The Great Passion of an "Impassable" God

Mr. Spock’s [Stoic] God: The [Great] Mistake of Western Theology

http://ourrabbijesus.com/articles/mr-spocks-god-mistake-of-western-theology/

by Lois Tverberg

January 15, 2014

I admit it. As a kid, I was a rabid Star Trek fan. Mr. Spock’s philosophy was brilliant, to my preteen thinking. He had purged all emotions from his psyche in order to live only by cool-headed reason. All anger, sorrow and fear were barred from his thoughts, allowing him to be perfectly rational at all times.

Sure, emotions like empathy, joy, and love had to go too. But how could you be wrong when you could calculate every potential outcome to the fifth decimal place?

Later in life, I discovered that Mr. Spock’s creators had unearthed this idea in classic Greek philosophy. My pointy-eared Vulcan hero was pursuing the Stoic ideal of apatheia—seeking virtue by rejecting all passions, by becoming indifferent to pain or pleasure.

Many Greco-Roman philosophers saw emotions as fleshly and evil, uncontrollable and opposed to reason. Obviously, in their minds, the supreme God could not be so weak as to express emotion. God must be impassible—impervious to passions like anger and sorrow, unaffected by the misery of the human condition. Aristotle’s God was the “prime mover,” but he himself was unmoved—he was pure thought, devoid of all feelings.

The idea that emotions are irrational and unnatural arose from Greco-Roman philosophy and has influenced Western theology for thousands of years. We moderners find God’s passions in the Old Testament embarrassing. But what if we looked at Israel’s God from a Middle Eastern perspective, which embraces his emotional reality?

Ken Bailey has discovered a wealth of insight on the parables, especially the prodigal son, from his study of traditional cultures of the Middle East. Throughout his travels, he’s asked his Arab subjects one question hundreds of times: “Have you ever known a son to come to his father and demand his inheritance?” The answer is always the same: it would be unthinkable. It would be an unspeakable outrage, a gross insult to one’s father and family.

Bailey tells the story of one pastor whose parishioner who came to him in great anguish, exclaiming, “My son wants me to die!” The man’s son had broached the question of his inheritance. In that culture, the son’s inquiry expressed a wish for his father’s demise. The elderly man was in good health, but three months later he passed away. His wife lamented, “He died that night!” The offense was so great that in a sense, the man died the very night his son had spoken to him.

Bailey’s insights on this parable reveal a basic error in how Western Christians understand sin and God’s response. We see sin as the breaking of arbitrary rules, as accruing parking violations and speeding tickets in a heavenly court system. If we put our faith in Christ, his atoning sacrifice will pay the fine. In this scenario, God is a callous, uncaring judge whose concern is that the law be upheld and the penalty paid in full.

The portrayal of sin in Jesus’ parable, however, is that of a broken relationship, a personal offense against a loving Father. The son’s actions would have been profoundly hurtful to his family as he cashed in their property for his own gain. Sin does not just “break the rules” and annoy a strict policeman; it is a direct, personal rejection of our loving heavenly Father, who cares for us deeply.

Anger in Tension with Love

The wounded anger of a deserted father is a far cry from the aloof judgment that many of us mistakenly see in the God of the Old Testament. Rather than God being distant and unfeeling, a more biblical understanding is that God’s anger at sin exists in tension with his overwhelming love.

The same passionate concern for humanity that causes God’s anger is also the source of his tenacious, everlasting love that bursts out in joy when his children finally come home.

All of the prophets, in fact, express God’s anguish when his children abandon him, and how he restrains his wrath at sin out of his hesed, his mercy and loving kindness.

This is the Old Testament God’s answer to our angry question, “How can you be so indifferent to the evil in the world?” Our accusations are actually against the impassible God that we’ve conjured up out of our own imagination!

The real God is just the opposite, because indifference to evil is in itself evil. Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes,

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. All prophecy is one great exclamation; God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man…This is one of the meanings of the anger of God: the end of indifference!

Man’s sense of injustice is a poor analogy to God’s sense of injustice. The exploitation of the poor is to us a misdemeanor, to God it is a disaster. Our reaction is disapproval; God’s reaction is something no language can convey. Is it a sign of cruelty that God’s anger is aroused when the rights of the poor are violated, when widows and orphans are oppressed?

If God is not wounded by his people’s suffering or angered at their cruelty toward each other, he would be a God who cannot love, theologian Jürgen Moltmann concludes. In The Crucified God he writes,

A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being.

God’s powerful emotions made perfect sense in a society where passions were embraced, where tears of mourning and songs of joy were a normal part of life. The Greek rejection of emotions arose out of an intellectual pride that was willing to sacrifice one’s full humanity for the sake of being in constant control.

God is not indifferent or disinterested—he’s an Arab father who is crushed by his son’s apparent lack of love. God is a mother bear who roars a warning if you get too close to her cubs. God is a jilted boyfriend who’s beside himself when he spots his true-love on another guy’s arm. Israel’s God is not less emotional than we are, he is even more.

A God Who is Grieved by Evil

If you’re looking for God’s unflinching judgment, the place you’d most expect to find it is at the time of Noah. You’d expect to find God nearly exploding with fury at the wicked deeds of humanity, when humankind had filled the world with violence, when “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5).

But instead of wrath, the Bible says that God was grieved, that God’s heart was full of pain. A murderous gangrene had infected his precious children, causing them to destroy themselves and each other. God’s anguish was so great that he even regretted making humankind.

In Hebrew there’s a connection between God’s pain and that of fallen humanity. Because of Eve’s sin, her sorrow (etzev, ET-tsev) in bearing children will multiply, and Adam will labor in sorrow (etzev) to make the earth produce food. (Genesis 3:16-19) This is the same word that describes God’s sorrow when his heart is “grieved” in Genesis 6:5 (Noah). Like Eve, God’s precious children would now fill his heart with pain; and like Adam, his beautiful earth would now be cursed by human bloodshed. Adam and Eve’s sorrows were a small taste of the pain God himself felt at his broken world.

Our world today is still filled with violence—we’re no different than the generation that made God regret he had created us. When you consider the mass graves of the genocides of this past century, you realize that humans really are capable of evil beyond the limits of the imagination. Yet, after the flood God promised, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done” (Genesis 8:21).

Why was God’s response to evil different than before?

Here, in the Scripture’s first pages, I wonder if we don’t see God’s answer to the classic question, “If God is good and all powerful, why doesn’t he destroy evil?” In the flood epic, God revealed what his righteous response to human evil would be—universal judgment. God bears with corrupt humanity because the alternative is the death of every sinner on earth. The fact that a good God does not destroy evil is not because he’s impotent—it’s because he’s merciful.

God’s Costly Covenant

We discover God’s mercy in his very next words, when he makes a covenant in Genesis 9. In this very first covenant he ever made with humankind, he committed himself to find another answer to sin rather than just to destroy sinners. In embryonic form, this covenant points toward the coming of Christ.

For God, this decision had an enormous price. Walter Brueggemann explains, “God resolves that he will stay with, endure, and sustain his world, notwithstanding the sorry state of humankind… It is now clear that such a commitment on God’s part is costly. The God-world relation is not simply that of strong God and needy world. Now it is a tortured relation between a grieved God and a resistant world… This is a key insight of the gospel against every notion that God stands outside of the hurt as a judge.”

Terrence Fretheim also notes, “Given God’s decision to bear with the creation in all of its wickedness, this means for God a continuing grieving of the heart. Thus the promise to Noah and all flesh in Gen. 9:8-17 necessitates divine suffering. By deciding to endure a wicked world, while continuing to open up the heart to that world, means that God has decided to take personal suffering upon God’s own self.”

God opts to suffer alongside his people because he loves them in spite of their sinfulness. From the moment he made that decision, we see the passionate love that ultimately led to the cross, to bring his prodigal children back to him. And we see his overwhelming joy when a single sinner repents and turns homeward.

The more you see God’s heart, the more you see the character of Christ from the very first pages of Genesis. Our dual images of God in the Testaments start to merge together when we see that the suffering of Christ began in his Father’s heart at the dawn of creation, when we see God our Father bearing the cross for our sins. It’s only when we focus the two images into one that we gain spiritual “depth perception” and begin to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Condensed and excerpted from the chapter “Our Longing Father” in Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus (Zondervan, 2012), pages 165-178. For a fuller discussion and for quotation references, see the book.

For further reading, an outstanding resource is Abraham Heschel’s The Prophets (New York: Harper, 2001), p 285-413.

How Important Is the Doctrine of the Trinity?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/04/1807/

 

by Roger Olson

April 29, 2013

Comments

 

            Here is a quote from Rowan Williams: “Trinitarian theology, in so far as it is concerned with what ‘kind’ of God Christians worship, is far from being a luxury indulged in solely by remote and ineffectual dons; it is of cardinal importance for spirituality and liturgy, for ethics, for the whole of Christian self-understanding.” (Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology, p. 142).

 

            This statement appears near the end of a magisterial discussion of Karl Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity that is equally complimentary and critical. But I lift it out here as a stand-alone statement, independent of the context, because it expresses a kind of over-arching evaluation of the doctrine of the Trinity or “trinitarian hermeneutics.” For Williams, as for Barth, as for numerous other Christian theologians past and present, the doctrine of the Trinity is crucial, essential, indispensable to a robust and healthy Christian view of God.

 

            The problem is, of course, that many, perhaps most, Christians have little or no understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. And they couldn’t care less. I once was a member of a church with the word “Trinity” in its name. During the eight years I attended there faithfully I don’t think I heard a single sermon on the Trinity. And I am almost sure that had I polled the congregation few would have been able to express, let alone explain, the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

            But I don’t want to be too hard on the perplexed. The doctrine of the Trinity is perplexing. Augustine said that anyone who denies the Trinity loses his salvation but that anyone who tries to understand it loses his mind. [He also] said that he did not use the word “persons” (of the trinitarian three) because he wanted to but because there was no alternative.

 

            I have known many devout Christian believers in, and followers of Jesus Christ, who have struggled with the doctrine of the Trinity. I don’t fault them. At least they struggle with it.... Let me interrupt myself for a moment to say this: believing in the doctrine of the Trinity is not really the point; the point is to worship the triune God. However, the doctrine of the Trinity, while it cannot replace the triune God in our hearts, must have a place in our minds or else we end up in confusion about who God is.

 

            Not all orthodox Christian theologians have agreed with Williams (and Barth) about the centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity for right understanding of God. Emil Brunner, Barth’s counterpart in Switzerland and the formation of “dialectical theology,” argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is not the gospel and is not something to preach. He rejected the idea that it is a revealed datum or the structure of revelation (a la Barth). For Brunner, the doctrine of the Trinity is a “defensive dogma”—a human creation intended to protect the deity of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit while maintaining their distinctness from the Father. In other words, it’s a secondary language of faith, not primary.

 

            John Wesley believed strongly in the doctrine of the Trinity, but he did not insist on belief in it for recognizing someone as a Christian. He knew it perplexed many sincere and devout Christians such as John Milton and many other nonconformists (e.g., Isaac Newton!). [As an aside,] I would not be as generous as Wesley perhaps was with regard to "Arians", those who deny the deity of Jesus Christ. My struggle is with modalists (Sabellians) many of who seem genuinely confused about the doctrine of the Trinity. Some of them I know simply cannot seem to grasp how the doctrine of the Trinity is not belief in three gods. I do not have that problem. My problem is with understanding how a one-person God could be eternally love by nature and even how such a “monadic God” would not need a world for self-realization.

 

            Back to the main point here. What exactly is the status of the doctrine of the Trinity? Is it an essential of Christian faith such that anyone who does not confess it is not a Christian?

 

            I remember when I first started teaching theology, a student objected that I had not “explained the Trinity.” I tried to explain to him (and have ever since to numerous students) that one cannot “explain the Trinity.” But one can, and should try to understand and explain the doctrine of the Trinity. We must make a clear distinction between trinitarian dogma and the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Sure, there’s a connection, but it has to be a tenuous one or else we fall into confusing our ideas about God with God himself.

 

            But how necessary is the doctrine of the Trinity?

 

            First, what is the doctrine of the Trinity? Without getting into waters too deep, let’s define it ecumenically and very generally. It is that God is one God eternally existing inseparably and equally as three “persons” (hypostases). But we must immediately qualify that by saying that “person” here, in this doctrine, does not mean what “person” means in everyday American English. Our culture is so individualistic that to us “person” almost automatically connotes “separate self as individual center of consciousness and will.” With Dr. Seuss, we believe the job of a “person” is not to “fit in” but to “stand out.” That creates havoc with the doctrine of God! We must explain that when we say three “persons” we do not mean “person” in the common, American cultural, individualistic sense. What we do mean is not clear.

 

            One way I express the doctrine of the Trinity to beginning theology students is that God is “one what and three whos.” Inadequate—yes. But a place to start. Actually, all expressions of the Trinity are inadequate. At their very best they differ only in degrees of technical precision. Technically, the classical doctrine of the Trinity is that God is “one ousia and three hypostases.” That’s usually translated “one substance and three subsistences” or “one substance and three persons.” (“Subsistence” is perhaps a better translation of “hypostasis” than “person” but the latter, if explained correctly, avoids the idea that the three are only relations or manifestations.”

 

            Who can blame someone for struggling with this seemingly arid formula applied to God? And yet who can blame the early Christians for inventing it as a rule to rule out false doctrines of God (such as Arianism and modalism)?

 

            Much to some, perhaps more, conservative folks’ chagrin, with Wesley I do not insist on affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity for authentic Christianity.  It is a clumsy doctrine, no matter how it’s expressed. So is the hypostatic union doctrine of the Person of Christ. I see both as necessary for a correct understanding of revelation and am convinced that most, if not all, God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians actually do believe something like them even if in very confused ways. To be very specific, while I consider modalism a heresy, I consider it a minor one and am convinced that the vast majority of Christians who seem to believe it do not really understand its implications or the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. I have this sneaking suspicion that if I could sit down with them for an hour and talk it over I could dissuade them from their modalism and get them to affirm something like the doctrine of the Trinity even if not its formal language.

 

            Here I’m agreeing with both Barth (and Williams’ quote above) and Brunner. With Brunner I affirm that the doctrine of the Trinity is not “gospel.” Nor is it part of the gospel we preach. It is a human construct and a defensive one. That God is triune, however, is necessarily implied by the gospel we preach. The biblical story necessarily includes the existence of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the unity of God as one God. [On the negative side,] anyone who denies the doctrine of the Trinity but affirms the gospel has some explaining to do [at least more than I do on my side of Trinitarianism]. I personally don’t think they’ll succeed without affirming the doctrine of the Trinity. But not everyone has arrived there yet. If they are truly God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians (i.e., gospel people who view reality through the biblical story and message) and keep on thinking about it long and hard enough, they will.

 

 

Postscript:

 

Some years ago I spoke on this subject to a group of Christian college presidents. Afterwards, one of them (very well-known conservative evangelical) took my president aside and advised him to “investigate” me with a view to possibly firing me – not for denying the Trinity but for arguing that the DOCTRINE of the Trinity is less than essential for being a Christian. Now there’s a good example of what I consider "fundamentalism" – not only insisting that a person believe correct doctrine but that he exclude others who don’t believe correct doctrine in the same way. Fortunately my president did not agree.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Important Modern (English Language) Books about the Trinity

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/05/1812/

 

by Roger Olson

May 2, 2013

Comments

 

            Here I’m following up on my recent post about the doctrine of the Trinity. I’m often asked to recommend books about Christian doctrinal themes, so here is my list of “favorite books” about the Trinity.  I’m limiting the list to English language (some are translations) and published within the last century. The focus of the list is on even more recent publications. I am dividing the list into two categories: primary works and secondary works.

 

Primary works are ones that focus on the Trinity and secondary works are those that focus on other theologians’ ideas about the Trinity. Feel free to recommend others. (I am consciously excluding from my list works I consider heretical such as Norman Pittenger’s The Divine Triunity—which is based on process thought.) I have put an asterisk beside the one book in each list that I think you should read if you can only read one. (Of course, out of sheer humility I avoided “asterisking” my own!)

 

Primary

 

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 and IV/1

Leonardo Boff, The Trinity and Society

David Brown, The Divine Trinity

Stanley J. Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self

Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity

Robert Jenson, The Triune Identity

Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World

*Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ

Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us

Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom

A. Okechukwu Ogbonnaya, On Communitarian Divinity

Karl Rahner, The Trinity

Cyril Richardson, The Doctrine of the Trinity

Claude Welch, In This Name

 

Secondary

 

Chung-Hyun Baik, The Holy Trinity—God for God and God for Us

Bertrand de Margerie, The Christian Trinity in History

Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God

Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology

William J. Hill, The Three-Personed God

Eberhard Jüngel, The Doctrine of the Trinity (God’s Being Is in Becoming)

Roger E. Olson and Christopher Hall, The Trinity

*Ted Peters, God as Trinity

John Thompson, Modern Trinitarian Perspectives

Peter Toon and James D. Spiceland, One God in Trinity

 

 

 

Election is For Everyone - Discussion of Election, Free Will, Predestination, & God's Sovereignty

 

A Plug for My Current Article on “Election” in Christianity Today

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/a-plug-for-my-current-article-on-election-in-christianity-today/

 

by Roger Olson

January 8, 2013

Comments

 

If you are able to, please read my article “Election Is for Everyone” in the current issue of Christianity Today and post your feedback here. There I call for Christians to emphasize more our common ground and less our differences. We all agree that salvation is solely God’s doing and not of works. We all believe in election and predestination. Reformed theology does not have a monopoly on these good biblical concepts. Obviously, we interpret them differently, but both Calvinists and Arminians (and Lutherans and Anabaptists) believe that God elects people. We do not elect ourselves. Please don’t respond to this abstract; read the article and respond to it (if you are able).

 

*all [bracketed] comments are mine own - R.E. Slater (res)

 

 

 

Election Is for Everyone
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/election-is-for-everyone.html?paging=off

 

by Roger Olson

February 5, 2013

 

However we interpret the controversial doctrine, it's clear

that salvation is never a human achievement.

 

When I was a kid my brother and I would sometimes spend part of Saturday handing out gospel tracts in our neighborhood. We were pastor's sons and probably felt some obligation to do it (as it was something promoted in Sunday school and youth group), but I can honestly say we also felt it was our contribution to the kingdom of God.

 

One of our favorite tracts pictured a voting ballot. The great preacher Herschel Hobbs, known among Southern Baptists as "Mr. Baptist," preached a famous sermon based on that tract on The Baptist Hour in October 1967. His sermon was "God's Election Day," and its main point was:

 

"The devil and God held an election to determine whether or not you would be saved or lost. The devil voted against you and God voted for you. So the vote was a tie. It is up to you to cast the deciding vote."

 

Without doubt that concept of the doctrine of election has become popular among Christians. After all, we Americans prize our right and freedom to vote. But is that what Scripture means by election? Is the gospel that God votes for our salvation, Satan votes against it, and we—individually, freely—cast the vote that decides our eternal destiny?

 

Probably not. Some biblical scholars and theologians would say, "Definitely not!" It does seem to trivialize the concept of election and especially God's sovereignty in our salvation. On the other hand, there may be some truth in this way of conceiving the issue, even if it does not do justice to the profundity of the biblical doctrine of election.

 

Unfortunately, the "doctrine of election" has come to be associated especially, even uniquely, with one particular branch of Christian theology—the one people know as "Reformed." It descends from the Swiss Reformation of the 16th century and most notably from the French reformer John Calvin, who lived in and spiritually led the Swiss city Geneva. Too often, "election" is identified as the distinctive doctrine of Calvinism—as if no other branch of Christianity believes in it.

 

In fact, it would be impossible to be a Bible-believing Christian without affirming God's electing grace and having a doctrine of election. The same could be said about predestination, often thought of as a synonym for election. The Bible is filled with references to God's choice of people, both individuals and groups. Abraham was not just "called" by God but also "chosen" or "elected" to be the father of God's "chosen people," God's elect nation of Israel (Gen. 12:1-3; Isa. 45:4). The church is the elect of God, chosen for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:5). Paul was clearly chosen by God for apostleship (Acts 9).

 

It would be no stretch of truth to say that God's election of people is central to the biblical message, to the gospel. And it can safely be said that people's election is God's grace, not human achievement. Nowhere does the Bible even hint that people elect themselves.

 

'Touched by an Angel' Theology

 

That brings us back to the gospel tract and Hobbs's sermon. All Christians, not only Calvinists, ought to reject the underlying message that election is a human act or achievement. Theologians have a term for that belief: semi-Pelagianism. It is arguably the default view of both salvation and service among American Christians, especially younger Christians. But all branches of Christianity have condemned it as heresy, because it completely contradicts Scripture.

 

[The unbiblical idea of] Semi-Pelagianism is the idea that human beings take the initiative in their salvation and service to God. We decide whether to be saved or enter into God's service completely by ourselves, without prevenient (or necessary) grace. (Prevenient grace is grace that convicts, calls, illumines, and enables. Christian theologians disagree about whether it is resistible [(Arminianism)] or irresistible [(Calvinism)], but all evangelical theologians agree it is necessary for the first exercise of a good will toward God.) Some years ago, a popular television series featured angels in human disguise helping people in distress turn to God. In one episode, a beautiful young angel with a Scottish accent counseled a man to "reach up to God as far as you can, and then he'll reach down and take you the rest of the way." I call that "Touched by an Angel theology." By itself, without careful biblical and theological clarification, it expresses semi-Pelagianism, [that is, personal self-election].

 

Contrary to what many think, both Calvinist and Arminian traditions of Protestant Christianity have always emphasized God's initiative in salvation and service. (Arminianism is the theological tradition named after Jacob Arminius, a 17th-century Dutch theologian who affirmed human free will.) That is, if any person or group finds reconciliation with God and/or a role in God's mission, it is due to God's electing grace and not to human decision or achievement alone.

 

Unfortunately, the doctrine of election has become a battleground among evangelical Protestants. Three main viewpoints vie for attention and belief. All three appeal to Scripture. All three claim the other two fall short of biblical and theological correctness. Occasionally advocates of the three views fall into nasty verbal combat with each other. Advocates of all three need to realize they share much in common, specifically belief in the divine initiative—that God is the electing one, the one whose grace is necessary to every good thing a person does, including the first movement of the will toward God.

 

The first view is classical, traditional Calvinism. It was not invented by Calvin but came to be associated with his name in English lands through the Puritans. Earlier reformers Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli held much the same belief about election.

 

According to Calvin, election, which is the same as predestination and foreordination, refers to "God's eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man …. [E]ternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others" (Institutes of the Christian Religion III.XXI.5). Many people refer to this as "double predestination." Calvin based it on Romans 9 and other passages that emphasize God's sovereignty in everything, including each individual's eternal destiny.

 

The second view is classical, traditional Arminianism. It is named after the theologian Jacob Arminius, but the basic outlines of the view predate him. Perhaps the most influential Arminian was John Wesley, founder of the Methodist tradition, who is also revered by Christians in the holiness and Pentecostal traditions.

 

According to Wesley's essay "On Predestination," faithfully following Arminius, election (pre-destination) means that "God foreknew those in every nation, who would believe, from the beginning of the world to the consummation of all things." He based this on Romans 8, especially verses 29 and 30. Like all Arminians (and many who do not use that label but agree with its essential doctrine of election), Wesley affirmed free will, enabled by [prevenient] grace, because otherwise, "[I]f man were not free, he could not be accountable either for his thoughts, words, or actions."

 

Mountains of Verses

 

Most contemporary evangelical Christians lean one way or the other—toward either Calvin's or Wesley's view of election. All agree that God elects people to service; all agree that God chooses (through corporate election) to have a people. The flashpoint of controversy is election to salvation - is it unconditional and irresistible, or does it depend on one's willingness to accept it?

 

The divide is over individual salvation and especially whether God predestines some people to hell. Arminians find that abhorrent and damaging to God's reputation, based on passages such as John 3:16, 2 Peter 3:9, and 1 Timothy 2:4. Calvinists argue that allowing humans to resist and thwart God's will limits God's sovereignty and, however unintentionally, diminishes his deity. If sinners can freely contribute to their own salvation, then grace is not the only factor.

 

Both sides in this debate can pile up mountains of verses and arguments to support their view. It seems doubtful that equally God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians will ever reach consensus about the matter. But consensus already exists in this: whatever role humans play in their salvation, salvation is God's work. Even Arminians, at their best and truest, believe sinners receive saving grace only because God enables them to receive it with the free response of faith.

 

All evangelicals agree that salvation is God's work and not ours. Our good works, even our free decisions or signs of grace, amount to nothing when compared with God's electing grace and power.

 

A third view appears among contemporary evangelical Christians. Whether it leans closer to the classical Calvinist or Arminian doctrine of election is much debated. So-called "evangelical Calvinism" is championed by followers of Scottish theologians Thomas and James Torrance. They, in turn, were influenced by Swiss theologian Karl Barth and, before Barth, by Scottish theologians John McLeod Campbell and P. T. Forsyth. This view has recently been spelled out and defended by 12 leading evangelical theologians in Evangelical Calvinism: Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church.

 

According to evangelical Calvinism (something of a misnomer, as all Calvinists consider themselves evangelical in some sense), Christ must be central to election as both its object and its subject. God elects Jesus Christ to be the Savior, and then elects people only "in him." In Jesus and his cross, God has said, "Yes!" to all people; there is no corresponding divine "No!" If anyone has been elected to salvation, it is because God first elected Jesus Christ and then, by grace, included sinners in that election. If anyone rejects their inclusion in Christ's election, it is solely because of their inexplicable rejection of the grace God extended to them in Jesus Christ.

 

The editors of Evangelical Calvinism affirm that "[A]ll are included in Christ's salvific work, and … salvation is by grace alone and Christ alone." Election to salvation is good news, because it is not dependent on the frail and faltering free will of sinners, and no one is excluded except those who willfully exclude themselves [in Christ].

 

Classical Calvinists and Arminians agree with much in evangelical Calvinism, but both find it inconsistent at certain crucial points. Their main common complaint is that it falls into contradiction. How, they ask, can one affirm the universality of electing grace and deny free will with regard to being elected [Arminianism], while also affirming free will to reject the truth of one's election [Calvinism]? Evangelical Calvinists, on the other hand, find both alternative views of election problematic in that each, in its own way, seems to impugn the goodness of God's character.

 

Evangelical books about the doctrine of election abound. Unfortunately, most of them are polemical—spending more time arguing against another view than underscoring and explaining common ground. Especially in the past two to three decades, the doctrine of election has become a cause of division more than of unity among evangelicals. More attention needs to be given to areas of broad and profound agreement, and less to areas of diversity. Evangelical Christians, at their best, share a common doctrine of election. The devil is in the details, especially when they become points of polemical accusation and opportunities for charges of heresy or biblical infidelity.

 

All evangelicals agree that salvation is God's work and not ours. Our good works, even our free decisions or signs of grace, amount to nothing when compared with God's electing grace and power.... They're like the deceptive pillars English architect Christopher Wren installed to reassure the city fathers who doubted his scheme for supporting the second floor of Windsor's town hall. Wren had in fact left space between the pillars' tops and the ceiling of the first story. But the space was so miniscule as to be invisible, and it wasn't until years later, when workmen built scaffolds to clean the ceiling, that the ruse was discovered. The pillars, which had seemed so important to the architectural design, were revealed (like our outwardly impressive good works) as meaningless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'God Will Find a Way'

 

If a sinner comes to Christ and receives salvation, all evangelicals agree, it is due to God's electing grace and not at all due to any meritorious work. They also agree that God is sovereign in salvation; election is one biblical way of expressing that sovereignty. The whole of Ephesians 1 extols God's sovereign election of his people. There, as elsewhere, however, it is possible to interpret election corporately [as well as it should be, esp. in Ephesians! - res]. All evangelicals agree that God's election of a people, Israel and the church, is unconditional. God chooses to have a people for his name and for his glory. He chooses to have a people on whom to lavish his love. He chooses to have a people to be a light to the nations and a testimony of God's greatness and goodness to the spiritual beings that populate the invisible world.

 

Evangelicals can and do disagree about whether individuals' inclusion in God's elect people involves any level of free will, but all agree that the existence of the people of God is not dependent on human choice. As a famous line from Jurassic Park says, "Life finds a way." Evangelical faith of all types and tribes agrees that "God will find a way" to have a people for his name.

 

Calvinists, Arminians, and evangelical Calvinists tend to find each other's positions inconsistent. But inconsistency is not heresy. Perhaps evangelicals divided over the details of the doctrine of election could rally around a prayer. The great English Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, saved in a Methodist church but a passionate Calvinist, frequently prayed a seemingly inconsistent prayer at his church's evening prayer meetings: "God, call out your elect. And then elect some more." Evangelicals of varying opinions may cringe at the apparent contradiction, but all can rejoice at the spirit of generosity and hope that pervaded Spurgeon's appeal.

 

- R.O.

 

*Roger Olson is professor of theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and the author, most recently, of Against Calvinism (Zondervan).

 

 

 

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Luther and “Double Predestination”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/04/luther-and-double-predestination/

 

by Roger Olson

April 10, 2013

Comments

 

So, my article on “election” was published in Christianity Today’s January/February issue (2013). Predictably, a letter responding was published in the current issue of CT (April). The letter writers (a Lutheran pastor in Iowa) takes issue with my claim that Martin Luther held a view of election similar to that of the Reformed theologians Zwingli and Calvin. The writer says (“The Way to Election,” pp. 55-56) that Luther did not believe in “double predestination” He describes my claim as “a serious mischaracterization” and argues that Luther “rejected the idea of God’s electing to condemnation.”

 

So, to refresh my memory, I have been reading Luther and Luther scholars for the last few days. Here is one article available on line that presents a persuasive argument that Luther did believe in double predestination: http://www.contra-mundum.org/essays/mattson/Luther-predestination.pdf. Here, as elsewhere on line, the following statement is attributed to Luther (and the sole source cited is Lorraine Boettner who doesn’t cite “chapter or verse” in Luther’s Commentary on Romans):

 

“All things whatever arise from, and depend on, the divine appointment; whereby

it was foreordained who should receive the word of life, and who should disbelieve

it; who should be delivered from their sins and who should be hardened in them;

and who should be justified and who should be condemned.”

 

So, yesterday I read through Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (trans., J. Theodore Mueller, Zondervan, 1954). I did not find that quote there. However, the volume lacks the all important Preface (!) so I read that at CCEL.org. Here is a statement I found there:

 

“St. Paul teaches us about the eternal providence of God. It is the original source which

determines who would believe and who wouldn’t, who can be set free from sin sin and who

cannot. Such matters have been taken out of our hands and are put into God’s hand….”

(This may be found in the Preface where Luther is previewing Romans 9.)

 

However, in the main body of the Commentary Luther, in the chapter on chapter 8 and on page 115 of the volume cited above, Luther writes thus about predestination:

 

“A fourth objection [to the doctrine of election as Luther believes it is taught in Romans]

is this: God hardens the will of man so that he desires to transgress the divine Law all the

more. Hence, God is the cause of why men sin and are condemned. This is the strongest and

most weighty objection. But the Apostle meets it by saying that so it is God’s will, and that if

God so wills He does not act unjustly, for all things belong to Him as the clay belongs to the

potter. He thus establishes His law in order that the elect may obey it, but the reprobates may

may be caught in it, and so He may show both His wrath and His mercy.”

 

Now, of course, someone (perhaps the letter writer) may argue that this was written in 1515 and therefore hardly represents the mature Luther’s thinking about the matter. Well, neither I nor the letter writer said anything about WHEN Luther believed in or didn’t believe in double predestination. In "Table Talk," Luther virtually forbids any discussion of predestination because it leads into all kinds of speculation and fear. So the issue is not WHEN Luther believed or did not believe in double predestination but whether Luther EVER believed in it.

 

Here is a quote from Alister McGrath: “Luther explicitly teaches a doctrine of double predestination….” (Iustitia Dei, Second Ed., p. 203)

 

I own this marvelous book entitled "What Luther Says" (Concordia Press, 1959). It contains pages of quotes from Luther about election. None of them explicitly express double predestination, but the editors (two Lutheran theologians) include a footnote that says “Luther had not always spoken like this. [viz., that there is no explanation for why God does not save everyone when he obviously could] While lecturing on Romans in 1515-1516, he was still teaching particular grace and predestinated reprobation…and his earlier lectures on the Psalms, 1513-1515, reveal the same point of view….” (p. 455)

 

Finally, I come to Luther’s debate with Erasmus in "The Bondage of the Will." I don’t see how anyone can read this c.1525 essay and not come away thinking Luther believed in “single predestination” rather than double predestination. Here Luther distinguishes between two aspects of God–God “hidden” and God “revealed.” It is imperative to pay attention to this distinction when talking about what Luther believed God does and does not will and do. It is part of God’s revealed will (“God revealed”) that all be saved. (All references here are to the following edition: Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation [The Library of Christian Classics] eds. Rupp, Marlow, Watson, Drewery [Westminster Press, 1969].)

 

But the “hidden God” wills and works everything. Commenting on Ezekiel 33:11 (which Erasmus used to argue that God does not will the condemnation of anyone) Luther writes that “It is this that God as he is preached is concerned with, namely, that sin and death should be taken away and we should be saved. … But God hidden in his majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life, death, and all in all. … God does many things that he does not disclose to us in his word; he also wills many things which he does not disclose himself as willing in his word. Thus he does not will the death of a sinner, according to his word; but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his. It is our business, however, to pay attention to the word and leave that inscrutable will alone….” (p. 201) (Lest anyone quibble here, the context makes clear that by “death” in this passage Luther is referring to eternal death, condemnation, hell.)

 

Later Luther writes about why God does not change the wills of wicked people when he could. “It therefore remains for someone to ask why God does not cease from the very motion of omnipotence by which the will of the ungodly is moved to go on being evil and becoming worse. … Why does he not…change the evil wills that he moves?” (p. 236) Here is one place where Luther’s nominalism/voluntarism pops out: “He is God, and for his will there is no cause or reason….” (p. 236)

 

Throughout the essay Luther ridicules and blasts belief in free will. And he makes abundantly clear that everything that happens, no exceptions, are willed and brought about by the hidden God–even evil. HOWEVER, people can argue that Luther did NOT believe God foreordains evil or sin or condemnation BECAUSE (although they rarely mention this) Luther DID deny that to “God revealed.” At least some of the time, and certainly in his response to Erasmus, Luther viewed God as Janus-like–with two “faces.”

 

So, it seems right to me to say that, for Luther, when speaking about God hidden in his majesty, God the all-determining reality, nothing escapes God’s foreordaining will and power–including reprobation. When people who know Luther well claim that he did NOT believe in double predestination, they MUST be talking about Luther’s “God revealed in his word.”

 

When I say that Luther believed in double predestination I mean (!) he believed God hidden in his majesty, the deus absconditus, foreordains and brings about (even if only indirectly through withdrawing his preserving grace) every sin and evil will and act of every creature including the reprobates’ condemnation.

 

Admittedly, later in his career, Luther shied away from this and stopped talking in that way and came close to forbidding “speculation” about predestination.

 

 

continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "Calvinism v. Arminianism"

 

 




 

Of Sons and Daughters Lost to the Fathers and Mothers of this World

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1662–1669 | Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The Parable of the Prodigal Sons

Commentaries by Pete Enns & R.E. Slater

A Parable of the $20 Bill

Sermon by James Grier

“But While He was Still Far Off” (or, what if God actually loves us?)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/but-while-he-was-still-far-off-or-what-if-god-actually-loves-us/

by Pete Enns

January 6, 2013

Comments

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion (Luke 15:20).

A lot of people have heard of “the parable of the prodigal (i.e., wasteful) son.” Some translations call it “the parable of the lost son,” which is better but not quite there. I prefer “the parable of the jerk loser son.”

Long story short (you can read the full version anytime you want to), the younger of two sons demands that his father give him his inheritance right now. This move is majorly disrespectful, for a inheritance is given only when the father dies and also the older son is supposed to get his first. The younger son isn’t being a little forward. He’s leaping over his older brother and in effect saying to his father, “you are dead to me.”

So, he left to live the life that mimicked Animal House and - spoiler alert - "ran out of money!" Of course, what should happen next but a famine and so he roamed the streets hungry and alone. He finally decided he actually has to get a job, and so wound up taking care of pigs–which, if you recall your Judaism, is about as bad an animal as you can come in contact with. He’s so hungry, he even started daydreaming about eating pig food.

He figured he needed to do something about his predicament before he starved, so his sense of self-preservation kicked in. (If you haven’t caught on, this guy is pretty focused on himself, even here.) ”I know, I’ll go back home and grovel a bit. ‘Oh father, I am not worthy to be your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands.’ That should work.”

"The Parable of the Lost Son" by Christopher W. French.
"Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight."

So, he sucks it up and heads back home.

I’m talking now to you parents out there, especially with high school and college age offspring. If you’ve ever been in the place where you son or daughter has left the straight and narrow, slammed the door in your face (actually or metaphorically), and began making some life choices that keep you up nights worrying yourself sick if they are OK, what they’re doing, are they alive, are they ever coming home–if you’ve ever been there, you know what’s going on here.

Or maybe things have not been all that dramatic for you. You child disrespects you and storms out the door to go who knows where and do who knows what with who knows whom. You’re worried and mad. The next day, the car pulls in the drive way and s/he clearly has that look of remorse.

If you’re a like most parents I’ve met (including me), you’re relieved but you also want to make a point. So you play it cool, stand at the door, and give you son or daughter that “I told you so, c’mon, admit it, admit it, you were wrong and I was right” look.

And this is where the parable hits me between the eyes.

When the son was still a far way off, rather than going back into his tent to play it cool (“Oh…You’re back. I hadn’t noticed. How have you been?”), rather than doing what normal fathers do, he was filled with compassion and ran out to meet him.

But while he was still far off…

He couldn’t wait. Even though the son had done his best to bring shame and hurt to his family and his faith …

... his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

The son delivered his limp, rehearsed, apology, hoping at least to get a bite to eat. Instead the father ignored the speech and ordered that his son be fully restored: a clean robe, a ring (representing family membership), and sandals where he had been barefoot.

As for a bite to eat? Forget it. How about a feast? And why not, as the father says, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.”

You get the feeling the father was pretty excited.

Frans Francken (II) - The Parable of the Prodigal Son

The father, obviously, represents God in this parable, but this isn’t a “get saved and go to heaven after you die” story. The son is, well, a son–already part of the family.

In Jesus’ day, he was addressing his stubborn fellow Jewish countrymen, reminding them about the love of God and that it’s never too late to come home. When this and other stories were adapted for the Christian faith, that same point remained but with a broader [non-Jewish] audience.

The story isn’t about conversion to Christianity. It’s about God being on the look out for those in the family who have wandered off, and God simply can’t wait to welcome them home.

I read stories like this and I wonder, What if this is actually true? What if there is a God who is really like this? What if God can’t wait to have us around–even with the garbage we keep carrying around and our half hearted “I’m sorries?”

What if God is glad to see us?

And the much more threatening question, What difference would really believing all that make in how I look at, well, pretty much everything?

And, what would it look like if I loved the way God loved?

- Pete Enns

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How Does One become "Family"?

R.E. Slater

January 11, 2012

I'd like to make one small addition and add the following observation....

The traditional church view here is that "the family" refers to believers of God who follow after Jesus. To a Spirit-baptized, confessing believer, who has left God and now wishes to come back, to whom God says to His child, "Eh, verily, even now, do I love thee! Thou art my child and ever will I love thee." Of course this doesn't answer the question of "faith and works" (James, Peter, etc) so much as state a profundity of church dogma which we must save for another day's examination.

But this isn't what Jesus was saying....

Certainly Jesus had this in mind when speaking to the Pharisees about belonging to God through the covenants made in Abraham, Moses and David. As Jews under covenant (esp. the unconditional covenant of Abraham) they were part of God's people. Even if, after having broken covenant with God (sic, the Mosaic Law, and Suzerainty-Lordship of God in the Abrahamic Covenant) they were welcomed back. It's what God does as One who Loves and Redeems.

But how can one come back when covenant has been broken?

In the OT sense of "remnant (theology)" those Jews who broke covenant were no longer part of God's blessings and fidelity. They stood in jeopardy of judgment and would be treated as a non-covenanted people God knew not. This is the sense you get when reading the prophets of the OT as they preached against the sins of the people of Israel who hardened their hearts against God and persisted in refusing to repent to the prophets message that they had broken covenant with God. That they were faithless, refusing His will and word in their lives. So too had the younger son in the parable acted by rejecting his father, collecting his inheritance, and leaving the community of his birthright.

Under the Abrahamic Covenant there was a way back to God. But how?

In essence, God Himself would become the sacrifice for His people's sin, as the Lamb of God, pictured in Jesus (who was very God himself!). Hence, when God had Abraham bring a sacrifice for his, and his family's (and his future descendant's) ratification of the covenant (... a ratification that in essence was an atoning covenant for sin, a family covenant for membership, and a submittal covenant for duration of treaty, among other things... ). When this sacrifice was brought it was God Himself who cleaved the oxen in two, who functioned as both the priest and the mediating sacrifice, before Himself and Abraham (Abraham here is pictured as yet another typological figure like that of Adam for mankind).

Thus was God both the Suzerainty who treated with Abraham, and the undergirding foundation for the covenant itself, when it surely would be broken by Abraham in his doubts and faithless acts soon to come.

Even so did Jesus remind the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day of their faithlessness to God. Of their need to repent (sic, as such, Jesus was acting as God's prophet to His people Israel... ). Of their rightness of restoration based upon God's faithfulness and love as their Suzerainty who had become their surety as sacrifice upon creation of their treaty with YHWH. Which Jesus Himself would someday soon perform in His own body and spirit as Exemplar Magnifique, by way of re-establishing Israel's broken covenant with God through Himself, as God's perfect, and acceptable sacrifice.

To whom does this apply? To Israel alone?

Hence, under Paul and NT theology, God's covenant has been expanded to all men - both Jews and Gentiles alike - in and through Jesus. Jesus is mankind's surety of covenant in/under/before/beside/by God. Through Jesus is our sin removed. Through Jesus may we become adopted into God's covenant as His people. And through Jesus has Israel's covenant with God has become enlarged to all men everywhere. And if - and when - broken, as it surely will be, it will ever remain in force because it is based upon the eternal God Himself, and through His Son, and not upon our own selves. So that even in our sin, we are God's "family". By right of creation (Genesis). By right of concession (Abraham). By right of redemption (Jesus).  By right of sustenance (the Holy Spirit). We are God's lost and straying remnant. We are God's faithless people to whom He seeks day and night.

And it is to this idea that God says to us today - to those standing outside His covenant, as well as to those standing inside His covenant - that all may come. And when we fail that He will be our surety. Our sacrifice. Our Oxen and Lamb. Our High Priest and Mediator. Our Savior and Redeemer. That His covenantal love restores, as well as makes, covenant with us. That He understands our brokenness and fallibility. Our sins, selfishness, pride, ego, faults, and small-mindedness. Our hesitancies, doubts, misgivings, hurts, shames, and failures. And yet, reaches out to all who wish to enter in to His grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness, healing and strength.

Then what is our answer this day? Shall we continue to despise the Father or return home?

Regardless if you have left "the covenanted family" or not. Regardless if you were not part of that family (like Abram first was before God had ever established covenant with him). It is to you that God has made covenant. A covenant that will stand the test of time through God Himself and through His work on Calvary's cross for all Jews and non-Jews alike. He is our Redeemer. Our surety. Our Promise-Keeper. Our faithful Lord and Sovereign who seeks all who are lost, and weary, and filled with the pain of this world.

Where money and riches and fast friends never brought satisfaction. Where the pigstys and self-imposed poverties of this world would grind upon our souls in our lostness and inability to find safe haven and rest. Yet God is there. He waits for you to leave yourself behind and to come to Him. Willingly. In hope and desire. Bearing ruin and destruction in your bones through the mangle of sin in our lives. Even as He searches for you. And is pained by your absence. And when seeing you come, will run to you. Embrace you. Hold you. And never let you go. Inviting all who will come to a feast held in your honor, reveling with God's broken heart of joy that yet another sinner has come home from the pigstys of the human heart and lost dens of this world. Wherever they be. For all are sought, and longed for by God, our Creator-Redeemer, with a broken and heavy heart, until "found" on the road leading back to "home". Come. And wait no longer.

R.E. Slater

January 11, 2012

The Parable of the $20 Bill

A well-known speaker started off his seminar holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this."

He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill. He then asked, "Who still wants it...?" Still the hands were up in the air. "Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. "Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air.

"My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We may feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.

Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE. For you are priceless in the eyes of God who loves you.

AUDIO FILE

James Grier: Sermon on the Parable of the Two Lost Sons

The Father of Two Lost Sons – Luke 15

Additional Sermons on Luke: http://jamesmgrier.org/sermons/