God's Glory is God's Love and Nothing Less

The “Chief End of Man”…God’s Glory…Yes and Amen (But…)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/04/the-chief-end-of-man-gods-glory-yes-and-amen-but/

by Roger Olson

April 4, 2014

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Recently I re-read Jonathan Edwards “Dissertation on the End for Which God Created the World.” And I watched and listened to John Piper’s address about why the evangelical church needs Edwards’ “God-entranced vision” today. (It’s on Youtube.)

Some people would be surprised to hear that I agree ALMOST entirely with Edwards and Piper about this subject. First, yes, I agree, whole heartedly, that everything, without exception, is created for God’s glory and that everything’s chief end (purpose) is God’s glory. Edwards’ and Piper’s “God-entranced vision” is needed by evangelicals (and others) today…with a few important qualifications. (The devil is always in the details.)

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” I say “amen” to that. We do not exist for ourselves; nothing exists for itself. Everything was created for God’s glory and exists to glorify him. As Edwards acknowledges, there are subordinate “ends” (purposes) for things, but the chief end, purpose, of whatever exists, has being, is God’s glory.

I sympathize with Piper’s (and others’) concerns about contemporary evangelical Christianity in America. We have fallen into various forms of human-centeredness. “Moralistic, therapeutic deism” is one of them. Another is worship and preaching that focuses on creation and human “success in life” (happiness, fulfillment, prosperity, etc.). I do not recognize much that is called “evangelical” as that.

So what is my problem with Edwards’ and Piper’s vision (they are basically the same) of this “God entranced vision?” They and I part ways over some very important details.

1

First, INSOFAR as they imply that sin and evil and hell are “designed, foreordained and governed” by God for his glory I demur. These are PERMITTED reluctantly by God and he uses them to glorify himself.

How so? Because God’s glory is his love. Even Edwards seemed to acknowledge this in The Nature of True Virtue by defining “true virtue” as “benevolence toward being.” Love does not coerce others into loving oneself. Sin, evil and hell are permitted by God as part of his consequent will, not “designed, foreordained and governed” by God as part of his antecedent will. But they still exist to glorify God–not because God planned them for his self-glory but because their existence is the result of his love for creatures which glorifies him. A God who permits creatures to resist him is more glorious than one who meticulously controls every thought and intention and decision and action of every creature.

How does hell glorify God? Not by being NECESSARY for the display of God’s justice in wrath (Edwards) but by being God’s painful refuge for those who reject him.

(For you Edwards experts out there…yes, I know Edwards also said that God “permitted” sin and evil to enter his creation, but he clearly MEANT “efficacious permission.” He clearly meant that the fall and all its consequences were planned by God and rendered certain by God according to a great plan and scheme to glorify himself by displaying his justice through wrath.)

2

Second, INSOFAR as they (Edwards, Piper and their ilk) imply that POWER takes precedence over LOVE in God’s glory, I demur.

God’s glory IS his love–first his innertrinitarian love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and second his love flowing out from the Trinity toward creatures.

God is glorious BECAUSE he is perfectly loving as well as perfectly powerful. BUT, since love is his essence, he can restrict his power (but not his love).

To be sure, Edwards believed in God’s love, but he MEANT God’s self-love and then, secondarily, his love for the elect. Piper tries to rescue God’s love even for the non-elect by saying he gives them “temporal blessings” on their way to hell. That’s absurd, of course. It is the same as saying he give them a little bit heaven to go to hell in. Wesley said that is such as “love” as makes the blood run cold. I agree.

My point is that, in my view, anyway, while Edwards and Piper are correct to emphasize God’s glory as the chief end, purpose, of everything, they are wrong to empty God’s glory of meaningful love and focus it on power. Power without love is not glorious.

Church father Irenaeus is famous for saying that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” So, yes, everything in creation exists for God’s glory, but God’s glory is not narcissistic. It is his perfect benevolence and ability to display it and give it to creatures.

As my friend Austin Fischer says in his wonderful book Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed (Wipf & Stock) “Love is not a cog in the glory machine.” But in our opinion, Edwards and Piper make it just that.

Rather, as Scripture itself testifies, “God is love.” God IS love. That is God’s glory.

So, let me say again, loudly this time: TRUE ARMINIANS ALSO BELIEVE GOD’S GLORY IS THE CHIEF END OF EVERYTHING. But we disagree with Edwards and Piper about the NATURE of God’s glory. Yes, it is his beauty and perfection, but his beauty and perfection are his perfect love, his benevolence toward being–his own and creatures’.

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Why High Calvinism is Impossible: The Importance of Language

Why (High) Calvinism Is Impossible

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/03/why-high-calvinism-is-impossible/

by Roger Olson

March 16, 2014

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By “impossible” I don’t mean, of course, “doesn’t exist.” I mean “exists but doesn’t work.” By “doesn’t work” I mean “cannot be believed consistently and coherently.”

In brief, my argument is that belief in the Bible as God’s Word and motivation to engage in its exegesis presupposes belief that God is trustworthy, that God cannot deceive. But this assumes that God has a stable, enduring, eternal character that is “good” in a way analogous to our highest and best intuitions of “goodness”—whatever their source may be.

Put another way, negatively, if one believes that God’s goodness is nothing like our best intuitions of goodness, that God’s goodness is possibly compatible with anything capable of being put into words (i.e., ultimately and finally mysterious), then there is no good reason to trust him. Trust in a person, even God, necessarily requires belief that the person is good and belief that the person is good necessarily requires some content and not “good” as a cipher for something totally beyond comprehension and unlike anything else we call “good.”

Put in technical language, if “good” applied to God is equivocal and not even analogical, then it is useless for describing God. If “God is good” is qualified with “but his goodness is completely different from ours” (meaning our highest and best ideas of goodness), then it is meaningless.

Not all Calvinists say that God’s goodness is completely different from ours. Paul Helm, for example, in The Providence of God, argues that “goodness” attributed to God cannot be totally other than goodness attributed to human beings (even as an impossible ideal). Unfortunately for him, I believe, he does not follow that insight through consistently but undermines it by attempting to combine assertion of God’s essential goodness with belief in double predestination.

I argue that belief in double predestination is simply logically incompatible with the claim that God is good—unless “good” is emptied of all meaning so that it is a useless cipher for something we don’t know.

But if God is not good in some way analogous to our highest and best intuitions, insights, into “goodness,” then there is no reason to trust the Bible. And if there is no reason to trust the Bible (because God, being not good in any sense meaningful to us, might be deceiving us), then there is no clear motive for intense biblical exegesis.

Every devout, evangelical Christian believer I have ever met or heard of approaches Bible reading and study (including exegesis) with the assumption that the Bible is true (even if not strictly inerrant)—that it does not misidentify God and God’s will for us. But built into that assumption is that God, the Bible’s author (by inspiration of the human authors) is good (which is why he is trustworthy and cannot deceive). But belief that God “designs, foreordains, and governs” hell for the reprobate who are chosen by God for hell for his glory without regard to any truly free choices they make undermines belief in God’s goodness. So does belief that God “passes over” some he could easily save (because election to salvation is unconditional and saving grace is irresistible), damning them to hell, for his glory.

There is no conceivable analogous human behavior that we would call “good.” The very concept of “good” rules out such behavior. (To say nothing of Jesus’ own goodness and the New Testament’s commands for us to love our enemies and do good to them.)

My point is, of course, that there exists a contradiction between two Calvinist beliefs: 1) that the Bible is inherently and unconditionally trustworthy, and 2) that God, its author, is not good in any sense meaningful to us. Belief “1″ assumes that God is good in a sense meaningful to us—comparable with our highest and best intuitions of goodness. Belief “2″ (necessarily implied by double predestination) empties belief “1″ of foundation.

Therefore, any exegesis of the Bible that ends up portraying God as not good, which high Calvinism (belief in double predestination) inexorably does, cannot be believed because it self-referentially turns back against the very reason for believing the Bible. In order to be consistent one must choose between belief in the Bible as God’s Word and belief in double predestination.

This is why I say with John Wesley about the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 9 “Whatever it means it cannot mean that.”

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Follow Up to Why (High) Calvinism Is Impossible

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/03/follow-up-to-why-high-calvinism-is-impossible/

by Roger Olson

March 19, 2014

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Suppose someone said “God is sovereign but God’s sovereignty is different from our ideas of sovereignty. God is sovereign but possesses only the power of persuasion.” Someone else objects saying “But wait. There is no meaning of ‘sovereignty’ known to man that is compatible with having only the power of persuasion.” The first person responds, “Oh, but you are assuming a human idea of sovereignty; God’s sovereignty is higher and better than any human idea of sovereignty. We can’t project our ideas onto God; we must learn from God what ‘sovereignty’ means.” The second person says “But wait again. When you say God is ‘sovereign,’ then, we have no idea what you mean because the word ‘sovereign’ becomes equivocal. It is compatible with anything.” The first person responds, “Well, God is mysterious and his ways are higher than our ways.”

In other words, two can play this game. The Calvinist believes God predestines people to eternal torment in hell apart from any truly free decisions they make (since he “designs, foreordains, and governs” all creaturely decisions) and could rescue them from it (because election to salvation is unconditional and grace is irresistible) but doesn’t say “God is good,” even though there is no OTHER meaning of “good” compatible with such behavior. This is no different from, say, a process theologian saying “God is sovereign” even though there is no OTHER meaning of “sovereign” compatible with total lack of power other than power of persuasion. In both cases we really have no idea what the words mean.

Almost all Calvinists insist that God is NOT the “author of sin and evil.” Why? Because that would be incompatible with being “good.” SOME Calvinists challenge that and ask why God can’t be good AND the author of sin and evil? The other Calvinists really have no answer to that because they have already emptied “good” of all meaningful content by saying it is compatible with God predestining people to hell (as described above).

Words cannot mean whatever we say they mean (contrary to the character in Alice in Wonderland). This is the whole point of saying that theological language must be analogical and not equivocal. High Calvinism makes “good” equivocal. Then, “good” becomes possibly compatible with anything and everything–including deceiving others. If God’s “goodness” is so elastic and equivocal, then there is no reason to expect that it could NOT be compatible with God deceiving us in which case we have no good ground for trusting the Bible.

I am convinced that all objectors so far have missed the point entirely. What scenario in human existence and experience can you think of in which something like predestining fellow human beings to eternal torment in hell apart from any free decisions they make would possibly be compatible with “goodness?” What scenario in human existence and experience can you think of in which refusing to rescue a fellow human person from eternal torment when one could rescue him is compatible with “goodness.”

If you say “Well, whatever God does is automatically ‘good’ just because God does it,” then you have made my point for me. We don’t have any dependable understanding of what that might exclude. In that case “good” MIGHT include deceiving us in God’s “Word” such that the reality is exactly the opposite of what it says–viz., that salvation is by works alone rather than by grace alone.

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