The socks of salvation

I like this prayer:

“It’s only what you have done in us that has brought us to salvation.”

We read in Isaiah 6:10:

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.”

See, it is God who clothed me in salvation; all the clothes – and the jewels – of salvation; even down to my socks.

Now, don’t stretch the metaphor too far with your Arminian riposte:

“But I prepared my body to receive my new clothes.”

For starters a dead “body” cannot prepare, or even stretch anything, even his pinkie:

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2:1-2).

Now get a life. Life, of course, you can’t get; it has to be given.

I’m nothing but a sinner saved by grace, nothing but forgiven, nothing but emasculated

In 1 Peter 3:15, Christians are admonished to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…”

I may sometimes fall down on giving and answer with gentleness and respect even when I bracket my answer with gentleness and respect. For example, I said elsewhere that you Christians who maintain that you first believe (decide to have faith) and then are raised from the dead to decide to believe even more “need a (respectful and reverential) kick in your Arminian pants.” I may have been even more brassy to Arminians when, taking a leaf out of Paul the Apostle’s book, I didn’t only let loose, as Paul did (in connection with those believers who insisted that Gentile believers be circumcised – Galatians 5:11) that he wished they would go the whole hog and emasculate themselves. I was much more blunt – and sharp: “Go and emasculate yourselves.” To add insult to injury, 1 Peter 3:15 is about giving an answer to those who ask me, and no Arminian asked me how faith and regeneration work together; I just went in hammer and tong(ue). Good thing I’m not an apostle.

But let me move on to the main clause in 1 Peter 3:15, “… always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” “Everyone” here refers to unbelievers. Permit me to expand the cohort of Peter’s listeners to Christians as well, who also need to ingest from other Christians the vitals of Christianity. Sometimes, alas, the meat dished out can be rather stringy. Here are two examples:

Not only those who call themselves Christians but even committed ones, say, when asked (and sometimes not asked) what Christianity means to them: “I’m no more than a sinner saved by grace.” To wit: 

Hazlett Lynch, in introduction to “D. Martyn LLoyd-Jones (1899-1981: A Personal Appreciation,” says in his opening paragraph:

“As one who has been reading and studying the Lloyd-Jones material for about 40 years, I am delighted to offer this paper as my humble contribution to the legacy of this dear servant of Christ to the Christian Church. To write about such a man as the Doctor (as he was affectionately known) was is an enormous privilege, and yet is a deeply humbling experience for me. I lay no claim to an expertise in the works of Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and am no more than a sinner saved by divine grace; yet I am that, and for that I am eternally grateful” (my italics). (For more context, see here).

Another example: Your answer you give to the hope that is within you is “I have been forgiven.” With regard to forgiveness, guilt is one the greatest human burdens. So, when you are told that God can wipe away all your sin, and all you have to do is believe that Christ paid the penalty in your place, and all can be wiped clean, you may – most, of course, won’t – jump at the offer and “give your heart” to Christ. If, however, that is all Christianity is for you, and all the other “stuff” like reading your Bible, praying, going to church, sharing with other Christians are a drag, then all you would’ve done is replace one burden with a another: religion. You’ve dredged up your guilt and masked it by the drudge of religion. 

A Christian is forgiven, of course, and that is most wonderful; the chains have been removed, indeed, you have been raised from death. But, the even more glorious thing than being no longer dead, it becoming alive, is being in Christ. What is it to be alive in Christ?

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory

(Ephesians 1:3-14 ESV)

Christians, should you give such an answer as above to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope within you? Won’t it be too much for an unbeliever? Shouldn’t we rather aim lower, at something an unbeliever can dig their rational teeth into such as the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? Now you’re making me want to pick up something sharp again. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit of God can turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, and don’t you think the best way He has chosen to do this is the scripture, for didn’t He say this was the way to do it? Wasn’t this the way He did it for you? 

Talk till you’re purple in the face about the evidence of the resurrection and the moral argument for God, about the wonders of human embryology (something amazing to see) , even calling it “divine” and “miraculous,” but unless the Holy Spirit of God irrupts into your life, you remain dead; in what ultimately matters: a life with God in Christ. 

Can’t continue…was cut off.

 

Related articles

• God’s grace and the bugbear of an authoritarian God: Why do Christians need psychology to relate to God? (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• In the trade: The songs Arminians – and Calminians – love to sing (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Isaiah 46:9-10. That’s why you need a kick in your Arminian pants (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• On passivity, mood and free will in Christian regeneration: With a little help from Glen Miller and Little Richard. (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

God’s grace and the bugbear of an authoritarian God: Why do Christians need psychology to relate to God?

What contribution does Christian psychology make to the relationship between Christians and God? I shall argue that Christians who need psychology to come to God are deceived. They may need psychology because they often do not understand or refuse to accept the biblical view of coming to faith in Christ. 

According to Pastor Steven J. Cole, who had been deeply involved with Christian psychology, psychology contributes hardly anything to an understanding of how a person comes to Christ. But the worst of it is that Christian psychology claims to enable a person to come to Christ by cutting through all the authoritarian stuff such as God ordering one what to think, what to believe, what to do. Cole relates the following incident:

“…the elders assigned to another elder and me to check out the book that the proposed “Recovery Group” led by my associate wanted to use. This elder and his wife had been on Campus Crusade’s staff for about 20 years and he taught at their seminary (my church was near Crusade’s headquarters and many of our people were on staff). His wife was one of the emotionally “hurting” people who wanted us to start these recovery groups.”

“ The book we read was Henry Cloud’s When Your World Makes No Sense [Oliver-Nelson, 1990]. I was told that it would help me understand these hurting people. I tried to give it every benefit of a doubt, but there was one part early in the book that troubled me, where Cloud asserts that for these hurting people, the “standard Christian answers” (dealing with sin, faith, obedience, time in the Word and prayer, etc.) did “not work.” He compares such things to the counsel given by Job’s friends, calling it “worthless medicine.” Then he proposes his solution, which is essentially a baptized version of developmental psychology.”

Here’s the mother load (my italics):

“As this elder and I were discussing Cloud’s approach, he told me that people like his wife who were from dysfunctional homes could not relate to my preaching because I emphasize obedience to God’s Word. Because they had strict, cold, authoritarian fathers, they don’t relate well to authority. I replied that I thought that I also put a strong emphasis on God’s grace as the motivation for obedience. But he responded that his wife couldn’t even relate to God’s grace — it went right by her. I was a bit taken aback, and so I said, “You mean that the many times I have spoken on God’s grace, she didn’t hear me?” He said yes, in her 20 years on Crusade staff, never once had she felt God’s grace and love on a personal level.”

“I thought about what he had said and asked some clarifying questions to make sure I understood him. Then I responded, “If your wife has never felt God’s love and grace, she is not converted!” I had been reading Jonathan Edwards’ classic, A Treatise on Religious Affections, in which he makes a strong biblical case that saving faith is not mere intellectual assent to the gospel, but that it affects the heart. This elder got very upset with me. But I stuck to my guns then and do so now, that if a person can sit in church for 20 years and never be moved by God’s grace and love as shown to us at the cross, then that person is not truly converted.”

“As I thought about what this elder, my associate, Henry Cloud, and others in their camp were saying, I realized that, in effect, they were saying that the transforming power of the gospel, which has sustained the saints in and through every conceivable trial, was not sufficient to deal with the emotional problems of these late 20th century Christians. And, I came to realize that the psychologized approach to Christianity was built on the inadequate theology that equates conversion with making a decision to invite Christ into your heart. But the two are not necessarily synonymous.”

And here’s where Arminians (a sinner participates in being born again) and Calvinists (God does all the “rebirthing”) disagree. 

“Biblically, conversion is the supernatural act of God whereby He imparts spiritual life to a person who is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1-5). It is not something that man can effect at all (John 1:12-13). As Calvin (and Edwards) helped me to see, invariably God has revealed to the truly converted person something of His awesome majesty and holiness.”

Arminians are synergists (erg – work, syn -with) ; they believe they co-operate with God in their regeneration – “born again”), while Calvinists are monergists; they believe that the dead cannot regenerate themselves, and so God does all the work in “rebirthing” the sinner.

The heart of the matter is this: Nobody in their “right” mind (that is, natural mind) wants an invisible force lording itself/himself over him/her. That is why regeneration is a unilateral act of (a living personal) God. Here is the Apostle John (Gospel of John 1):

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural (flesh) descent, nor of human decision (the will) or a husband’s will, but born of God.

I said that “regeneration” is a unilateral act of God. Once the sinner has been raised out of the grave, he is enabled to convert (to turn to Christ), that is accept Christ. He does so willingly, and joyfully, of course, because he not only is made free to do so, but he discovers that he was made free to do so. Eureka. Much more joy.

How is it that most professing Christians don’t get it? See; born not of your dead nature, not of your will (two ways of saying the same thing).

When God draws sinners to Him, they don’t yearn for a counsellor to ease them into their prospective role as servant son or servant daughter of Almighty God. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:44). Why are you so concerned about your democratic rights when you have been assured that if God draws you to him, you will live eternally: “I will raise them up at the last day.” If a divine promise of living forever in joy and peace does not cut it for you, then go and emasculate yourself.

“Instantly, continues Cole, like Isaiah after his vision of God, the sinner is struck with his utter defilement of heart in the presence of this unapproachable light, and he cries out, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” Rather than feeling better about himself, he feels much worse as he realizes his true condition before the Holy God. Like the man in Jesus’ story, he is even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but he beats his breast and cries out, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” (Luke 18:13). And, of course, God is merciful to all who truly call on Him.”

Post haste: Not all Arminians need the authority of a psychologist to ease them into the harness of divine authority. And hey, there’s also bound to be a Calvinist or two who are not averse to a little psychological help in matters religious.

Philosophy Shmephosophy: John Owen strutting his Calvinist stuff

The pith of ”it’s not he who willeth.” Romans 9 and free will

Arminius

Lately, I’ve been writing much on that “hellish” doctrine of the bondage of man’s will. Today I was listening again to gentle James White’s exposition of Romans 9 and reading again (which is always a gain) one of my previous posts, “The Jew’s role in salvation and the future of ethnic Israel: Give John Piper his due.”

Here are a few more comments on the bondage of the human will in salvation with reference to Romans 9, which encapsulate (but hopefully do not insulate) what I said in “The Jew’s role in salvation…”(URL above).

Jewish believers in Jesus are generally Arminians (a very few might be Armenians as well). Arminianism states that human dignity requires an unimpaired freedom of the will to choose salvation, which implies that the one who ultimately decides salvation is the believer. In contrast, the Reformed (Calvinist) position states that salvation is totally of the Lord. Christians are Arminians on their feet and Calvinists on their knees.

On feet – Jesus thank you for giving me, and my brothers and sisters I’m praying day and night for, this precious freedom to allow you to change my, and their, heart.

On knees – Jesus please please change their hearts.

Arminians are unable (until enabled) to see that the main focus of Romans is not about the pre eminence or eminence of ethnic Israel. Romans 9 is about individual salvation where Paul uses the example of two Jewish boys (Jacob and Esau, both rotters) to show that not all Jews are automatically part of God’s family. That’s the plain sense of Romans 9:13-16, that is, if you accept that you cannot accept the Gospel unless God makes you willing to do so.

To our Romans 9:

13 ”As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. 14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. 16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy.”

What about verse 16?

“So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy.”

“Him” in v. 16 is an individual. It’s clear as day. So, to repeat, it’s not the person that wills, or runs (a parallel for “wills”) who ultimately saves himself (makes the final decision) but it is God’s mercy that saves. Arminians retort that there are many other parts of the Bible that command you to choose. That’s true, but those commands are the means God uses to call those on whom he will have mercy. No human being knows whom God has called – from eternity (irrespective of what he sees they’re going to do once on earth), so all an evangelist can do is make a general call. If you understand that, you’ve got the kernel of how one comes to Christ. No medals, though.

But hang on, consider what I said above about Jacob and Esau:

“Romans 9 is about individual salvation where Paul uses the example of two Jewish boys (Jacob and Esau, who both turned out to be rotters in their own way) to show that not all Jews are automatically part of God’s family.”

Now, it says the following in verses 11 and 12, which I had not included above: “Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad–in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls–she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”

So, if God’s purpose of election does not depend on Jacob, or Esau (or you or me) doing anything good or bad, what has not  doing anything good or bad  to do with the twins turning into rotters later on in their life? Surely, a rotter is a doer.

Paul provides the answer in Chapter 5 of the same Epistle. It’s called the doctrine of ”Original Sin”:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

(Romans 5:12-19)

In Ephesians 2:1-3, we read:

”And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

The first sentence “dead through trespasses and sins,”could very well be talking about personal sins we commit throughout our lives, and, therefore, is not dealing with the concept of being born in sin (as spelled out in Romans 5 above). Later in the passage, however, we do read that we (Christians) were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest (all other human beings).”

There are swathes of Arminians who hate the doctrine of ”original sin” ( clearly explained in Romans 5 above) so much that they will insist that ” by nature children of wrath” definitely does not mean ”born with a sin nature.” Here, for example,  is Wayne Jackson’s conclusion to his Are Infants “by Nature” Children of Wrath?

”The Bible does not teach the doctrine of inherited depravity. The dogma is strictly of human origin. ”And it is a serious tragedy that those who profess to be friends of the Scriptures will teach this error, thereby subjecting the Christian system to unjustified criticism. Ephesians 2:3 does not teach inherited depravity.”

Barnes’ notes on the Bible takes a neutral position, which, implies that he is not out to promote the doctrine of ”total depravity.” ”Radical corruption” is a more accurate term, because ”total depravity” suggests ”utter depravity,” which would suggest that no one can be good enough to love his dog, or Beethoven. Barnes is a Methodist, therefore, an Arminian. He couldn’t be anything else, for it is only an Arminian who hates the doctrine of ”Original sin” and her daughter ”total depravity.” Here is Barnes (my italics):

”And were by nature – Φύσει Fusei. By birth, or before we were converted By conversion and adoption they became the children of God; before that, they were all the children of wrath. This is, I think, the fair meaning of this important declaration. It does not affirm “when” they began to be such, or that they were such as soon as they were born, or that they were such before they became moral agents, or that they became such in virtue of their connection with Adam – whatever may be the truth on these points; but it affirms that before they were renewed, they were the children of wrath. So far as this text is concerned, this might have been true at their very birth; but it does not directly and certainly prove that. It proves that at no time before their conversion were they the children of God, but that their whole condition before that was one of exposure to wrath.”

Let us grant that Barnes’ neutral position is true. What, however, about ”just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given…” (Romans 5 above).

When it comes to biblical exegesis, Calvinists are accused of being more ”philosophical” than biblical. Too much noggin is the complaint. Too much pride, pomposity, assumptions, presumptions, presuppositions, interpretations, categorisations, ratiocinations – in short too much philosophy.

The upshot: whereas Barnes is painfully neutral, Calvinists are painstakingly neural. I think the root of the differences between the Arminian and Calvinist goes deeper than the core text or the cortex, into what the psychologists call ”conation.”

”Conation”  is a term that stems from the Latin conatus, meaning any natural tendency, impulse, striving, or directed effort. It is one of three parts of the mind, along with the affective and cognitive. In short, the cognitive part of the brain measures intelligence, the affective deals with emotions and the conative drives how one acts on those thoughts and feelings” (Wikipedia).

The Bible calls these three areas, the mind, the will and the heart. With regard to ”radical corruption,” the Calvinist exegesis is that when Adam ”fell,” all three, mind, will, and heart, became radically corrupted. The Bible is adamant that the whole human race fell in Adam. How this happened, the Bible doesn’t tell us. In my book, and in my Bible, that is the only hard doctrine hard swallow whole. Why should I suffer because of what my father (umpteen generations ago did)?

The Arminian, in contrast, is obsessed with ”conation,” with the coronation of his ”free” will,  free to love God.  And so, in his endeavour to hold tight on to his ”free will,” he plays footloose with the doctrine of ”Original sin,”  distorting  it into a aboriginal monstrosity. The boot is on the other foot.

When the Calvinist reads the Bible, he sees man freely following his heart. The man thinks, he desires, and his mind directs that desire to its object. The will is not a noun, it is a verb, a present continuous, always willing, moving, in its natural state, away from God (of the Bible). Man is dead, totally dead, totally deprived of the love for God; in other words, totally depraved. And that includes his willing. And that is the original Bible doctrine of ”original” sin; willy-nilly.

Related articles

• The Nature of Man: the Will and the Fall of Adam and his children (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Isaiah 46:9-10. That’s why you need a kick in your Arminian pants (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• In the trade: The songs Arminians – and Calminians – love to sing (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

Ipad 3 explains salvation and a Calvinist sees the light

“Don’t touch my Ferrero Rochers. Too late! You’ve gone ‘n ruined the friendship. And if you even as much as blink at my ipad 3!

Calvinist: “Ouch, wazzat for?” ipad 3 owner: “That includes the back.” And don’t talk back to me, especially about free will, ’cause no one must tell me I didn’t freely choose my irresistible ipad and to-die-for Ferreros? So don’t go telling me I’m not free to choose my saviour. You give me the willies. I’m not that dead that I can’t will to buy my ipad 3 and my Ferreros, or will to give you one if you go near them. So why in Heaven’s name am I, you say, too dead to be able to choose Jesus. Can’t you see that God has said – in the Bible! – that he requires my co-operation to come to Him. And, naturally, he helps my will along with his grace; otherwise I’d just be like my ipad 3 in His hands; press button, whoops, ipad am born again, ipad believe. Now, I’m not saying that I contribute anything to my salvation; of course I don’t; I merely cooperate with God. God doesn’t only want to love me, He wants me to love Him back. That’s what relationship is all about. I’m not His ipad, or His Rocher. In fact he’s my Rock. Love’s a two way street. And without this mutual love and respect for each other’s free will (God ordained it that way) God’s whole plan of salvation – the Son taking on flesh, suffering, dying, and so on for me, who was, before I made the right decision, deadish in sin – would be pointless. Now, perhaps you’ll understand what Paul is going on about in that passage from Ephesians that you Calvinists love to quote. Come read it slowly with me and you will see that you’re not a pathetic dead ipad that only springs to life (lachaim) when God presses your belly-button; you would say “quickens you unto life.” Hang on a mo. Let me find the Bible app. Wow, there you go; quick, no fuss. I loooove my ipad 3 – reminds me of the trinity:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of humanity. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:1-10).

Calvinist: When we read, ”But God, being rich in mercy…,” it makes me think that we don’t only need to be saved by God, but saved from God. From what? His wrath; otherwise what does God’s mercy mean? The from, therefore, is pivotal to salvation. So, we first have to be saved from God’s wrath before He can bless us in his Beloved (His Son, Jesus, Ephesians 1:6) and when God does so, we also become the beloved of the Father exactly in the same way that Jesus is beloved of his Father: “…that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me”(John 17:23). You know, that word “dead” in the passage bothers me, for if you’re merely deadish, why does the passage say ”dead.’ In Hebrew we would say you’re a dead ISH, a dead MAN. And dead men don’t even blink (as I was afraid to do at your ipad). So, what kind of dead ISH – and dead ISHA (woman) – is able to decide to be raised from death and be born again? A dead ISH (man), ISHA (woman)? A Jewish zombie? Eish! Eisha!

Related articles

• In the trade: The songs Arminians – and Calminians – love to sing (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• On Being Cal-minian (Both Calvinist and Arminian) (atwistedcrownofthorns.com)
• On Doctrine and the Person Christ Jesus by Martyn Lloyd Jones (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• What Calvinism And Arminianism Have In Common (kimolsen.wordpress.com)
• Isaiah 46:9-10. That’s why you need a kick in your Arminian pants (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Why I Am a Calvinist (carlgobelman.wordpress.com)

On passivity, mood and free will in Christian regeneration: With a little help from Glen Miller and Little Richard.

In Walking backwards to the Cross: The Passivity and Suffering of the Passion of Christ, I examined the meaning of the “Passion of Christ.” The heart of the “Passion” lies in its historical (etymological) meaning. “Passion” comes from the Latin root passio “to render,” “submit” “be passive.” So, the ground of Jesus’ Passion was his submission to causes that deprived him of his freedom and well-being. Jesus’ passivity, however, was not the passivity of resignation: “Oh well, I’ll have to do what my Father commands me to do; come to earth, suffer and die for sinners.” Not at all. The Father’s will is also the Son’s will, is also the Holy Spirit’s will. It was the Tri-une God’s will that the Son should take on flesh to give his life to “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages (Revelation 7:9).

“…though he was in the form of God, (he) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).

What was the main reason why the Apostle Paul wrote Philippians 2:6-8 above? The main reason lies in the preceding verse, Philippians 2:5): “ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself …”

So, the Christian is admonished to diminish himself. To do so, he has give up some of his rights, he has to curtail his freedom, as Jesus did. In other words, every Christian must suffer (undergo) his own “passion” (submission).

We see that there is both an active and a passive element to the “passion” (submission).

I would like to discuss now the following question that a Roman Catholic asked me in a comment on “Walking backwards to the Cross: Passivity and Suffering in the Passion of Christ.”

“I am at the moment curious to know how do you act ‘passively’ in your being protestant/Calvinist, in your being part of your church?”

Back of that question lies, I suggest, the view that Calvinism teaches that we have no free will. That, of course, is not true, but no matter how much you try and explain to an Arminian (someone who maintains that we have to co-operate with God in our regeneration), they don’t get it. And I have tried in every which way in a clutch of essays so far – this one is my 17th – to  disabuse the Arminian, but to no avail and much travail  (Calvinism and Arminianism). The etymological meaning of essay is “try,” hence the French essayer “to try.” Try, try, try again.

Here is the Roman Catholic’s question again together with related question in her follow-up comment, followed by my reply:

Questions: “How do you act ‘passively’ in your being protestant/Calvinist, in your being part of your church? And “You have yet not answered my question about how you are in a ‘passive’ mood in your denomination.”

My reply:

Your oxymoronic question: how do you act (tee hee) ‘passively’ in your being protestant/Calvinist, in your being part of your church? And your further comment: You have yet not answered my question about how you are in a ‘passive’ mood in your denomination.

There is the passive “mood” in grammar and being in a passive mood as in Glen Miller’s “ïn the mood;” 

Grammar: Active mood: “Christ saves me.” Passive mood “I am saved by Christ.”

Our issue, of course, is not the grammatical mood because in both the active and the passive mood, the agent and recipient of the action is the same. In my example, it is Christ who is the active party in both the active mood and the passive mood: He gives the faith; I receive it.

The question is: is my will passive in the reception of this faith. Not at all. I actively accept the faith that Christ has gifted to me. But I can only will (move my heart) to accept once – as Christ says – Christ has made me free. So I was passive (indeed dead) before God regenerated me and then (logically, not chronologically) gave me faith (Ephesians 2:1-3), but once I was made alive, I accepted (received actively) with joy – as did the last sower in the parable of the sowers – the faith that God planted in my regenerated soul And that’s Calvinism AND the biblical view.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:44. If you are drawn, you come; if you come, you WILL be raised on the last day.

Here is a bit from my “Anthony Flew and CS Lewis come to God.”

Whether one is forcefully persuaded, as in Flew or “gives in” as in Lewis, they both, in Lewis’ words, were “given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open.”

Brothers Lewis and Lazarus have been dead and buried for four days, and stinketh by now. Jesus says “Lazarus and Lewis come forth!” Lazarus exercises his atrophied muscles, rolls off the slab, staggers erect and stumbles out the entrance of the opened tomb. Lewis exercises his free choice to rise from the dead, get off the slab and move to the closed door. But look, the door is already open. I could’ve done that myself, says Lewis, but thanks for the gracious help.

As Lewis didn’t believe in the inerrancy of scripture, it would have been hard for me to appeal to what Jesus says in John 6:44:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Like a good Arminian, he believes that Jesus is knocking at the door of his will, and pleading: “Let me in, let me in, please, I beseech you.” I’m reminded of Little Richard’s “Keep a nockin’ but you can’t come in…come tomorrow night and try again.” One of the comments on that song was “Everything anyone ever needs toknow about rock and roll is in this song.” And everything that is wrong with Arminianism is in their interpretation of “I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20).

What does John 6:44 really mean? It means that God enables a sinner to come to him., which does not mean come as far as the moment of decision (shall I or shan’t I believe). No, “coming”means “believing,” And we need his grace to come to Him; that is indisputable.

Eureka; I’ve got an idea of how to get through to Muslims. Instead of talking of the “Passion of Christ,” let’s try “The Submission of Christ.” Actually that might not only open the door to Muslims it might also open the door to many a Christian’s understanding of the Passion of Christ – for the first time in his lethargic life.

Related articles

• Freedom of the will, regeneration and faith: D.A. Carson’s “It’s up to you.” (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Anthony Flew and CS Lewis come to God (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• The Power of Passion of Christ by DJA (girlwiththepen1118.wordpress.com)
• In the trade: The songs Arminians – and Calminians – love to sing (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Philippians 2:12-13 ~ Work Out Your Own Salvation (faithbibleministries.wordpress.com)
• Isaiah 46:9-10. That’s why you need a kick in your Arminian pants (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• The Truth About God We Need To Know (mimentovivere.wordpress.com)
• Caught In Between the Easter Bunny & The Cross Advent Ideas for Adults and Kids (inspiredbyfamilymag.com)

Walking backwards to the Cross: Passivity and Suffering in the Passion of Christ

(See follow-on related post On passivity, mood and free will in Christian regeneration: With a little help from Glen Miller and Little Richard).

Passion week is approaching where many preachers are racking their brains over how to produce a sermon on the crucifixion that is both powerful and pivotal.

How do I construct a Good Friday sermon? Working backwards through the text might work well, for in walking backwards we may gain fresh insights. Backwards need not be disordered or illogical, unless you’re a goon walking backwards for Christmas across the Irish sea.  For example, Ephesians 1 tells of the believer who has been  raised into heavenly places, while Ephesians 2 describes the believer’s lost condition before he was raised into heavily places. Now, say you want to switch Chapters 1 and 2 by starting with the lost condition of man and then describing what happens when God “finds”him, that could also be useful.  Can we do something similar with 1 Peter 1 and 1 Peter 2, if only for the purpose of encouraging us to think more deeply on what we read in the Bible?

Let’s see whether walking backwards for Good Friday is useful. We start with the original chapter progression. The first two chapters of Peter’s first letter. These chapters are divided into:

Chapter 1

1. Greeting of Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles, according to the foreknowledge (forelove) of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
   (1 Peter 1:1-2 ESV)
2. Born again to a living hope.
3. Called to be holy.

Chapter 2

4. A living stone and a holy people. The Apostle appeals to believers, who have become sojourners on this earth:“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,  you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. [6] For it stands in Scripture: ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. [10] Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:4-10).
5. Submission to suffering, often involving submission to someone else’s will or authority“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.  For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Peter 2:18-25).

Our obedience to Jesus and sprinkling in his blood brings us grace and grace brings peace (1 Peter 1:1-2).

1. Born to a living hope.
2. Called to be holy.
3. We come to the living stone.
4. We are a royal priesthood.
5. We suffer for Christ because He suffered for us.“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. [25] For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

Lets now walk backwards for Good Friday:

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.  For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

So, we suffer for Christ because He suffered for us.

We become a royal priesthood through the living stone. Being a royal priesthood we are called to be a holy people. W are able to be holy because we have been (re)born to faith. This faith is the substance of our living hope.

We end the sermon where 1 Peter begins, namely: Our obedience to Jesus and sprinkling in his blood brings us grace and grace and peace (1 Peter 1:1-2), which brings us back to where 2 Peter ends:“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. [25] For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

What else could we call to remembrance on Good Friday?

To focus on the physical suffering of our Lord is secondary to a much deeper meditation on His spiritual suffering. How, though, do you talk for five minutes, never mind a half an hour or more about such an intangible unearthly thing as spiritual suffering? Isn’t it much easier, and more experiential, to go the more palpable route by describing how Jesus’ body was broken for ”you.” For Jesus did indeed say, “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

What is the Lord asking us to remember – on Good Friday? The graphics; the whipping, the flaying of skin and flesh, the blows with rods and fists, the one-inch razor sharp thorns (no, not three-inch ones)? Many a sermon has taken that emotive route, with great effect; “Jesus did all that for me.” The question is whether that route really gets to the root of Christ’s Passion? I suggest we are led astray by the term “passion.” In normal English usage, “passion” means “strong emotion” of short duration. Armed with this – as we shall see – faulty understanding of meaning of the term ‘The Passion,” the preacher may ask the congregation to try and feel some of the emotions Christ felt hanging on the cross. It’s the sort of meditation common in the Roman Catholic “Stations of the Cross.”

The heart of the “Passion” lies in its historical (etymological) meaning. “Passion” comes from the Latin root passio “to render.” So when we suffer, we have to submit to causes that deprive us of our freedom or well-being.

When I was at the 1993 Congress of Philosophy in Moscow, where I presented a paper, I attended a session where the French philosopher,Paul Ricoeur, “one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century,” (Stanford Encyclopedia) spoke on “suffering.” He spoke in English. I noticed, after he had used the word “suffering” several times, that his context nothing to to do with the English meaning of “suffering,” namely, extreme distress or pain. I studied the mesmerised faces of the audience. It seemed to me that even if he had talked backwards, they would’ve accepted it as Gospel. Hopefully the backward flip that I have done with my prospective sermon has faired a little better.

As I had some familiarity with Ricoeur’s philosophy, I was pretty sure that his “suffering” had nothing to do with extreme mental or physical pain but rather with one of his important philosophical themes, namely “passivity in action” See END NOTE¹). At question time, I asked him what he meant by “suffering.” The problem was, I said, that in French there exists the two words “subir” and “souffrir,” which originate from the same etymological root. “Souffrir” means “suffering”(extreme pain), while “subir” has the meaning, as in the King James Bible Version, of “suffer little children to come unto me,” (Mark 10:13), that is, let, or allow, them to come to me, or don’t take in action that will prevent them coming to me. So, when Ricoeur used the word “suffering,” he was thinking “subir” (passivity). And what was Ricoeur’s response? He meant “subir” (passivity) not “suffering.” He had committed a common error in French-English, English-French translation called “faux amis”(false friends). (For an example of a Yiddish-Hebrew “false friend” see When is a Hebrew youth not a Yiddishe fool?

To return to the Passion of Christ; its main meaning is the French “subir” – passivity, submission, undergo, be subjected to.

There are different degrees of passivity. For the Christian, the highest degree is when Jesus had reached his lowest point – in the garden of Gethsemane: “falling with his face to the ground, he prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will’” (Matthew, 26:39). This leads on to he more evident events in his Passion.

What kind of suffering (passivity) must it have taken to submit to not only the brutal onslaught of men but to the crushing anguish of being torn from the bosom of his Father. How does one begin to grapple with such a mysterium tremendum? (See Rudolph Otto’s “The Idea of the Holy”). Human wisdom is useless. Understanding has to be granted from above, as does everything that is the Gospel is granted from above. To see even darkly into this holy “mystery,” one has to have the same vantage point as Christ; looking from above. He always was from above; we, if he has drawn us to him, has also drawn us up above, into heavenly places. We’re seated there now, yet still suffering in this world. Every Christian knows when he is suffering, but few realise they’re doing so in heavenly places; which makes all the difference to one’s attitude to towards that suffering.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:3-10).

A very important point. Just because Christ is passive in his Passion, this does not mean that he is helpless. Not at all; He is deeply involved.  The deepest aspect of this involvement is his voluntary emptying of Himself (Philippians 2:5-10).

Scripture (the words) is not the revelation itself. “Revelation”is when the Holy Spirit of God reveals to you the meaning of the words. This meaning is far deeper than the linguistic meaning. The Passion begins more or less when Jesus is led “from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters (John 18:28) and ends in his Death with, “When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:30). The Passion is one of those moments, but of course, a pivotal one.

I ask the question again: What is Jesus really asking us to remember? After all, there were thousands that suffered a more barbarous and excruciating death. It is this: He suffered the full wrath of His Father. All the horror of sin was concentrated in those few hours. But worse; He was also cut off from the Father. To understand some of this requires to be borne on high by Christ, but first we have to be born again. Only then will I be able to see what the world or no psychology can see.

“It is finished.”

Now “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you (the Father), the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent”(John 17:1-3).

1“Ricoeur’s account of the way in which narrative represents the human world of acting (and, in its passive mode, suffering)” “Asserting Personal Capacities and Pleading for Mutual Recognition”

Kluge Prize Winner 2004 – Paul Ricoeur Acceptance speech of Paul Ricoeur – December 2004

“I identify myself by my capacities, by what I can do. The individual designates himself as a capable human being—and, we must add, as a suffering human being, to underscore the vulnerability of the human condition.”

Related articles

• 1 Peter 2:24 – “By His Wounds You Have Been Healed” (readingacts.wordpress.com)
• Give It Up and Take It Up (tomdesomer.wordpress.com)

The Nature of Man: the Will and the Fall of Adam and his children

Can you prove that man is not a fallen creature? Sure, say many Christians. For starters, they say, here you are:

Man sins despite his upright nature – Eccl. 7:29

He is created in Gods image Gen. 9:6, I Cor. 11:7, James 3:9

Every sinner, they say, is the author of his own moral depravity. He becomes a sinner after he reaches the age of accountability Isaiah 7:16, Deut. 1:39, Rom. 2:15, Rom. 5:14, Rom. 9:11. And surely this verse clinches the fistful of previous verses: “Gods law is written in our hearts” (Rom. 2: 14,15).

There you are: man has a good nature and only becomes bad when he reaches the age of rotten reason, for as we read in Romans 9:11 – “though they (Jacob and Esau) were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls.”

Don’t you see that if Jacob and Esau had not done anything bad – how could they, they hadn’t yet been born? – this surely means that they couldn’t have been bad (in their nature) before they became accountable (reached the age of reason – 7 years old?). If this is true, it must also mean that before they became accountable they also couldn’t have been good (in their nature); they were morally neuter(ed), which of course implies that the image of God that they were had no good in it. We know, of course, that as Adam and Eve before the Fall did not know the difference between good and evil and was only to know the distinction after eating of the tree of good and evil:

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17 ESV).

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve – in their ignorance of the distinction between good and evil (of what it meant to be naked, as an example of this ignorance) – were a image of God What does the Bible mean by man being created in the image, in the likeness of God? What is certain – if we accept that God is Spirit (of course, when the Word was made flesh,the picture changes) – is that man is composite of spirit and flesh, while God is pure Spirit. What is important is that Genesis 1:26 does not specify what it means by man as the “image of God.” If, however, we examine the rest of scripture, the following human attributes emerge, which man shares with God: creativity, power to reason, power to make decisions, moral conscience and personal relationships. These are called the communicable attributes of God. The attributes that God does not share with man are God’s incommunicable attributes, for example, his omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful) and eternality (no beginning), immutability (unchanging). (What does “man is the image of God” mean?).

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, sin shattered the image of God, and ever since crackpots abound. If this is so, what do we make of this biblical verse (quoted at the beginning), which many Christians use as proof against the doctrine of the radical corruption of man’s nature, namely “Man sins despite his upright nature?(Eccl. 7:29). Here is the King James Version: “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” KJV

In the above verse, the Hebrew word for “man” is ADAM אָדָם, and the Hebrew word for “upright” is YASHAR יָשָׁר “straight

עָשָׂה הָאֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאָדָם יָשָׁר וְהֵמָּה בִקְשׁוּ חִשְּׁבֹנֹות רַבִּֽים׃ …

(…asah ha-elohim et ha-adam yashar ve-heima vikshoo chishvonot rabim).

[the ch in chishvonot has the Scottish guttural sound as in “loch”]

The meaning is not that all descendents of Adam (the first man) are upright, but that Adam alone was upright until his progeny (following his fatal act of disobedience) sought out and continue to seek out many schemes/inventions.

So when we read “… in the image of God made he man” and “With it (the tongue) we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God (James 3:9), the “image/likeness” here is indeed of God, but – this is crucial for an understanding of the plan of redemption – it is a broken. What is the Gospel if not God’s plan to 1. restore the original image of Adam before he fell,and much more, namely, to make of this restored image (among those he has predestined from every nation and tongue according to his purpose) a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3)

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).

“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11)

So, to maintain that because a child below the age of accountability has a pure nature (and using as support that he is an image of God) is inimical to the Gospel because it denies (as Judaism does) “Original sin,” and thus I denies the fall of all human beings, who because of the fall, have been born with a corrupted nature, or damaged image of God. In such a view, Romans 9 cannot be understood. Neither can all the other verses be understood that state clearly that the will of man plays no role in salvation except to accept what Christ has already given him (by making him free by raising him from spiritual death.

Once you deny the Fall of all humans in Adam, you have made the journey to Arminianism (man makes the final decision about his salvation) certain. You’re also well on the road to universalism (“Love wins.” Everybody including the devil goes to heaven. Yet there are many Arminians who do believe in the “radical corruption” caused by the Fall. They have a more difficult time reconciling their corrupt nature (it does not want to seek God) and their “free will” (that might want to seek God).

What does sin “nature” mean? Lewis Johnson explains (I have transcribed this from one of his mp3 messages):

“One of the reasons why people have such a shallow view of sin is because they have not been taught to think rightly about sin. If you ask a man whether he is a sinner, he understands you to mean that he is a great flagrant outbreaking transgressor against the principles of morality that are found in the Bible. If you tell him that he is a great sinner in the sight of God, he thinks you are accusing him of being a blasphemer or a perjurer or a thief, an adulterer or a murderer. But without any of these forms of outbreaking forms of sin there may be a deep and damning hatred of the word of God in that man’s heart.”

But we must go deeper. Why do we hate the word of God? Because of unbelief. Every sin is a failure to respond to the word of God. This is clear in the Tanach (Older Testament) as it is clear in the Newer Testament, where God’s word is manifested through another (single) man, the second (and last Adam), Jesus the Christ, or if you prefer the Hebrew, Yeshua HaMashiach.

In much of Judaism, sin is no more than making a mistake, or missing the mark. Many Christians are not any closer than Jews to the mark when it comes to the seriousness of sin; for example, Helmut Thielicke (and Philip Yancey, who quotes Thielicke approvingly in his “What is so amazing about Grace,” Zondervan, 1997, p. 175):

“When Jesus loved a guilt-laden person and helped him, he saw in him an erring child of God. He saw in him a human being whom his Father loved and grieved over because he was going wrong. He saw him as God originally designed and meant him to be, and therefore he saw through the surface layer of grime and dirt to the real man underneath” (Helmut Thielicke, “Christ and the meaning of life,” Grand Rapids, Baker, 1975, p. 41).

An important question to address in the above paragraph is: “What is the attitude of a “guilt-laden” person toward God. Does it follow that if you feel guilt that you feel more than mere remorse, that you feel repentance? I don’t think so. “Guilt” is the human condition; but, so is pride. Guilt – except in rare conditions such as psychopathy – begets remorse: “I feel (really and honestly bad about this or that”. But repentance is a different mental state altogether, namely, its about longing for forgiveness and falling on your knees before a holy God and pleading for forgiveness. “Woe is me, for I am undone” (Isaiah, 6:5).

When Thielicke speaks of a “person”, and the “man underneath”, he seems to be talking about anybody who feels guilt, which is the whole human race (except possibly psychopaths, and even there we are not sure what they feel); and there lies the problem with Thielicke’s portrait of sinful man.

Thielicke’s Jesus and Thielicke’s human being are not the Jesus and human being described in the Bible. The Bible says the opposite: Jesus did not see “through the surface layer of grime and dirt to the real man underneath,” because the real man underneath was not only superficially grimy, he was filthy. The “real man” of the Bible is totally depraved in his very nature. Everything in the Bible glorifies God and abases man. God saves men and women not because deep down they are good, but in spite of the fact that deep down they are evil. He chooses to save them – for one reason only: because He wants to. The natural man despises such a God. Many professing Christians do so as well. But that is the God of the Bible. God floods the whole Bible – but not everyone -with mercy, and “I will show mercy to whom I will” (Romans 9:15), and its got nothing to do with you or me. (Why do you call me good).

The upshot is that every one has a shot nature, and,therefore no one is upright – right up there – to merit God’s mercy. All are condemned. Here’s a hard one: God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy.

And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. (Exodus 33:19).

John 6:44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Whoever the Father draws, therefore, will be raised without fail, and thus this does not depend on the will of man but on God. Once saved (born again) always saved. You can only be born again once.

John 1:12-13
As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

To emphasise his point John repeats the idea using the parallel of “flesh” and “man.” So John (the Holy Spirit through John) wants to spell it out. Unless God brings light, all you’ll get out of this spell is a smell.

The above two texts from John are not rocket science. This is also true of most of the Bible. The crucial thing is that these two texts are, among others such as Romans 9, pivotal texts around which the whole salvation process rotates. Those who are born again are not born as a result of a decision they make. There is, of course, mystery here, but only in the sense of mysterium “secret.” What the Bible says is clear; why it says what it does is often not clear. But that should also be perfectly understandable ’cause that’s the nature of being human; an imperfect nature – from conception, born in sin, yet wonderfully and fearfully made.

Arminians (God is knocking and knocking at everybody’s door asking them whether they want him) think that only an evil God would “destroy” our free will. But God doesn’t destroy one’s ability to do what one wants. The issue is that what man wants is not God (of the Bible). The objection is that God chooses to save some and not others. It’s not fair. But!

Romans 9:14-23
“What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, (will and run mean the same. Here again as in John 1:13, there is reiteration for emphasis) but of God that sheweth mercy… hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.”

“Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.”

Th Arminian will never (wills never to) accept that anybody could be a “vessel fitted for destruction.” so he tries – which requires a massive mental contortion – to wriggle out of this one. Here’s the nub of the issue:

All vessels, without exception, are – because they are radically corrupt – fit for destruction, but some, through God’s mercy, are shown the riches of his glory. Others, in contrast, are “fitted” (that is, left in their state of corruption) for destruction. Romans 9 is clear and thus we do not require much mental energy to understand it. Is it easy or difficult to understand? What is difficult is not the plain words on the page but why God would act so “arbitrarily.” If, though, you ask why God would act in a such an “arbitrary” way, you’re merely using the form of a question to express what you have already decided to be the answer, namely, “God acts in an arbitrary way.”

What about other verses in the Bible that seem to contradict “it’s not he who wills…runs?”
I suggest that with the solid foundation of “it’s not he who wills” and other verses such as the two verses from John above (on the non-role of the human will in salvation) it is not hard to understand (with the renewed mind) how other parts of the Bible are able to harmonise with these pivotal “it’s not he who wills” verses; for example:

Romans 10

“14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” -Rom 10:8-15.

The above tells us that God’s means for achieving his ends is send, preach, hear, call on God. The above does not tell us that those who call on God among all those who hear are enabled to do so because God chose them (first) and thus made them free. “I chose you, you didn’t choose me (first).” This freedom is not the freedom (will)  of man/the flesh, of an unregenerate heart, but of the heart that has been “splashed” (as you vividly described it) with eternal life.

There is far less “mystery” in God’s word when studied with a regenerated mind. Much in the Apostle Paul, because he was teaching, relied on meticulous thought, that is, theology. Without theology (which relies much on our brains (hence “ology”), you may end up with, “give me less doctrine and more Jesus,”  less noggin and more snoggin’.

Isaiah 46:9-10. That’s why you need a (respectful and reverential) kick in your Arminian pants

One of the most controversial doctrines in Christianity is the role of a person’s will in coming to salvation. I am one of those who believe that the unregenerate will should be rebaptised total swill. In other word’s I’m a Calvinist. The very mention of Calvin sends Arminians (who are the bulk of Christians) and Jews into a tizz; for different reasons. The Arminian accuses Calvin of turning people into robots; the Jew accuses him of being horrible to Jews.

There is one passage in the Bible that should settle this matter of “free” will – but won’t.

Isaiah 46:9-10
9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.

If you believe that, you, an unregenerate person, can/has come to Christ (ultimately) on your own steam (you get to make the final decision), you could find yourself in hot heavenly water, for you are the person that must also say that Christ is begging people to come to him but in most cases fails. But how can God fail when it is clear that “I will do all my pleasure.” Do you really believe that God gets a kick out of failure? Yep, that’s what you must think AND not think. That’s why you need a kick in your Arminian pants.

Freedom of the will, regeneration and faith: D.A. Carson’s “It’s up to you.”

I was discussing with a Christian friend the songs he sings in church, songs such as “At the foot of the cross,” (Worship and Wordship: What songs shall we sing in Church?).

In these songs, I described the radical contrast between monergism (regeneration and justification are totally of God) and synergism (regeneration and justification involve cooperation between man and God). Synergism is the common view among professing Christians, whereas the monergistic position belongs to Reformed (of the Reformation) Christianity.

The synergistic position will naturally receive more sympathy with the world for whom the freedom to choose one’s beliefs is what makes us human.

If, as the monergist claims, regeneration (born again) and justification (made right with God), are all of God, then this, argues the synergist, would mean that a person is unable to come freely to God, unable to freely accept Him. This inference is not biblically sound. The New Testament teaches that a battle rages between the natural self (the “flesh”) and the “new creature” in Christ. Every born-again person does indeed accept Christ, but he can only do so after his fallen will has been resurrected (“quickened” – Ephesians 2:1-3). In other words, only when the effects of the Fall are reversed (through a unilateral divine act of regeneration), only then will a sinner, as Jesus said, become free to know the truth (not all truth, of course), only then will he become free to believe/accept the truth.

The true monergist teacher or preacher, especially when feeling blue, has to be constantly standing high up on his humble linguistic toes. Even the best lines can sometimes end up in a tangle of fluff. One monergist who does end up so is the usually punctilious D.A. Carson. In his “Christianity: Why it’s important and how to live it” says (discussing the difficult notion of the Trinity):

“It’s up to us to welcome him (God), even if he’s difficult to explain.”

Surely, as a good monergist, Carson means “It’s our responsibility to welcome Him,” because “up to us” means “if we want it, fine; if we don’t want it, that’s also fine: it’s our decision.” Do you want Jesus? No one’s forcing you now. It’s up to you, ’cause God is so high up that he’s left it up to you down here. Actually Carson didn’t end up in a tangle, for he quickly cuts free (without even aware that he was in bondage for a mo) and proceeds masterfully to deliver the goods

Here’s a prayer from a monergist friend: We pray that he will surrender his life to you.” So, if you surrender (hand/render over) your life, God will remove your stony heart that makes it impossible for you to surrender in the first place. So, like Carson, he fluffs it. The bothersome thing, though, is that he doesn’t see any difference (theological or linguistic) between “surrendering” (handing your life over) to Jesus and “accepting” Jesus.

I was praying recently with a synergist relative who prayed: “Please send the Holy Spirit to them.” After the prayer, I asked, “don’t you believe that the Holy Spirit is hammering on everybody’s door begging to be let in (a synergistic interpretation of ‘I stand at the door and knock’) but in your prayer you ask God to send the Holy Spirit to them?” My relative turned on me: “the problem with you is you walk around everywhere with your red pen; you lack the social graces.” The thing is biblical grace can be so unsocial, so unkind, so mean, so divisive, so judgmental.

“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” Unfair? “Who are you to talk back to God?” (Romans 9). Every synergist is a synergist on their feet and a monergist on their knees.

Here is a part of Charles Spurgeon’s ironic “Arminian’s prayer.”

“There are many that wilI go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as l am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not—that is the difference between me and them” (Inviting your dead enemy to surrender: The chicken and the egg of regeneration and faith).

Make your mind up; it’s up to you. Or is it?

A while later. Now D.A. has really gone and upset the apple cart. I returned to reading further in his book when I came across this degenerate-looking sentence:

“Regeneration is the process triggered by our faith where the Holy Spirit works to reconfigure us from the core so we can rightly love God and show His importance to the world around us.”

C’mon now, D.A. aren’t you a five-point Calvinist like me? If so, you’ve got it back to front; faith does not trigger regeneration. You’ve put the regenerative horse before (that is, behind!) the faith cart. Surely, for us monergists/Calvinists, it is regeneration that triggers faith, for as you know, the dead have no triggers (of faith). Or to return to my horse ‘n cart, the horse of regeneration drags the motionless dead cart to life. “He has quickened you (brought you to life)” (Ephesians 2). Only then do you get faith, which is the second part of God’s gift after regeneration.

Anthony Flew and CS Lewis come to God

Anthony Flew

I discuss and compare the journeys to belief of Anthony Flew and CS Lewis.

Clive Staples Lewis

Robert B. Stewart, in his “C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith,” describes Lewis’ road back to the faith of his early years:

“The road back to faith was cluttered with obstacles Lewis once thought impossible to overcome. His conversion to a robust Christianity required years of intellectual struggle and came only after being convinced that faith was reasonable.” (My emphasis).

Here is part of Lewis’  reasoned decision to surrender to God; not yet, the Christian God.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. Just how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? … Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning” (Mere Christianity, 45-46).

So far, Lewis is only a theist. This theism, however, is more than just the belief in a supernatural power controlling the world; this power is also personal, because an impersonal force , as far as definitions ago, does not have the foggiest “idea of justice” (Lewis above). 

Compare Anthony Flew, who at the time of his conversion to theism, was the world’s most celebrated and “cerebrated” atheist.” Here is an excerpt from the obiturary column of the Daily Telegraph:

“After months of soul-searching, Flew concluded that research into DNA had “shown, by the unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved”. Moreover, though he accepted Darwinian evolution, he felt that it could not explain the beginnings of life. ‘I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated creature,’ he said.”

“Flew went on to make a video of his conversion entitled Has Science Discovered God? and seemed to want to atone for past errors: ‘As people have certainly been influenced by me, I want to try and correct the enormous damage I may have done,’ he said.”

So far, we have two celebrated cerebral atheists whose intellect compelled them to accept the existence of a creator of the universe. In Flew’s case, we’re not sure whether his belief in a supernatural creative force went further than deism, where the creator kick-starts the universe into being with all its constants in place, and then leaves it to its own fine-tuned devices. 

Flew’s obituary continues:

“But believers waiting to welcome this most prodigal of sons back into the fold were to be disappointed. Flew’s conversion did not embrace such concepts as Heaven, good and evil or the afterlife – let alone divine intervention in human affairs. His God was strictly minimalist – very different from “the monstrous oriental despots of the religions of Christianity and Islam”, as he liked to call them. God may have called his creation into existence, then, but why did he bother? To that question, it seemed, Flew had no answer.”

In Flew, we have a“God (who) calls his creation into existence,” and then flies off. And that’s why Flew is, indeed, a deist. But why then, as the Telegraph asks, did Flew bother (changing his fine atheistic tune)? What difference did this knowledge make to his “enormously damaging” (Flew above) life, for surely a belief in a deistic god didn’t add an inch to Flew’s moral stature, which he was so concerned about.

Lewis, in contrast, moved beyond theism/deism to a belief in a personal God. Here is Lewis (in a radio interview), The question of God: C.S. Lewis: A Leap in the Dark:

“The fox had now been dislodged from the wood and was running in the open, bedraggled and weary, the hounds barely a field behind. The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears to be a moment of wholly free choice. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words, and almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay.”

“I felt myself being given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. Drip-drip. And presently trickle-trickle. I had always wanted, above all things, not to be interfered with. I had wanted — mad wish — to call my soul my own. I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.”

“Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. I gave in, and admitted that God was God … perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Wait a minute. An “absolute leap into the dark?” (Not about faith in Christ, mind you, but about faith in a personal supernatural being). What then do we make of Robert Stewart’s (see first paragraph):

“The road back to faith was cluttered with obstacles Lewis once thought impossible to overcome. His conversion to a robust Christianity required years of intellectual struggle and came only after being convinced that faith was reasonable.”

There is, granted, no contradiction between intellectual conviction and a subsequent leap; but there certainly is a contradiction between intellectual conviction and a subsequent leap in the dark. Whatever way they believed they arrived at theism/deism, the determining factor for both these humanists was their freedom to believe. Whether one is forcefully persuaded, as in Flew or “gives in” as in Lewis, they both, in Lewis’ words, were “given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open.”

Brothers Lewis and Lazarus have been dead and buried for four days, and stinketh by now. Jesus says “Lazarus and Lewis come forth!” Lazarus exercises his atrophied muscles, rolls off the slab, staggers erect and stumbles out the entrance of the opened tomb. Lewis exercises his free choice to rise from the dead, get off the slab and move to the closed door. But look, the door is already open. I could’ve done that myself, says Lewis, but thanks for the gracious help.

As Lewis didn’t believe in the inerrancy of scripture, it would have been hard for me to appeal to what Jesus says in John 6:44:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Like a good Arminian, he believes that Jesus is knocking at the door of his will, and pleading: “Let me in, let me in, please; and if you don’t, it’s curtains – for me.” What does John 6:44 really mean? It means that God enables a sinner to come to him., which does not mean come as far as the moment of decision (shall I or shan’t I believe). No, “coming”means “believing,” And we need his grace to come to Him; that is indisputable.

A major reason why many hate the doctrine of radical corruption – there’s a flower growing out of the navel of Lazarus’ and Clive Staples’ soul – is because “dead in sin” (Ephesians 2:1-3) implies that a person plays absolutely no part in his salvation, for the obvious reason that the dead can do nothing, not even play a part. Lewis believed and taught that he came to Christ because he wanted to.  But here is the problem, as Charles Spurgeon explains:

“The question is, are men ever found naturally willing to submit to the humbling terms of the gospel of Christ? We declare, upon Scriptural authority, that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, and so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ. You reply, that men sometimes are willing, without the help of the Holy Spirit. I answer-Did you ever meet with any person who was? Scores and hundreds, nay, thousands of Christians have I conversed with, of different opinions, young and old, but it has never been my lot to meet with one who could affirm that he came to Christ of himself, without being drawn. The universal confession of all true believers is this-”I know that unless Jesus Christ had sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God, I would to this very hour have been wandering far from him, at a distance from him, and loving that distance well.” With common consent, all believers affirm the truth, that men will not come to Christ till the Father who hath sent Christ doth draw them.”(End of Spurgeon).

In conclusion, Anthony Flew shocked and shook the atheist world because he believed in a prime mover. No one was moved; least of all, perhaps, Flew. But as the Telegraph pointed out, why did he bother? It didn’t change anything for him. And Lewis, caught between the intellectual rock and leaping-off place, opened the door. Both could say “I did it my way.” Flew’s way was to follow the evidence where it leads – which led – ultimately- nowhere. Lewis’ way was “I will to ‘let God be God,’” and willed himself into (a version of) Christianity to boot, a Christianity that undermined the central doctrine of the atonement: the  propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. (See Myths, facts and blood sacrifice: CS Lewis at his best and worst).

Inviting your dead enemy to surrender: The chicken and the egg of regeneration and faith

Arminius taught that God votes for you, the devil votes against you, and you have the final vote. Spurgeon held to the Reformed position that salvation was totally dependent on God’s sovereign will.

Here is a part of Charles Spurgeon’s ironic “Arminian’s prayer.”

“There are many that wilI go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as l am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not—that is the difference between me and them.”

Now, no Arminian believes that it is good to boast of being better than the person who rejects Christ, and so would not really pray in this fashion. In fact he’ll protest that all is grace, that they are no better than anyone else; which, of course, is true.

I heard this prayer recently: “We pray that you will remove his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh. We pray that he will surrender his life to you.” So, if you surrender your life, God will remove your stony heart that makes it impossible for you to surrender, that is, to come to Christ (to believe, have faith, trust). Which is it then; does God first have to regenerate you to enable you to surrender (have faith), or do you first surrender then get regenerated (born again)? The difficulty with the latter is, if you surrender your life to Christ, this can only be done if you’ve already been regenerated (enabled to do so by God’s grace), which renders regeneration obsolete. “Regenerate” means “qicken” means raised from the dead. Imagine in wartime asking your dead enemy to surrender.

A few days ago I was discussing this issue with an Anglican priest friend in my home over tea. He remarked: “Chicken and egg.” In other words, who knows what came first, regeneration or faith, and does it really matter?

Another cuppa?

In the trade: The songs Arminians – and Calminians – love to sing

In You have won my heart, now I can trade my ashes in for beauty: How one does not come to faith in Christ, I examined the song, “At the foot of the cross.” I examine more closely the lines “You have won my heart” and “Now I can trade these ashes in for beauty,” and show how it exemplifies the Arminian/monergistic view of justification (obtaining a right standing before God).

When Calvinism is contrasted with Arminianism, what first comes to mind is God’s role and man’s role in coming to faith. The Calvinist says that man plays no cooperative or contributive role in coming to faith (monergism; mono “alone,” ergos “work”), while the Arminian says that man cooperates (synergism; syn “together,” ergos “work”) with God in that he is ultimately justified (made right with God) only when he turns to God, that is, wills to come to faith. In Calvinism, God first regenerates (born again) the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of salvation.(See Calvinism and Arminianism).

A “Calminian” is someone who loves the story about the arch of heaven. As the believer approaches, he sees written above the arch, “All are welcome.” He passes through the arch into heaven. He turns around to wave farewell to the sorry stubborn lot who preferred to stay outside, and sees written above the inside of the arch “predestination.” Happy reconciliation.

I was in correspondence with a music leader of a church. With his permission, here is the conversation. He initially appears in agreement with my critique of the view I expressed in “At the foot of the cross.”

Music leader

“So many of the really good songs with good messages still have some dodgy words in them, even some of the hymns. Most modern song writers are not theologians and often words are chosen to fit the rhyme or the flow of the music (one of the reasons I still really love hymns). So do we go with the overarching message of a song and allow for poetic license or do we chuck it out because of a questionable word? I would say that if the incorrect word or words are clearly pointing at incorrect doctrine, chuck it out.” He then begins to tweak his tune and seems to repenting 180 degrees: “Can ‘you’ve won my heart” be interpreted any other way than “I’m giving Him my heart because I’m so impressed?’”

“When I was preparing for ash Wed I came upon this verse in Isaiah  “To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.” (Isa 61:3  KJV). It’s within the context of the passage that Jesus quoted and proclaimed Himself to be the fulfillment of Luke 4:18-21.” “I will give the benefit of the doubt to the possibility that the author of our communion song is referencing to this verse (Isaiah 61:3 previous paragraph), which would mean that her use of the word “trade” is simply alluding to an exchange of one thing for another and not a commercial transaction. I would then go back to my original interpretation of the words “…you have won my heart…”, as referring to Christ winning over sin and death, beating sin and rescuing me from death and not me giving my heart to Him as a prize since He is to be glorified because it was all His work.”

Me

“If it is understood that only after Jesus takes the heart of stone out of us and replaces it with a new one (like His), and in so doing makes us free to choose him (we choose Him because He first chose us), then “you’ve won my heart” does seem to be acceptable. But, unfortunately it is not understood that way (by the song writers as well as by most who sing it), which is proven by another line in the song (much worse), ‘I have traded…..’”

“Theology is nothing more than how we think about scripture. Poetic “license” in how we right our songs has to e faith to the scripture meaning. To play safe, why don’t we just use scripture for our lyrics, because scripture is always right. There are already thousands of beautiful songs that have scripture lyrics. It’s a great eye-opener scrutinising all the fluff on the buff of many of songs of “worship.” Makes one feel like a peeping tom.”

End of conversation.

The music leader conveys the impression that he has found a solution to what he considers a misunderstanding, and that when seen it the right light, “trade” may not be so bad after all.

A few more comments.

He is finding it hard to shuck off his Arminian coil, even though he had told me previously that he believes the monergistic doctrine that only after you are born again do you come to believe. The Arminian/synergistic view is (first you make a decision to have) faith then comes regeneration, which flies in the face of Ehesians 2: 1-10:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.But3 God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this (refers to the whole previous chunk, namely, “by grace you have been saved through faith) is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (My italics and emphasis).

“Dead,” in verse one; is that, I ask, merely “poetic license?” If so, the sinner cannot really be (spiritually) dead but still has enough life in him to blink or wave his limp poetic pinky, which is all that God, philosophy and poetics require for the sinner to retain the imaginary dignity of his free will. Is any “trade-off” possible between “really” dead and “poetically” dead? To answer that question, let’s return to the Arminian “trade.”

trade

1. the act or process of buying, selling, or exchanging commodities, at either wholesale or retail, within a country or between countries: domestic trade; foreign trade. 2. a purchase or sale; business deal or transaction. 3. an exchange of items, usually without payment of money.

The songwriter obviously has basic interpersonal communicative English skills, and thus should know what “trade” means. If so, how to explain the use of this inappropriate term in the song? It’s pretty obvious; she thinks like an Arminian and, being consistent, writes songs like an Arminian. I suggest she knew exactly what she was conveying, namely, an exchange effected ultimately by herself (God has voted for you, the devil against you, and you have the final vote).  What, though, does the Bible say? God didn’t traded anything, neither did (could) I. This, however, does not mean that I did not accept Jesus, but merely  that I did so only after God raised me from the dead and made me free to do so. The Arminian position is “God I accept your offer.”

On the monergistic view, therefore, there is everything wrong with “I traded.” Keep in mind that we are talking about justification (our “standing” before God), which is conditional on regeneration, faith, and repentance, in that logical order (which occur simultaneously). The dead “I” cannot be involved because it is unable to lift a darning finger or to reverse the lethal damage of the Fall. And this reversal is what justification is all about (as Martyn Lloyd Jones makes so clear in his teaching on Ephesians). Nor can there be any trade – a cooperative transaction. Justification is a unilateral divine sovereign act of love; a pure gift; like winning a lottery, but only better, because it’s rigged for you to win – big time. Also, you don’t need to buy a ticket, and more; your prize is far greater than your money or your life –

Or my wife. (“I’ll see you afterwards!”).

You have won my heart, now I can trade my ashes in for beauty: How one does not come to faith in Christ

The song “Draw me close to you” makes congregations warble and swoon. It moves for two reasons: first, it gets to the emotions, and second, it moves away – very far away from the Gospel, indeed, in the opposite direction to the Gospel (Good News). One of the lines says, “I’ll lay it all down again to hear You say that I’m Your friend.” Lay what down, I ask? What did you lay down the first time? The only thing you can ever lay down – if you are a true believer – is your sinful nature. And you didn’t even lay that down. Christ took your sinful nature on him and exchanged it for His righteousness. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). (See “Draw me close to you. But what’s with ‘I’ll lay it all down again?’”

Another song ( with great music and voice, sung by Kathryn Scott) is “At the foot of the cross.” Here is the first verse:

At the foot of the cross

Where grace and suffering meet

You have shown me Your love

Through the judgment You received

And You’ve won my heart

And You’ve won my heart

The first four lines are a magnificent summary of the Gospel. But then the next line goes and spoils it all. What does it mean for Jesus to win my heart other than that the end result is that I give my heart to Jesus, that – in the context of the preceding lines – he has earned my love through suffering the judgment that I deserved. Absolutely right, Jesus did suffer the judgment I deserved by (to return to the previous song) laying it – his life – down for me. But, as in the previous song, I didn’t, I was totally unable, to give my heart to Jesus, for how can a dead (in sin) heart even emit the tiniest flutter. It is at this point in the song that the profound truth of the propitiary (no, not merely expiatory) sacrifice descends into the murky waters of Arminianism. Yes, of course, I accepted Jesus – and willingly, but only after he made me free (alive) to do so (Ephesians 2:1-10). And those he makes free are free indeed. “Indeed” means nothing less that certain eternal life.

The first chorus line, which immediately follows the double trouble “You’ve won my heart” reinforces the idea that Jesus earns/deserves my heart.

Chorus

Now I can trade these ashes in for beauty,

And wear forgiveness like a crown,

Coming to kiss the feet of mercy,

I lay every burden down,

At the foot of the cross.

Can I “now” trade my sins for His righteousness (beauty)? Do I have the permission or the power to make this transaction? God forbid. Faith is a gift from God. In other words faith is free (gratis, grace). We’re not talking here about a transaction between two (equal) parties – I give Jesus (a teeny) something (say a wink of acceptance), and Jesus gives me (a gigantic) something (salvation). In reality, I had nothing to give, and everything to take; and even the taking required the divine quickening of my dead arm to enable me to reach out to receive the gift. How you come to faith determines everything else about your Christian life, including the songs you sing. Keep ‘em peeled.

“Your question is awaiting conflagration” (Wintery Knight)

Being a dutiful Jewish Calvinist (do you have any such friends?), I posted a question on Wintery Knight’s blog regarding the debate between Michael Brown, a Jewish Arminian, and James White, a non-Jewish Calvinist. Wintery does NOT- as is the situation with most professing
Christians – believe that a person is so dead (in sin) that he is unable to choose to believe in Jesus Christ. Here is my comment to Wintery:

“Hi Wintery, Your position seems to be that there is something inherent in people that (inwardly) determines their acceptance of Christ. Is that correct?”

As many others have found with Wintery Knight’s “awaiting moderation,” my comment ended up in the fiery moat.

If you’re an Arminian (man chooses Christ, Christ doesn’t choose man), you will probably never say openly – or even dare to think – that you deserve to go to Heaven, but instead you will push grace to the fore- “it’s all about grace” you might say. The thing is this: for Wintery Knight, his eternal destiny depends on himself because the Arminian position is that God offers saving grace to all but only some are willing (good enough) to choose eternal life. It follows that there must be something in Wintery that is better than the person who does not choose Christ. Now, hardly any Arminian will deny that if you reject Christ, you deserve the terrible consequences. But ask him whether he is willing to apply the same logic to himself who has chosen Christ.

Calvinist (Jewish): You say you chose Christ. So do you deserve to go to Heaven, then?
Wintery Knight: Your question is awaiting conflagration.

Salvation and the creaturely corridors of time

Is it something (good) in the believer that counsels God to favour his chosen (Jews and Gentiles)? Not at all; “The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; but because the LORD loved you” (Deuteronomy 7:7,8).

“And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy” (Exodus 33:19). Indeed, “the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger: as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,” Romans 9:11-13.

Jew and Gentiles who come to believe in the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, come because they are “predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11).

“He declareth the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Isaiah 46:10).

God doesn’t look down the corridors of time to learn which sinners will choose to believe in Him, and on that basis elects those who will be saved. There are many verses in the Bible (I quoted a few above) that should put that dead idea to bed for good.

Furthermore, God knows everything from the beginning , from eternity in fact. God, therefore, doesn’t learn anything, and certainly nothing from his creation of which the two primeval creatures are (the corridors of) time and space. So God doesn’t look down any corridors of time to see any who are righteous enough to deserve to be elected to eternal life – and on the basis of what He learns decides on a plan of salvation.

7 He hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; 9 Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began (2 Timothy 1:7-9).

The gift of a sound mind comprehends the understanding that God calls and saves according to his own eternal purpose and grace.

John Owen on Arminianism and the idol of “free” will

In Chapter 4 of a “A Display of Arminianism,” John Owen discusses “The providence of God in governing the world diversely, thrust from this pre-eminence by the Armininian idol of free will. Owen writes:

“That God by his providence governeth and disposeth of all things by him created is sufficiently proved; the manner how he worketh all in all, how he ordereth the works of his own hands, in what this governing and disposing of his creatures doth chiefly consist, comes now to be considered. And here four things are principally to be observed: — First, The sustaining, preserving, and upholding of all things by his power; for “he upholdeth all things by the word of his power,” Hebrews 1:3.

“Secondly, His working together with all things, by an influence of causality into the agents themselves; “for he also hath wrought all our works in us,” Isaiah 26:12.

“Thirdly, His powerful overruling of all events, both necessary, free, and contingent, and disposing of them to certain ends for the manifestation of his glory. So Joseph tells his brethren, “As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is at this day, to save much people alive,” Genesis 1:20.

“Fourthly, His determining and restraining second causes to such and such effects: “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will,” Proverbs 21:1.

end of Owen

Now we can appreciate more fully what it means to “work out your salvation,” and to do it “in fear and trembling”:

“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).

Children of God should not tremble out of fear of not coming out on the right side of the balance sheet of works. Rather, they should tremble at the astounding thought that their bodies are the temple of God. In the Christian view, this does not mean – as in Eastern, Gnostic and Kabbalistic thought – that the soul is a piece of God, but rather that God comes to dwell in the soul.

“That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19).

When Voluntary is not free? Faith and Will in salvation

What is freedom? Is there a distinction between a “voluntary” action and a free action? I examine these questions in the light of how one comes to faith.

At the time of the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus wrote his “On the Freedom of the will” (1524) where he defines free will as “a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation or turn away from them.” Erasmus, like a good Arminian, says that this does not mean that man contributes to his salvation but merely cooperates with God in salvation, which an Arminian, like the Calvinist, would say is 100% of the Lord. In response to Erasmus, Luther wrote “The Bondage of the will (1525), which was later accepted by all the main Protestant reformers such as Calvin and Zwingli. Calvin stands out among the reformers.

Calvinism for the average person as well as for the average Arminian is this: “Calvinism designs men to perdition no matter what they do” (Cornelius Van Til, “An introduction to Systematic Theology, ed. William Edgar, P&R Publishing, Second Edition, p. 294).

With regard to the terms “cooperation” and “contribution,” the Calvinist goes further than the Arminian by stating that man does not even cooperate with God in salvation. In other words, the Arminian holds a synergistic (cooperation) view of salvation, while the Calvinist holds a monergistic (God does it all) view of salvation. In both Arminianism and Calvinism, though, the believer responds to God’s call. The difference between the Arminianism and Calvinist response is that in the former the response is the cause of regeneration (being born again, “made alive”), whereas in Calvinism the response is the effect of regeneration.

We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—  and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2:3-5). (See the Arminian claim that it is not synergistic).

From the Calvinist perspective, the best treatise on the will is Jonathan Edwards’ “Freedom of the will,” which can be summed up in Edwards’ words, “we are free to choose that which we most desire.” His argument is this:

The natural man is dead to the commandments of God, and thus dead in sin. Human beings are “by nature in a state of total ruin, both with respect to the moral evil of which they are the subjects, and the afflictive evil to which they are exposed, the one as the consequence and punishment of the other.” (Jonathan Edwards, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, in Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 10th ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh/Carlisle, Penn: Banner of Truth, 1979, 1:1).

So, from the biblical view, sin is man’s best friend, while freedom is his greatest enemy. The will is mistakenly taken to be a thing – a faculty – like the mind. In fact, the will is not a noun but a verb; the will is “the mind choosing” (Edwards).

“The human will is not free” means that it’s freedom is determined by the heart’s desire to do what it wants, which is not to obey God. Most professing Christians believe that they cooperate with God in their salvation. Jesus is standing outside, knocking at the door of whosoever’s heart offering salvation, where the handle is on the inside of the door.

  “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

“Yes, says John Stott, Jesus Christ says he is standing at the door of our lives, waiting.” (Stott is talking to the unsaved, those who are dead in sin – Ephesians 2:1-10). Stott continues, “He (Christ) is the landlord; he bought it with his life-blood. He could command us to open to Him; instead, he merely invites us to do so. He will not force and entry into anybody’s life. He says (verse 18) ‘I counsel you.’ he could issue orders; he is content to give advice. Such are his condescension and humility, and the freedom he has given us” (John Stott, “Basic Christianity,” Intervarsity Press, 1958, p. 124).

According to Stott’s Arminian view, the sinner is free to choose reconciliation/salvation or remain unreconciled to God. The Calvinist view, which is the same as that of the original Anglican Westminster Confession, is that man is not free to choose salvation, or anything “good.” The reason is NOT that he is a robot, but that he is dead to the good; his heart’s desire is to do his own will, that is, to choose only what is not good, where “good” is what God wills. According to the Calvinist view, man does what he wants; he follows the desire of his heart. Owing to the fact that man is unable to choose good he is not free to choose good.

An important point: both the Arminian and the Calvinist agree that the will is not autonomous (neutral). In other words, what the heart chooses (dictates!), it will necessarily do. The process of choosing may involve deciding which of two or more options is the best, but whatever the number of options, it is the mind/heart that inwardly determines the option finally chosen. None of these options, of course, involve moving towards Christ. John Gerstner explains:

“Your choices as a rational person are always based on various considerations or motives that are before you at the time. Those motives have a certain weight with you, and the motives for and against reading a book, for example, are weighed in the balance of your mind; the motives that outweigh all others are what you, indeed, choose to follow. You, being a rational person, will always choose what seems to you to be the right thing, the wise thing, the most advisable thing to do. If you choose not to do the right thing, the advisable thing, the thing that you are inclined to do, you would, of course, be insane. You would be choosing something that you did not choose. You would find something preferable that you did not prefer. But you, being a rational and sane person choose something because it seems to you the right, proper, good, advantageous thing to do.”

(John H. Gerstner, A Primer on Free Will (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1982, p.4-5). (See  W. Tullian Tchividjianan Jonathan Edwards’ “Freedom of the will”).

If you asked an unregenerate person whether his heart forced him to choose something, he’ll look at you funny. In his book, not the Bible, of course – the unregenerate actions are voluntary. So, if you tell him he’s a robot for allowing his mind/heart to “force” itself on his will, you could end up on the floor.

In sum, the heart dictates (internally determines) a person to reject God (good), and so the person does so voluntarily. Owing to the fact that a person is unable – he thinks, of course, he’s free – to choose God/Christ, he is not really free, for only those who are free are able to choose between good and evil. As Paul Helm puts it:

“Normal human activity is not forced or coerced; insofar as it proceeds from fallen human nature it is not free because a person with a fallen nature does not have the power to choose what is good. Nonetheless, where a person is not forced, but makes a contribution to his action, and is not acting out of ignorance, he is acting voluntarily, and is responsible for what he does.”

The Calvinst’s view of Augustine of Hippo  is that he was a monergist, whereas the Roman Catholic view of Augustine was that he was a synergist. The following from Augustine shows clearly that he was a monergist:

”It is not enough simply to have choice of will, which is freely turned in this direction and that, and belongs among those natural gifts which a bad person may use badly. We must also have a good will, which belongs among those gifts which it is impossible to use badly. This impossibility is given to us by God; otherwise I do not know how to defend what Scripture says: ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ (1 Cor.4:7) For if God gives us a free will, which may still be either good or bad, but a good will comes from ourselves, then what comes from ourselves is better than what comes from God! But it is the height of absurdity to say this. So the Pelagians ought to acknowledge that we obtain from God even a good will.”

”It would indeed be a strange thing if the will could stand in some no-man’s-land, where it was neither good nor bad. For we either love righteousness, and this is good; and if we love it more, this is better. If we love it less, this is less good; or if we do not love righteousness at all, it is not good. And who can hesitate to affirm that, when the will does not love righteousness in any way at all, it is not only a bad will, but even a totally depraved will? Since therefore the will is either good or bad, and since of course we do not derive the bad will from God, it remains that we derive from God a good will. Otherwise, since our justification proceeds from a good will, I do not know what other gift of God we ought to rejoice in. That, I suppose, is why it is written, ‘The will is prepared by the Lord’ (Prov.8:35, Septuagint). And in the Psalms, ‘The steps of a man will be rightly ordered by the Lord, and His way will be the choice of his will’ (Ps.37:23). And what the apostle says, ‘For it is God Who works in you both to will and to do of His own good pleasure’ (Phil.2:13).”

(Augustine – On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, 2:30),

Now, if someone (non-”Reformed”, naturally) asks me: What about, “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live?” Deuteronomy, 30:19)?, I shall ask: just because God commands doesn’t mean that we are able to do so? What, God commands what we are unable to do! Yes. How else is He going to convey his commands to his elect?

Furthermore, “I can only ‘run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!’” (Psalm 119:32).

When the Bible says that salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9),  “[w]e are to understand by this that the whole of the work whereby men are saved from their natural estate of sin and ruin, and are translated into the kingdom of God and made heirs of eternal happiness, is of God, and of him only. “Salvation is of the Lord.” (Charles Spurgeon)

 

Normal human activity is not forced or coerced; insofar as it proceeds from fallen human nature it is not free because a person with a fallen nature does not have the power to choose what is good. Nonetheless, where a person is not forced, but makes a contribution to his action, and is not acting out of ignorance, he is acting voluntarily, and is responsible for what he does.”

Analysis of the Modern Evangelical Mind and the Lost Art of Boxing

Before I begin my mind-walk, let me say something briefly about the knotty  term “evangelical.”

David Bebbington in his “Evangelicalism in Modern B

ritain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s” mentions four key marks of “evangelicalism”: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism (the cross) and activism (activity).” (See review of Bebbington and Al Mohler’s “Thinking in Public: in conversation with David Bebbington). Bebbington lumps the Puritans together with Arminians (e.g. Methodists) where he gives more weight to Wesleyan Methodism than to the Puritans (Calvinists). When I refer to the “modern evangelical” mind, I am referring to the Arminian evangelical who thinks that thinking about Jesus can get in the way of believing in Jesus. I now examine one of these “modern evangelical” minds.

Walking with Jesus, all Christians would agree, often involves talking to others about Jesus. Talking, naturally, involves thinking. The main operation of thought is categorising. Many modern evangelicals rebel against “boxing in” Jesus into categories. My aim in this post is to argue that “boxing in” and “boxing,” (categorising) are not the same process.

To describe one’s beliefs, or anything, you have to use words, which is the usual human way of expressing thoughts. Some words are more important than others. These are called “key” words. Problems arise in communication because of contradictory definitions of these key words.

When Calvinism is contrasted with Arminianism, what first comes to mind is God’s role and man’s role in coming to faith. The Calvinist says that man plays no cooperative or contributive role in coming to faith, while the Arminian says that man cooperates with God in that man turns his heart to God, that is, exercises his will to come to faith. In Calvinism, God first regenerates the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of salvation. Faith, for the Arminian is something the believer does, not something God gives, as Calvinism understands it.

Here is a typical comment I received from and evangelical Christian on one of my posts about Calvinism and Arminianism:

“Can I make a suggestion, because these terms – Calvinian, Arminian.. etc.. – have never occurred to me in my walk with our Lord, Jesus Christ – I don’t even know who Spurgeon is (and I’m sure many others can say the same) this kind of thing can just spread confusion with different followings. I’d suggest we continue to Humbly study the Word, and do what is commanded of us. That is to spread and teach the gospel; to continue to seek the Kingdom of God first; to ask Forgiveness and to repent of our sins… but all the time to remember that God sees and weighs up the heart – so whatever we do or say, may it be with an examined heart, or we could fall into a trap ourselves. Using terms like Arminian and Calvinism is putting people in boxes – this is the thing the world does. We don’t do this – because its putting man-made limits and assumptions up. I believe that God, in his sovereignty, does as He pleases. Has mercy on whom He pleases, gives understanding to whomever he wants at whatever time suits Him and his ultimate plan.”

“I think that some understanding and having our eyes opened brings us to the point where we can do nothing but be humbled, quietened, moved by our God. A seeing person can only be effected and touched by what he sees. Maybe its like a person who is slowly gaining strength back in his/her legs… he can do more and more each day that his strength is renewed. But, that person with the weak legs has to go to the doctor first to get worked on. Jesus Christ didn’t just go to people and spontaneously heal them. The people came to and called on Him. These man-made terms and translations mean nothing to me personally – I wont be put into a box. Its like the rest of the world.. if you’re like this, you’re Aries or a Dragon.. Fill in these questions that our Well Learned Psychologists have put together and we will tell you Who you are and What Category you fit into….. harumph! No thanx.”

The problem with this view is summed up in the writer’s last paragraph, specifically the misunderstanding of the term “category”:

“These man-made terms and translations mean nothing…I wont be put into a box… Fill in these questions that our Well Learned Psychologists have put together and we will tell you Who you are and What Category you fit into…” (My italics).

Categorizing is the mother of all mental processes. What do we do when we categorize? Here is a thesaurusful (I emphasise “analyse” because I use this term later on):

Words related to (that is, the semantic field of) Categorise

“analyze, ascertain, distinguish, characterize, classify, collate, decide, demarcate, determine, diagnose, differentiate, discriminate, estimate, figure out, identify, judge, know, label, mark off, pinpoint, place, qualify, recognize, select, separate, set apart, set off, sift, single out, singularize, sort out, specify, spot, tag, tell apart.”

Now, obviously, the writer does not advocate that when we study the Bible or talk to others about it we should not differentiate, select, diagnose (something psychiatrists do very well), sift, and so on.

The writer says:
“I’d suggest we continue to Humbly study the Word, and do what is commanded of us. That is to spread and teach the gospel; to continue to seek the Kingdom of God first; to ask Forgiveness and to repent of our sins… but all the time to remember that God sees and weighs up the heart – so whatever we do or say, may it be with an examined heart, or we could fall into a trap ourselves.”

This is good advice. My question is: How is one going to teach the Gospel to enemies of the Gospel, which all human beings are in their natural state? The writer asks: “Why try to analyze it all? God is not subject to any laws or rules.”

I answer: the fact of the matter is that the writer and I understand a key doctrine of scripture in opposite ways, namely, I hold the Calvinist view that sinners play no cooperative or contributive role in coming to faith, while she says that sinners cooperate with God by turning their hearts to God, that is, by striving (exerting their will, with help from God – “prevenient grace”) to come to faith. Her view is Arminianism. In Calvinism, God first regenerates the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of salvation. Faith, for the Arminian is something the believer does, not something that God gives, as Calvinism understands it.

Obviously there is much sifting, demarcating, differentiating, categorising, analysing going on.  In “Analysis,” we break things down, where we move down the ladder of abstraction from the  general to the particular.  Here is Hayakawa’s graphic explaining the ladder of abstraction. (S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, George Allen & Unwin, 2^e edition (1973, London).

(See here for further clarification).

Here is an example from scripture. A large section of the New Testament deals with explaining what is meant by Jesus is the Son of God; for example, in John’s Gospel and Paul’s epistles. Paul spends much effort – mental, analytical effort – explaining what “Jesus the Son of God” means. Three thousand years ago, the psalmist asks:

[1] Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

[2] The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,

against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,

[3] “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”

[7] I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.”

Why do the unbelievers rage when they hear: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” The reason, the Bible explains, is that their “hearts” are darkened. “Heart” in the Bible refers to man’s internal(ised) determination to disobey God, and what better way to do it, says the modern man, than to deny that God has a Son, or worse, God does not exist.

Now, a follower of Christ like the Apostle Paul or like many modern Christians will want to – indeed are commanded to – defend the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. To do that you’ll have to use your noggin and not your bottom – unless you’re sitting down. And that is where “analysis” is pretty useful.

Definition of analysis

1580s, “resolution of anything complex into simple elements” (opposite of synthesis), from M.L. analysis, from Gk. analysis “a breaking up, a loosening, releasing,” from analyein “unloose, release, set free; to loose a ship from its moorings,” in Aristotle, “to analyze,” from ana “up, throughout” (see ana-) + lysis “a loosening,” from lyein “to unfasten” (see lose). Psychological sense is from 1890.

(Synthesis, the opposite of Analysis, is putting things together).

Walking with Jesus will have to also involve thinking about Jesus and how to explain to non-believers how to think about Jesus and Jesus as the Son of God. To do so does not mean that you have to talk about ladders of abstraction and other such theoretical concepts. Nonetheless, when you do explain a biblical doctrine such as the divinity of Jesus, you are trawling – in your noggin – with Jesus up and down the mental ladder of abstraction. Theology, the science of God, is based on the same principles as Hayakawa’s ladder of abstraction above. To return to “Jesus is the Son of God. In 1, Moving from the bottom up, we move from Jesus through Son to God. But it is not a simple as that, for in 2, we see that “Son” only applies to Jesus, and not to other sons; the Son is God and the Father is God.

My explanation is “analytical.” So walking with Jesus should also involve analysing Jesus (the concept) for ourselves and (unless we do it ourselves we can’t do it) to others. “Analyse” means use your reason to give reasons for the faith that you have received, and defend the body of teachings (doctrines) that pertain to this faith. The Bible is clear: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” ( 1 Peter 3:15). There are many examples of Jesus and Paul reasoning (analysing, and synthesising) with their listeners. One important topic in this regard was the authenticity of the historical events in the scriptures. Paul was a master “apologist” (defender) of the Gospel. “Apologetics” is a very important part of learning and teaching the faith.

Having established that we need categories to know how to “apologise” (defend) for our faith, that is, walk the walk with Jesus, I can safely say that we also need categories to establish how a person comes to Christ – the Arminian or the Calvinist way (or, what is very bothersome, the Calvinist-Arminian and the Arminian-Calvinist way) which is closely bound up with what is meant by the “Sovereignty of God.”

They (people who don’t read – books) say that books aren’t everything. But that does not mean that books are nothing. Similarly with the mind; “the mind isn’t everything” does not mean that the mind is nothing. Actually when it comes to living the Christian life, reading (and thinking that is required to read) are important. As is very clear from the scriptures, minds can be darkened by more than lack of information. For example, the Gospels are very clear that most, if not all, the disciples, were “slow of heart” to understand Jesus. Peter got it most in the neck from Jesus. Jesus kept on telling the disciples that he was to suffer, die and rise again, but they couldn’t take it in because they didn’t want to; they were not expecting a suffering Messiah but a victorious one.

Happy analysing, in other words,  bottoms up.

(See A Jewish view of a French Bottom)

1S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, George Allen & Unwin, 2^e edition (1973, London)

Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s

Calvinist Arminians and Arminian Calvinists

When Calvinism is contrasted with Arminianism, what first comes to mind is God’s role and man’s role in coming to faith. The Calvinist says that man plays no cooperative or contributive role in coming to faith, while the Arminian says that man cooperates with God in that man turns his heart to God, that is, exercises his will to come to faith. In Calvinism, God first regenerates the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of salvation. Faith, for the Arminian is something the believer does, not something God gives, as Calvinism understands it. See John Wesley, Budding Calvinist, Naughty Arminian.

I use excerpts from Ephesians 2:1-10 to illustrate the contrast between Calvinism and Arminianism:

[2:1] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins…[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ… [8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…(Ephesians 2:8 ESV)(Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV).

Here is a table of the contrasting interpretations:

Ephesians 2	Arminianism	Calvinism
[2:1] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins. …[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ	“Dead” does NOT mean that the mind/heart/will is so darkened that it has no desire to choose “good,” namely, the Good News (the Gospel).“Made alive” means made our spirit alive, not our wills. Our wills were always intact, that is, the Fall didn’t affect our ability to choose God/Christ.	Dead DOES mean that the mind/heart/will is so darkened that it has no desire to choose “good,” namely, the Good News (the Gospel)“Made alive” means made our spirit alive, where “spirit” subsumes the will.
[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,	God’s shines enough light (prevenient grace – the offer of salvation) into a corner of our darkened mind/heart. We can choose to follow the source of that light or to retreat into another dark corner of our mind/heart. Faith means “follow.” We have faith in God’s offer, and in that act of faith we are saved through God’s “saving grace,” which is the grace that follows prevenient grace “Faith” is something we (our wills) do. The “this” in And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” refers only to grace, because “faith” is your own doing (willing); and thus NOT a gift of God.” The gift of God is salvation – if you exercise your faith	God regerates/makes alive the dead soul; in other words, he shines His light into the darkened a soul/spirit. That is what it means to be born again. “Prevenient grace” is a figment to those who have been brought back from the dead. The grace that is involved in salvation is “venient” (it comes) at God’s convenient time, and is efficient and sufficient to save. In the Greek original, “this” is in the neuter form, which means that in “And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” the “this” refers to BOTH grace AND “faith.”

See John Owen for a comprehensive description of the differences between “Scripture” (Calvinism) and Arminianism.

In general, one usually can distinguish an Arminian from a Calvinist. Many people, however, exhibit a bit of both Arminianism and Calvinism, leaning more towards one or to the other to produce either an Arminian-Calvinist or a Calvinist-Arminian – sandwich.

In the Calvinist-Arminian sandwich, the bread is Calvinism, and the much more substantial tasty middle is Arminianism. In the Arminian-Calvinist sandwich, the bread is Arminianism, and the much more substantial and tasty middle is Calvinism. What I’d like to do is to describe an Calvinist-Arminian sandwich, not because it is to my taste, but because it may help someone think more about what he puts into the mouth of his mind. Here is a picture of a Calvinist-Arminian sandwich.

Over the years, I have taken up the habit of writing down the sermons I’ve listened to in the different churches I attended. I came across a series of sermons on the beatitudes. Throughout the series of sermons – sometimes within the same sermon – we find: bottom slice of bread (beginning of sermon)– Calvinism; filling (bulk of the sermon) – Arminianism; top slice of bread (end of sermon) – Calvinism (which is often a recap of the beginning of the sermon).

In his first sermon in the series, the preacher made the – very Calvinistic, and biblical, therefore useful – observation that the term “blessed” in the beatitudes does not mean that salvation is conditional on whether one is poor in spirit, or merciful or pure in heart. Blessed” in the beatitudes (the preacher acknowledges Spurgeon as the source) means “fortunate are the poor in spirit,” where the preacher stresses that those whom Christ has previously saved/regenerated have received His character (righteousness). To use our sandwich analogy, the preacher has placed the first Calvinist slice of bread on the plate of his sermon.

Let’s home in one on one of the sermons, which is on the sixth beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). In the beginning of this sermon, the preacher goes straight to the Arminian fillng, but that’s ok, because if his listeners were observant they would’ve noticed that in his first sermon of the series he had placed the bottom slice of bread on the plate (recall the discussion on “Fortunate are the poor in spirit” of Spurgeon mentioned above).

Here are a few layers of the Arminian topping in the preacher’s own words with my comments in brackets:

“How are we to be saved from our sins?” The answer, said the preacher is “Matthew 5:8.”

“What must I do to be saved? I must have a pure heart.”

(This is the opposite of what the preacher said at the beginning of the series, namely, salvation produces a pure heart – not fully pure, of course).

“Only the pure in heart will be saved.”

(The cause and the effect is the reverse of what the Bible says. The biblical – Calvinst – position is that when God saves you, He gives you a new (pure) heart. Cause – salvation; effect – pure heart).

“God is looking for people who are pure.”

(No; God is looking for sinners whom he wants to make pure through the new birth. That’s the Bible; that’s Calvinism).

“Before you can see God, there has to be a total change.”

(The Calvinist agrees but insists that it is God who brings about the total change, not you. “Total” has two meanings: 1. born again and 2. growing in holiness, which follows after God had given you a new nature, that is, after He has given you a “totally” new nature).

“This beatitude is the process of salvation.”

(As long as does not make this beatitude a condition for God regenerating you and ultimately being brought into his heavenly kingdom.The are four senses of salvation in the Greek text: you will be saved (will bee born again through grace and faith) you have been saved (born again), you are being saved (sanctification) you will be saved (heaven).

That’s the end of the Arminian topping. The preacher then tops up the sandwich with this Calvinist slice.

The Lord “opens our eyes” and “then gives us the pure heart of Christ.”

(The Lord “opens our eyes.” This is a reversal of the Arminian doctrine that a person’s eyes must be open, that is, he must be able to see/understand that God is making him an offer of salvation, and it is up to him – his open eyes – to accept the offer. I must add, though, that many Arminians believe, as do Calvinists, in the doctrine of “total depravity” (radical corruption), which means that man needs God’s grace to enable him to come to Him (to believe in Him). The difference between the Arminian and the Calvinist is that the former believes in prevenient (“comes before” making a free choice) grace whereas the latter asserts that there is no such idea in the Bible.The Arminian’s prevenient grace is the grace that lifts man’s corrupt will to a neutral state, which enables him to decide whether He wants Christ to “quicken” him (make him alive) or prefers to remain dead (see Ephesians 2:1-10) to Christ.

Recall also that the preacher said previously “Only the pure in heart will be saved.” and “God is looking for people who are pure,” which is pure Arminianism. Having said that, it is indeed biblical that God opens our eyes and gives us the pure heart of Christ, but I don’t think there is a chronological sequence (as in “then gives us”). The two acts of God are simultaneous. Here is another example of this simultaneity:

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).

Towards the end of the sermon, the preacher describes the five marks of a pure heart:

1. Hunger for greater holiness.
2. Sincerity.
3. Hatred of sin.
4. Love of others.
5. Increased desire to know the Lord.

Arminians and Calvinists agree on that.

The sermon ends with Psalm 51:1 “Create in me a clean heart…”

From a Calvinist view, if one asks God to create in you a clean heart, he has already done it. What you should be asking God, if one understands that salvation is 100% of the Lord (that is, there is no human cooperation, no human contribution to your salvation) is: “Create in me a purer heart/increase the purity of the pure heart you have given me at the new birth.”

After the sermon I asked one of the church members which of these was the sermon about?

1. If you have a pure heart you will be saved.
2. If you are saved, God will give you a pure heart.

He said 1.

In this final section, I want to show that the Calvinist-Arminian preacher (whose stronger inclination, as I have described, is Arminianism) is in good company. Many, including myself, struggle with the difficulty of reconciling God’s predestination of His elect with man’s will. A prime example of this conflict is the “naughty Arminian,” John Wesley (see below). Another example is the naughty Calvinist, J.I Packer.

In his lecture series “The attributes of God,” J.I. Packer, in several places refers approvingly to C.S. Lewis’ theology. For example, in his “Immutibility and Impassibility” (21 minutes into the lecture), Packer refers to Lewis’ view of the reason why God rejects those who spurn Him, which, Packer says, is also what the Bible says in many places. Lewis’ view (in Packer’s words) is this: “God’s rejection of sinners is simply His ratifying their prior rejection of Him…Lewis went on to say that such rejection is God’s last act of respect to the self-determining free agency, Lewis says simply ‘free will,’ of the human creatures that He makes.”

Lewis is the perfect English gentleman: “God’s last act of respect to the self-determining free agency – man’s ‘free will’” I can’t see, however, where God’s “last act of respect” to man’s “free wil”l is – or can be inferred from – the Bible.

I wrote elsewhere that John Wesley’s Calvinist leanings threatened to turn him into “naughty Arminian.” Well, Packer’s commendation of Lewis’ Arminian view that God respects man’s “free will” – where the implication is that man is free to choose God or reject Him – makes Packer, who says he is a Calvinist, a naughty Calvinist, because in Calvinism man’s will is inwardly determined by his own radically corrupt heart, which is to reject God. The biblical reason why man isn’t a robot is not because he is able to choose God in his natural state; the reason is that man’s will is in bondage to his own heart. He, of course, thinks his will is autonomous (neutral) because he is following his own independent inner determinations, which are to reject God (the God of the Bible). Notice that Lewis doesn’t seem to believe in prevenient grace, that is, he believes that the Fall didn’t affect man’s will, and so, it has retained its neutral (autonomous) quality. That puts Lewis closer to Pelagianism than Arminianism, where the latter believes that man’s will is corrupt and needs Gods (prevenient) grace to bring it back to the neutral (autonomous) position.

Many are confused about Packer’s “Calvinism. Here is an example:

“I am a bit confused. I respect J.I. Packer immensely. He states he is a Calvinist, but also says he believes what CS Lewis has stated about life being a series of choices which either lead us to Christ or away from Christ; that each of us by our own actions either chooses what we know to be right or choose what seems to benefit us in the moment. When asked if each person controls their own destiny he answers “I think it is a true statement, but we don’t always know what we are choosing.” (from the youtube video:Does Each Person Choose Their Own Destiny? J.I. Packer ) This seems to line up better with Arminian thought. Could someone please explain.”

So, is Packer a Calvinist Arminian or an Arminian Calvinist. From what I know of Packer, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and say he’s a kosherish Calvinist sandwiched between two slices of Arminian bread – he’s an Arminian Calvinist.

A Calvinist Jew’s gratitude to Gentle James White

Who of all the Reformed Christians (Calvinists) on the internet is the most vilified and despised? That’s easy. James White.

James (I’ve already revealed my bias by dropping the “White”), besides many of his other activities, presents a weekly chat show “The Dividing Line” (Aomin.org under “Blog Articles). Each broadcast begins with the following admonition from the Apostle Peter to always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence (respect)” (1 Peter 3:15 ESV).

Sometimes James’ humour – on the dividing line – may appear to contradict the Apostle Peter’s admonition to “do it with gentleness and reverence,” but I don’t think this is so. In general there is no doubt that no matter how strong James’ criticisms, they are done with gentleness and respect. Besides “The Dividing Line” (DL) is a different kettle of fish to his sermons and debates, where the former (DL) is less formal than the other two. For example, James would spend less time in a sermon or a debate telling us about his incredibly flashy ties and shoes, and his bicycle rides, without which all the other deep stuff on DL would be, if not spare, unconsummated.

The term “criticism,” like so many other terms – such as “argument” – has the social meaning of “saying nasty things” as well as the formal meaning of “critiquing,” that is, presenting an “argument” (a reasoned presentation of ideas). In my book, James is one of the best defenders of biblical truth. The main thing people (naturally) hate about James – and about all “Calvinists”-  is his view that man plays absolutely no part in his salvation.

Here is some of what James showed me so clearly about the sovereignty of God in salvation, which I express in my  own “boggy” way (my blog user name is “Bography”).

Consider John 6:44 “No one can (has the ability, the power to – Greek  “dynamai”) come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

So, if you are drawn, you will logically come. And if you come, you will logically be raised up. In other words, if the Father “draws” – Greek “drags” (helko) not “woos” you – you will (logically and futuristically) be raised up. There nothing in John 6:44 about God only raising up a sinner IF he uses his “ability” to choose to come.

In John 12:32 Jesus says “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will drawall people to myself.”

“All” must mean “all kinds of people,” as only those who are drawn will come to believe, because as John 6:44 says, all (those) that God draws will be raised up on the last day. “So, if you are drawn, you will logically come. And if you come, you will logically be raised up. In other words, if the Father “draws”  – Greek “drags” (helko) not “woos” you – you will (logically and futuristically) be raised up.”

The “dragging” is not of someone bursting all over with autonomy, screaming all the way to salvation: “No, no, I don’t want to be saved. I hate you God. Stick to your Sovereign bargain of keeping my autonomous will intact after death came into the world. I want nothing of this hellish “helko” stuff.

What in reality does God’s “dragging” of the sinner to himself entail; what is this biblical “dragging?” It’s this:

You’re drowning in a bog. No, it’s more radical than drowning – you’re drowned. The Father, in his mercy, dredges (drags) you up out of the mud, and breathes new life into you, not only a restored life, but a life of a completely different kind. In your boggy (sinful, spiritually dead) state, you, of course, won’t be scratching and screaming for your Father – yes, your Father, because if He is dragging you out of the mud, He has already become your Father – to take his predestinating prehensile hands off you. Instead, what will you be doing? Rejoicing, because you were dead and now you’re alive, you were locked into your desires (freely following your heart), and now you’ve been released into the real meaning of the love of God.

No one was more wretched than a Calvinist; that is why when he sings “Amazing Grace” for saving “a wretch like me,” what is more amazing than God saving me with nothing in me having anything to do with it? Thank God for giving me no say in the matter.

Joe Rutherford asks: “Are people in hell just randomly chosen to suffer the wrath of God forever, or is there a valid reason for their punishment?”

No, people are not randomly chosen to suffer in hell. God’s reasoning, as you know, is perfect. Everyone deserves hell,  but God has mercy on those (whosoever) He wants to have mercy. Why God has mercy only on the ones  He has chosen, and not on everyone is hidden in God’s secret decrees. It’s all in Romans 9, which is not only about Jews (like moi) but about everyone.

The Christian Science Monitor carries an article about the “surprising comeback (of Calvinist theology, which is) challenging the me-centered prosperity gospel of much of modern evangelicalism with a God-first immersion in Scripture. In an age of materialism and made-to-order Calvinism’s unmalleable doctrines and view of God as an all-powerful potentate who decides everything is winning over many Christians – especially the young.”

I pray that James will continue for many more years to hammer home the “unmalleable doctrines” so lacking in modern Christianity.

Who of all the Reformed Christians (Calvinists) on the internet is the most vilified and despised? That’s easy. James White.

James (I’ve already revealed my bias by dropping the “White”), besides many of his other activities, presents a weekly chat show “The Dividing Line.” Each broadcast begins with the following admonition from the Apostle Peter to always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence (respect)” (1 Peter 3:15 ESV).

Sometimes James humour – on the dividing line – may appear to contradict the Apostle Peter’s “do it with gentleness and reverence,” but I don’t think this is so. In general there is no doubt that no matter how strong his criticisms, they are done with gentleness and respect. Besides “The Dividing Line” (DL) is a different format to a sermon or a debate, where it (DL) is less formal than the other two. For example, James would spend less time in a sermon or a debate telling us about his incredible ties and shoes, and his bicycle rides, without which all deep stuff on DL would be, if not naked, unconsummated.

The term “criticism,” like so many other terms – such as “argument” – has the social meaning of “saying nasty things” as well as the formal meaning of “critiquing,” that is, presenting a “argument” (a reasoned presentation of ideas). In my book, James is one of the best defenders of biblical truth. The main thing people hate about him – and all “Calvinists” is, naturally, his view that man plays absolutely no part in his salvation.

Here is what James showed me so clearly about the sovereignty of God in salvation. Consider John 6:44 “No one can (has the ability, the power to – Greek  “dynamai”) come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

So, if you are drawn, you will logically come. And if you come, you will logically be raised up. In other words, if the Father “draws” – Greek “drags” (helko) not “woos” you – you will (logically and futuristically) be raised up. There nothing in John 6:44 about God only raising up a sinner IF he uses his “ability” to choose to come.

In John 12:32 Jesus says “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

“All” must mean “all kinds of people,” as only those who are drawn will come to believe, because as John 6:44 says, all (those) that God draws will be raised up on the last day. “So, if you are drawn, you will logically come. And if you come, you will logically be raised up. In other words, if the Father “draws”  – Greek “drags” (helko) not “woos” you – you will (logically and futuristically) be raised up.”

The “dragging” is not of someone bursting all over with autonomy, screaming all the way to salvation: “No, no, I don’t want to be saved. I hate you God. Stick to your Sovereign bargain of keeping my autonomous will intact after death came into the world. I want nothing of this hellish “helko” stuff.

What in reality does God’s “dragging” of the sinner to himself entail; what is this biblical “dragging?” It’s this:

You’re drowning in a bog. No, it’s more radical than that drowning – you’re drowned. The Father, in his mercy, dredges (drags) you up out of the mud, and breathes new life into you, not only a restored life, but a life of a completely different kind. In your boggy state, you, of course, won’t be scratching and screaming for your Father – yes, your Father, because if He is dragging you out of the mud, He has already become your Father – to take his predestining prehensile hands off you. Instead, what will you be doing? Rejoicing, because you were dead and now you’re alive, you were locked into your desires (freely following your heart), and now you’ve been released into the real meaning of the love of God.

No one was more wretched than a Calvinist; that is why when he sings “Amazing Grace” for saving “a wretch like me,” what is more amazing than God saving me with nothing in me having anything to do with it? Thank God for giving me no say in the matter.

Joe Rutherford asks: “Are people in hell just randomly chosen to suffer the wrath of God forever, or is there a valid reason for their punishment?”

No, people are not randomly chosen to suffer in hell. God’s reasoning, as you know, is perfect. Everyone deserves hell,  but God has mercy on those (whosoever) He wants to have mercy. Why God has mercy only on the ones  He has chosen, and not on everyone is hidden in God’s secret decrees. It’s all in Romans 9, which is not only about Jews (like moi) but about everyone.

James may think, and rightly so, that he is a rare breed. I wonder, though, not how many Jewish Calvinists he knows, but how many he knows who are, as evident in my “bogs,” somewhat gentle and respectful, but not as much as James certainly is.

Bography

John Wesley, Budding Calvinist, Naughty Arminian

When Calvinism is contrasted with Arminianism, what first comes to mind is God’s role and man’s role in coming to faith. The Calvinist says that man plays no role in coming to faith, while the Arminian says that man cooperates with God in that man turns his heart to God, that is, exercises his will to come to faith. In Calvinism, God first regenerates the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of faith.

John Owen compares various scriptures with their Arminian interpretation, for example:

Scripture

“Else were your children unclean; but now are they holy,” 1 Corinthians 7:14.
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one,” Job 14:4.
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John 3:3.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John 3:6.

Arminian interpretation of the above scriptures

“Neither is it considerable whether they be the children of believers or of heathens; for all infants have the same innocency,” Rem. Apol. “That which we have by birth can be no evil of sin, because to be born is plainly involuntary.”

John Wesley is a famous Arminian. George Whitefield, his Calvinist friend and colleague wrote a letter to Wesley “In answer to Mr. Wesley’s sermon entitled ‘Free Grace’” in which Whitefield rebukes Wesley:

“Dear, dear Sir, O be not offended! For Christ’s sake be not rash! Give yourself to reading. Study the covenant of grace. Down with your carnal reasoning. Be a little child; and then, instead of pawning your salvation, as you have done in a late hymn book, if the doctrine of universal redemption be not true; instead of talking of sinless perfection, as you have done in the preface to that hymn book, and making man’s salvation to depend on his own free will, as you have in this sermon; you will compose a hymn in praise of sovereign distinguishing love. You will caution believers against striving to work a perfection out of their own hearts, and print another sermon the reverse of this, and entitle it “Free Grace Indeed.” Free, not because free to all; but free, because God may withhold or give it to whom and when he pleases.”

Iain Murray writes: “These doctrines of “free grace” were the essential theology of his (Wesley’s) ministry from the very first and consequently the theology of the movement which began under his preaching in 1737.”

When I read Wesley’s commentary on John 3:3, I think that he might have taken Whitefield’s advice. Let’s examine Wesley commentary on John 3:3. Here are two translations of John 3:3:

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Verily, verily, I say to thee, If any one may not be born from above, he is not able to see the reign of God;’” (John 3:3 Young’s literal translation). And the ESV translation:

“Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  (John 3:3 ESV)

Here is John Wesley’s commentary on John 3:3:

“Jesus answered – That knowledge will not avail thee unless thou be born again – Otherwise thou canst not see, that is, experience and enjoy, either the inward or the glorious kingdom of God.”

Spoken like a good Calvinist – regeneration first; see God, second. The Arminian might very well say that “Kingdom of God” does not refer to the “inward” Kingdom (Wesley) but only to (a future) Heaven. But, as any good Bible student knows, “Kingdom of God” refers to the “reign of God, not only in Heaven but – in our hearts – on earth, that is, in the “inward Kingdom of God.” What is very interesting, and very“Whitefieldian,” is that Wesley – naughty Arminian! – says, no one can see (the reign of) God unless they are first born of God, that is, unless God “quickens” him – Ephesians 2:

[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive (quickened us) together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— [6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus… (Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV).

The Arminian position, as I mentioned in the introduction, is that the sinner first has to accept God’s offer to be regenerated before God can regenerate him. Unless by “quicken” the Arminian means a prodding of his will. A Calvinist understands “quicken” as “Dead, dead, see I am dead, and there is a flower growing out of my belly button. My blood is ice cold. Now, look, there is Christ standing over me . ‘Come! get up!’

Wesley continues (my italics and bold):

“In this solemn discourse our Lord shows, that no external profession, no ceremonial ordinances or privileges of birth, could entitle any to the blessings of the Messiah’s kingdom: that an entire change of heart as well as of life was necessary for that purpose: that this could only be wrought in man by the almighty power of God: that every man born into the world was by nature in a state of sin, condemnation, and misery: that the free mercy of God had given his Son to deliver them from it, and to raise them to a blessed immortality: that all mankind, Gentiles as well as Jews (all = “all kinds of men”seems  to be Wesley’s meaning) might share in these benefits, procured by his being lifted up on the cross, and to be received by faith in him.”

Well, that’s the Calvinist view. John Wesley continues:

“but that if they rejected him, their eternal, aggravated condemnation, would be the certain consequence.”

Wesley is supposed to be commenting on John 3:3, but I don’t see anything about rejection of Christ in John 3:3. We do, however, read in John 3:18 “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18 ESV). But to get to John 3:18. Wesley has to somersault over John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8 ESV).

John 3:8 is enough to disarm any Arminian, for it’s all about being born of the Spirit (born again, born from above). It’s not at all about playing a part in one’s regeneration; indeed John 3:8 is about (one’s will) being totally blown way by the process of being born again, and into the arms of God? If this is true, what does Jesus mean later in verse 18 by “whoever does not believe is condemned already?” If the “Spirit blows where it wills,” means regeneration, how, protests the Arminian, can someone who is not blown on by the Spirit (born again, born of the Spirit) be blamed if the Spirit does not blow on him? Because, for those who believe in the biblical doctrine of Original Sin, every human being is guilty and deserves damnation; except – as the Bible says in Romans 9 – Jews and Gentiles of the “promise.”

Romans 9:

“8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” 14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion,2 but on God, who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”

“19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to its milder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honourable use and another for dishonourable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” (Romans 9:19-24 ESV, my italics).”

(See Whitefield’s comments – in his letter – on Welsey’s Arminian interpretation of the above passage).

Wesley ends his commentary of John 3:3 with these words:

“Except a man be born again – If our Lord by being born again means only reformation of life, instead of making any new discovery, he has only thrown a great deal of obscurity on what was before plain and obvious.”

All good Arminians as well as all good Calvinists will agree.

Finally, Whitefield, in his introduction to his letter to Wesley (cited above) says:

“Known unto God are all his ways from the beginning of the world. The great day will discover why the Lord permits dear Mr. Wesley and me to be of a different way of thinking.”

Now they know. And soon will – willy nilly – we all.

God’s will and God’s swill in salvation: thoughts on the Arminian-Calvinist controversy

In “How have you personally dealt with the Calvinist-Arminian issue?,” I came across the following two responses. My comments appear after each response:

1. Ryan on February 13, 2010 at 2:30pm

“Derek said: ‘I think its also important that Christ’s first commandment when He began His ministry was “repent!”, thus seeming to suggest some human response to the divine calling.’”

Comment:

Derek seems to assume that a human response to God’s call implies that the believer must have cooperated with God in his salvation. Obviously “responding” involves doing something. The question is whether the act of responding is what saves you.

God not only chooses the ends but also the means, namely, in this case, the desire to respond. At the back of this desire to respond lurk secondary causes, often in the form of misfortune. We’re all familiar with  “man’s importunities are God’s opportunities.” One good example of misfortune is Jesus’ parable of the “Prodigal Son.” The secondary means God provided in that story – the son’s final straw – was pig swill. The primary means God used was his miraculous raising the prodigal son out of that swill by an act of pure mercy and grace. It wasn’t the son’s will that saved him; it was God’s will and God’s swill.

So, the “means” of God’s provision for salvation embraces far more than the human reponse, and covers all that Jesus makes explicit in the “Great Commission” – Go and preach: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20 ESV).

When we turn over the page of our Bible to Mark 1, what was the first thing Jesus does in his ministry? “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The Great Commission in a nutshell is: “Repent and believe in the gospel.” But before one can repent one needs to hear, to read, to learn the Gospel. The means is the Gospel, the end is repentance, and all that comes with repentance such as faith, assurance, and the desire to obey God’s commands. God grants the repentance (like faith, repentance is a gift of God) as the Bible clearly points out in several places. God enables a person to repent. He also commands us to repent. How to reconcile this apparent contradiction. “Commands” is the means, while “repentance” (which is a sign of salvation) is the end.

So whether you are an Armenian Arminian or an Armenian Calvinist, you must have repented to become one or the other. Every believer will repent, and will also will to do so. When God regenerates a person, he makes him free to repent. It is that truth that will make you free.

Here is the second response at “How have you personally dealt with the Calvinist-Arminian issue?”

2. Lisa Robinson on February 13, 2010 at 4:04pm

“The question I really had to grapple with was, is it regeneration or some type of prevenient grace that enables the person. If it is the former, then response will be given but not so if it is the latter.”

This is what I understand her to be saying:

1. If regeneration occurs before believing (faith), that is, if salvation is 100% of grace, THEN a response will be given.
2. If regeneration occurs after believing (faith), that is, if the believer cooperates with God’s PREVENIENT grace, then NO response is necessary, and so, is not given.

Isn’t she perhaps confusing her “latter” with her “former” because no Arminian (a believer in prevenient grace) will say that he does not make a response. So perhaps Lisa means the following?

1. If regeneration occurs before believing (faith), that is, if salvation is 100% of grace, THEN a response will NOT be given.2. If regeneration occurs after believing (faith), that is, if the believer cooperates with God’s PREVENIENT grace, then A response WILL be given.

But say Lisa did mean the second set of propositions, there would still be something wrong, because a response is given in both the synergist (Arminian) and the monergist (Calvinist) siutation. The difference lies in the cause of that response. The synergist says “I made the decision to be saved,” in other words, “I saved myself, whereas the monergist says “God made the decision, that is, “God saved me.” The Arminian will probably object, “I didn’t save myself, God saved me.” Not so. You did save yourself. All God did was – in your view – make you an offer that you could refuse; but if you accept the offer, you’re saved. So, it’s what’s in you, in your “flesh,” and not what is in God that determines that you are saved. When I says “determines” I mean “inwardly determines” (coming from you, the Arminian).

Even if an Arminian says, “I only did .000000000000000000001% and God did 99.000000000000000000099%, the fact of that matter is that it is that flick of that floating eyelash that redeems you from the pit and makes you a child of God. By the same logic it woild be the same eyelash response that sends you to the pit. Such eternal consequences determined (inwardly) by an eyelash!

The question is: “Is God really knocking at whosoever’s heart, begging to come in, but failing – sovereignly so – most of the time?