side meaning of “very, very much” that it does in English, so using it is misleading. Okay, HOW did God love the world? The answer isn’t that He saved everyone in the world; the answer is that He saved SOME, the ones who believed on Jesus. So does “the world” mean “everyone” here? NO.
Breaktime. I’ve got some new baby doodies (I mean duties) to do.
-Wm
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William,
Two things, I gave you quite a list of verses in the other thread where we discussed some of these things that spoke to me very clearly that regeneration comes after faith. Actually, it was brought up twice. The first time you simply dismissed the verses I gave you. Later, when you asked for verses again, I gave you a longer list. As far as I remember, you never responded to any of them. Can’t say that I would particularly like to go there again. Maybe John will though.
And secondly, you have stated, I believe, that our actions all come out of our core desires which you say God gave to us. If that is the case, how do you make sense of the discussion in Ezekiel 33 where God speaks of people turning from their wicked ways to do what is right and conversely, people turning from their right ways to do wickedness? It seems to me that Scriptures like those say that people can and do make choices different than their “core desires” given them by God. Or are these folks somehow given two totally opposing sets of core desires? Or are they becoming regenerated and then “unregenerated”? Regeneration and salvation would be, I assume, a very Calvinistic reason for them turning away from eveil to do right. However Calvinism doesn’t allow for any form of becoming “unregenerated”. So how do you deal with those verses?
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“Yes. Calvinism also says that we had to get our desires from somewhere: and since we have a beginning, our desires must be formed by either heredity, environment, or miracle.”
I think this is an important point.
If you accept creation ex nihilo, there are some logical conclusions to be drawn. And I don’t think Arminians necessarily always draw them.
If you believe in an absolute creation, how do you avoid Calvinist conclusions about free will?
Of course, I’ve got my own entirely different set of parameters from my religion that pretty-much change the entire question. But I don’t want to sidetrack the conversation further by bringing them up (unless y’all think a common enemy might help promote a bit of Calvinist-Arminian unity…).
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William,
Nobody said that John 3:16 says that God saved the whole world. What it does say is that he LOVED the world. Therefore He gave Jesus so that anyone that believes could be saved. So I don’t think your argument makes sense.
And again, on the I John passage. Yes, the context is in a discussion of love of the brothers. However, there is still the statement there that God is love. To use your argument from above, the “explicit, literal meaning” of God is love is, duh—God is love! Unless you can prove from somewhere else in the Bible that when God says He is love He doesn’t mean just that, I am afraid I can’t buy it. And if His characteristic is Love, I can’t buy that He doesn’t love the whole world.
As a matter of fact, here is a series of verses that seems to me to show that God does indeed love the whole world.
First:
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ dying for us shows His love for us. We will all agree with that.
Next:
I John 2:2 “and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for {those of} the whole world.” Here it says that His death was effective for the whole world.
And again:
I TImothy 4:10 “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe” This verse seems to me to be very explicit that He is the Savior of all men. Particularly those that believe.
So if he died for the whole world and is the Savior of all men, and if His death shows His love for us, how can you possibly say that He does not love all men??
(Incidentally, I believe those last two verses very strongly contradict the “Limited Atonement” aspect of Calvinism also.)
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Having reread my post 238, I fail to see that it is at all snarky, but if it came across that way I apologize.
Matters in post 238 unaddressed by Tanksley stand.
In respect of “regeneration”, given that regeneration is undeniably discussed in the New Testament and is a doctrine accepted by all Christians, that I wrote “a regeneration” indicating that there was more than one kind of regeneration, that I was specifically referring to the timing of regeneration prior to the exercise of faith, that the doctrine of regeneration prior to the exercise of faith is a peculiarly Calvinistic doctrine not held by the other 1 billion plus Christians in this world, it is obvious that I was referring to the Calvinist doctrine of regeneration before faith.
Tanksley’s exegesis of 1 John 4:8 is incorrect. 1 John 4:7 – 10 is a discrete unit within John’s large structure. It begins with “dear friends”, as does the next unit that begins in verse 11. It continues the theme of love from earlier sections and reemphasizes it.
The word “because” also appears in the Greek, and is causal, giving the reason why the readers, who are believers, ought to love one another. The reason they are to love each other is because love comes from God and indeed has its source in God. John then uses “and” to introduce a second concept, paternity: everyone who loves is fathered by God and knows God. That is, like father like son / daughter.
In the clause “God is love” has a subject “God” and a predicate “is love”. The noun “love” is grammatically a predicate noun. In the Greek text the noun “love” does not have an article (i.e., no “the”) and so is described by the grammatical term anarthrous. Nouns that are in Greek anarthrous (without an article) are generally translated in English with the indefinite article (“a, an”). However, some anarthrous nouns are qualitative and are often translated without an article. Thus, “God is love” not “God is a love”.
There are two other places in the apostle John’s writings where he uses a similar grammatical structure to tell us about God: 1 John 1:5 “God is light” and John 4:24 “God is Spirit”. The anarthrous predicate (“is love”, “is light”, “is S/spirit”) suggests a qualitative force, not a mere abstraction, that is, it gives a quality of God’s character. C. H. Dodd explained the difference between saying “God is love” and merely “God loves” this way:
“The latter statement might stand alongside other statements, such as ‘God creates,’ ‘God rules,’ ‘God judges’; that is to say, it means that love is one of His activities. But to say ‘God is love’ implies that all His activity is loving activity. If He creates, He creates in love; if He rules, He rules in love; if He judges, He judges in love. All that He does is the expression of His nature, which is—to love. The theological consequences of this principle are…
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#John,
Thank you for that explanation of the “God is love” passage. I have heard the same thing, but never seen it so fully explained before.
William mentioned the, “Jacob I loved, Esua I hated”, verse. What are your thoughts on the use of the word hated there? I have been meaning to challenge William to take another look at that verse but haven’t gotten that far.
It is obvious from other Scripture that the word “hate” is sometimes used as hyperbole. One instance is the verse I quoted above that speaks of having to “hate” our father and mother. Another is in the Old Testament where is says Jacob hated Leah–right after it says that he loved Rachel more!
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Indeed, and I didn’t dismiss them — rather, I exegeted one of them, and you responded by saying that you didn’t have enough time to interact with my exegesis, but instead you provided another bushel of verses for me to consider.
The problem is twofold.
First, I can’t possibly fairly consider that many verses — and please consider this as a plea to both of you to slow down a bit. It’s just not humanly possible for one man to keep up with two people, both of whom are throwing out admittedly hard verses _fast_.
Second, please don’t assume that because you’ve cited or quoted a verse you understand it. Not only is that unfair to me because it makes you do less work than me
, it’s also not exegesis; it’s just assumption.
One side point: John, I’m impressed by your study of 1 John 4:8; that’s some good work to do off the top of your head! I’ll respond when I have some time; that’s too well done to ever be ignored. The nice part is that I agree with the entire thing; the sad part is that I believe it doesn’t address the point of contention at all (which I think is appropriate, because 1John doesn’t there address the point of contention).
-Wm
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William,
Regarding the “bushel” of verses I gave you. Unless you can prove to me by other Bible verses that you can give me that I don’t understand them, I will stick with my understanding! Which, by the way is, as John mentioned above, the way billions of other Christians have understood them too.
What other reasons do Calvinists have to assert that regeneration has to come before faith except the verse that states we are dead in sin? As you know, we don’t think that Calvinists understand that one correctly!
So when we read a bunch of verses that speak of faith before regeneration–what else are we supposed to think?
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William,
I need to ask you a question here. You feel free to speak of the “explicit, literal meaning” of a verse. And yet when someone else, like me for instance, speaks of the meaning of a verse or verses, you tell me that I may not necessarily know what they mean and that to think that I do is just assumption. Isn’t that an incredible double standard? I’m sorry, but that says to me that you don’t think much of my understanding or reasoning powers at all. And that you and your Calvinistic understanding are obviously far superior.
I guess maybe you need to quit speaking of verses and assuming you understand them and expecting the rest of us to change our beliefs because of it!
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Re Tanksley’s post 47
While 5 verses is still significant (1 John 4:8, John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 2:2, and 1 Timothy 4:10), it’s not a bushel. Moreover, they come up frequently in discussions of TULIP and Calvinists have several ready-made answers, though I know you don’t just want to parrot what’s out there. I haven’t added verses to the list, but responded to the discussion of interpretation of 1 John 4:8 that you and Cherylu were having. I can understand your desire not to be overwhelmed with verses and so appear to be conceding the argument simply because you cannot humanly respond to everything. You’re a good fellow for responding as much as you do, which provides an enlightening discussion for all the viewers and lurkers.
My discussion of 1 John 4:8 in my post 245 directly addresses your contention that we are to understand “God is love” in a limited fashion, along the line of “God shows brotherly love to those whom He has saved”. I have shown, to the contrary that “God is love” is an independent proposition about God’s essential nature that is used as the basis for John’s argument about how brothers in Christ are to treat each other. There is nothing in the passage that limits thge qualitative description of God’s nature as “love”.
Regards,
#John
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Cheryl and others:
First, I’m sorry if I’ve come off as arrogant in mentioning the explicit meaning of verses. I’m not assuming that the explicit meaning is available without careful study and interpretation, and I’m sorry I came across that way.
Second, I won’t ever look down on you simply because you don’t agree with me, whether or not I’ve made a good argument. I’ve said this before, but I’m impressed with Cheryl’s merciful heart and John’s willingness to study the other side, even when he’s highly suspicious of it. This will always be what I know about you two — never that you happened to disagree with me.
I hope I manage to leave anything near as good an impression on you as you’ve left on me.
-Wm
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Thank you William.
I shouldn’t have said everything I did in my comment to you either– that last line, should have been left out altogether I believe.
Frankly, I had been having a rough day when I wrote that note. Two people had gotten quite irate with me in two separate conversations because they had been having a bad day already. And I had sort of had it. Guess I need to join the club over on the taking another look at sanctification thread too!
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All I said is that I’m not required to change my opinion because you post a list of Bible references — that certainly doesn’t imply that YOU should change your opinion whenever you post a list of verses
.
Even if I proved that none of your verses supported your opinion, I’d still bear the burden of actually proving there were verses that supported my opinions.
That’s just way too strong of a claim. Ignoring the billions of uninformed and untaught Christians, the vast majority who believe as you do believe in a modern Roman Catholic context, not a Protestant one, and that’s incompatible with most of the rest of your soteriology.
Argument by popularity is usually a weak argument, but it’s especially bad when the majority of your supporters actually disagree with you as well as me.
Still responding slowly — I’ve got a baby in one arm.
-Wm
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How can you respond at all with a baby in one arm? You must be a better one armed typist than I am!
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I love that verse — it’s a good reason to memorize all of Romans 6. There are two pertinent comments in there: first, we are to count ourselves dead to sin, which means we are to have the attitude of being dead (even if we don’t have the reality). The interesting thing is that this doesn’t say we’re dead to sin — it says to think about ourselves as though we were. And yet in Rom 6:2, less than 10 verses before, Paul implies that we are dead to sin. So why should he tell us to pretend when he’s previously told us that we are?
The answer is that Rom 6:2 is not an indicative statement saying that we are dead to sin; it’s a question setting the direction of the teaching. We are not yet dead to sin, but our baptism represents our death with Christ, and we will one day be resurrected to new life. So considering oneself as being dead to sin is directing one’s mind to the reality of our position and future with Christ, rather than our present, obvious besetting by sin.
This reading doesn’t support or oppose Calvinism (I don’t believe that it’s a real TULIP prooftext, nor the following part about slavery to sin), and I’m sure you could affirm this reading of Rom 6 if you desired. But neither does it deny the reading of “dead in sin” that Calvinists see in Eph 2, contrary to your claims.
-Wm
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Cheryl, I admit it’s not easy. I didn’t type any of the BIG replies, and I certainly didn’t do any exegesis (that requires flipping among web pages to get to my Bible tools).
-Wm
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With respect to the reference to the 1 billion plus Christians who do not follow the unique interpretations of TULIP Calvinism, neither Cherylu nor I were asserting that the truth of our statements were established by the larger numbers and so neither of us committed the fallacy of populism. In my case I referred to the numbers to indicate why it was clear that I was referring to a particular understanding of regeneration (Calvinist pre-faith regeneration) rather than to regeneration in general. In Cherylu’s case, she referred to the numbers to indicate that the Calvinist interpretation is not necessarily the most obvious one, nor one that it can simply be justified by claiming that it is the explicit literal or natural meaning. The fact that so many interpret it differently belies that claim. Indeed, in line with Calvin’s claim that the Spirit is crucial to understanding and interpreting Scripture, one would be justified in asserting that the activity of the Spirit has led the greater proportion of Christians into a true understanding of those verses and that it is the minority Calvinists who are resisting the Spirit’s leading. However, such a direct mystical appeal to essentially “the Spirit led me to this interpretation” is not susceptible to direct examination or comparison (how can one compare their experience to another’s? How can one be certain that one is being led by the Spirit into a particular interpretation?), and so it is not useful for settling interpretive disagreements.
Regards,
#John
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William,
Going along with John’s last post regarding regeneration coming before faith, you made the statement, “the vast majority who believe as you do believe in a modern Roman Catholic context, not a Protestant one, and that’s incompatible with most of the rest of your soteriology.”
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I will have to contest that claim. I wll be 60 years old in Jan–am telling on myself here now!–and have been around Christian people, churches, and Christian teaching almost all of my life although when I was a child we were not able to attend church regularly. But I still had a lot of teaching during that time. At various times in life I have attended Lutheran churches, Assembly of God, Foursquare, Christian Missionary Alliance, two different nondenominaitional churches–one extremely conservative and the other hyper charismatic, attended a Lutheran Bible school for two years, and you know what? In all of that time I had never once heard that regeneration preceded faith!! The first time I ever heard or read that concept was about a year and a half ago and at that time I read it on another Calvinist blog.
So, I don’t at all believe that most protestants have the view that you do on this subject. If you have statistics or something to prove otherwise, I will accept your claim.
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Cheryl, John: we’ve been going back and forth for a while, and I’ve really found it motivating in my Bible study to have this goal. I’d like to continue, but it would be nice to stop using “Parchment and Pen” for our own debate.
I therefore created a blog named “Exegetical Debate“, and I’d like to know whether you two would like to join me as coauthors. The rules would be simple: exegesis goes into posts, comments on the exegeses go into comments. One passage per post, always.
I’ve made one post, based on my brief Eph2 exegesis from the Doubt thread.
Please let me know what you think, or email me at wtanksleyjr at Google’s mail service. I’ll need your email address to add you as a contributor. I currently have the comments locked only to contributors; we can discuss that policy, and I’ll happily lighten up (I’m strict so we don’t get spam).
Doing this would make our debates a lot more relaxed, I think — there’ll be no need to rush to reply. Nor, by the way, will there be any obligation on any of you.
I hope this doesn’t look like a spam; my hope is that this will reduce comment clutter on this blog
.
-Wm
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William,
Thanks for the invite. Will have to get back to you with my answer. Not sure at the moment about doing that.
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Your time in the Lutheran church, one of the most influential in the United States, should have included instruction in their doctrine of regeneration by grace alone. The other churches you mentioned, to the extent I know, do believe faith precedes regeneration; but the largest congregations in the United States, including the current largest (Southern Baptist) follow the doctrine of regeneration preceding faith.
In the United States, much of this is a relic of the First Great Awakenings, which were largely driven by Calvinism; more recently, the Second Great Awakening was something of a reaction to failures within the Calvinistic churches, and so was dominated by people like Finney, who held beliefs that make yours look Calvinistic (I’m strongly tempted to call him semi-Pelegian).
Of course, this is only in the US; outside of that, the situation is often grossly complicated by political churches. It’s hard to say what a specific British Anglican believes (although a British Methodist will make an argument clearly on your side), and although I could count most of the state churches in Europe on my side, I don’t know how many of them are actually peopled by Christians in any real sense (not because they have bad doctrine, but because the people go only because their society/state requires it).
In the final analysis, though, the argument of “more people believe” is a red herring. It only matters if nobody (or only heretics) has believed my doctrine — if I were innovating something. As it stands, the doctrine of regeneration is solidly supported in Church history, albeit not during the Middle Ages; it’s not my innovation.
In all of that time I had never once heard that regeneration preceded faith!!
Your statement that I quoted is one I’ve heard a lot, sadly. Most churches in fact fail entirely to teach their own doctrines; they allow people to teach who don’t even know what the doctrines are. It’s one thing to allow an Arminian to teach on Arminianism; it’s totally different to have a teacher whose doctrine is totally unknown and unchecked by the church, and who (it turns out) isn’t even teaching doctrine, but only assumptions. As I said, this statement should be a shame to your Lutheran congregations.
-Wm
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Billy Graham was once asked by reporters, which of all the different denominations and Christian faith traditions has, in your opinion, the best grasp of the Christian faith? (paraphrased).
He answered, “The Lutherans. And they are probably the worst at conveying it to their people.”
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In my years in the Lutheran church, even in Bible school which was a strictly Lutheran school, as far as I can remember at all, there was no mention of regeneration coming before faith. It was, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Acts 16:31. Regeneration or the new birth, justification, and initial sanctification were all seen as part of the salvation process and came when a person had faith.
I knew about Calvinism and teachings on election many years ago. However, as I said, it was only very recently that I ever ran across the concept of regeneration before faith. When I first read that I couldn’t see where in the world the idea came from because I saw no Scriptural basis for it at all.
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Cheryl: on the meaning of “hate”: note that in both of these context the thing being noted about the person hating is a verb, an action. There is a a manner of behavior in which the actor is said to hate the object; God “hated” Esau by rejecting his inheritance, even though he was a true child of Abraham and Isaac, both of whom were given the promise. This doesn’t mean that God’s limbic system produces the chemicals correlated with the emotion of hate in humans (of course); it means that God acted against Esau by rejecting him.
The same is true of God’s love. It’s not an “aw shucks” feeling God has about everyone (or anyone). It’s not God considering others as more important than Himself. It’s a verb, and God’s love is displayed in actions.
Again, this means that if God’s love is displayed in His every action, it’s displayed in his rejecting (hating) Esau, and in the very action of throwing an unrepentant sinner into hellfire.
But the only way to understand this is to admit that God’s love doesn’t extend to every person in the same way. God does not love the unrepentant sinner by saving him; He loves him by demonstrating longsuffering, by continuing his existence, by setting limits on his depravity. No doubt there are other ways in which God shows love to the unrepentant sinner.
-Wm
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Here is the best sermon (Lutheran) I have ever heard on the subject:
http://lightofthemaster.com/Sermons/Entries/2008/3/4__The_Holy_Spirit.html
It’s not too long and well worth the listen.
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William,
That doesn’t change the problem of there being no way to comprehend any definition of love which some of us firmly believe is a characteristic that is at the very heart of God’s being, decreeing from all eternity that most of His creation is going to be unrepentant sinners that are going to hell. That is one of the major “rubs”–but only one of them–that I see in the the Calvinist understanding that is represented by TULIP.
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William,
In thinking about it, I don’t think that I can probably be a contributor on a blog. Although the idea certainly has it’s merits for the reasons you want to do it. I think in my mind, it would put a lot more pressure on me. Here I can walk away from a conversation any time that I need to for whatever reason, whether that is time constraint or if I come to the conclusion that the topic or conversation at hand is just not something I should continue commenting on. I don’t think I would feel that same freedom on a blog where I was a contributor.
But I do want to thank you again for the offer. Maybe #John will be able to take you up on it. I would find it interesting to read the exchange between the two of you if he does!
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steve martin,
I wanted to listen to the sermon you linked to. However, that link just took me to a page with another page for sermons listed. I scanned through a few of them and didn’t see the one you were referring to. Can you be more specific? Thanks!
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cheryl,
Sorry it didn’t work.
Try this link:
http://theoldadam.wordpress.com/
and then go to the right side of the page and look for ‘A Lenten sermon ‘I believe that I Cannot Believe’
I hope that works.
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Although I would hope otherwise, I think your gut feeling makes sense — going through the hassle of signing up as an editor does seem to create at least a *feeling* of obligation. I need this for the opposite reason — posting to comments thread means that you have to comment soon, since posting to an old comment thread means that nobody will see it.
I’m going to modify the blog so that anyone can sign up (anonymously) to post comments on it, so that you (or anyone else who’s not a goof-off spammer) can post comments if you *want*. I think your comments here have been valuable as you’ve provided feedback and moderation to some of my sillier ideas, so perhaps you can contribute in that way.
No rush, anyhow; if nobody steps up to provide “the other side” exegeses, then I don’t know whether I’ll bother doing anything more with this.
Anyhow, I like my idea (duh
, and hope someone will see it the same way: a chance to post exegeses at a slower and more considered pace than can ever be achieved in a comment thread like this.
-Wm
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One last try, then: Biblical AGAPE Love is an action. It’s not a feeling. The reason that God, who is AGAPE, can look “forward” in time and see people being damned to hell — and he can actively damn them to hell, and create them even though he knows with total certainty that’s their fate — is that He has other ways to AGAPEW love them.
This is not a Calvinistic doctrine (and I deliberately didn’t invoke anything about God’s eternal decree). This is fundamentally inherent in the idea that God is the all-knowing eternal creator and the judge. And it has exactly the same impact on the meaning of αγάπη love as the Calvinistic doctrine of God’s eternal decree does. The only way to escape this is to claim that God either did not create, or is not all knowing.
-Wm
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You’re right that Scripture must be harmonized; this can be seen mainly in passages which make perfect sense by themselves, such as the resurrection narratives, which have a slightly different meaning when read together. There’s also a very important rule that no doctrine should ever be based on a single passage.
But in all the cases you list, the foolish interpretation is avoided not by comparison with unconnected passages, but rather by carefully studying the passage itself, in its own context. The passage itself is meaningful; you don’t have to look at a completely unrelated passage by a different author at a different time to make sense of it. You may have to think, but you don’t have to be knowledgeable of literature in a way that the original hearers or readers were not. (For example, the people who heard Jesus’ difficult saying didn’t know about 1 John 4:8.) All some of them had heard was what He was saying right then; and some of them followed Him.
If this is not true, then the New Testament would have been useless to the new Church until it was complete and canonized; but this is not true.
-Wm
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William,
I will have to check out your blog if you are allowing commentor’s who are not official contributor’s. It will be interesting to see how it goes!
And maybe the reason we are having such a circular discussion regarding God’s decree of some to hell is that you are speaking more of His foreknowledge–knowing what kind of people they will be–at least it seems like that may be the case in your last comment. On the other hand, I have been speaking of what some Calvinists seem to be stating– that God makes that eternal decree quite arbitrarily–you will go to hell when you die–end of discussion. And then gives them the personality and character to see that it has to happen. Does that make any sense? I’m not certain I stated that very well.
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I still believe that if someone read some of those verses today that I spoke of above as examples of needing to harmonize Scripture, they would come away with a very wrong idea about what was being said if they didn’t know what the rest of the Word taught about God’s way.
For example, the one about hating father and mother. If that was the only verse you had ever read in the Bible, what would you think God was teaching?
And anytime there are Scriptures that seem to contradict each other, they certainly need to be harmonized. That was what I was referring to particularly.
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Re post 64 and others related to God loving/hating Esau
Love and hate in Hebrew are also used idiomatically to indicate “choose” or “reject” and in those roles do not have any of the meanings the English speakers associate with the words “love” and “hate”. Biblical Hebrew does not have a way of making comparables that is directly translatable to the English words and grammatical structure. Rather than saying “more than” or “less than” as we would in English, it may use extremes, e.g., using “first” and “last” rather than “first” and “second”. Thus loving one and hating the other does not mean that the “other” is “hated” but only that the first is loved more than the second. The notes to the NET Bible put it this way, ““and I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.” The context indicates this is technical covenant vocabulary in which “love” and “hate” are synonymous with “choose” and “reject” respectively (see Deut 7:8; Jer 31:3; Hos 3:1; 9:15; 11:1).”
The Billy Graham website also puts it into more plain language, “When they are used in juxtaposition, as they are in this passage, a vital point must not be overlooked: The Hebrew verb translated “love” means having a positive relationship in which the parties have the benefit of all the decisions, actions, attitudes, thoughts, responses and feelings that accompany such a relationship. The Hebrew word for “hate” indicates a nonrelationship (or a negative relationship) with none of the decisions, actions, attitudes, thoughts, responses and feelings that accompany a positive relationship.”
Paul in Romans is referring back to Malachi chapter 1. Malachi also has a peculiar structure, different from the other prophets, in which he states a claim from God, questioning of or objections to it, and deals with those objections. Understanding Malachi helps make it clear that Esau and Jacob are stand ins or representative heads of nations and that individual election is not in view in Romans.
Regards,
#John
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#John,
Do you see the example of Pharoah in Romans 9 as representative of the nation of Egypt also? And can you tell me how you come to that conclusion, assuming that you do.
The whole context of the chapter does seem to be dealing with nations–Jews and Gentiles.
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For that post I deliberately limited myself to topics on which I knew we all agreed — God’s omniscience through time (not the same as God’s foreknowledge, by the way), God’s righteousness, and God’s creative power. My point was to show that even assuming only common premises, you have to admit that God’s Love doesn’t play out in the same actions for every human. Therefore, 1 John 4:8 doesn’t prove anything about whether or not God can act by decreeing people’s salvation, because it only addresses God’s love, not God’s decrees. You’ll have to cite a passage that actually limits God’s decree — or get me to admit that there’s no support for claiming that God’s decree has to do with salvation (I admit I haven’t attempted to support that claim yet).
Right now, though, we’re looking at 1 John 4:8, and your claims that it supports your case just don’t play out. It just doesn’t address your case at all, unless you deny omniscience or creative power.
-Wm
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I’m writing an exegesis on Romans 6 on this topic (to be posted on my blog). Your claims are simply unsupported by the text of Romans 9; your claims about Romans in general are correct, of course, but you completely fail to look at what Romans 9 actually says. It’s an example of not seeing the trees for the forest.
So if I may put Billy Graham’s plain language into even more plain language: God’s hate is not the same thing as God’s love. The two are exclusive; God’s hate excludes God’s love in that specific manner for that specific person. (It’s impossible, I think, to exclude God’s love in every way — but because God says he hated, we know that He excluded at least Esau from that positive relationship with Him.)
Thus, not everyone is shown God’s love in the same degree and/or manner. Some are excluded from some aspects of it.
This is obvious — some humans never hear the gospel, so how can they believe?
-Wm
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Cheryl, I think I went to far. You’re right that some of the verses you listed (as well as others, of course) certainly need to be harmonized; but my point is that the harmonization won’t reveal the meaning, but will only warn you of an invalid exegesis. Further exegesis is the only way to determine the actual meaning.
-Wm
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Sorry William,
In my mind, and obviously in John’s too, the passage does support our claim. Our claim is:
1. God states He is Love. It is a very attribute of His character. Part of His essence if you will.
2. Since He is Love in this manner, everything He does has to be done in love.
3. There is no way that one can logically or by any twist of the imagination see a way that the essence of Love could determine before all of creation that the largest share of His creation are going to go to hell for an eternity of the utmost horror because: a. He made that decision, b. He gave them only desires that would lead them there and make them deserve to go there, and c. He gave them absolutely no possibility of the above scenario being changed by anything they ever could do or think. It was set with finalty before the creation of the earth.
How in the world does that scheme of things fit with the very essence of love?
And yes. there is a great difference between God sending people to hell when He has loved them and given them the opportunity of redemption in Jesus and they have steadfastly refused the offer, and God sending people to hell without them ever being given that opportunity at all because either: a. He created them so that they would go there and gave them the character that would require them to go there, or b. He didn’t even die for them in the first place–he only died for the ones He chose for heaven as some explain the L in TULIP. (Limited Atonement)
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William,
“Thus, not everyone is shown God’s love in the same degree and/or manner. Some are excluded from some aspects of it.”
Our point is that to show love for the speck of time that is a man’s life on this earth as compared to an unending eternity of absolute torture in the Lake of Fire with no opportunity to have that decree that was made before creation changed, a place Jesus said we are to avoid at all costs, really doesn’t seem like love at all does it? It starts sounding, in the long run, a whole lot more like cruelty of the utmost kind rather than the actions of a being who has defined His very essence as Love. And if Jesus says we are to avoid that place at all costs, something just doesn’t seem right about Him dooming the largest share of His creation to that place and not giving them a chance to avoid it, does it?
That is one of the biggest problems I see with Calvinism–God seems to totally contradict Himself in this theology.
One more point: you said, “the harmonization won’t reveal the meaning, but will only warn you of an invalid exegesis. Further exegesis is the only way to determine the actual meaning.”
That was our point exactly. Harmonization may show that there has been an improper exegesis here!
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Again, your point as you’ve stated it isn’t even remotely supported by 1 John 4:8. There’s nothing there, and you haven’t shown any other passage that would modify the meaning at all.
My reading of 1 John 4:8 doesn’t violate harmonization in any way; if I have problems, they must be in other passages.
Your only other argument is purely philosophical, and very extreme; I’ve clearly shown that if your argument holds, it forces a contradiction in doctrines we all agree on. (Note that the Mormon who dropped in here pointed that out before I did, although he wanted to argue against me.)
-Wm
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Re post 278
Tanksley misses the point entirely. The use of love and hate in both Romans and Malachi has nothing to do with hating at all. It is merely the Hebrew way of comparison. In Malachi, the people are suffering under foreign rule and wonder if God loves them. God says yes, I love you (“Jacob”) more than your brother nation Edom (“Esau”). Edom has lived in sin and I will therefore destroy them. God chose to love Jacob more than Esau before they were born. There is nothing in that about election for heaven or hell at all. It’s about choosing Jacob/Israel from all other nations and choosing to show more love and favour on them than all others. Malachi argues that this is still true even though the current circumstances don’t seem to indicate it.
1 John 4:8
The Biblical description and characterization of love is entirely inconsistent with the Calvinist description of God’s love, which is one reason why that verse is not only important, but also why it works out to entirely different conclusions / results in the TULIP Calvinist system versus all others. The other reason why the verse is important, along with John’s other descriptions of God is to indicate that love is an essential characteristic of God, rather than an accidental or contingent characteristic of God. Wrath is not an essential characteristic of God and did not exist prior to sin. Before creation there was only love among the persons of the triune God. Consequently, God has no need to display or show his wrath against anything and no need to create something on which to display his wrath. That whole concept is a reading into scripture of a logical part of the TULIP Calvinist system of theology. That is, as one works out the implications of TULIP one finds that humans were all created in sin which can only be explained in that system by postulating that they were created in sin in order to display God’s wrath.
Non-TULIP systems have entirely different explanations, ones more consistent with the revelation of God.
regards,
#John
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William,
I think as far as the love verse goes, I give up! That doesn’t mean I have changed my mind in the slightest. It just means that we have tried to explain in every way possible what to us is the “explicit, literal meaning” of that verse and are getting nowhere in getting you to see what we are saying. So I think I’m done trying–at least at this point.
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First of all, that last sentence is both important and true. The blessing that was passed to Jacob and that passed entirely over Esau wasn’t an election to heaven or hell, but an election to carry forward the covenant promises to Abraham. And as Paul said in Romans 3 and 9, what benefit is that? None whatsoever; it’s utterly irrelevant (note: sarcasm alert! Paul said the opposite).
The point you’re making EXACTLY matches the point I’m making, except that you’re minimizing the importance of the “hate” to Esau, who did not wind up with a lesser version of the covenant, but with no covenant whatsoever. Jacob’s descendants often rebelled against God, but He provided a remnant who would carry on His plan; Esau’s descendants rebelled and were wiped out utterly (compare Ishmael, who received no covenental blessing, but wasn’t “hated” to the extent that his line was wiped out).
But let’s ignore that minimization, and admit that Esau was loved less (surely something on which we completely agree). That’s my point: not all people and things are loved in the same way by God. Jacob was given the promises, Esau was given nothing; Pharaoh was raised up, but only to serve as a vessel of wrath; Ishmael was given a lesser promise than Isaac, and no share in the covenant.
You want to absolutize a single phrase entirely out of context, and use it to determine boundaries on God’s proper behavior in a way that the passage in question doesn’t mention in any way. When we love each other in accordance with 1 John 4, we are following God’s example of love, not as expressed toward the world or the Son or Esau, but as expressed toward us. Yes, God loves because God is Love; but this alone doesn’t tell us that God can’t do things that seem “mean” to us.
And that’s the fundamental argument you offer: it seems mean to you that God would plan salvation rather than allowing it to “just happen” according to the will of people. You don’t have any Biblical support for this; it’s just bedrock assumption for you, and you won’t even argue it at a philosophical level (and you cannot possibly argue it at a Biblical level!).
Nor will you admit that there’s a parallel to other accusations that God is acting “mean” in some human sense, as with the accusation that God’s being mean to sentence people to hell forever “for a white lie.” The fact that this is built on a misunderstanding of why hell…
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(Sorry, I got cut.)
…Nor will you admit that there’s a parallel to other accusations that God is acting “mean” in some human sense, as with the accusation that God’s being mean to sentence people to hell forever “for a white lie.” The fact that this is built on a misunderstanding of why hell is everlasting doesn’t stop the accusation.
-Wm
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Re Tanksley’s post 285
The point is that there is no emotional, antagonistic or destructive significance whatsoever to the “hate” towards Esau. It is purely a Hebrew language idiom of comparison. Comparison only. The significance in Malachi, which is echoed in Paul, is that God chose the nation of Israel. Malachi could have used “hate” with respect to any and all other nations, because Israel is favoured above all others. The destruction experienced by Edom does not result from the fact that Israel was chosen, but from its sin. Moreover, the election in both cases is soley corporate and national, not individual at all.
On 1 John4:8
Noting that John’s argument in 1 John 4:8 depends upon the proposition that God is love, where love is stated as being an essential characteristic of God, is not pulling it out of context. John’s argument depends on the truth of the proposition that God is love, that love is an essential characteristic of God. That principle must stand alone, on its own two feet, for the rest of John’s argument to work. So, if it is thus true that God is love, where love is to be understood as an essential characterist of God, then the truth of that proposition can underpin other arguments as well.
When John states that God is love, he is not stating that God is love in so far as He shows love to us, or only to the extent of brotherly love. John himself is making an absolute statement about the nature of God and is arguing from that absolute to the more limited aspect of the problem before him in that church (the actions of brothers to each other). John has witnessed the entire ministry of Jesus-his actions and teachings of and about love. John in that passage is not placing any restrictions on the parameters of the characteristic of love that he assigns to God and uses the anarthrous construction to do so.
There is nowhere in the Bible that indicates that destining someone to destruction is love. Rather, the Bible indicates that such things are terrible, and grievous. To call such an action love is not only contrary to the Biblical but perverse. Furthermore, it is a constant theme in God’s revelation that moral responsibility arises from individual choices to do sin where that individual could do otherwise (i.e., not sin). It would be morally evil for a person, an image of God, to be created whose destiny was only ever hell.
God does prophesy the destruction of the evil, so it is not contrary to His love character to do so. God is also holy, and nothing the falls short of the mark can exist with Him in the kingdom He gives to Christ. But the damnation does not flow to the evil ones from His love, rather the death of Christ flows from His love to the evil ones-while we were sinners and the enemies of God He in His love sent Christ to die for us, that is, all human enemies/sinners.
BTW, I signed up to follow your blog, and will be emailing you.
regards,
#John
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Comparison between what? Jacob and Esau? No… Comparison between God’s treatment of one versus the other. And not different degrees of treatment, but different kinds of treatment. Jacob God befriended; Esau God abandoned.
Saying it’s comparison only is to miss the entire meaning, not only by missing what’s being compared, but also to miss the import of the comparison.
He could not have used “hate” in the same way for the Edomites as for the Ishmaelites, could he? The Ishmaelites God left with a part of Abram’s promise, even if they didn’t get to carry the covenant. The Edomites got nothing, and they got it taken from them even though they had every human right to it (unlike the Ishmaelites).
That’s true, but the Israelites were not sinless. The destruction of Edom could have been justly carried out on Israel, but because God chose them, God allowed a remnant to survive His judgments.
I’m writing up a study of Rom 9 in this regards. I think you’ve got a tough row to hoe here… Paul is very clear that he’s talking about election of individuals, and he uses his examples to prove over and ever again that being part of the chosen line doesn’t make you chosen (“not all of Israel are Israel”), and that God’s chosen are chosen out of the descendants of the line as well as out of the Gentiles. The whole point of Romans is that there’s no corporate body that has a right to be saved by God (i.e. is elect); nor is there any unelect corporate body. God elects only those whom He wills to save.
Thus, Romans is all about individual election.
So you say; yet God keeps doing it. Look at the Edomites. Compare the Hebrews, who deserved the same treatment, but got saved. Compare ourselves, who offer 3000 children to Moloch every day.
Thank you so much. I can, if you’d like, give you full editorial rights on the blog (I only need your email address), and we can reach a consensus on how to carry on a proper exegetical exploration. Or you can just comment.
-Wm
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That’s not the question. The reason we know that the Father’s drawing is irresistible isn’t that there’s a specific irresistible word being used; the reason we know is because of the context, in which Christ explains over and over that without the Father’s action nobody comes to Christ, and each one given the Father’s action always comes to Christ, and will be raised on the last day.
In John 12:32, on the other hand, the context is that some God-fearing Gentiles sought to see Jesus; He preached briefly to them, God spoke to endorse Him, and then He hid himself from them. While He preached, He made the promise that after He was “lifted up” He would draw “all men”. Before Christ died His ministry was only to the Jews — a point He’d made several times before. After He’d died His work applied to all men, and He would draw all men (Jews and Greek) to Him.
The simple fact that two passages use the same word doesn’t mean the passages mean the exact same thing by it. Close context is more important than remote context, and in this case the close context of Christ hiding himself from the Gentiles helps make it clear that this particular action is a promise to the Gentiles that His ministry will later on expand to all men.
-Wm
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Sorry, and you’re right, it was unclear. I think the worst word was “miracle”. The rest was pretty unclear too.
Libertarian Free Will says that our desires are set by our own choice; but in reality, we choose according to our desires, rather than desiring according to our choice (consider, for example, addictions and habits). Therefore, LFW implies that we somehow set our desires (and our choices) without prior cause. Calling that a miracle is an error (blush), but calling it “magical” isn’t a bad description. There’s no possible explanation for it; it just _happens_.
This is not part of TULIP or compatiblism; it’s fatalism. Compatiblism holds that God did not necessarily ordain our desires; He simply created them, just as He created our bodies and our circumstances. The reason we don’t change them isn’t that God blocks us from changing them; it’s that because they’re OUR desires, we don’t WANT to change them.
It’s just part of the definition of a desire. The only way we could want to change them is if we had a stronger, more core desire that ran the other way. And we don’t.
-Wm
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Okay, our desires are formed by some combination of the following:
1. Supernatural injection into our infant soul.
2. Part of our heredity (genetics, traducianism, whatever).
3. Brought by our environment (parental habits, teaching, propaganda, etc.).
4. Personal training (habit-breaking, habit-forming, Bible study, etc.).
God can (and may) clearly control the first three. It’s absolutely certain that we don’t control them in any way. I think you’d agree that the fourth way is the only way we can set our own desires.
But setting our desires takes a good amount of work. How will we start to do that work without first wanting to do it? The desires we develop in ourselves through #4 are based on the desires we already had, which can only be ultimately traced back through the other 3 avenues.
And who controls those? Again, it’s not us.
-Wm
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John is not an expert on Tanksley’s views. I believe that God wills the fall of every sparrow and the number of hairs on our heads, because Jesus clearly says that. I believe that God controls those things, because Jesus used that fact to comfort people and let them know that God controlled the future.
Unlike Calvin, I do not wildly extrapolate to decide that therefore, God pre-planned all those sparrow falls and hair numbers. I don’t want to contradict Calvin on this; he may be right, and his argument’s strong. But it’s not part of the Biblical testimony.
Care to explain? Oh, I guess you’d better write to all the confessional Reformed people in the world — the confessions all take this position as well. Many people agree with Calvin, but the confessions follow sola scriptura, as well they should.
You truly don’t see this as being mind-bendingly insulting and offensive? Wow, to add a little more you pretend that all other faith traditions have NO problem Bible verses at all. Meh, this is best ignored.
-Wm
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Hmm, going on about Hebrew grammar from memory and without my grammars before leads to trouble. My initial use of the word “choose” was more accurate, and I should have been writing about “preferance” rather than “comparison”. Comparison has to do with superlatives, or relative value, etc. (e.g., bigger than) and Hebrew does have constructions to do that. Hebrew is, however, quite a bit more striking (to us, speakers of a different language) in the way it indicates preference. So to respond to Tanksley’s comment regarding Ishmael (his post 288), yes it would be correct to say that God loved Israel and hated Ishmael, meaning that God preferred Israel to Ishmael.
The Jewish concern in both Malachi’s time, and Paul’s was that God was abandoning them and His covenant with them. The circumstances in Malachi’s time weren’t great. And if what Paul said about Gentile salvation was true, it appeared to have negative implications for Jews. In both cases the audience is told that God chose / preferred Israel over others. The choice did not depend on sinlessness.
Edom was not destroyed because (i.e., for the reason that) it was not preferred by God, rather the reason for its destruction was it’s sin. Israel is spared that end (though it should be destroyed because it whored itself to other gods and broke the covenant), because it has been preferred by God.
To be extra clear the “hate” (the translated word for the Hebrew) has absolutely nothing to do with the reason that Edom is destroyed. It is not destroyed because God “hates” it. The idiom “hate” only indicates that it was not preferred in relation to the thing that was “loved”. Because Israel is preferred over Edom (and over all other nations, Edom was just an example, though particularly pertinent because of the twin birth) it is preserved and blessed. Edom suffers the fate that all who sin and rebel against God will eventually suffer.
Regarding individual election in Romans, do you have Schreiner’s articles from JETS? They are available on the web.
BTW, I disagree that libertarian free will is nonsensical; I would say that it is more sensible than the alternatives. It is not magical in the least and is eminently reasonable. But that would be for a series of posts in another thread. CMP actually has a thread started on the nature of the will, and such a discussion could be continued there if anyone is interested.
Finally, as I continue to reflect on CMP’s initial post (thanks to Cherylu and WmT for keeping me ruminating on this topic), I now find that I have more disagreements with it than ever. Indeed, I disagree with his fundamental conclusion that one white lie, or floating a stop sign, is not what sends one to hell. I conclude that it would and does.
regards,
#John
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Okay; I see what you mean. But I think my response stands; the passage is about God’s actual actions toward Jacob and Esau.
I agree with you, and the fact that the Bible never said that probably is because God never had to “make a decision” between the two. Ishmael was born at the wrong time to be the true promise child, and God simply blessed him and his mother (probably because of their ill treatment). Jacob and Esau were a tougher choice; by all the rules of the time they were almost indistinguishable, except for birth order — and in that way God chose the “wrong” one. Thus, God clearly had to actively accept one and actively reject the other.
Not quite — Paul said that Israel was the way in which the promise was brought. They were (elsewhere) the original heirs, the natural branches of the vine onto which the Gentiles are the grafts.
This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.
Yet the hate DOES explain why they were destroyed. If Esau had been loved by God while Jacob had been hated, then likely the sons of Jacob wouldn’t live on Earth to this day, and certainly the sons of Esau would. Yes, they were justly condemned for their sins; but the sons of Israel were mercifully saved in spite of their sins in order for God’s purpose to be fulfilled.
Yes, it’s corporate; but it’s based on an individual choice made by God between those two individual twins. Malachi doesn’t parse this out, but Paul does.
-Wm
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Sure! Where’s the link?
If a single lie sent you to hell before you believed, then why doesn’t the same lie continue to send you to hell now that you’ve repented of it? Surely the repentance doesn’t change the fact that you committed a lie. All that changes is your heart, not the lie.
(Wow, are we actually possibly back on topic??????!!!!)
-Wm
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William,
Not quite back on track here yet!
You said, “This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.’
However some Calvinists like John Piper for instance, believe that God decress sin and evil and guilt and punishment and who will be that type of person so that his wrath may be shown.
See this article:
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?371
Here is a quote from this article: “Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who will believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and deservingly perish. Before they were born or had done anything good or evil, he loves Jacob and gives Esau over to wickedness and destruction (9:11-13). He is free and unconstrained from influences outside himself when he decrees who will receive mercy and who will not (9:15-18).
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William,
Not quite back on topic yet! You said, “This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.”
But some Calvinists like John Piper believe that God actually decreed sin and evil, guilt and punishment. Here is an article where this is discussed:
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?371
Here is a quote from his article: “Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who will believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and deservingly perish. Before they were born or had done anything good or evil, he loves Jacob and gives Esau over to wickedness and destruction (9:11-13). He is free and unconstrained from influences outside himself when he decrees who will receive mercy and who will not (9:15-18).”
This is what I have been talking about and I believe John has too.
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Sorry for the double posting of that last comment. I seem to be having a problem off and on today with the comments working correctly here.
Actually, it is not quite the same. I thought it was deleted so I rewrote the whole thing.
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Why does God inflict this horrible suffering on me? (Okay, I’m kidding. I enjoy this.)
As far as I know all Calvinists believe that, unless you intended to say that Piper believes that all that is part of God’s decree before time began. I don’t see what that has to do with this conversation, though; it doesn’t contradict what I said.
My point remains: what John said about the descendants of Jacob and Esau is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination: God blesses some people, and doesn’t bless others; that’s God’s gracious choice.
-Wm
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William,
It certainly seems to me from the article I linked that Piper meant God decreed all of this before time began. I read another article with a quote in it from Piper’s book, “Desiring God”, that says this: “God is more glorious for having conceived and created and governed a world like this with all its evil” (p. 351). That sounds to me like he is speaking of before time began. That quote is from this article: http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/08/21/john-pipers-false-god-1/
Did you read the article I linked above? If you did, do you think I understood it correctly?
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Here is the link to the other thread on this site. It contains quite a few quotes and some links to other materials on this subject. There are quotes here from John Calvin that say God ordained the fall of man. http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/05/john-calvinlove-him-or-hate-him/
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Cheryl, I’m baffled. Why are you talking about Piper?
As I said, Piper does believe that. As I said, I don’t. As I said, Calvin does. As I said, “I don’t see what that has to do with this conversation, though; it doesn’t contradict what I said.”
Why are we talking about Piper?
-Wm
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I’m talking about Piper because he seems to be, at least to many Calvinists today, their “poster boy”–he is highly respected, looked up to and referred to repeatedly. Therefore, it would seem that he is at least a somewhat fair representation of the general beliefs of Calvinism. And that is what I thought we were discussing, the general beliefs of Calvinism. Not just your particular take on it. Does that help?
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#John,
Back on track–can you tell us what changed your mind about the one white lie issue?
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Sorry I missed this earlier! The answer is very simple: the context is speaking of the covenant promises made to the Israelites in the Land, and the immanent judgment of invasion that God promised through Ezekiel. God has two messages: first, He wants it known that there’s a threat of physical death from this punishment, both general and specific (you can get killed by being in the wrong place because you weren’t warned, OR you could get killed because the judgment “had your name on it); and second, He wants it known that the specific threat of physical death can be avoided by turning from your sins and doing righteousness — but contrariwise, if you think you’re doing great now, keep in mind that if you do violate the covenant the punishment for doing so will fall on you.
When we generalize this passage (which we should), it applies not to eternal salvation, but to national judgment. If it DID apply to eternal salvation, then a single white lie WOULD send you to hell; there could truly be no assurance of salvation.
-Wm
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So, then “The wages of sin is death” must only mean phyisical death??
After all in Ezekiel 33 he is speaking of such things as “you shall die in your iniquity”.
Sorry, I can’t buy your interpretation.
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“When we generalize this passage (which we should), it applies not to eternal salvation, but to national judgment. If it DID apply to eternal salvation, then a single white lie WOULD send you to hell; there could truly be no assurance of salvation”
Umm, isn’t that why we need Jesus salvation?
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My argument is against the interpretation that says something like this: “God so loved the world that…” means “God loved everyone in the world very, very much, and therefore…”
That’s not what the verse means; it’s not present at all in the Greek, but is just an accidental double-meaning of the English word “so”. A less ambiguous translation is in the NET Bible: “For this is the way God loved the world…”
Now, that’s what “so” means. What does “world” mean? It’s true that it could conceivably mean “everyone in the world”, but it could also mean simply “the created order” or “this globe”. When you keep reading things become clearer, though: John 3:17 says “…that the world through Him should be saved.” This is an unconditional sentence; what God did in John 3:16 to love “the world” results in unconditionally saving “the world” in John 3:17. This means that if “the world” means “every person in the world”, John 3:17 must mean that everyone is going to be saved. And this doesn’t fit well with the condition in John 3:16.
-Wm
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William,
Could I ask you to do me a favor? You are going way back in the comments and pulling out quotes here lately. Would you mind putting comment #s with them so that I, or others, could refer back to them easily without having to hunt back through this huge manuscript we have managed to write here? I find it is not always easy to answer your new comments when I’m not sure I remember precisely what the argument was in the original one. I think it might save us all a bit of confusion.
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What does Jesus’ salvation do for us? Does it stop us from sinning? If not, and if your reading of Eze 33 is correct, it’s not enough: any return to sin will instantly condemn you to death.
The reason Jesus’ salvation truly saves eternally is that it changes us. The reason the unsaved go to hell isn’t because the last thing they did was tell a white lie; the reason is that they do not desire God, but rather hate him.
Thus, it’s not the white lie that sends the unsaved to hell; it’s their sinful, dead heart. To go back to Ezekiel, it’s their stone heart, not replaced by the heart of flesh granted by the New Covenant.
-Wm
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He is indeed respected; I myself respect him. But on this specific point, both he and Calvin diverge from mainstream Calvinism (ha!) as it’s defined in all of the Reformed confessions.
The reason is as I’ve stated: his conclusions aren’t present in the Bible.
Now, I was making a point to which you responded by implying that Piper believed that people get sent to hell because of God’s decree. But this is not an accurate representation of Piper’s beliefs. People get sent to hell because of their sinful hearts, not because of God’s decree. Claiming that it’s because of God’s decree is exactly the same sort of error as if you claimed that being sent to hell is a result of God creating them. Creation and decree are both necessary, but they’re not the proximate nor sufficient cause for them going to hell.
-Wm
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William,
Romans 5:18 says, “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.”
If one uses your interpretation of John 3:16 ff on this Romans verse, it becomes completely nonsensical and loses the meaning and comparision Paul had for it.
Nobody is going to argue that one man’s–Adam’s– transgression brought condemnation to all men, but you will certainly argue that Jesus death (or His love) didn’t bring justification or salvation to all men. Yet that is precisely what Paul says here happened. And I see no way to get around it by your argument.
So it seems to me that the logical way to interpret this is something more along the lines of, “God loved the world to save the world and Jesus act of righteousness brings justification to all men means the POSSIBILITY of salvation and justification for all men–if they will accept it.” In fact, I just read a couple of commentaries that interpreted it that way–Matthew Henry’s and David Guzik’s.
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William,
You said, “Now, I was making a point to which you responded by implying that Piper believed that people get sent to hell because of God’s decree. But this is not an accurate representation of Piper’s beliefs. People get sent to hell because of their sinful hearts, not because of God’s decree. Claiming that it’s because of God’s decree is exactly the same sort of error as if you claimed that being sent to hell is a result of God creating them. Creation and decree are both necessary, but they’re not the proximate nor sufficient cause for them going to hell.”
But Piper says God is the one that decrees people to be rebellious.
So….He decrees their rebellion, their sin and sends them to hell for it. Is not that being sent to hell by God’s decree?? To say other wise is simply a juggling act of words to make God seem free of decreeing people to hell it would seem to me.
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William,
You know what seems really odd about all of this? You Calvinists insist that you had nothing at all to do with your salvation–that God brought you sovereignly to Himself by irresistable grace. That He changed you so that you couldn’t help but respond. Therefore all of the glory is His and none of it is yours.
On the other hand—you insist, or at least some like Piper do–that God decreed who would be sinful and rebellious. Then you say that they can’t change or do anything else because those are their core desires given by God.
HOWEVER, in the case of the rebellious, you insist that they are only getting what they deserve because they are sinful and it is not God that has decreed that they go to hell.
If you can’t resist His grace that will draw you to Him- it has nothing to do with you that you choose to come–then how in the world come does it have everything to do with the sinner and he is getting sent to hell because of his sin–but it is not God’s decree that sent him there?
With one it is all God’s decree, with the other it is his own sin and his own fault. But God has, in the Calvinist mind, made them both to be exactly as they are.
Sounds like an incredible double standard to me.
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Cheryl: good point about the post numbers. I read through Google Reader, so I don’t see them; but I can and should dig them up when I reply.
In response to the rest of post 244:
He definitely loves the whole world. John 3:16 says so. The question is whether He loves each and every one in the world the same way He loves His saints. I contend that He does not; you contend that He does. So far our argument is clear.
Indeed.
First, I have to admit that this verse, on its face, is very strong; if the propitiation applies to the sins of everyone in the world, it’s a death blow to the idea of Limited Atonement, and means that either your ideas are right, or Universalism is true.
But there’s a few problems.
First, note that the words “those of” are not present in the original Greek. The verse might be meaning that Christ died for the sins of the whole world; but what it’s saying is that Christ died for the whole world. When we say that Christ died for sins, we speak of the sins of individuals; but when we say he died for the whole world, we are talking about the cosmic redemption for which the entire creation groans.
Second, what of the context? 1 John is an eminently practical epistle; he’s writing to assure us about our salvation, not merely to explain the nature of God. So how does this fit into the surrounding argument? John is saying that Christ’s sacrifice forgives all our sins, and there’s nothing it can’t cover. I think this verse means that Christ didn’t just pay for all our sins, He paid for the redemption of the entire cosmos. Therefore, we should confess our sins and accept forgiveness gladly, without trying to hide the sins or pretend they didn’t happen or don’t matter.
Again, these are merely possible interpretations, not certain ones; but they fit very well with what John’s trying to say, while your interpretation simply doesn’t belong in the context.
In just a few words: this verse makes it clear that God acts as Savior in different ways for all men as He does for those who don’t believe. That rejects the idea that He Loves both the same.
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Re: post 250:
My main problem wasn’t the number; it was that the verse references were posted instead of interacting with my analysis of Eph 2. Why should I spend my time analyzing five more verses, when my first one was apparently completely ignored? I still don’t know whether my analysis was right, wrong, convincing, or just pointless.
True — more importantly, I’m learning a lot by studying these things myself. It’s easy to cut and paste, but I learn nothing that way. I get real criticism, too, from people who can hate my errors without hating me.
Actually, I now see why you’re disagreeing with me. That’s not what I wanted to communicate. The phrase “God is love” clearly and deeply shows that God’s nature is Love (your analysis was spot-on). But there it stops. The phrase does NOT say that God loves all of His creatures in the same way; and there are other verses that specifically say that He doesn’t love them all in the same way.
-Wm
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William,
“In just a few words: this verse makes it clear that God acts as Savior in different ways for all men as He does for those who don’t believe. That rejects the idea that He Loves both the same.”
That is how you interpret it. Others interpret it to mean simply that He is the Savior of all but it is specifically applied to those that believe. That doesn’t mean that He loves them differently.
“When we say that Christ died for sins, we speak of the sins of individuals; but when we say he died for the whole world, we are talking about the cosmic redemption for which the entire creation groans.”
If that is is the case, doesn’t it also have to be the case in John 3:16-18? You mentioned it as a possiblity. However if you read verse 17 and 18 together, it becomes very clear that he is speaking of individual salvation and condemnation. Not the salvation of the cosmos. So I don’t think that works either.
And very frankly, I just can’t see that your argument about context rules out my interpretation of it at all. Just because he is trying to give people assurance, doesn’t mean that he can’t be saying that he died for the sins of all men. In fact, what a better way to give people assurance than to state that His death was for all! Saying his death is for a very few, is to me, one of the greatest ways in the world to stir up questions in a persons mind. How are they ever to know if it was for them???
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From post 306:
Ezekiel is talking specifically about people dying because a man with a sword ran past the watchman and stabbed them. That’s physical death.
“The wages of sin is death” is in a completely different passage, in a different book, by a different author, to a different culture, in the New Testament; the following context (“but the gift of God is eternal life”) unmistakably shows that it’s speaking of eternal destiny.
Ezekiel can’t be broadened into a metaphor about spiritual death; as I explained, to do that forces it to contradict other passages of the Bible, by making a single sin even in a saved person result in spiritual death.
So you’re not at liberty to simply “not buy” my interpretation. If you’ve got a better one, by all means provide it — but do so taking the context into account.
-Wm
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Post 312:
But you can’t possibly do that. Rom 5:18 doesn’t mention the world; it speaks of “all men”. Furthermore, Rom 5:18 isn’t in the context of John 3:16ff, and so isn’t constrained in the same way.
Rom 5:18 is worthy of its own analysis (but what Bible verse isn’t!), but it’s not an argument against my analysis of John 3:16, because the passages contain no common text.
That’s because I haven’t argued it yet — as Proverbs 18:17 says, “the first to state his case seems right, until his opponent begins to cross-examine him.” I’ll argue it — I guess — after you’ve dealt with John 3:16.
I think the text reasonably (although not completely) rules that out; John 3:17 isn’t a conditional (that’s not clear in the English, but the verb “saved” in Greek is a simple tense, not subjunctive). John 3:17 says that Jesus came to save the world, not that He came to maybe save the world.
I do accept that other verses can lead one to harmonize the text in that way, and that’s perfectly within the pale of orthodoxy. But it’s not part of the text itself.
-Wm
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William,
Regarding your last comment. I have always read and heard Ezekiel 33 to mean not only physical death, but spiritual death as well, particularly in the charge given to Ezekiel. I just read four commentaries on that chapter, and they all accepted the same interpretation. One other one I read spoke of both physical and spiritual death being meant here, but with some qualification.
Obviously this is just one more Scripture passage that we see in totally differnet ways.
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William,
Okay, I think I see your point regarding the Romans 5 verse. Scratch that argument!
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Re post 320:
Actually, you’re right. The watchman story at the start of Ezek 33 applies to almost everything, including financial loss; it’s a very general metaphor, because it’s based on a very simple ethical principle. Here it’s being specifically applied to the threat of death during an invasion brought on by God as judgment for prolonged disobedience.
The second half of Ezek 33, which includes the verses you were citing, can’t be applied to spiritual death; it’s specific to the sort of punishments God was preparing for Israel at the time.
-Wm
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Hi William,
Actually the second half of Ezekiel is precisely the part that all of the commentaries I mentioned interpreted as spiritual death just as I did.
Remember this is the Old Testament where people were told they would live or die both physically and spiritually if they didn’t keep the law. New Testament reference–the first few verses of Romans 10. The catch was, of course, that they couldn’t keep it–just like we can’t. And so–”the just shall live by faith.”
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Cheryl, the Jews didn’t interpret the law that way; the Law didn’t include any mention of life after death, and some Jews in Jesus’ time didn’t believe in it because they accepted only the books of the Law as Scriptures (the Saducees). The promises of fulfillment after death, whether Abraham’s fulfillment (promised only through his children) or Job’s (“yet in my flesh shall I see God”) weren’t tied to fulfillment of the Law, but to faithfulness to God as shown by trusting and obeying Him.
I’m also not happy with the following statement from you:
You’re saying that we _have_ to interpret Ezek 33 in a misleading and incorrect way? Why can’t we interpret in a way that leads to correct conclusions? Keep in mind that the law required perfect conformance; repentance and sacrifice only helped with accidental infractions, not deliberate ones. The correct way to live forever with God, NT and OT, was to have faith in His promises.
It’s odd to be encouraged to interpret a passage in a way that the author couldn’t have possibly done, and that would be unmistakably heretical (Pelagian) now (because it pretends that eternal salvation can be gained by good works plus regular repentance alone).
-Wm
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William,
Well, all the more I have to say on that particular subject is that it is certainly not original with me. And while the emphasis in Romans is certainly on salvation through faith and not through works even in the old testament, Romans 10:5, in a context of speaking of eternal salvation makes this comment: “For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness.” So Paul certainly applied it in this way. So it is can’t be correct that the Jews didn’t interpret it that way–at least one did!
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Sorry, I should of added another Scripture to what I said above. It is: “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM.” Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”
However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, “HE WHO PRACTICES THEM SHALL LIVE BY THEM.” Galatians 3:10-12
This seems to me to confirm what I said in my first comments on this subject: He that does the law will live by it. Only problem is, we can’t do the law, we don’t abide in it and therefore are cursed. Therefore we need Jesus and faith in Him.
By the way, that verse refers back to Lev. 18:5 which says, “‘So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them; I am the LORD.”
And again, Paul spoke of spiritual life when referring to this verse.
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Cheryl, well-studied; thank you for providing so much related materiel.
But it seems to me that there’s a major and a minor problem.
The minor problem: using the Law to save oneself from spiritual death requires lifelong perfection (according to Paul), whereas Ezekiel 33 allows a person to be so imperfect as to be worthy of death, and then to repent and do right. The sacrifices that cleanse from sin under the law can only cleanse of unintentional sin — deliberate sin remains.
The major problem: reading Ezekiel 33 as promising life after death means full-blown Pelagianism. If it’s valid, you don’t need faith or Jesus, only regular repentance from your sins and turning to the good works established in the Law. And remember, this is God Himself speaking, not a mere apostle. Ezekiel is presumably quoting God exactly.
On the other hand, reading it as promising only that God will relent on the punishment He was having Ezekiel threaten at that time not only fits in the context, it also fits into the explicit threats written into the Law. NONE of the blessings and curses there mentioned the afterlife; all had to do with the prosperity of the community and one’s own life or death. This is not saying that the afterlife was never part of the Jewish religion. God revealed much later that had been hidden or obscure before; in the late books of the Old Testament one can see an understanding being built that Christ would fully complete with His argument that “God is the God of the living,” to prove that Abraham is fully alive and in God’s presence. But this was not part of God’s revelation until later in the OT.
(I don’t know what Ezekiel believed. I believe he trusted in God and was justified; but I don’t know what he believed about the afterlife.)
-Wm
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Re Post 294
Tanksley writes, “This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.”
But people are sinners because of God’s decree. So argued Calvin (see quotes in various above posts), and current Calvinists. Furthermore, for those who believe in inherited guilt, every person (but Adam and Eve) is going to hell from the moment sperm meets egg. So yes, people are going to hell because of God’s decree.
regards,
#John
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One does not go to hell because of anything that God does.
One goes to hell because THEY have cut themselves off from God’s grace.
When you walk away from your parents, you have decided to do that and have therefore cut yourself off from the inheritance.
The scriptures tell us that “God desires that all men come to Him.”
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Here are many posts with a great many Bible passages that explain how wrongheaded Calvinisn is when it comes to this topic:
http://amillennialist.blogspot.com/search/label/Calvinism
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William,
I can understand your points in your last post. However, they still leave some questions to me and one big problem. If disobedience to the law didn’t bring spiritual death but only phyiscal death–if none of the blessings or curses there referred to anything beyond physical death, how come disobedience to the first law in Genesis 3 brought about spiritual death? And it is the same Hebrew word used for death there as in Ezekiel, by the way. Or do you believe that when Adam and Eve sinned it only brought about physical death?
Or was it only an initial disobedience to God’s law in the garden that brought about spiritual death and after that only physical death? But you seem to be indicating that spiritual death was not being referred to in the OT at all until much later.
But still you say in other places that it is our sin that results in God sending us to hell.
I am confused!
At least we seem to be somewhat back on track of the original post after a great long detour. At least temporarily….
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Again, this is superlapsarian, the minority view (shared by Calvin and Piper, so I can’t refute it; but it’s not in the Bible).
I can accept that people are sinners because of God’s curse after the fall; in that way you can blame it on God, if you want. I don’t; I think sin is man’s fault, even the Original Sin/Total Depravity that infects us from conception.
My schedule has changed; I’m not going to be able to be as talky as I was. I’m going to keep working on my blog, but much less here.
-Wm
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I’m probably not going to be able to to be as “talky” either. I was kind of taking a bit of down time last week, recouping from a particularly intense and rather insane summer. But I need to get back at things around here again.
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In Calvinisim, people are sinners because of God’s decree, regardless of whether that decree is considered to be supra or infralapsarian. The supra and infra labels have to do with the particularity or individuality of the sinners and with the so-called double predestination, and is irrelevant to the issue of sinfulness, either of Adam or the rest of the human race.
WmT. I’ll see you at your blog. I’ve just been very busy.
regards,
#John
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There are many theories that suggest that we have had certain sins, either from before birth, or later on. Some of which (even all of which some say?) can be removed; though it is not certain which ones.
Yet in any case, most theologies allow that though some sins may be “washed away” by this or that special sacrament, grace, etc …. still, it is possible to sin enough, that we end up in Hell, not Heaven.
Could just one little “white” lie do it? Maybe.
Some cynics even say that Christianity itself is a “white lie”; it promises that if we are good, we will get miracles. But it knows that miracles are not real; it is just making false promises to keep the people tame and quiet.
But in any case, regarding “white” lies in general? The Bible itself tells us that those who “white”wash signs of sin in our religious leaders, for example, who tell white lies about that … are evil deceivers.
In fact, many lies that we think are “white,” are black in the end. Suppose for example, my wife asks me if I like her new – and awful – hat. And to spare her feelings, her “heart,” I tell her it is a wonderful hat. So she wears it to a job interview … and flunks it, because the interviewer got a bad impression of her … due to her ugly hat.
Many lies that we think are “white,” are often very black. Even much blacker than that.
Therefore, we should reconsider the many lies that we think are “white”; many are rather black. In fact, no doubt, many of them appear minor … but are serious enough that they can send us to Hell.
And for a scriptural reference? Regarding “white” lies? It is best to remember what the Bible said, about those who “white”wash sins.
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[...] sin merely an action, or is it an attitude? C. Michael Patton expands on that here, but I’d like to chime in some biblical evidence for sin being not just an action but a state [...]
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Post 315: an excellently stated objection.
Interesting point. I grant this as stated.
Close; we’re ALL rebellious and God-denying (according to us Calvinists, we all agree here). And I want you to be careful to note that the reason we can’t change is because we don’t want to, not specifically because of God’s command. God never commanded us to not change.
Pretty much. Now, to be fair to your objection, this is where I have to make my answer. It’s fair for you to object that the cause of damnation is not “only” their sin; it’s ultimately God’s decree. That’s fair. But the just cause is directly their sin. God’s decree is a more remote cause than God’s creation, and we both agree that God’s creation is a very indirect cause of sin.
God’s decree is (intentionally) why you exist, why heaven exists, why hell exists. In that sense, God’s decree is why you are sent to hell — but God doesn’t send you to hell because of His decree. God sends you to hell because you’re the sort of being for which hell is appropriate.
Whoops! With neither one is it “all God’s decree”. With the saved it’s all God’s acting (and they are saved from their sins); with the unsaved God chooses not to act, and they perish in their sins.
Both start the same: sinful.
-Wm
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Your objection isn’t clear to me. In Calvinism, some people hold that all humans were decreed to be sinners from eternity — i.e. God planned the Fall; Piper believes this. Others do not hold that God planned the Fall (but He did permit it). I don’t take sides, because I don’t find enough info in the Bible. Both sides have logic to them.
And they have very much to do with sinfulness. If the infralapsarians are correct, the Fall could conceivably have been avoided, which might affect “the issue of sinfulness.” The elect would then be saved by God in a different way.
As I said, I find this all to be too speculative.
-Wm
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(post 317):
I agree and admit that’s a possible interpretation of that verse, and I got a little overexcited in my explanation. What I was saying was intended to be an answer to your bringing up the verse as an objection to Calvinism. Calvinists can handle that verse; it’s not a prooftext for or against Calvinism, since it can be consistently and usefully read either way.
No. John 3:16-18 doesn’t say Christ died for the whole world; it says that God loves the whole world. Again, two different verses in different contexts.
Yes, the way in which God loves the cosmos is shown by Him saving individual humans. But this verse is still directing God’s love towards the cosmos, not toward all humans.
What kind of assurance is it to know that most people He died for would never be saved? What good is it, then, to have all the verses echoing the Apostolic proclamation that Christ died for our sins — if it didn’t help most people?
Nothing easier — because Paul, James, and John all said that God works in the lives of His people in ways that He doesn’t work in the unsaved. You can tell you’re saved if you’ve believed in Christ (incarnation, death, resurrection); if you love the brethren; if you love God; if you obey Christ’s commandments; and if you confess when you mess up. If you don’t do those things perfectly, you shouldn’t have assurance of salvation — and if that doesn’t worry you, you should have assurance of damnation.
But you can’t get personal assurance by believing that Christ died for all people, and I don’t think the Apostles anywhere hint that it’s possible to get assurance from that.
-Wm
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Hi William,
I have several thoughts here.
First you said, “You can tell you’re saved if you’ve believed in Christ (incarnation, death, resurrection); if you love the brethren; if you love God; if you obey Christ’s commandments; and if you confess when you mess up. If you don’t do those things perfectly, you shouldn’t have assurance of salvation — and if that doesn’t worry you, you should have assurance of damnation.”
I am not at all sure I follow you here. Do you mean we actually do become PERFECT in the areas you mentioned? Please explain because I am not sure I understand what you are saying.
Then you commented: ‘In Calvinism, some people hold that all humans were decreed to be sinners from eternity — i.e. God planned the Fall; Piper believes this. Others do not hold that God planned the Fall (but He did permit it). I don’t take sides, because I don’t find enough info in the Bible. Both sides have logic to them.”
Doesn’t that contradict what you said in # 332 above and elsewhere?
And I am sorry, but it just makes no sense to someone who is not a Calvinist to say that people don’t go to hell because of God’s decree but because they justly deserve it because of their sinfulness. When God has decreed that they be sinful and they can do nothing about it and He won’t–the ultimate cause is logically God’s decree.
And I said, “With one it is all God’s decree, with the other it is his own sin and his own fault.”
And you answered, “Whoops! With neither one is it “all God’s decree”. With the saved it’s all God’s acting (and they are saved from their sins); with the unsaved God chooses not to act, and they perish in their sins.”
Regarding the saved in your comment, is it not again God’s decree before the creation of the earth that these ones would be the elect and that He would therefore act to save them? That is the whole Calvinist point is it not–that some are chosen to be saved before the world began? If God hadn’t elected them, He would of not acted to save them.
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If I may interject regarding being perfect: we have been given the Spirit of Self-Control (also called self-discipline, or even self-improvement) because we need to work at some things. Jesus told us to be perfect in matters of charity and love, etc., yet John admonishes us that we still sin and are far from spiritually perfect while on earth. Your comment that we cannot be assured of salvation unless our works are perfect is putting the cart before the horse.
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William,
Regarding John 3:16-18. I think you missed my point entirely. God loved the world so much that He sent His Son so that the WORLD might be saved and not condemned. However, when you read verse 18, it is clear that the ones being saved and not condenmed are individual people that believe in the Son. The cosmos can not believe in the Son and so be saved and not condemned! Therefore, how can the term “world” refer to the cosmos and not all the men in the world? That would make no sence in context at all.
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William,
“And I want you to be careful to note that the reason we can’t change is because we don’t want to, not specifically because of God’s command. God never commanded us to not change.”
Nope, He never commanded us not to change. In fact He commands all men everywhere to repent. But how can man do that or for that matter, want to do it, when God has already decreed what kind of person his is going to be, i.e. sinful and rebellious?
A quote from Piper again, “Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who will believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and deservingly perish. ” From here: http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?371
So at least Piper’s brand of Calvinism allows people no choice at all–it is by God’s decree. He decides who will rebel but then still says they will deserving perish. They may deserve it–but what choice did they have? God’s sovereign decree made them so!
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Just a quick reply — this is the worst self-editing I’ve ever done, I think. That came out completely wrong, because I started writing one thing, went back and changed part of it, and didn’t proofread properly.
Sorry.
There were two different points being made there, and they got mixed to make one completely wrong point.
First, we should be perfect in all those areas; we should want to be perfect, and we should be working to improve to perfection in all those ways.
Second, we won’t be perfect, but we should want to “walk in the light”; to confess when we fail, and to improve.
If we don’t experience any of this, we shouldn’t feel assured of our salvation. As James says, if we don’t see evidence of the works of faith, we shouldn’t claim to have faith. BUT, once we’ve seen the evidence, we can be assured that Christ will never let us go; that nothing can separate us from the love of God; and so on.
My point is that assurance is gained not by believing that it’s possible for Christ to save anyone who wants salvation bad enough (how could you know whether you wanted it bad enough), but rather by the two facts that God works in the lives of those He saves, AND God never, never lets go of those He saves, even in the dry times. (That’s not a Calvinist belief — although some Arminians deny Perseverance, of course, in which case they have no assurance of salvation at all.)
-Wm
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Thanks for the clarification, William! I can’t believe the things I miss sometimes in my proof reading of my comments either.
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Arminians do have assurance of salvation, whereas Calvinists not only do not have assurance of salvation, but cannot.
How do the Calvinists deal with the many examples of people who do say the sinners’ prayer, do believe, do grow in the faith, but then stop believing completely and live worse than before? They never were elected.
Even Augustine admitted that no one can know if they have the gift of perseverence until death, because only God knows who is elect. This side of death one can never know if one is elect (this gave the puritans coniptions/ got their knickers in knots).
So, a Calvinist could be merrily going to church, thinking he/she is elect, but isn’t, and then at some future point will leave the whole thing behind.
All Arminians have to do is what Christ said: “follow me”. If you’re following Christ you’re still “saved” regardless of sins. God forgives 70 times 7 (i.e., unlimited).
Re post 342: Great point, cherylu.
regards,
#John
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#John 1453,
These two short articles say pretty much what you have said regarding Calvinism, a bit different on Arminianism, though:
http://amillennialist.blogspot.com/search/label/Arminianism
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The Fall
It makes no sense for a Calvinist to say that God “permits” the fall given that God ordains everything, even the number of hairs on each individuals head.
God can only permit something if Adam and Eve were prime movers, that is, the initiators of their own actions without being doomed in any way to a specific choice because of preexisting factors (e.g., the prior state of the material universe, the laws of that materials, and “desires” or whatever one includes as the prior non-material state).
WmT, what do you mean by “permit”?
All are doomed sinners by God’s foreordination
The difference between supra/infralapsarianism is whether God specfically knew the individuals who would be sent to hell. Regardless of the Calvinist view, everyone is destined to go to hell unless elected. God chooses and ordains the destiny.
regards,
#John
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This fairly short sermon explains why we cannot choose God:
http://lightofthemaster.com/Sermons/Entries/2008/3/4__The_Holy_Spirit.html
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Post 346:
John, that’s disappointing. There’s absolutely no reason why what you said applies to Calvinism more than Arminianism. Both have to wonder why people leave the faith even though Christ said that nothing can pluck us out of His hand, and Paul said that nothing can separate us. John answers those questions: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.” This is exactly the “Calvinistic” answer (“they never were elect”) to the riddle that you mock as useless (it’s not Calvinistic, of course; anyone who affirms Perseverance will also affirm it).
Now, it’s not a practical solution to the question of security; but the question of security has to be met by first understanding the stability of our salvation. If there exists anything that can steal our salvation, it’s not secure; even if that something can steal it by persuading us to stop working so hard. Second, we have to understand the effect of salvation; salvation isn’t ONLY a change in our eternal destiny, but rather a change in our heart. We can see that change, and we can confirm it by our daily life. I like how the NET Bible puts in in 2 Peter 1:3-11. Here we see that the starting point is the rich provision of God, including faith; then we work to add to that daily the results of faith. If we’re doing that, we can see the effects of our salvation — as Peter puts it, confirm our election and calling — every day, and there’s never a cause to stumble in doubt (note that the NET is incorrect to say “stumble into sin” in verse 10; the words “into sin” are not present in the Greek). If we’re not doing those things, Peter doesn’t say we’re not saved; he says we’re blind and unable to recall that we were saved (talk about a loss of assurance!).
Paul touches on this topic in Phil 2:12-13, where we’re urged to bring the effects of salvation out from inside us (the mind of Christ) to outside, keeping in mind that both the desire to do these good deeds and the work of doing them is the result only of God’s work.
The main point: salvation lasts forever, but also has real effects in the real world. Our assurance comes from seeing those effects and acknowledging that they are the result of God working within us — and that His work is permanent.
This reasoning holds for all Christians — Calvinists, Arminians, and others — except those who deny Perseverance. Those have no assurance whatsoever, since by definition they could lose their salvation tomorrow.
-Wm
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Post 342: Cheryl, thank you for explaining — I did indeed miss your point. I’m going to have to move this to my blog, but I’ve got a huge backlog; I’m preparing a post for it, but I’ll have to finish my Romans post first.
-Wm
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John, I don’t want to repeat this yet again. Not all Calvinists insist that God’s providence for us (which is meticulous, down to the hairs on our head) is planned as part of God’s decree. The Bible doesn’t say. It’s not required by the purposes for the decree that are revealed to us.
It’s a lot more complicated than that! If it were that simple your position would be philosophically untenable, because you agree that God is the Prime Mover (and by definition there is only one).
In that case, I took the word from Wikipedia. I went there because I don’t have a lapsarian position.
First, ‘foreordination’ is a specific term; God foreordained Christ’s work, our conformance to His likeness, and a few other glorious things. He is never said to foreordain sin or doom. In Calvinist thought, the terms are kept separate.
Second, the reason given in the Bible that all men sin is the fall, not God’s “dooming”. This reason is sufficient! You cannot argue that it’s not true that all men are doomed to be sinners; we are. You can shift the blame for that to God or man, but either way the doom remains.
Not if words have any meaning. Those words refer to whether God’s decree of salvation came before or after the fall in logical order.
Of course God knew which individuals would go to hell — that’s part of omniscience and omnipotence, not part of lapsarianism.
After the fall, yes. That is indeed the situation in which the Bible clearly describes us.
-Wm
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Of course we have a choice! We wouldn’t deserve to perish if we hadn’t chosen. (Frankly, I don’t think we’re going to ever resolve this — you won’t even admit that our definition of “choice” is logically possible, which it is.)
Again, I’m amazed that you can ask me this question when Paul has already answered it almost verbatim. Do I have more authority than Paul in your hermeneutic?
Does Paul’s answer just make no sense to you? Or do you think that the context gives the question a very different meaning than Paul give it, and it’s just pure coincidence that the argument Calvinists give on the basis of Romans 8-9 always generates the same objection Paul answers in Romans 9?
I’m trying to do an analysis of the text, but it’s a huge text and I’m kinda busy, so it’s taking me a long time.
-Wm
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William,
I don’t think we will ever resolve this either! It hasn’t been resolved in the church as a whole in what, about 350 years? So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t resolve it in a debate that goes on over several months on one thread or another here.
The problem is, as a whole, as I have said before, that to harmonize the Romans 9 chapter or the whole Calvinist theology with the rest of Scripture hasn’t been done in a very convincing way by Calvinists in general as I and many others see it. (I am not saying that it has been done in a very convincing way by Arminians either.)
II Peter3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
I wonder what you do with that verse? I suppose you are going to say that all doesn’t mean all men? Only some of all kinds of men? But how does that make sense in the rest of the verse? If the Calvinist position is true and He gives irrestible grace to the elect so that He can’t make any other choice but to come, why is God having to wait with judment until all people come to repentance? Why doesn’t He just “zap” them with that grace now? There certainly seems to be an implication here that people are being allowed time to make that choice. Which, as I said, doesn’t seem to make sense if God in the end is just going to “zap” the ones that will come with “irrestible grace”. (I’m not at all sure I have explained myself here very well at all. Hope you can understand my point.)
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Cheryl suggested some time ago, that if we sin, it is because God created us in such a way that we CAN sin.
Therefore: if we sin, the question is, isn’t it God’s fault? Because God has made us in such a way that we can sin.
Why didn’t God make us perfect, instead? Why did he create the possibility of sin?
For that matter: why did God create Satan, the author of sin?
Has anyone answered this yet?
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Re post 350
Tanksley wrote, “John, that’s disappointing. There’s absolutely no reason why what you said applies to Calvinism more than Arminianism. [in reference to my post 348]”
Yes. It applies only to Calvinism and not to Arminianism. No Calvinist can know if there are one of the ones that were never elect but only looked like it for a while. While it is possible for every Arminian to reject God, every Arminian can be confident that there are not misled. That is, if they are following Jesus now, then they are saved. Whereas if a Calvinist appears to be following God, that appearance is no assurance that one is of the elect. Only God knows who he has elected.
It’s got nothing to do with plucking out of God’s hand. According to Calvinists, that will never happen to one of the elect, but it is not possible for a Calvinist to know if they are one of the elect (they could be one of the temporary Christ followers). A Calvinist’s daily life is no assurance that he/she is one of the elect. In fact it is irrelevant. If one is elect, one can be one of those whom God let’s sin a great deal even though elect.
Tanksley, “Our assurance comes from seeing those effects and acknowledging that they are the result of God working within us — and that His work is permanent.” No it doesn’t, not for a Calvinist. The person who has effects in their life, may only be having temporary effects which will eventually stop if they are not elect. That is because Calvinists have only two, unbiblical, explanations for the person who lives like a Christian for a while and then sins till they die: (1) they are elect and are going to heaven despite all the sin, or (2) they were not elect and their Christlike lives were only a temporary phenomenom.
“could lose their salvation tomorrow”: no, Arminians can’t lose their salvation. It takes rejection of God, a wholesale deliberate turning away from Him.
Re post 352
Tanksley wrote, “Not all Calvinists insist that God’s providence for us (which is meticulous, down to the hairs on our head) is planned as part of God’s decree.” Every Calvinist I’ve ever read has stated that, so perhaps you could supply some references for me to check out, please.
Tanksley wrote, “It’s a lot more complicated than that! If it were that simple your position would be philosophically untenable, “. Nope, it is that simple and it is tenable. You also have to pay attention to my use of “prime mover” I’m not using it in the cosmological sense, but as I indicated with respect to one’s actions. By prime mover I mean that one’s will is solely responsible for, and solely determinant of, the resultant action. The range of choices before one may be broad or may be limited, but one’s choice is not determined by the immediately prior state of the material universe and one’s immediately prior desires.
WmT, you didn’t actually provide your definition of “permit”.
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Tanksley wrote (in 352), “Second, the reason given in the Bible that all men sin is the fall, not God’s “dooming”.” God ordained the fall, hence, He ordained people to hell. Calvin himself stated that God did so (as I have quoted earlier), so if you disagree with him, perhaps you could indicate why. It does not matter in what order the fall happened, because it results in people being ordained to hell.
Tanksley wrote, “Of course we have a choice!”. The Calvinist definition of choice is not at all like the one used in the Bible, or by ordinary people in normal language, nor by any one except determinists and compatibilists (which is a determinism that alleges it provides for moral responsibility). For a Calvinists “choice” means “choose one thing” (i.e., choose what you desire most at any one moment). For every one else, including the Bible, choice means selection between alternatives or from a range of possibilities. Those who are not elect have will only choose to reject God, to sin, and to follow satan, because that is what their “choices” are limited to.
Tanksley wrote, “Again, I’m amazed that you can ask me this question when Paul has already answered it almost verbatim.” Except that the interpretation Tanksley put forward is not “Paul’s answer” and is not what he meant. So, in fact, cherylu is correct to ask the question because Paul has not answered it in the way Tanksley believes.
regards
#John
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I’m not convinced that’s either true or convincing. The Calvinist exegesis of Romans 9, John 6, Eph 2, and so on is powerful and convincing; I know of some problem verses (I’ve got a list of them in my backlog), but all of them are able to be exegeted to comport with the Calvinist interpretation, often to support it rather than fight with it (such as II Pet 3:9, below).
I think a lot of people put harmonization before exegesis, and I think that’s a huge mistake. Before you can harmonize two passages, you have to first work to understand their message. THEN you can see if the messages are complementary. If they’re not, you go back to one or both and try to exegete again. You should _never_, however, insert meaning into one passage that isn’t actually in its solo exegesis. (This is what you and John were doing to I John 4:8.)
I don’t have to spend a few hours exegeting this one — the meaning jumps out.
The verse says “but is patient TOWARD YOU.” The Lord isn’t willing that any of the Elect should perish; He’s waiting until we all come to repentance. Note that in context Peter can’t be talking about All Men in general, because he’s quoting the prophecy (vv. 1-8) that evil people will be judged and destroyed, and he’s looking forward to it as a promise.
The answer is that “grace” doesn’t work that way. In fact, “grace” doesn’t do any work at all; it’s not a thing that causes salvation, but is rather the manner in which God delivers salvation. Salvation is accomplished by Christ, through our faith, in the gospel. Without us hearing the Gospel first, we will not come to salvation. God is gracious in delivering this to us — but “grace” is a word that’s similar to “kindness” or “freedom”; you can’t ask “why didn’t God just zap us with his…
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Continued:
… you can’t ask “why didn’t God just zap us with his kindness?”
God is working through His people, the Church, to deliver the Gospel to the entire Church. That’s why we wait.
-Wm
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I’m sorry William, but your meaning does not “jump out” to me at all. And I don’t think it “jumps out” to anyone that hasn’t already decided that the Calvinist understanding is the correct one.
I think the difference between us is that Calvinists have adopted the verses in Romans 9 and similar verses as your base understanding for the whole rest of the Bible–therefore everything else is seen through that lens. And sometimes the understanding you have of the rest of Scripture because of that is, to the rest of us, “tortured” at best.
We have a totally different paradigm that we see all of Scripture through, so we come to totally different conclusions about the meaning of particular verses. And what jumps out to you, doesn’t jump out to the rest of us at all.
That is why we harmonize things much differently, it seems to me.
And these differences have been going on in the church for centuries!
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False Hope
John Frame (Calvinist theologian and bible scholar) states God’s eternal decree to damn “does not prejudice our assurance of salvation” because our “assurance is not based on our reading of the eternal decrees of God, which are secret unless God reveals them, but on the promises of God” (The Doctrine of God, 334). Thus one’s ability to believe the promises of God in a saving manner is conditional upon God’s eternal decree. Consequently, in order to have assurance one needs to know the status of one’s election, something that by definition is secret and cannot be known.
It is for that reason that Calvinism offers no real basis for assurance of salvation and has developed the theory of the “false hope” in which God temporally enlightens some people to have the fruit of salvation, only to draw away His temporary grace and damn the person ultimately. True, you could have the fruit of election now, but one must not confuse regeneration (or alleged regeneration) with election. If you are a Calvinist, how can you possibly know for sure that God loves you and will give you the grace you need to persevere? The only way to know that is to know you are elect, and that lies in the secret and unrevealed counsel of God. If you fall into sin or begin to doubt or get depressed, there is no support for you whatsoever. God may just be dangling salvation in front of you for a time only to withdraw it later for His “glory.”
John Owen’s treatment of assurance makes claims that are both incredible and terrifying. Owen asserts that an insincere believer (one that is not truly saved) can be “enlightened” yet not changed, renewed, or transformed. He or she may “taste of the heavenly gift,” meaning the Holy Spirit, yet still not experience the regenerating work of the Spirit. Wow! He actually argues that one may even experience gifting of the Spirit (like Simon Magus did [Acts 8:15-21]), yet fail to taste “the goodness of God, and the powers to come”. Conclusion: one can have the experiences of a Christian, yet not be a genuine Christian.
In Arminianism, by contrast, if one is currently “tasting the fruits” one does not have to worry about having them taken away later because one is not elect. If one has fruit, one is truly saved.
Re post 358
Tanksley writes, “(This is what you and John were doing to I John 4:8.)” Hunh? I don’t see where Tanksley has shown any eisegesis (reading meaning into scripture) in my posts 245, 250, 283, and 287. Tanksley looks only at the application of the apostles reasoning about love (the apostle applies it to fellow / brother christians) and so concludes that the statement “God is love” means only “God loves the brethren”. That is, “God loves the elect christians, and so you should love them too / being brother christians you should love each other the way that God loves christians”. I showed in my exegesis that there was no such restriction on the scope of God’s love in that passage and that the apostle’s reasoning makes sense only if “God is love” has a much broader meaning. Furthermore, I showed that the both the larger structure of the book and the unique grammatical construction supported my interpretation, not Tanksely’s.
regards,
#John
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#John,
I agree with you 100%. I don’t see where either one of us are guilty of “inserting meaning”, (eisegesis) into the I John 4:8 passage. It seems to me that if anything, William is guilty of SUBTRACTING meaning from it!
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Cheryl, post 360:
Your question to me wasn’t “what meaning is obvious”, but rather “how do Calvinists explain this.” I answered that, and in addition I showed very simply how the meaning you originally assigned (that Peter was saying that God wanted absolutely everyone to be saved) wasn’t possible in this context. (I’m not saying it’s not true in every possible sense; I’m saying that Peter can’t be saying it in this passage.)
Your response here is essentially “I didn’t think of it first.” That doesn’t invalidate my explanation. The purpose of the explanation was to help you see what I saw. Did it work?
I’ve read a lot of books on the topic citing tons of problem verses — many of them with very real problems. I’ve never seen one cited that created more problems for Calvinism than they did for Arminianism — often resulting in universalism or Pelagianism if interpreted in a way that can’t be harmonized with Calvinism.
This is what I’m talking about when I say that exegesis has to come before harmonization. When you harmonize, you have to start by exegeting _both_ passages. You can’t exegete one, assume the other, and throw away the exegesis; you have to do both. And you can’t interpret the other passage in a way that contradicts your own beliefs in order to make someone else’s beliefs seem invalid.
I’m going to post an exegesis of Romans 9 in “a while”
, and hopefully we can discuss it. In the meantime, my examination of John 6 (I forget whether it was in this thread or the previous one) doesn’t seem to have been answered. That seems to be a problem text for Arminianism.
It’s one thing to claim that they harmonize poorly, but you haven’t attempted to exegete my passages, while I’ve done my best to exegete yours. (I’ll get to John 3:16-18; I think that was a great exegesis you did of it. The others I’ll also do, but since you didn’t exegete them yourself yet, I’ll do them later.)
-Wm
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Willilam,
You said, “Your response here is essentially “I didn’t think of it first.” That doesn’t invalidate my explanation. The purpose of the explanation was to help you see what I saw. Did it work?”
Talk about putting words in someone’ mouth! That is not essentially what I said at all! In case I didn’t make myself clear enough in my last comment–I don’t see your meaning in that passage at all. So no, it didn’t work!
And I honestly don’t know what John 6 verses you are talking about. Guess they have gotten lost in shuffle here of all of our comments.
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By the way William, I don’t believe you ever answered any of my questions in my last comment regarding the Ezekiel passages we were discussing either. Or my question regarding your seeming downplaying of the seriousness of hell. I would give you comment #’s but don’t have time to go looking for them now. All I know is they are way back up there somewhere!
Am babysitting my Grandaughter. She is taking a nap and I have to take advantage of the quiet time. She can tend to be extremely chatty. She told me once that her Mommy told her she talks too much! I tend to agree at times.
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Temporary Disciples
Francis Turretin, famous Calvinist theologian, writes, “XV. Although the faith of the temporary is true in its own order because it truly receives the seed with joy and is not feigned by those who thus believe, who not only think they believe, but really and truly believe (hence they are even said “to believe,” ]n. 2:23; Lk. 8:13), still it is not a true and living justifying faith, in which sense it is even called hypocritical because it is emulous of the faith of the elect and has an external resemblance to it (although destitute of its truth); and so great is its similarity to it often that a greater is not seen between an image and its prototype. Hence not only others who see them are easily deceived by them, but the believers themselves also are deceived and impose upon themselves; not feigning, but believing that they are truly believers (God alone, who searches the innermost recesses of the heart, knowing the truth). Still it is certain that there is a manifold and most essential difference (as was said before) which shows that they mutually differ not only in degree or duration, but in very kind and nature.”
John Owen, another Calvinist in his Religious Affections, wrote, “And besides, it is to be considered that persons may have those impressions on their minds, which may not be of their own producing, nor from an evil spirit, but from the Spirit of God, and yet not be from any saving, but a common influence of the Spirit of God; and the subjects of such impressions may be of the number of those we read of, Heb. 6:4, 5, “that are once enlightened, and taste of the heavenly gift, and are made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and taste the good word of God, and the power of the world to come;” and yet may be wholly unacquainted with those “better things that accompany salvations” of spoken of ver. 9. . . .
“But with respect to love; it is plain by the Scripture, that persons may have a kind of religious love, and yet have no saving grace. Christ speaks of many professing Christians that have such love, whose love will not continue, and so shall fail of salvation, Matt. 24:12, 13: “And because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Which latter words plainly show, that those spoken of before, whose love shall not endure to the end, but wax cold, should not be saved. . . .
” Thirdly, We have no certain rule to determine how far God’s own Spirit may go in those operations and convictions which in themselves are not spiritual and saving, and yet the person that is the subject of them never be converted, but fall short of salvation at last. . . .
“And as a seeming to have this distinctness as to steps and method, is no certain sign that a person is converted; so a being without it, is no evidence that a person is not converted.”
I can quote more, and from other authors should anyone be further…
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Hmm, so it would seem that several famous Calvinists from the past don’t see acting like a Christian now–even if those actions come from the Spirit–mean that a person is saved. These people can be convinced that they have the faith of the elect, but really don’t and are not saved.
That is precisely the point I have tried to make–how can you possibly know in the Calvinist scheme of things if you are one of the elect or not until the end of your life.
Obviously, William, some of your fellow Calvinists from the past don’t think you can either.
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Post 361(a):
I have to stop you here. Your conclusion is the opposite of the author’s; he says that our assurance is NOT based on God’s eternal decree. Unless you personally believe that God’s promises are unreliable, you should notice that Frame is saying that we have an assurance that’s based on something solid.
Absolutely not — this is based on numerous Bible texts in the practical epistles, as well as preaching by Christ himself. I will note that some Calvinists differ; they hold that these texts refer not to “false hope”, but rather to true covenant membership from people who participated fully in the Church, receiving baptism and communion, and yet who never accept Christ.
WOW! You’re expressing contempt for Owen’s words which shows no awareness whatsoever that every word you’re quoting is not from Owen, but from Hebrews 6! Is that contempt actually for those words?
Continue that sentence: one is truly saved FOR NOW. One might not be saved tomorrow. Arminians have to worry about what specifically they might have to watch out for that will remove that salvation. I counseled one man — a superb apologist — who was in existential fear because of that. He’d backslidden as a youth, and believed that if he’d died then he would have gone to hell — therefore, he realized that if he died a week from now, how could he know NOW? All for a sin mentioned once and never explained in the Bible!
The reason “Calvinist” assurance is secure is twofold. First, God always works through means; He doesn’t decree and then fail to enact the means required to bring that decree about. Second, God’s actions are carried out according to His promises and character; the means and results of salvation are clearly explained in Scripture.
-Wm
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In regards to the entire topic of assurance of salvation:
John, and to a lesser extent Cheryl, are implicitly assuming that because a Calvinist may be wrong about his salvation, that therefore it’s impossible to be assured of one’s salvation.
The underlying error is, I believe, a mistake about the nature of knowledge. We finite beings cannot ever know anything with certainty. All we can do is work for greater accuracy, never certainty.
So assurance doesn’t mean total certainty. Rather, it means being about to rest in the finished work of Christ, confident that it has been applied to you.
John claims that Arminians don’t have this problem. But how not? Both Arminians and Calvinists read the exact same signs in order to tell whether or not they’re saved! The only difference in respect to assurance is that Calvinists believe that once they’re saved, they’re always saved, while Arminians believe that even a truly saved person can fall away somehow and become unsaved. So given a Calvinist and an Arminian who have both “worked out their salvation with awe and reverence” and become confident that they’ve accurately assessed their salvation, both using the same Biblical tests, which one will be most assured that God is truly working in them right now? Which one will be most assured that God will be working in the a year from now? And which one is most assured that Heaven is waiting after death?
Both know that they’re saved now; but only the Calvinist can be assured of the future as much as he’s assured of the present. The Arminian has to admit that something could possibly happen to make him change his mind — even if he’s totally correct that he’s saved now.
Now, I’m not saying here that you’re wrong. If the Bible supported you, I’d cheer for you. I’m just saying that your comparison of assurance is entirely misguided and backwards.
Can the Calvinist be wrong about his salvation? YES! But the Arminian can be wrong in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons.
-Wm
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Hmm. Well, I didn’t intend to put words in your mouth– I was trying to understand why you would object to my explanation by simply saying that “it didn’t jump out to you”. Your meaning is clear now.
In review: 2 Pet 3:9 says that God “is patient toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” You wish to interpret the last half of that verse as meaning that God wants no people to perish, and all people to come to repentance; but that simply ignores the context in the same sentence. God is patient towards whom? US. Why? Because He doesn’t want who to perish? If the answer is “all men”, then why does being patient toward *us* help God in that goal? It wouldn’t. God is patient toward us because He doesn’t want any *of us* to perish. Same sentence; same object.
For an additional argument, I also brought out additional context. That same verse mentions a “promise”, and assures us that there’s a reason it’s taking so long to receive that promise. What is being promised? “The day of His return,” and with it “the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” If the point of this phrase were that God didn’t want anyone to perish, why would Peter utter it in the context of promising the day of God’s judgment and wrath?
-Wm
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William,
I will agree with pretty much everything you said in your last comment except for one thing. The Arminian believe’s that Jesus is always there for him, as He is for everyone else in the world (if they believe in Him and receive Him), and He can base his faith on that even in the rough times of his life when he may be questioning his Christian life or sanctification–like maybe a lot of the folks in CMP’s recent article. The Calvinist, if he starts thinking and wondering about it can become desperately afraid that Jesus is not there for him–that maybe he is not one of the elect and that therefore Jesus did not die for him after all. I have read statements of Calvinists that have gone through that type of trauma. Even John Calvin in some quotes I read somewhere said that people can become very afraid in this situation, that it is a thought that will come to pretty much every thinking person, and if allowed to go on will totally shipwreck that person’s faith. So it is to be avoided at all costs. Think I am remembering the gist of what he said correctly here.
Both Calvinist’s and Arminian’s have their own areas where they can have problem’s with assurance.
However, I can not personally imagine a worse one myself than to start questioning if Jesus ever died for me in the first place.
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Cheryl: we discussed the Ezekiel 33 passage at great length. I know you’re not convinced, and that’s okay; but we did discuss it.
I remember the message you accused of downplaying the seriousness of hell; I don’t know what you want in response aside from “oh, I don’t mean that.” I don’t recall the point I was trying to make at the time, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that hell is wonderful; I think it was more along the lines that hell is God’s way of expressing love even in judgment. I don’t see how it couldn’t be.
-Wm
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Good point. The nice thing is that both have to be solved the same way: explain how you can tell that you’re saved, by examining your fruit with diligence. Assuming you’re elect won’t help the Calvinist; and working to save yourself won’t help the Arminian. Both are heresy, and neither one is taught by their respective doctrine.
And the presence of an awful error in the (nominally) Arminian camp doesn’t mean that everyone should be a Calvinist in order to avoid that error. And conversely — the presence of an awful error in the (nominally) Calvinist camp doesn’t mean that everyone should be an Arminian!
-Wm
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William,
Who says “us” in the II Peter verse has to mean only the elect? Who says “us” doesn’t simply mean mankind in general? And when he is writing to Christians, why would “us” refer to all of the elect and not just to those he was already addressing–his fellow Christians? And if he is addressing just his fellow Christians, the argument would make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
And if He does indeed wish no man to perish as I believe this verse and others teach, then why wouldn’t He be slow in bringing about the promise of wrath–giving folks time to come to repentance even if His wrath is inevitable and must come?
Again this is a verse that I believe will only be interpreted in the way you are interpreting it if you are already persauded that Calvinism is the truly correct way to look at Scripture.
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William,
I brought up a point from another Scripture that I really believed refuted your take on the Ezekiel passage in my last comment. That is the one that was never commented on.
And the comment on downplaying hell was reacting to comment #228, I believe, where you said, referring to hell, “I think this is intended to answer my immediately previous question. But it doesn’t get you out of the quandary. God knew what He was creating; if it was really going to be such a horrible situation as you’re describing (keep in mind — we both believe in the same situation!), wouldn’t the loving thing to do be NOT creating at all? Do you really think God’s wincing at the horror of what He’s done?”
Then you went on to comment that you believe it is somehow God’s way of showing love even in judgement.
Sorry, but your quote above certainly sounds like it is downplaing hell or
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Sorry, I hit the submit button by mistake.
My last sentence should of read: “Sorry, but your quote above certainly sounds like it is downplaing hell or or the lake of fire that burns forever–a place Jesus taught us was to be avoided at all costs.” I can’t imagine a place any more horrible than a lake of fire that burns forever. Can you? So yes, it seems to me you were trying to downplay the seriousness of hell to make God seem more loving in sending anyone there.
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Can you find a more precise target for “us” than Peter’s salutation in 2Pet 1:1 (plus himself, of course)? Is there any hint that Peter is talking to someone else? I don’t see it, but perhaps you do.
Furthermore, if “us” means mankind in general — I refer to my former argument. And here’s stronger evidence: read the entire book. Chapter 2 is absolutely scathing! The Lord isn’t reserving the unrighteous to give them a chance to repent; He’s reserving them for judgment.
I don’t understand. Is there a sense in which fellow Christians are not elect or the elect are not fellow Christians? And furthermore, if there were such a division, why would the argument stop making sense?
By the way, I didn’t use the term ‘elect’ when discussing this originally; you did. I’m fine with 2Pet 1:1.
As I said, this all means is that God’s procrastinating sheerly for the sake of procrastination, since if God had ended the world in AD 300, FAR fewer people would have been sent to hell than if He ended the world in AD 2010.
Let’s suppose that’s true. I’m fine with that; I’m answering your challenge in which you said “I wonder what you do with that verse?” I answered; that’s what I do.
But I answered — I think — a bit more powerfully. That verse not only does NOT defeat Calvinism; it actually makes more sense that way. I fully admit that this passage (in context) doesn’t singlehandedly prove Calvinism; it doesn’t really talk about it at all. The one thing it does talk about (and I think we’d agree) is that God is waiting for all the people to be saved that He wants to be saved.
We agree on that point, I suspect, but we disagree on whether God is going to get what He wants. You think He’s not going to get it (but He’s waiting anyhow); I think He’s going to get it.
-Wm
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Let’s put it this way (and I said this before): picture the end of the Ages. We all stand at the Judgment Seat. God condemns each and every hell-deserving person to hell forever. We both agree that this will happen, right? And we both agree that “God is Love”, right? So that action — which we both agree He will do — must flow from His character as a God Who is Love. Then God turns around and allows a different group into everlasting happiness. That’s also how God demonstrates the Love that is His character and nature.
We both believe this. I don’t see how you can avoid this; it’s the only part of your reading of 1Joh 4:8 on which we agree. Are you saying that “God is Love” only applies when God’s NOT dealing with hell?
(Keep in mind that I’m not saying this to disagree with you on 1 John 4:8! I seem to believe this passage more than you do, when it comes to hell. And also keep in mind that I’m not saying that God’s love makes hell pleasant; I’m only saying that God must be displaying His love even in His judgment, and even to the people being judged, because it is His nature.)
-Wm
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Okay William,
Again about the word “us”. You say it refers to the ones spoken of in II Peter 1:1. Who are they? Those that have obtained like precious faith–in other words Christians, “the elect.”
So, now all of a sudden in chapter 3 the Lord is withholding judgment on the world so that his elect, (that will persevere, remember?) and that already show they are the elect, because God has given them faith, (according to Calvinism, right?) will not perish??? How are the elect, the saved ones, the ones given “like precious faith” going to perish? So how in the world can they be the ones he is referring to as “us”???
And yes, chapter two is scathing–it is speaking of the end of ungodly, unrepentant people. However, weren’t we all ungodly people at one time? Elect and non elect alike? How about the example of the apostle Paul who was out to have all of the Christians he could put to death? He called himself at one point, “the chief of sinners.” And yet God saved him. So what makes you so sure God does not want to save any of those ungodly ones in chapter two?
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Joe said:
I didn’t answer this earlier because I felt I’d addressed it a long time ago — but that WAS a long time ago. Let’s hit it again.
The shortest, most certain, and least satisfying answer is that “God had a good purpose for it.” I think all the theists (excluding the open theists) agree on this.
A more satisfying answer would have to be more precise: WHY did God want this situation? I’ve heard some imaginative answers; I think one of my favorite is the literary analogy, which says that God created the world for much the same reason that a great author creates a good story: to express himself. Every good story has a dragon
, some evil that the hero can’t simply beat; but in every good story the hero does beat the dragon. Is God the hero? Well, God does actually enter into the book, as Christ. I think the Church is the hero, though.
The ideal answer would be entirely supported by Scripture and entirely satisfying. I don’t think an ideal answer is available; the above is very satisfying to me personally, but I don’t have direct Scriptural support (I can come up with elements of support, and I’m sure someone’s written a book, but the analogy itself isn’t present in Scripture). In fact, it’s definitely not complete; it’s not complex enough.
I think we can definitely give some specific answers that don’t work. God didn’t create on accident; Jesus spoke out against people who start work without counting the cost. God didn’t create for an evil reason, or for no reason (this means that He did have a reason). He didn’t create because He had to. He also didn’t create for a simple reason — His ways are far above our ways.
-Wm
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No, I don’t think it is God’s love that is casting people into hell or that created hell. I believe God send’s people to hell when they have rejected His love and His offer of salvation. I believe that He at that point has to show them His wrath and His anger since they have refused His love that was offered to them.
What I am saying, again, is that I don’t see how He can be showing His love by decreeing before creation, as at least some Calvininists believe, that a good share of His creation will go to hell, which He Himself has described as a terrible place to be avoided at all costs.
That is simply illogical: “I am creating a terrible place and you need to avoid it all costs. But I in my love for you am going to be sure from before the creation of time that is exactly where you will spend eternity”. Huh??
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I need to amend my last comment a bit. It is certainly God’s love that casts all sin and evil doers, the devil and his demons away from His saved people for all of eternity. In that way I can say that the creation of hell and casting people into it for eternity shows His love. BUT, I don’t believe it can be love to those being punished so or that it would be love to create them for such a punishment.
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I did not intend that. “God is Love” does not mean only “God loves the brethren”. God is Love means, indeed, that Love is God’s nature, just as you said (and I agreed with). The problem is that this passage only explains God’s love in the context of the brethren; it doesn’t explain at all how God’s love manifests toward the unsaved (although we agree that it MUST).
John, I entirely agree with your exegesis — that is, with your interpretation of the passage, including your careful study of the specific grammar. Where we diverge is in your philosophical extrapolation that because “God is Love”, therefore God must love all people in the same manner, at least with respect to predestination.
The criticism I’m leveling against you isn’t that your conclusion is incorrect; it’s simply that your conclusion isn’t mentioned or implied by this specific text. Okay, God is Love. Okay, that means that Love is in God’s nature, that’s it’s fundamental to who He is. Okay, that means that every action will show forth that love. Must God therefore love all people in the exact same way? The text simply says nothing about that.
You are very specific about the way in which God loves all people equally. You say that He loves them all equally, specifically, by giving them all the same ability to be saved. Why do you stop there, though? Wouldn’t it be more equal to love them all by actually saving them all? The passage doesn’t specify, so if you’re going to say that one conclusion is required by the passage’s implication, why do you reject the other conclusion?
Your argument is eisegesis because it forces the idea of equal love into the passage, going beyond the simple fact that God is love by nature to add that everyone will receive that love in the same way and to the same amount.
-Wm
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More on 1 John 4:
I think it’s significant that this passage doesn’t try to justify loving the brethren by comparing that to God’s treatment of all people; rather, we’re told to love the brethren as God loved the brethren. This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love non-Christians; rather, it means that John felt that God’s love for Christians was the model we should follow, and this suggests that, in some way, God’s love for Christians is different from God’s love for non-Christians.
Now, that difference may (as far as we can tell from this text) be very minimal, or even just a matter of perspective. Perhaps, for instance, Christians find it easier to understand God’s love for them simply because they’re directly experiencing it. (I don’t agree with this, but perhaps I’m wrong; this passage neither supports nor contradicts it.)
The passage doesn’t say. What IS clear from the passage is that John treats God’s love for Christians differently from how He treats God’s love for non-Christians. For you to claim that the two must be equal in action because of this passage alone is wrong, because the passage doesn’t support it.
-Wm
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“What IS clear from the passage is that John treats God’s love for Christians differently from how He treats God’s love for non-Christians.”
Maybe that is clear to YOU, from the passage. To me the passage doesn’t say that at all. Ever hear the old saying, “Clear as mud”?
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Clearly, such people exist. In fact, there are two types of such people: the ones who stay in the church, and the ones who don’t. The ones who leave the Church “went out from among us, because they were not of us.” Those who remain in the church must be under the authority of the church; if they sin, they should be confronted, and if they do not repent after the full process of church discipline, they should be treated as an unbeliever (Matt 18:15-17).
Does that mean that we can tell whether they’re saved? No. But we can tell that in both cases, the evidence shows that they weren’t. All we have is the evidence, not the actuality, and we should keep the humility to admit that we don’t know.
In neither case does the question of whether they were elect enter into how we should speak or act; it’s purely hypothetical from our point of view. Now, some of us will be surprised by who we see in Heaven; I suspect that some of these surprises will be in things like seeing that total druggie who never returned to the church, and rejected every attempt the church made to help.
Of course, other surprises will be from a category I didn’t mention: churches who didn’t confront their people in sin will find that “good members” don’t know about the seriousness of their sins, and thus never took the Gospel seriously, and were never saved. Does this mean that these churches thwarted God’s election? No, it means that these churches didn’t obey God, and so didn’t get to serve as gloriously as they could have. They didn’t thwart God; God still used them.
What do you mean by “it”, when you say “it takes rejection”? Don’t you mean “losing your salvation”? If not, then what DO you mean?
As far as I can tell, you believe that a Christian can be saved one day, and unsaved the next, by some action under that Christian’s control. If we say that the Christian “has salvation” the first day, and doesn’t have it the second, then can’t we say that the Christian has lost salvation?
-Wm
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“A more satisfying answer would have to be more precise: WHY did God want this situation? I’ve heard some imaginative answers; I think one of my favorite is the literary analogy, which says that God created the world for much the same reason that a great author creates a good story: to express himself. Every good story has a dragon , some evil that the hero can’t simply beat; but in every good story the hero does beat the dragon. Is God the hero? Well, God does actually enter into the book, as Christ. I think the Church is the hero, though.”
Here’s what I don’t understand: “Well, God does actually enter into the book, as Christ. I think the Church is the hero, though.” Have I missed something here? How can the church be the hero if God has already determined who His elect are from the foundations of the earth? Is the church the final hero vis a vis this, or does that thinking in effect minimize the death of Christ on the cross, in favor of predestination of an elect group of folks who will win out in the end through perseverance? And how does that really differ from a works gospel?
Just asking.
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Post 382:
I’m still confused, but let’s cut to the chase.
How are all these fine distinctions between creating hell (you agree), casting for eternity (you agree), being punished (you disagree), and creating for torment (you disagree) present, as you claim, in 1 John 4:8? The verse doesn’t even mention hell, creation, torment, or eternity.
It seems clear to me that you’ve defined a concept of “love” that excludes carrying out punishment and creation for punishment, but includes creating the punishment and condemning to it. That distinction may or may not be real, but it’s certainly not in this verse!
-Wm
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Assuming that God is indeed love as His very essence, (which I think you agreed to above?), my problem is that God with that love couldn’t create people that He has decreed are going to hell before their creation AND be acting in that love as far as I can tell.
No, the verse does not say anything about hell, or torment, etc. What is does say is God IS love. What I say is IT IS NOT LOVE to create people decreed to be going to hell with no other option available.
It is one thing, it seems to me, to send people to hell who have lived in such a way that they have deserved it and who have refused His love. It is another thing to create people with the purpose of sending them to hell and giving them no possibility of salvation.
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William,
By the way, you have repeatedly tried to convince us that in the Calvinist system people do really have a choice. It is just that they choose what they desire most. (Never mind that desire is the one and only one that God gave them.)
However, if the Calvinist belief in limited atonement is true, how can that possibly be the case? If Jesus never died for them in the first place, how in the world could they ever have a choice to choose Him even assuming their desire was for that at some time?? You can’t choose a salvation that isn’t even there for you, now can you?!?
No, in the Calvinist system people are decreed by God to be going to hell before they are even born, before the world began as a matter of fact. And Jesus had no intention of paying for their sins. And they can do nothing but sin because they were born dead in sin. COMPLETELY HOPELESS situtation for these folks.
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Re posts about assurance of salvation
Re Tanksley’s 368. Tanksley misunderstands my point about Frame. Frame states that one cannot know who God has, by decree, elected to salvation. Therefore, there is no point in trying to find out what God decreed. Even John Piper has admitted, on his website, that it is possible that God may not have elected his children to salvation and that there is nothing he could do about that. My further point is that, under the Calvinist system, the degree to which one has assurance is one of the things ordained by God in His meticulous control of all things. (in Calvinism God knows what will happen in the future because he has ordained all that will happen).
Owen’s comments about not being able to tell who is elect, or even if oneself is elect, is not the words of Hebrews, but merely one of the many aberrant Calvinist misinterpretations of scripture. Moreover, I was not expressing contempt for Owen’s words, but rather horror.
Tanksley writes, “from people who participated fully in the Church, receiving baptism and communion, and yet who never accept Christ.” Great comfort there, so there are deluded people who believe that they believe in Christ, and have been baptized, etc., but who are not elect and so not saved. That means anyone could be mistaken. And if one reads testimonies of those who left the faith, one will read many testimonies of those who were fully convinced that (earlier in their lives) they were true believers with authentic conversion experiences and authentic lives in Christ. As Frame and Piper admit, no Calvinist can know if they are elect. If one cannot know if one is elect, and if one can show all the signs of being saved but yet not be elect, one can never have any final assurance at all. No wonder the calvinist Puritans tied themselves into knots trying to determine if they were truly saved or not.
It is important to note that the Calvinist assurance only works from God’s side of the secret decree of election. It has no application on the human side. What good is knowing that God will save exactly those whom He elected if I can’t know whether I’m elect?
Arminian belief does not entail the belief that one can lose one’s salvation like one can lose one’s car keys. That may be the colloquial way of expressing it, but that is not the correct concept nor is it how the concept is set out by Arminian theologians. One has to reject God to reject one’s salvation. Furthermore, such rejection is evidenced by the direction and character of one’s life. One sin, or even many, does not make one bound for hell. However, the many warning passages are real and are intended to make one conscious of sin and of rejecting God. In the Calvinist system, such warning passages are unintelligible and make no sense whatsoever. Piper is an example of Calvinists who waffle back and forth on what those passages mean.
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I believe this part of the debate is now over; you have conceded the point being argued. The question of whether “it is not love to create people decreed to be going to hell with no other option available” is not, by your admission, answered in 1 John 4:8, either positively or negatively; it’s merely a matter of your own opinion.
1 John 4:8 is therefore not a prooftext against Calvinism (nor for it!), and should not have been brought into the debate.
I hope, but don’t expect, that this will reduce the number of posts per day.
-Wm
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Regarding post 390: I’d love to discuss this, but let’s try to wind down the existing debates rather than creating new ones. Let it stand that you don’t accept our definition of choice as even vaguely logically consistent, so you’ll never accept anything we say on the topic unless we come to terms first.
Conversely, sadly, I don’t accept your definition of choice as being logically coherent; so I’m no different.
Perhaps in some other thread we’ll debate the nature and existence of “freedom of the will” (Edwards’ study on compatibilism); or perhaps we could take a Lutheran perspective and debate “the bondage of the will” (Luther’s Biblical refutation of Erasmus’ belief that sinners wills are not in slavery to sin). In one, we’d consider the definition of choice; in the other, we’d consider only what the Bible has to say, not the philosophy.
-Wm
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re Tanksley’s post 369
Tanksley admits what other Calvinists admit, that is, a “Calvinist may be wrong about his salvation”. But then he goes on to state that a Calvinist may have confidence anyway. But for Tanksley confidence means less than 100%. In his next paragraph he states that the nature of knowledge is such that we can never have 100% certainty, and he agrees that assurance doesn’t mean 100% certainty.
But then he goes on to write about “resting” and “confidence”. But how can this be so if a Calvinist cannot know if he/she is elect? Or that no display of the fruits of the spirit and the sacraments of the faith is a certain indication of election but may only be a mark of temporary tasting of salvation that one has not been elected to?
Because Arminians do not believe in the doctrine of election on the basis of foreordination, they do not have such worries. If they believe in Christ they are elect, 100% for sure. Signs of the life of the Spirit in them, such as love, are true indication of salvation and not merely an indication of being ordained by God for a temporary tasting only but not lasting election. As the John writes in 1 John 4:15 “If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God.” The Arminian has no worries about being a temporary disciple or having a false hope (i.e., a hope that one is elect even though one is not).
True, there is the possibility that a Christian may again turn away from God but (1) that is a fact that we observe happening anyway and which must be explained, and (2) that is the teaching of the Bible. All of us know people who were believers and who are no longer. How do we explain that? The Arminian reasons that that person turned away from God, took their hand off the plow, that their salvation was real when they were a believer. The implication though is that one can have full confidence in present salvation; there is no secret decree of God with the secret list of the elect.
The Calvinist, no the other hand, reasons that that person is either (a) still elect even though he/she lives like an apostate, or (b) that person was never elect and saved in the first place, but that we cannot know which it is. The result of this, though, is that one cannot have confidence in one’s present salvation: one could be non-elect even though one has apparent signs of salvation. The Calvinist thus cannot have confidence in the future either, because time could reveal that one was not elect but only temporarily “blessed’ with experiences in the Spirit and the body of Christ, and that in time it will be revealed that they were never elect. In time they will start to sin and be apostate because they were never elect. Of course, it could be that they are still elect but only foreordained to live like a sinner until death. It is only after death that one’s elect or non-elect status is revealed.
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the whole discussion is moot because our sinful nature and numerous daily sins disqualify us in the first place, lol
a detailed rationalization of Romans 6:23 would be a suitable follow up to your philosophy
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All Calvinists believe that God’s providence is meticulous — God takes care of us in every way, and allows nothing to happen “apart from His will” (the Bible says so). Some believe that God’s sovereignty is meticulous — that God controls all things directly. Few believe that God’s decree is meticulous — that God planned all events precisely as they occur, before time began, and that for each event He could have chosen otherwise.
I don’t see grounds for choosing between these; I affirm the first, suspect the second, and will not unfellowship someone for affirming the last, although I strongly suspect it’s unbiblical.
I see. I’m not familiar with that usage. No matter; I understand. You’re speaking of Libertarian Free Will. Following is my reply to your original passage, as clarified; thank you.
I have no dog in this fight; it’s extrabiblical and thus not essential. I find your reasoning consistent with the supralapsarian position, of course; the reason I don’t find it compelling is that I don’t assume that Adam and Eve were the same as us. We have NO desire for God; they may well have had a desire for God equal to their desire for self (or some other arrangement; the Bible doesn’t explain).
Like Luther, I don’t see a need to explain what the Bible leaves unexplained. Unlike Luther, I enjoy doing it anyhow — and, of course, I am a Calvinist — but I’m going to avoid that during a debate like this, because it assumes more than is necessary.
I said that I was describing the sides of a debate that I find academic and irrelevant; I’m using a word used in that debate, not one that I’m pinning an argument on. That particular word is taken from the Wikipedia article on Lapsarianism. It’s used in what appears to be two slightly different senses. I…
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William,
“I believe this part of the debate is now over; you have conceded the point being argued. The question of whether “it is not love to create people decreed to be going to hell with no other option available” is not, by your admission, answered in 1 John 4:8, either positively or negatively; it’s merely a matter of your own opinion.
1 John 4:8 is therefore not a prooftext against Calvinism (nor for it!), and should not have been brought into the debate.”
As far as I am concerned, this debate is not over! I will agree that it is over with you. For you simply can not see that we have a point….period.
And you say that this verse can not be used against or for Calvinism–well if that is the case, I don’t see how any verses in the Bible can be used either against or for Calvinism. Except those of course that use the word “Elect” or other explicit phrases. There can be no way of comparing Calvinism to the rest of Scripture at all.
So, if there is no point in using any other Scripture in this debate except ones containing those words, (and by the way you have done the same thing before too–saying “it could be understoood either way), I don’t see any point in continuiing this discussion at all. No matter what we bring up, you are likely going to say, “that is just your way of interpreting it”, to which, of course, we can reply the same thing to you.
By the way, you have been speaking for several weeks now of having other articles ready for your blog, of exegeting large portions of Scripture and putting them there and taking the debate over there. When can we expect to see those?