Exonerating Pelagius

So, how about that post title? It made you really want to click and find out what in the world I'm talking about, right? I digress...

In terms of popularity among evangelical Christians, the fifth-century heretic Pelagius ranks somewhere between Judas Iscariot and Satan. His eponymous teaching is considered the heresy of all heresies, the false teaching from which all others spring. Somewhat like proving NP-completeness, a teaching can be proven to be heretical if it can be shown to imply or equate to Pelagianism. What is this dastardly, false, and dangerous teaching? The gospel of works-based righteousness, it is said. The lie that man can be good without God. That our righteousness is up to our free will and moral effort rather than the grace of God. That we can earn our salvation. That man is innately good rather than sinful. It is the very antithesis of the Gospel, such that the Gospel can sometimes be defined more negatively than positively, as the opposite of works righteousness.

But like my erroneous 32,000 Protestant denominations figure, virtually all of this is hearsay. After studying total depravity in my systematic theology class, I have to wonder, how historically grounded is this picture of Pelagius and Pelagianism? I'd like to try to dispense with the following myths about Pelagius:

• Pelagius' goal was to deceive people and pervert the gospel. Actually, his concern was much more pastoral. He was not very given to lofty theologizing; his concern was to help people live righteous, Godward lives. He saw the church's increasingly prevalent theology of original sin and human inability as an unnecessary hindrance, reasoning that God only commands us do do something (even "be perfect", Mat 5:48) if we are able to do it. He viewed Augustine's doctrines of original sin and predestination as a perversion of God's justice and a resurgence of the fatalistic pagan teachings the church struggled against in the second century, and defended what he considered to be the traditional teaching of the church on human responsibility. Adam's sin only affected Adam himself, and every human after him has the same freedom Adam did to choose to obey or disobey.
• Pelagius denied God's grace/taught that we can be good without God. Actually, Pelagius' theology was just as full of grace as Augustine's, albeit in a different way. To Pelagius, God's creation of man with free will and the ability to choose between good and evil was an act of grace. Man's exercise of that ability was not self-righteous moral effort, but grace on the part of his Creator. He also viewed God's revelation and moral instruction as dispensations of grace. Where he differed sharply from Augustine was that he saw grace as something largely passive or external, whereas Augustine saw grace (the most important, salvific kind) as active and internal.
• Pelagius promoted a theology of "works". He was not given to discoursing about "works" and their value at all. Rather, Pelagius stood up for what he saw as the church's teaching of human free will and responsibility over against fatalism.
• Pelagius taught that we earn our salvation. In the fifth century there was little sense of salvation as a legal transaction based on merit. Salvation was viewed as rich and multifaceted: the forgiveness of sins, regeneration of damaged human nature, deliverance from death and the devil, bestowal of the Holy Spirit, and Godward growth in holiness, righteousness, and Christ-resemblance. It was not given in an instant but received over a lifetime, primarily through the administration of God's grace via the sacraments. Pelagius affirmed that we actively participate in our salvation by choosing God and righteousness over sin and evil, but in no way taught that we simply "earn" salvation the way a worker earns his wages.
• Pelagius was condemned for these things. Actually, Pelagius' initial condemnation came from the Synod of Carthage in 418 over the allegation that his theology (especially his denial of the nascent doctrine of original sin) made infant baptism, a firmly established practice of the church and commanded in the Nicene Creed, unnecessary "for the remission of sins". This was reiterated at the Council of Ephesus in 433, along with mention of his denial of internally working grace.
• The church sided with Augustine over Pelagius. This is mostly, but not entirely, true. Though Augustine's theology has been enormously influential in the west, his contemporary church, especially in the Christian east, was not willing to follow all of his conclusions. They actually agreed with Pelagius' criticism of predestination as fatalistic, and that it implied that God did not actually wish all men to be saved, as 1 Tim 2:4 says. Neither did they deny that God's grace could work externally, or that man's free will is part of God's grace. Rather, both kinds of grace are active in the salvation of man. This is basically the theology of the Orthodox Church to this day. The term "Semi-Pelagianism" was only applied to this position in the sixteenth century and does not do justice to the fact that it has been the consensus of the church throughout the majority of its history.

Pelagianism is a heresy, but it is not the arch-heresy that it gets made out to be. It is certainly not the anti-gospel. There is plenty to criticize Pelagius for that is actually true without perpetuating these myths. And Augustinian theology is not as rock-solid orthodox as it gets made out to be, historically speaking. Augustine remained in good standing with the church and was never condemned for his teachings on predestination, but later theologians who propounded them with less of his nuance and balance (like Gottschalk, Cyril Lukaris, and Cornelius Jansen) were. Augustine was one of the greatest theologians of the church in any age, but he was not infallible, and his theology does not define the rule of faith. I hope this historical context has been helpful.

Providence, Part IX: Application for Better Theology

This is part 9 of my series on providence. Table of contents:

1. Introduction and apology
2. A brief history of the soteriological debate
3. Overview of Calvinism
4. Overview of Arminianism
5. Comparing, contrasting, and evaluation of Calvinism and Arminianism
6. The Biblical data

     6.5. Interlude: The God Who Seeks Us

7. My position on providence
8. Applications of this position to the soteriological debate
9. Practical applications and conclusion

Eight months after starting it, I'm sorely tempted to make the elusive conclusion to my providence series into some kind of mythical, continually-promised, never-delivered carrot-on-a-stick to keep people reading my blog. But I wouldn't troll my faithful readers like that. I have already written enough to fill a small book, which makes me rethink how many times I've casually told people looking to discuss predestination to just "read my blog" about it. I have significantly changed (I hope progressed) in my view on providence as I see it and as it is commonly debated in the church. While I'm not sure I'll ever "arrive" at a complete understanding of providence in this life or otherwise by virtue of my finite mind, I have come to a fuller understanding of it than I ever thought possible before, and it has been a truly rewarding journey.

But this is only half of the story. No theology is complete if it doesn't draw one into greater spiritual understanding of God and appreciation of His glory along with merely conveying intellectual understanding. Greater knowledge about God must lead to greater knowledge of God and love for who He is and what He has done in us. The connection between one's theology and the rest of life can't be understated, even if it isn't always obvious.

A Relational Theology Take on Sovereignty

I just read a commendable essay by one of my favorite contemporary theologians, Roger Olson, propounding what he calls a "relational" view of God's sovereignty that raises some very interesting points and perfectly captures the importance of this connection between theology and life. It was a nice reminder that my theology concerning God's sovereignty will never be complete--and that's great news! He says this quote pretty well summarizes this perspective of "relational theology":

To be sure, God does not hand over the reins of government to the faithful; but neither does he want to make them automatons, beings resigned to a determined will. From the very beginning, he has preferred to give his friends a joint knowledge of what he wills to do…and to deal historico-temporally through them as his instruments, which as personalities may co-determine his will and counsel. (Quoted in Claude Welch, God and Incarnation, p. 116)

Elsewhere, Olson makes another point about God's sovereignty:

The key insight for a non-process relational view of God’s sovereignty is that God is sovereign over his sovereignty. The missio dei is God’s choice to involve himself intimately with the world so as to be affected by it. That choice is rooted in God’s love and desire for reciprocal love freely offered by his human creatures. None of this detracts in any way from God’s sovereignty because God is sovereign over his sovereignty. To say that God can’t be vulnerable, can’t limit himself, can’t restrain his power to make room for other powers, is, ironically, to deny God’s sovereignty.

This is exactly what I was getting at in my seventh post: trying to develop a view on sovereignty that leaves God as free as possible. The answer, Roger says and I believe, is ironically that God seems to have used His total freedom to relinquish some of it, "made himself nothing and took the very nature of a servant", and allows us to share in His kingdom reign. God's sovereignty is two-way; though He doesn't need anything in the world and certainly can't be controlled or manipulated, He makes Himself vulnerable, opens Himself to sharing in our sorrows and joys. This is a much more satisfying view of God than one who either autocratically micromanages every moment of our lives from on high or challenges us to decipher His inscrutable will for each moment of our lives. Both of these views lack the deeply personal nature of God embodied in Christ. It will take some time to fully work this idea into everything I developed in post 7.

The Most Excellent Way

But Olson gets at something deeper than view on God's sovereignty when he explains where it came from, which is just brilliant:

Rather than focusing on proof texts of Scripture or philosophies, this relational view of God’s sovereignty arises out of and is justified by a synoptic, canonical, holistic vision of God drawn from the biblical narrative. Obviously I do not have time now even to summarize “narrative theology,” but I will mention a few of its major points. 

Narrative theology regards stories and symbols as vehicles of truth. The Bible contains propositions, but it is not primarily a book of propositions. It is primarily a book of stories and symbols from which propositions can be drawn. The Bible is the story of one great “theodrama.” Its purpose is to identify God for us and transform us. Transformation is its first and highest purpose though it does also contain information. 

Narrative theology refuses to treat the Bible as a “not-yet-systematized systematic theology” which is how I believe too much conservative evangelical theology treats it. No system can replace the Bible which always has new light to reveal and more truth into which to guide us. 

Narrative theology resists too much philosophical speculation into matters beyond our possible experience and beyond the biblical narrative which is not about God-in-himself but about God-with-us. Narrative theology resists metaphysical compliments paid to God that cannot rest on the portrayal of God in his own story. 

Finally, narrative theology insists on taking the whole biblical story into account when theology attempts to derive truth about God.

This shift from viewing the Bible as systematic theologies tend to, as a collection of propositional statements (which may be wrapped inside historical narratives, poetry, prophecy, etc.), to a holistic narrative about God and His people has been a big area of growth for me lately. I increasingly think the latter is how the Bible was written and how it is "meant" to be read, while the former is an imposition of a more recent, Western way of thinking on an ancient, non-Western text.

Often in Christian theology and teaching there is an imposing tone of "this is how the Bible says God is [usually as a set of propositions], and the Bible is God's true word, so we have to accept, believe, and proclaim it". The truth is the truth, and we must learn to love it even if it seems hard or doesn't make sense at first. With some of the things Reformed theology says about God--His absolute control over even acts of evil on every level, His indiscriminacy in inflicting pain and suffering, His willingness to preselect people for Hell--such an authoritative view of the truth is necessary, because of how intrinsically distasteful and difficult these things are to believe.

This often leads, in turn, to an expectation that Biblical truth should be hard to accept or unpalatable, because we're blinded by sin to God's true goodness, forgetting that the point of the Gospel is that we will, we can, we do joyfully know and love God for who He is. If people, presented with a harsh view of God's sovereignty or something else, "refuse to love the truth" and fall away, we view them as lacking faith, unable to run the race, without wondering if it was we who pushed them away. Looking back at my struggle with doubt, I now see just how much I was trying to force myself to maintain this way of thinking about God in a hyper-logical framework that was becoming increasingly untenable. I think that what kept me going through this time was an even deeper belief or expectation that God has to be better than this. I knew there was more to the picture than the cracked view of God I'd held before, and I determined to wait for Him to reveal it to me.

What if theology didn't always have to be like taking medicine? What if we expected truth about God to be deeply satisfying and resonant emotionally as well as intellectually? What if we "got to" learn more about how God relates with creation instead of "had to"? A holistic theology of anything, certainly God's sovereignty, must be worked out by the heart as well as by the head. No doubt some of the teachings of the Bible will sometimes be hard for us to accept, but the distinction between dishonestly disbelieving the truth and honestly struggling to accept a distortion is real and important.

Rachel Held Evans says in her post "The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart", "It’s not enough for me to maintain my intellectual integrity as a Christian; I also want to maintain my emotional integrity as a Christian." You have to have both. I think the narrative (or "Biblical") theological approach is the way to do that. I think God has wired us to know Him experientially, in the framework of a story, not a logical system of truth. It is this kind of knowledge that Jesus called us to and it is this kind of knowledge that transforms lives; theological study is at best an aid or a support to it.

I don't, ultimately, care if you see the "genius" of my thinking about providence or come to share something like my view. What I care about is this: does your understanding of God's sovereignty, whatever it is, "make much of God" for you both intellectually and emotionally? Does it magnify Him, or does it make Him harder to believe in? Does it draw you towards or away from Him? The point of theology is worship and communion--love and knowledge working together and building off each other, not conflicting. Is your theology doing its job?

The Blessing of "Predestination"

Mark Driscoll has long (deliberately, I think) been a rather divisive figure in American evangelicalism. While worthy of respect for bringing the gospel to tens of thousands of unchurched people in the American northeast and founding the church planting organization Acts 29, he has come under fire for, among others, some of the practices of Mars Hill church, sexism, and, most recently, a certain tweet he made about President Obama. Fortunately, I'm not going to focus on any of these things but want to comment on his doctrine. Specifically, a section from his most recent sermon which was interesting in light of my post series on providence (which I swear I'm working on finishing).

First of all, he does mention Arminianism dismissively and in passing, which is sadly about par for the course for most of the Calvinists I've read. He boils Arminian theology down to the single statement that "We choose God", while Calvinism is implied to stand for the much more theologically sound belief that "God chooses us". To Driscoll's credit, he does admit this is a simplification--but getting the facts wrong is not the same thing as simplifying them. I'm not exactly Arminian, but I'm close enough to feel somewhat protective of it, and I think a better summary would be that "God invites us to salvation and we freely respond with faith, to which God responds by bestowing salvation in Christ". Not was pithy, but then the truth rarely is. It's a common misconception of Arminianism (at least as I understand it) that it believes we are the initiators in relationship with God; this is absolutely not true.

But that's just a minor correction; I'm getting used to being surrounded by people I disagree with and I hold no ill will toward Driscoll for this mistake. What's more interesting is his series of illustrations that follows. He argues for "predestination" with a series of stories of personal redemption: first Paul, then himself, then a variety of other people with prison shivs, demonic encounters, and tattoos of the virgin Mary with devil horns who all had salvific encounters with God. What his argument boils down to is that if you want nothing to do with God and seem irredeemable but God finds and saves you anyway, you were predestined. You know what? I agree.

I'm not trying to create more controversy here but to shut it down. After his earlier comments, these examples don't say anything objectionable to Arminianism. In fact, I don't think they speak directly to the predestination debate at all. That God can powerfully change the hearts of people opposed to Him and redeem them is not a controversial truth, at least for Christians. Driscoll doesn't here care whether this total transformation happens by irresistible grace or the sinner's willing acquiescence, and I gladly accept his point that God lovingly chooses to bless and save sinners who care nothing for Him.

Of course, given Driscoll's repeated use of the loaded term "predestined" (which I'm sure means something different for him than for me), I'm not sure that his own aim was to defuse controversy. But if we listen and seek to understand and interact with truth claims rather than simply agreeing with or denying them, a lot of controversy in the church starts to seem unnecessary.

Providence, Part VIII: Application to the Five Points

This is part 8 of my series on providence. Table of contents:

1. Introduction and apology
2. A brief history of the soteriological debate
3. Overview of Calvinism
4. Overview of Arminianism
5. Comparing, contrasting, and evaluation of Calvinism and Arminianism
6. The Biblical data

     6.5. Interlude: The God Who Seeks Us

7. My position on providence
8. Applications of this position to the soteriological debate
9. Practical applications and conclusion

The providence series continues! A bit of restructuring: I have decided to axe post 10--not, of course, because there are no difficulties with my position, but because I think I covered the important ones when discussing the problems with Calvinism and Arminianism (some of which my view shares) or in my other posts that arose from my struggles with doubt in the past months. Anyway, after all of that study of God's providence and sovereignty over us, I am now ready to summarize my current view on soteriology, which I overhastily rushed into in my previous attempts.

Total Depravity

Like Calvinism and Arminianism's versions of the doctrine of total depravity, mine is distinct largely because of the concept of free will on which it is based. Like the honest Calvinist, I would say that total depravity is not so much the bondage of the will as it is about the bondage of our natures. This is why I think free will is largely a red herring in discussions of total depravity; it's just not what "total depravity" or the parts of scripture backing it up refer to. We shouldn't expect it to be so philosophical. I am free to do what I consider to be good, to try to be good, even to try to know God, but my own efforts do nothing to change the fact that I am a sinful person and I am by nature separated from God. I've experienced the seeming paradox of wanting to love God more, but being unable to make myself. This is the essence of total depravity: we are by nature alienated from God and unable to make any move in our selves toward Him; I'm willing to believe we can't even truly desire to do so without His hand on our hearts.

Calvinists, however, often go a bit too far (with, I believe, the best of intentions) in defining total depravity, particularly in the metaphor of "deadness". An example of this kind of thinking: is found from a sermon preached by Mark Driscoll on predestination:

That being said, God’s heart is love. God’s invitation is Jesus. Our rejection is our own responsibility. And the reason why we reject and refuse Jesus Christ is because we are wicked. We do evil continually. We are slaves to sin. We do not seek God. We do not do good. We do not fear God. Our thinking is hostile to God. We are unable to understand the greatness of Jesus. We are children of wrath who are spiritually dead. Dead, dead, dead! Physically alive, spiritually dead.
Now at this point, some will ask, “What about free will? Can’t we choose God?” My answer is simply, “Dead people don’t make any decision..."

 And later:

Lazarus didn't call out, “Jesus, help me. I’m dead.” He didn’t pursue Jesus. He didn’t cry out to Jesus. He didn’t stick a hand out of the grave, begging for Jesus. He was dead, as Ephesians and Colossians say that we are spiritually dead. And what did Jesus do? Jesus came to him, as Jesus comes to us. And Jesus called for him, as Jesus calls for us. And Jesus said, “Lazarus, come forth.” And Lazarus, through a miracle of Jesus, was given life from death. And exactly as Lazarus was brought forth from physical death, so the children of God are brought forth from spiritual death.

Notice the progression of logic here: he starts from the sinful nature: "We are wicked." From there he moves to the language of Ephesians 2:1 and Colossians 2:13 of spiritual deadness. After making a clear distinction between our physical nature (alive) and spiritual nature (dead), he then draws some parallels between spiritual deadness and physical deadness that I don't think are warranted--starting with a total lack of agency. And then the story of Lazarus, which I don't think was ever intended to be a metaphor for total depravity.

Like all metaphors, the metaphor of spiritual deadness needs to be handled carefully and not abused or taken beyond its meaning in the text. If spiritual deadness meant a total lack of spiritual agency in the same way physical deadness means a total lack of physical agency, then we would be just as unable to decide evil as good. We would be unable to accept or reject God; we would simply have no spiritual dimension and would be completely materialistic beings, totally ignorant and apathetic of God. But this is not the case. In fact, everyone, from the fundamentalist to the atheist, is, in some sense, a worshipper of something; people all undeniably have spiritual agency. Therefore I conclude that such a close parallel between spiritual and physical deadness is unjustified. With the Calvinist misconception of total depravity as this kind of spiritual deadness, it's easy to see how salvation can be viewed as entirely God's doing with humans as passive beneficiaries of the process.

So, if we do have some kind of spiritual agency, what does it mean that we are dead in our sins without Christ? I think it means that this agency, by which we are able to enslave ourselves to the myriad pleasures of the world, is powerless to bring our hearts any closer to a perfect God. We are cut off from, unable to reach the true Life. We may like the idea of God, outwardly identify as Christians, and try to seek Him in some sense, but unless God makes a move and comes to us (and we respond with faith) we will never find Him or come the slightest bit closer to freeing ourselves from sin. By way of a preview, I am contemplating doing a post or series of posts on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, and I think the phrasing of the first one, "poor in spirit", is apt here--we are, in a sense, morally and spiritually bankrupt, with no reserves of our own to draw on, totally dependent on God to be good.

The Condition of Election?

To be brief, my position on conditional/unconditional election is more of a lack thereof. I think both the Calvinist and Arminian views go beyond what can be known for sure from the text and should be treated as sanctified speculation on the same subject, not as established doctrine (and certainly not as a basis for division).

Both conditional and unconditional election are, at heart, attempts to get into the mind of God--to answer the question, "Why does God elect those whom He does?". Without a direct word from God on the matter, such attempts are ultimately doomed (Romans 11:33-34). Do we try to make such simple rules to explain others of God's decisions? In fact both views try to constrain God--conditional election makes our foreseen faith the sole determining factor in our election, and unconditional election rules out anything about us from God's decision. Is God not free to show mercy to whomever He pleases for whatever reason He knows is best? Yes--God is not obligated by anyone or anything outside Himself, but only by His own word and promises to us.

In the language of Christian Smith in The Bible Made Impossible, precisely why God elects those whom He does is "underdetermined" by the Bible, at least in the level of detail Calvinists and Arminians seek. The only condition given for election is "foreknowledge" (Romans 8:29), which is vague enough to be interpreted either way--either God foreknowing those who are eternally His, or God foreknowing the elect as those who will have faith in Him, or something else entirely. In his book in Arminian theology, even Forlines admits that conditional election cannot be directly read out of scripture, but is inferred by the fact that salvation is conditional.

I don't think that the Bible has a conclusive answer to the question at hand, as is commonly expected of it. The Bible doesn't have all the answers we want, but the answers we need--the good news of God and His kingdom come to earth. The direct lines of causation drawn from election to faith and salvation, or vice versa, are both simplifications--they could be true, but are certainly not beyond reasonable doubt. As I argued in post 6.5, God's pursuit of and love for us are unconditional, and His hardening, wrath, and rejection are conditional--but how these are related to His eternal "plan" and our election are far from crystal clear.

Unlimited Atonement

I mostly agree with Arminius on the third point. You could say that Christ died "for" everyone, but "especially for" the elect, those who would believe. The gospel is only truly the gospel ("good news") if it comes with a real chance to be saved which can be accepted or rejected, which is hard to reconcile with the idea of definite atonement. Also, I would direct suspicion to the meaning of "for" in this point, which can have all sorts of different connotations and is the source of most of the confusion--the question is not merely one of quantity; there are alternatives beyond Christ simply dying "for" everyone or "for" only some, which the turn-of-phrase "Christ's death was sufficient for all, but efficient for the elect" is getting at.

Resistible Grace and Our Spiritual Agency

I think that Acts 7:51 is sufficient evidence that God's work through the Holy Spirit can be resisted. You may say, "Acts 7:51 is not talking about the irresistible work of God in actually bestowing salvation on sinners, but some other work", which I would say that in the Calvinistic view the whole process of salvation (of which turning from rejecting prophets and the Son of God is part) is supposed to be irresistible. If one part is resistible, it all is.

The elect are simply those who (by their choice and God's determination, not causation overriding their desires) do not resist the Spirit. Similarly, the reprobate are not so against their will, but because of it (Romans 9:32). God gives the real offer of salvation by faith to everyone; the elect are all those who accept it. But I don't think the Calvinist and Arminian views on this point have to be terribly different. God influencing someone and fully foreknowing what their response will be is essentially different to, though functionally identical to, Him causing their response.

To put it another way, consider again our aforementioned "spiritual agency". If, by the Calvinist view, we have none, no ability to accept or reject God, it's easy to see how grace can be irresistible. But, of course, we do have spiritual agency, and though it cannot get us any nearer to God, it can (sadly) move us away from Him. We are able to slow or undo God's work of salvation in us, but not hasten or effect it but only let Him do so.

Perseverence: A Present Promise Based on a Future Reality

Hebrews 3:14 tells us how to know we belong to God: "We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first." Unpacking that: "We have come..." (past and present tense) "to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end..." (present and future tense) "the confidence we had at first." In other words, our faith is only real if it lasts.

This (and Philippians 1:6) seems like convincing evidence for the Calvinist point of perseverance of the saints on top of all the verses cited for it, but I think the message can go both ways. If we are truly in Christ, part of God's elect, then He will preserve our faith like He promised, but at the same time the perseverance of our faith is how we know we are elect. Once again, our status as elect (determined by God) is not the cause or source of our salvation; we are not saved "because" we are elect, but because we have faith.

Similar to the process of sanctification (with which it is inextricably bound), our assurance of salvation is conditional both on our faith and on God's preservation. This makes faith seem like a work we do to remain saved, except that faith is specifically contrasted with works, and the work of Christ in us makes it entirely possible to remain in faith whereas salvation by works is always impossible. Once we are in Christ, I would say that rejecting Him is more of a work than remaining is. Either way, it makes little practical difference: if anyone is in Christ, he has eternal life; if not, then he does not. Anything beyond that is semantics.

Again, my point here is to allow you to disregard all my thinking in previous posts and simply let you go back to thinking in terms of five points with a new perspective. The question of how God predestines and saves people is much deeper than that and without a firm, Biblical foundation for the philosophy underlying the debate your position will likely be whatever interpretation of the relevant passages sounds the best to you. The question of predestination has never been as simple as two sets of five points; don't think you have to choose either.

Providence, Part VII: My Position

This is part 7 of my series on providence. Table of contents:

1. Introduction and apology
2. A brief history of the soteriological debate
3. Overview of Calvinism
4. Overview of Arminianism
5. Comparing, contrasting, and evaluation of Calvinism and Arminianism
6. The Biblical data

     6.5. Interlude: The God Who Seeks Us

7. My position on providence
8. Applications of this position to the soteriological debate
9. Practical applications and conclusion

Disclaimer: All of the views expressed in this post are absolutely my own and not those of my church, my small group, or any other religious entity I am or have been involved with.

It's hard to believe I've now been wrestling with questions about God's providence for over two months. In the course of answering these questions I've read thousands of pages, written tens of thousands of words, and seen my faith tested like it hasn't ever been before. This post, and the four after it, are the first fruits of all of these efforts. I've been excited about this for a long time. Let's go.

I would prefer to keep my arguments strictly centered on scripture, but since thinkers over the ages have brought in philosophical constructs like modern thinking about free will or determinism into the debated on predestination, I will do my best to engage them on this front with what I think.

Determinism

Calvinism holds that God determines and effects everything that happens. Arminianism would say that God knows everything that will happen, but is not the author of the actions of beings He has given free will to; He decides to permit them to act freely and knows what action they will take. So in Calvinism, God "foreordains"; in Arminianism, God "foreknows". In response to this, I am going to base my position on what may be the dumbest statement ever made on this blog:

"What happens, happens."

Here is what I mean. There is exactly one course of events that actually makes up the history of the universe. When we look back at the past, there is only one version of it. To us the past is determined, set in stone; it will always be the way that it was and is. In a minute whatever you are doing right now will be similarly determined to you by virtue of being in the past.

To God, who as I said last time has equally perfect knowledge of every moment in time, all of eternity is therefore determined. In fact, though, I would say that the future is determined even if you don't acknowledge the existence of any supreme being. Whatever is going to happen, which looks determined in hindsight, was always going to happen that way. I don't know and probably never will know exactly what time I'm going to fall asleep tonight (hopefully not too late), but that doesn't change the fact that it is a definite time, and it always would be that same definite time. Just because we can't know the future doesn't mean it isn't just as determined as the past. Whatever is going to happen is definitely going to happen.

In light of this, the more liberal Arminian view that actions performed by agents possessing "free will" are somehow undetermined or unknowable until they happen (as seen in open theism and Molinism) seems untenable. It assumes that the only way to view reality is from our temporal perspective in which we have no certain knowledge of events that haven't happened yet. From an eternal perspective to which nothing "hasn't happened yet", (as I think God has), only determinism makes sense--but determinism that doesn't obliterate free will, but encompasses it.

Free Will

In discussions on free will, it is critically important that all parties involved define what they mean by the term so they don't waste their time each arguing different things, like Erasmus and Luther. My definition of free will is as intentional in what it does not state as in what it does. I would define the "freedom" of the will as this: it is the quality of human actions and intentions that their only true "cause" is the will, the decision-making part of the mind, and nothing can be said to "cause" the will to decide anything. (Though many factors may influence it) It is for this reason that people can be said to be truly morally responsible for their actions: because their actions are caused exclusively by their own willing and decisions. If our actions (or the will that caused their actions) were caused by something exterior to ourselves, then that exterior cause would be responsible for them, not the performer of the action.

This view of free will is compatibilist in that I hold it alongside the deterministic view of the universe as described above: our "free" actions are determined to happen; we were always going to freely act in a definite way, known from eternity to God. God's knowing and, in a sense, determining our actions does not make them any less free. (More on that in a bit) However, it is not, I think, compatibilist in the same sense that Calvinism's view of free will is. Calvinism holds that people are always "free" to do what they desire most and God is able, by the irresistible process of regeneration, to make us desire Him instead of sin. In other words, our actions are caused by our desires and our desires are caused by God, so God is able to cause people, like all other created things, to act exactly in accordance to His will. This conclusion is strongly opposed to my view. To Calvinism, "free will" means the absence of coercion or "violence" on the will; to me, it means the absence of causation of any kind. Except for its compatibilism, this view of free will is really much closer to that of Arminianism.

Another definition of free will with which I would also disagree is the idea that it means the absence of some kind of constraints. I think this kind of free will is used more as a straw man than as an actual belief people have. I have heard my pastor argue against free will by pointing out that, unlike God, there are limitations to our agency; we can't create something from nothing, grow wings and fly, do any of the things in Job 38-41, &c. No one actually claims that free will necessarily means this. Similarly it doesn't mean freedom from moral constraints or the ability to be good without God, as Pelagius claimed, as Luther railed against in On the Bondage of the Will, and as Calvinists often try to pin on Arminians. Debates trying to precisely define the nature of "free will" seem to go on endlessly and, I think, tend to lead discussion away from the real issues having to do with God. For this reason I will not elaborate on my position on free will any more than I have.

With the philosophy out of the way, I'll begin putting together the three categories of statements from the last post.

Determination and Causation: The Two-Part Working of an Eternal God

A proper understanding of who God is is essential before we can begin to understand who we are. As I said in post 5, proponents of Calvinism and Arminianism both tend to confuse and conflate God's decrees with His actions. Or, more specifically, they tend to overly connect election and salvation so one causes the other. There is an underlying assumption that God's decrees are made temporally, like His actions. But if God is truly eternal, unchanging, and all-knowing, then how can His plan change? The Bible, in fact, asserts that God does not change His mind. (Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29) God's will, or the sum of His decrees and plans for creation, is as eternal as God Himself. How this manifests in my theology of providence is that I draw a sharp distinction between God's eternally foreknowing and predestining of all things (hereafter referred to as "Determination") and those things actually happening in time (hereafter referred to as "Causation") with His direct or indirect involvement. These two levels of the unfolding of history are often confused and it would be good to clearly define each.

Determination

God is clearly said to foreknow all things, and to have a plan for all things. However, as we have seen, He does not cause or do all things, because that would make Him a sinner. Determination is my name for God's planning or "foreordaining" or all things. Like God, His determination (or "plan" as it is commonly said) is absolute, eternal, unchanging, and perfect; it is unknowable to everyone except God in advance except inasmuch as He chooses to reveal it to us. Determination is strictly monergistic; by His very nature as the only eternal, omnipotent, omniscient being, God is the only one who is able to work or think on this level.

It is important to keep in mind that God's determining something is not the same as His "causing", "doing", or even "desiring" it; as we have seen, God determines that many things will occur contrary to His manifest desire. (More on this in the section on His goodness) So what is it? As I argued above, there is exactly one determinate sequence of events that makes up how the world has been and will be. God's determination is, very simply, the reason that things happen the way they do and not in some other, equally plausible way.

It is the deciding of what will happen, separate from the factors that actually cause things to happen. It is not found anywhere in the complex network of causes and effects that makes up history; it is the origin of the entire network and the power that orders and focuses it towards the end of God's glory. Saying that something God has determined may not happen is like saying what will happen might not happen; it is a self-contradictory statement. Doing something contrary to God's "plan" isn't morally impermissible, it's logically impossible--this doesn't mean we shouldn't still try to live according to God's revealed desire. (Note that my terms God's "plan" and "desire" correspond to the Calvinist terms God's "hidden will" and "revealed will") Our total inability to know what will happen does not lessen its determinedness in any way.

Applying this to soteriology, the terms "election" and "reprobation" should be taken to refer to the parts of God's determination relating to who will and will not be saved. Election is not the cause of our faith or salvation, and is only indirectly the reason it happens. This does not mean our salvation isn't willed (or brought about) by God, only that it's unwise to draw as direct a link between election and salvation as Calvinism and Arminianism do.

Causation

The actual working out of God's plan I call causation. It is temporal, dynamic, and not just two-handed but many-handed; God, humans, angels, and other created beings all contribute to it. It encompasses peoples' idea of "reality"; it is what actually happens, not what will happen. When we think of correlation, causation, chains of temporally ordered events, agency, and responsibility, all of these concepts fall in the scope of causation.

God is, of course, still the primary actor and mover, doing everything that He predetermined to do as the main part (but not all of) His plan, which also includes the free actions of other beings. To repeat, God does not "do" everything that happens, even though it is all part of His determined plan. You could say that God's plan "depends" on our free actions happening as they do, except as stated above the nature of determination means they couldn't occur otherwise. (Where I break from the incompatibilist Arminian view)

Now, why it is important to think in terms of both determination and causation: explanations of the reasons for events can only work within the causation level. That is, you can't say something happened "because God predestined it". While that is true, it is not helpful because it is not the reason we are concerned with. This is a mistake I see a lot of well-meaning Calvinists make (or at least joke about); Calvin writes about God's sovereign will as the "primary cause" of all things, which is certainly false. Determining something is not at all equivalent to causing it to happen. The only thing caused by God's determining it is the working and acting of God Himself, in the same way that we cause our own actions when we decide to perform them. The difference is that God, being omniscient and eternal, has predetermined all of His actions from eternity past and doesn't decide anything "on the fly".

I have tried to avoid analogies as much as possible in my arguments thus far because I think they tend to introduce unwanted meanings and cloud the real meaning of the discussion, but here I have one that I actually consider the appropriate. God's relationship as the determiner and main actor and mover in His creation is surprisingly analogous to the relationship between an author and the characters in the author's books, except in this case the author also writes himself into the story as the main character and hero.

When you're discussing a good story, you never try to explain why someone in the story does something by simply saying "Because the author wrote it that way". This is technically true, but a truth unhelpful and unlooked-for. It isn't the answer to the question of "Why?" that we really want or need. This was especially easy for me to see as I was reading The Lord of the Rings. Why did Frodo have to destroy the Ring? Not "because Tolkien said so", but "because it was the keystone of Sauron's power" and "he inherited the ring from Bilbo" and many other wonderful reasons you have to read the story to understand. In the story of creation, God is both the author and the main character; created beings, whose actions are authored but not caused by God, act as supporting characters. I hope you begin to grasp the distinction.

The Goodness of God

With the spontaneous inclusion of my previous post/Old Testament class paper to this series, I won't need to write nearly as much here. Refer back to it for my current, balanced view on how God is always pursuing us for salvation, especially in the person of Christ, but is not afraid to harden and punish those who reject Him while continuing to offer them chances to repent. Make no mistake: God knows exactly which of those He hardens will return to Him and which will be lost. But His election is not the cause of their damnation, their freely chosen hardness is. The Calvinist view of cause/effect is critically different from the Arminian one of God influencing us while knowing the exact result makes all the difference for us because it means that God does not cause anyone to sin, but functionally they are the same to God.

Now is the time for a more thorough study of what pleases God. From the fifth post, here is a list of things God is said to "take pleasure" in:

• His son, Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22)
• Sanctifying us through "grace-driven effort" (Philippians 2:13)
• Giving good gifts to His children (Luke 12:32)
• Those who love and fear Him (Psalm 147:11)
• Uprightness (1 Chronicles 29:17)
• The wicked coming to repentance (Ezekiel 33:11)
• The salvation of everyone (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9)
• Predestinating the elect (Ephesians 1:5)

And things God takes no pleasure in:

• The death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11) or of anyone (18:32)
• False/empty religion (Malachi 1:10, Hebrews 10:6,8)
• Faithlessness (Hebrews 10:38)

The Greek word for what Calvinists refer to as God's "good pleasure" is ευδοκια (verb form ευδοκεο), which can mean will, desire, preference, or delight. These words are used a total of 32 times in the New Testament, which is few enough that I can go through them all:

• God is well pleased in His Son, as revealed at Jesus' baptism (Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22), transfiguration (Matthew 17:5, 2 Peter 1:17), and through the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 12:18)
• Matthew 11:26, Luke 10:21: God takes pleasure in revealing Himself to those who seek Him earnestly like children, not those who are wise in their own eyes.
• Luke 2:14: God's good pleasure/will toward men was manifested in the birth of Jesus.
• Luke 12:32: God's takes pleasure in bestowing the Kingdom of God on us.
• Romans 15:26-27: The churches in Macedonia and Achaia (Greece) were pleased to financially support the poor among the church in Jerusalem.
• Romans 10:1: Paul earnestly wants Israel to be saved.
• 1 Corinthians 1:21: It pleases God to reveal Himself through things that are foolish to the world instead of wise.
• 1 Corinthians 10:5: God was not pleased with the Israelites who turned from Him during the Exodus.
• 2 Corinthians 5:8: Paul and Timothy would prefer to be at home with the Lord rather than in their bodies.
• 2 Corinthians 12:10: For Christ's sake, Paul delights in weaknesses, hardships, persecution, and difficulty.
• Galatians 1:15-16: God was pleased to use Paul to preach Christ to the gentiles.
• Galatians 1:19: "All the fullness" of God was pleased to dwell in Christ.
• Ephesians 1:5: God takes pleasure in redeeming His predestined elect. (Or maybe He takes pleasure in predestining us)
• Ephesians 1:9: God takes pleasure in revealing to the church His will.
• Philippians 1:15: Some preach Christ out of good will, others out of bad will.
• Philippians 2:13: God takes pleasure in working with and through us to achieve our sanctification.
• 1 Thessalonians 2:8: Paul, Silas, and Timothy were delighted to share with the Thessalonians not only the gospel, but their lives as well.
• 1 Thessalonians 3:1: Paul and Silas thought it best to remain in Athens and send Timothy to the Thessalonians.
• 2 Thessalonians 1:11: God takes pleasure in the ultimate sanctification of His saints. (Or Paul is praying that God would fulfill every good purpose of the Thessalonians regarding sanctification)
• 2 Thessalonians 2:12: All who do not believe the truth but take pleasure in wickedness will be condemned.
• Hebrews 10:6,8: God takes no pleasure in burnt offerings and sin offerings. (Although they were required by the law)
• Hebrews 10:38: God takes no pleasure in those who "shrink back" from faith.

Agreeing with John Piper, I think that God's ultimate purpose in all that He does is, in some way or another, His glory. But as I briefly mentioned in post 5, I don't think God's pleasure and His glory are always equivalent.

Example 1: God is certainly glorified in the working of His power, justice, and righteousness in the just condemnation of sinners, but as we read in Ezekiel 33:11, He takes no pleasure in doing this. From 1 Timothy 2:4 we read that He desires that everyone be saved (that He would not have to condemn anyone), but again, He has clearly not ordered things this way, according to His desire. But His glory is not in any way diminished by this.

Example 2: The crucifixion. Of course God took no pleasure or delight in crushing His innocent Son, in whom He was well pleased, and Jesus took no pleasure in the agony of the cross. But the crucifixion was still the climax of history as we know it, the ultimate display of God's love, mercy, power, glory--pretty much everything. It is because of the cross that we are who we are, and though God takes delight in bringing us into glory by the work of the cross, He took no delight in the work itself.

Another interesting one I noticed during that word study was the sacrificial system. God takes no pleasure in the Israelites' offerings, even though He commanded them to be offered. I can think of no clearer evidence that God does not always act to the pursuit of His own "good pleasure" than this. We see that though God is glorified in all that He does, He does not take "good pleasure" in all that He does or all that happens, except inasmuch as it brings Him glory.

This is my answer to the Calvinist doctrine that God sovereignly works all things, even the election of some to salvation and others to perdition, according to "His good pleasure". God's pleasure is not achieved in everything; His glory is. The distinction between God having two wills, and His having one will and one desire, is subtle but important. The fact that God does not take pleasure in everything is a reflection of the fact that the world we live in is fallen; presumably His pleasure and glory will be indistinguishable after He restores all things.

One should not assume from any of this, of course, that we can make God frustrated or sad or ruin His day by doing things that displease Him. Talking about God in terms of human thoughts and emotions is always going to be inaccurate. When the Old Testament talks about God "remembering" people and things, it of course does not mean that He had forgotten, but that He has deliberately begun actively working towards the welfare of whatever He remembers. In the same way God taking or not taking pleasure in things is an approximation in human language of a reality unimaginably grander.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I did not address the main appearance of ευδοκια brought up by Calvinists, Ephesians 1:5. With a bit of context, it reads:

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

The ESV says "according to the purpose of his will" rather than "in accordance with his pleasure and will". But either way, it seems like a misreading to say the predestination was done according to God's pleasure. It says that He predestined us in love and will adopt us as sons according to His pleasure. This isn't to say that no connection between God's good pleasure and predestination can be drawn, only that if one is drawn (and certainly a connection between reprobation and God's pleasure), it can't rely on this verse for support.

Human Nature

As I have said, I think Calvinism and Arminianism both, to an extent, fall into the trap of only considering or discussing the will when treating on human nature. The discussion boils down to whether people are capable of choosing God/good themselves, and how much divine assistance they need to do this. similarly, in Erasmus' On the Freedom of the Will he defines "free choice", which he says we have, 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." Very intentional. From my understanding of scripture and personal experience, I disagree with this focus. While we are certainly morally responsible for the choices we make, there is much more to how God has wired us than just the will.

God's "common" grace for the world is already such that we are not as evil as we could possibly be, but even those who do not know God are capable of deeds that a Christian would consider "good" or "commendable". But though we can do good on our own, we can only become good inwardly through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. There can be many motivations for a morally good action, but only one (love for God) is acceptable in His sight. It is in this sense that Isaiah is able to say that our righteous acts are like "filthy rags" before God (64:6), because God does not look at our actions on the surface as we do, but at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7) This is also the sense in which Luther says that our wills are not free but are always enslaved to either sin or the Spirit.

So though by the power of free choice we are able to choose to do what is good, even "put our faith" in  God, none of these decisions amount to anything from an eternal perspective unless God changes us on a deeper level. My friends in Cru always need to remember: the true evidence of saving faith is not a single decision, even one made for the right reasons, to put our faith in Christ but a whole life of faithfulness and fruit-bearing. The former can be done ourselves (with only common grace); the latter is impossible without God. It is for this reason that the Calvinist pillorying of Arminians for making faith a boast-worthy act of self-salvation baffles me. If you really understand faith, you see that there is absolutely no way to boast in it (Romans 3:27).

So you could say that while our wills are free, our identities are not. It may be noble and praiseworthy for a lost, rebellious sinner to decide to give of his time or treasure for the needy, but in the end he is still a lost, rebellious sinner. Our nature and agency go much deeper than our conscious will. While we are able to do good, we are unable on our own to love God or to make ourselves love Him. Only a relationship with God can transform us into something truly acceptable to Him. We only have control over one instant of our lives at a time, but God sees them as wholes and (quite mysteriously) weaves our individual, freely chosen actions, attitudes, and thoughts into His plan for our lives.

So, this is the theological-philosophical framework underlying my response to the soteriology debate. It is between Calvinism and Arminianism in many ways, though the conclusions it leads to will fall closer to Arminianism as you will see next time.

Providence, Part VI.5: The God Who Seeks Us

The following is also a paper for the Old Testament class I am taking at my church. But I realized my conclusion is also appropriate for my series on God's providence (the reasons for whose suspensions are discussed in the paper) and that it covers some verses I was going to discuss in post 10, so I'm working it in.

One of the biggest Biblical themes throughout the Old and New Testaments is God's steadfast, actively seeking, unconditional love, or "loving kindness" for fallen people like us. We see it in His raising up of the patriarchs and Israelites to make them into His chosen people, His repeatedly calling them to Himself with judges and prophets when they go astray, and most of all in His sending Jesus to us to save us from our sins. But at the same time, we see numerous instances in the Bible of a flip side to this compassion, when God seems to pass people over or even actively reject them in a way that seems utterly incompatible with His loving nature and leads many people to form different views of God for the Old and New Testaments. The reconciliation of these two sides of God's relating to us is the goal of this paper. The difficulty can be seen in the case studies of the lives of two kings: the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and Ahab of Israel.

The Bible's treatment of the Pharaoh of the Exodus (whose identity is not certain) is largely negative, as an oppressor of God's people and an obstacle to His plan to free His people and bring them to the land of Canaan by raising up Moses to be His voice to Pharaoh. But even as Moses performs many miracles and afflicts the people of Egypt with plagues, Pharaoh steadfastly refuses to free the Israelites. The reason repeatedly given for this is that his heart was hardened.

What did it mean that Pharaoh's heart was hardened? Most immediately, whenever it is used in the Exodus narrative it refers to his refusing to have mercy on the Israelites or to acquiesce to God's command to let His people go. Elsewhere in scripture, being "hardened" also means refusing to have pity on one's neighbor (Deuteronomy 15:7), ignoring God's voice (Psalm 95:7-8), the opposite of turning to God (2 Chronicles 36:13), resisting God (Job 9:4), and refusing to understand the gospel (Mark 8:17). Psalm 95:8 also uses the behavior of the Israelites at Meribah ("quarreling") and Massah ("testing"), where they ungratefully demanded water from God, as an example of hardness. So having a hardened heart seems to mean the opposite of living by faith: not seeing God as He truly is, not trusting in His promises, and resisting His purposes.

The next question, then, is who hardened Pharaoh's heart? Sometimes Pharaoh himself does it (8:15, 8:32, 9:34). Other times God is said to harden his heart (4:21, 7:3, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 14:4, 14:8). Other times the passive voice is used and it's not clear who did the hardening. (7:13-14, 7:22, 8:19, 9:7, 9:35). This is a common point of confusion for people reading the story of the Exodus. What does it mean that God hardened Pharaoh's heart? Does this mean He caused Pharaoh to continue resisting when he would otherwise have given in? Did Pharaoh really have a choice to disobey God? And if God is the same now as He was then, does He similarly control our choices today--even if this means driving us away from Him to get glory for Himself in our deserved destruction?

A related, even more troubling story is that of the death of King Ahab in 1 Kings 22. Ahab the king of Israel has decided to go to war with Syria. He invites King Jehoshaphat of Judah to join him, who first wants to inquire for the word of the Lord. Ahab's four hundred crony-prophets all tell him that God is on his side, but Jehoshaphat, suspicious, asks for a "prophet of the Lord". Ahab reluctantly summons Micaiah, another prophet who always prophesies against him. After pretending to agree with the other prophets, he then prophesies that the king of Israel will be killed in the battle and his subjects will be like sheep without a shepherd. He then explains the four hundred false prophets by a vision from heaven in which God sends a lying spirit into their mouths to deceive Ahab into going to his death.

This raises two big questions. First, Micaiah promises to speak only what the Lord says to him, but when he comes to Ahab, the first thing he says is the same lie the other prophets have been telling him. And, of course, he later explains that God Himself sent the lying spirit to the mouths of the other prophets. Does this mean that God lied to Ahab, in spite of all the other verses asserting God never lies (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2, Proverbs 30:5, etc.)? (The technicality that the spirit, not God, did the actual lying doesn't seem sufficient)

Taken out of context, these examples depict a darker picture of God than we commonly imagine. He seems highly vengeful and vindictive, to the point of overriding peoples' decisions and lying to them in order to glorify Himself in His predecided wrath on them. It also seems arbitrary--why has God decided not to be good to these individuals and instead lie to Ahab and forcibly harden Pharaoh's heart? The possibility of words "from God" being lies also casts doubt in the very trustworthiness of scripture: how do we know He hasn't also decided to display His wrath on us and give us a false testament of Himself?

Answering these questions by asserting God's right to be merciful on whomever He pleases (Exodus 33:19) and to harden whomever He pleases (Romans 9:18) is unhelpful for me. These arguments reinforce the conception of God as arbitrary--why has He apparently decided a priori to reject people? And, even worse, why does He seem to violate His nature as revealed in His mercy in order to do it? It takes away our security as believers; what if God arbitrarily decides to reject me as He would be right, just, and even glorified in doing so? If God predetermines to reject some people, where is His loving kindness for them?

But, praise be to God, He has also given us in the New Testament and especially in the person of Jesus the way to fit these and other examples into our knowledge of who He is. 2 Thessalonians 2:11 seems to be part of the same quandary as 1 Kings 22: "Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false." But this time there is a clue: the first word "therefore". The reason for God sending this delusion is in the previous verse: "because they refused to love the truth and so be saved."

So God's sending people this delusion is not a priori, it is because they have already rejected the truth He offers. We can infer from Ahab's surrounding himself with four hundred false prophets that he had also rejected the truth. Effectively, if God doesn't give us the truth, it's because we have told Him not to. And even then, God doesn't deprive Ahab of the truth--He tells the complete story to him, and Ahab of course disregards it as God knew he would.

Another illuminating passage is Romans 1, one of the most complete descriptions of human depravity anywhere in the Bible. The order of events is important here: God's attributes have been visible in the world ever since its creation (v20). Sinners had some knowledge of God, but rejected Him (v21), so God gave them over to their impurity (v24), dishonorable passions (v26), and a debased mind (v28). This "giving over" sounds very much like the "hardening" previously discussed.

So we see that God doesn't preemptively harden people to ensure they never get a chance to know Him. The order in Romans is that God reveals Himself to sinners, they reject Him, and only then does He harden them. This hardening takes the form of His reinforcing or amplifying their preexisting disobedience not necessarily to keep them from ever being saved (though that can and does happen) but to condemn their sin and highlight their need for a savior, like the purpose of the law. (Romans 3:20) Also, it's important to remember than sin is essentially a rebellion of the heart, forsaking proper worship of God for idols (Jeremiah 2:13), so God does not reject people for one incidental misstep as it sometimes seems, but for deliberately rejecting Him in their hearts on some level.

So these NT verses, taken alone, seem to provide sufficient explanation for what God was doing in Exodus and 1 Kings and how it fits with His revealed nature as a God who loves and pursues us for salvation, but is also just and sternly punishing of sin. But the Bible was not meant to simply be explained, but to be celebrated and reveled in as God's word. To gain that kind of perspective, we look next to Christ.

One of the things about Jesus that most confused people and may have contributed to His death was His upending of the social order of the time. The wealthy rulers and "righteous" teachers of the law were frequently the targets of His harshest words, while He sought out and ate with the outcast and downtrodden in society. Though Jesus was overall the nicest person ever, He scorned people like the Pharisees who had some idea of what He was really about but rejected Him. But His rejecting them was not final; we do see Pharisees like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea joining Jesus, and ultimately His using "Pharisee of Pharisees" Paul to spread the gospel all over the world.

Another example is His use of parables. In Mark 4:10-12 He explains that He speaks in parables rather than plainly so that, fulfilling the words of Isaiah, the unrighteous, those who have rejected Him, will not understand and will take some other meaning from the parable. To His followers "on the inside" (the apostles) he speaks plainly, but to outsiders He speaks in veiled parables. Only those who have open hearts to God will really understand the gospel that Jesus presents.

In John 6:65 Jesus says: "'This [the spiritual nature of Jesus' words] is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the father.'" This does not mean that God indiscriminately selects some to come to Him and bars others, but that no one can make any progress towards Jesus while remaining in the flesh or rejecting His help as Lord and Savior. This comes after a sermon in which Jesus takes the "I am the bread of life" analogy to gruesome lengths to drive away people who were following Him with the wrong expectations. Of course Jesus is inviting people to follow Him, but He will make sure you are following for the right reasons. He doesn't just want fans or "like"s, but men and women who are totally given and open to Him, who just want Him and not just the blessings He has to offer.

So again with Jesus, we see God inviting people to follow and know Him, welcoming those who love Him and rejecting those who reject Him, though never without a continuing invitation to return. The only people He said would certainly not be forgiven were those who speak against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32)--meaning those who fully realize what Jesus is doing in His ministry and call it evil instead of good, indicating a final, settled rejection of God in the flesh. For everyone else, everyone who has any desire to know Jesus, there is hope and an invitation to life in the Son. The initiative God takes is clear in Revelation 3:20: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." God is not just inviting us to come to Him; like a friend in our need He takes the initiative and comes to us, wherever we are, to let us meet with Him.

Or consider our view of God's justice. It is a truth universally acknowledged among reformed Christians that God would cease to be just if He were ultimately the slightest bit unjust to one person. Should we not have the same universal expectation for His mercy? God would not have given the call to believe to everyone (Acts 17:30) and desire them to answer (1 Timothy 2:4) if He did not mercifully give them the opportunity and ability (Acts 5:31, 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25) to do so by repentance--the metaphorical knock on the door.

So, the Christian adage "God acts (or rather, has acted) and we respond" is certainly true. God extends the offer to the gospel to everyone and calls us to respond by belief. (John 3:16,18) We can respond to this offer by opening our hearts and believing, or by hardening them as described. The Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert." (Hebrews 3:7-8) Responding to God's initiation by belief is not a work that saves us by our own strength; it is the substitute for works that God has graciously decreed to count as righteousness. (Romans 4:3)

But then, when we respond to God, He also responds in kind to us. The gospel tie-in of God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart seems to be that by the Spirit He takes and amplifies our response into something beyond what we ever could have imagined. If we respond to Him with the smallest inkling of belief and trust, by the Spirit God fans it into a great blaze of faith to our own amazement. In this way God accomplishes the great works of salvation and sanctification in those who could never do it in themselves, though never without our own conscious involvement. (Philippians 2:12-13) And correspondingly, God intensifies the sin and unrighteousness of those who reject Him (as we see in Romans 1). Either way, God's response is inextricably tied in with our willful response, yet the result is beyond what we could accomplish alone. Grace or wrath, God will give us whichever one we ask Him for in our hearts.

It may be difficult to see how God can be good or really desire the salvation of everyone if He drives those who reject Him away, even if it is just. It might seem as if He is letting childish pettiness get in the way of His desire to bring men to salvation. But remember that sin is not just deeds--it is rejecting and rebelling against a perfectly holy God. When we are in a state of sin, we are unable to properly receive His grace; we are apt to think we have earned His blessings or let them content us rather than looking beyond them to God Himself. I think there are times when God's wrath and discipline are really what we need most, even if they drive us farther from God for a little while. And notice that God's grace and mercy are unconditional (not prompted by anything in us); only His wrath is conditional (on our unrepentance).

2 Chronicles 15:2 is a good summary: "The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you." But this truth cannot be fully understood and celebrated solely from the Old Testament. The human face Jesus puts on this doctrine helps us to understand it and even rejoice in God's boundless grace. Jesus Himself is the embodiment of God's grace, His loving kindness, His continual pursuit of His lost children even as they reject and kill Him. He is living proof of how far God will go--to death--for us, purely out of love. And this love, this crazy desire to be reconciled to us, remains even if we push each other away for a time.

The first application of God showing me this was simply joy in the assurance that He is good, all the time. I first came across 1 Kings 22 ten months ago and struggled with it on and off, unable to intellectually deny that God was a liar. This persistent doubt ate away at my life and joy in Christ and trust in the Bible like a spiritual cancer that seemed to have no cure. After seriously contemplating the possibility that God is not really good, I can appreciate His goodness more fully and am less inclined to take it for granted.

Trying to understand this chapter really drove home the point of this paper for me. I first came across 1 Kings 22 ten months ago and struggled with it intermittently ever since. Although I "knew" I couldn't trust God, I continued to wait for Him to make sense of this for me anyway. In a deeper sense, I somehow knew there had to be an answer even if I couldn't see it. This powerful experience of anxiously expecting and hoping for something, then seeing it come to pass (like in Hebrews 11:1) transformed my understanding of faith and showed me what it means to wait for the Lord.

In my doubt I also came to a better understanding of what it means to harden one's heart against God. There was always a decision before me to be totally done with God, which I always refused to make. I suppose the fact that I had to actively decide to reject God meant that I never really left Him. But it showed me that faith and doubt/hardening are not just states of feeling, but decisions we make, consciously or unconsciously, to throw in our lot with God or to turn away.

I used to misunderstand all the talk thrown around about "seeking God" to mean that I had to take the initiative in my relationship with God and that I had to do more, try harder to improve it and bring about God's promises, which I often took as instructions. My understanding of living a "Christian" life "by the Spirit" simply meant asking for His help in trying to carry out what He had instructed, and my problems stemmed from my failure to do something well enough. (Note that this was not legalism because my ultimate goal was not making myself righteous in God's sight, but simply living comfortably and at peace) I didn't realize that all along it was God who was seeking me.

And even when I did hear God's promises as promises, I had a tendency to apply them too shallowly as "quick fixes". For example, if I were doubting that God would always provide for my needs, I would tell myself some scripture that affirmed this and then stop thinking about it, but continue doubting in my heart. This superficial understanding of God with myself as the initiator frustrated me--why wasn't my relationship with God working?--and made it harder for me to deeply trust Him. This changed when I really understood that God was the initiator in the relationship, not me. I don't have to make everything happen myself; I can put my hope in God to act and expect Him to come through.

Blog-only postscript: The aforementioned crisis of faith brought about by my struggles with 1 Kings 22, among many other doubts about God and the Bible, is why my series on providence has been so delayed. But as of this post, it is back on track!

Providence, Part VI: The Biblical Data

This is part 6 of my series on providence. Table of contents:

1. Introduction and apology
2. A brief history of the soteriological debate
3. Overview of Calvinism
4. Overview of Arminianism
5. Comparing, contrasting, and evaluation of Calvinism and Arminianism
6. The Biblical data

     6.5. Interlude: The God Who Seeks Us

7. My position on providence
8. Applications of this position to the soteriological debate
9. Practical applications and conclusion

This post is kind of a jumping-off point for the eagerly-awaited (at least by me) one where I unpack my own position on providence. In contrast, this one is going to be as objective as possible, in which I present the Biblical foundation that I will build on next time. My thought process wasn't quite as simple as inferring doctrines from verses that directly support them. I'm going to take a lot of very simple facts that are (hopefully) beyond dispute, throw them in a blender, and come to my position in a more holistic way. Think of these facts as the ingredients. They can be divided into three categories for the three big concepts I am trying to balance: God's sovereignty, God's goodness, and human responsibility (or "free will" if you must have it in this discussion).

God's Sovereignty

God is omnipotent; He is able to do all that He wills and nothing is too hard for Him. This fact is attested to abundantly in scripture. Jeremiah attests that nothing is too hard for the Lord (32:17), Jesus says that with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). One of the anchors for our hope in God's providence is that He is always able to do what He wills. The simplified statement "God can do anything" is a bit misleading because though God can do all He wills, He can only will things that are consistent to his nature. For example, God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13), or tempt anyone to sin (James 1:13) because these things are antithetical to His nature. He also can't do logical contradictions or things that are by their nature impossible, so the question "Can God make a rock so big He can't lift it?" is best answered with punitive violence of some kind.

God is sovereign and in control over all of creation. This control is both extensive and intensive. God is said to be continually sustaining all things on some basic level; Colossians 1:17 says that "in [Christ] all things hold together", and Paul said "in [God] we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:26). It seems that what we consider to be the laws of physics and nature aren't fundamental to the universe, but are simply God graciously upholding creation in consistent ways that we can understand and utilize. If you're into that sort of thing, you could thank God each morning for keeping the earth in its orbit or electricity working the same way. We also see Him sometimes breaking these "laws" and commanding creation to do something incredible, like calming a storm (Matthew 8:26), parting the sea (Exodus 14), or, of course, raising from the dead after three days. From all this we clearly see that God is absolutely Lord over His creation, and nothing in the universe is outside His dominion.

God knows absolutely everything that has been, is, and will ever be. God is "perfect in knowledge" (Job 36:16) and "knows everything" (1 John 3:20). We also know that God does not change (Malachi 3:6) so He has always had this perfect knowledge and will always have it. Among other conclusions, this means that God always has equally perfect knowledge of every instant in all of time, unlike finite humans who only experience history one moment at a time. This becomes important later.

God has a plan (or "will") that includes everything that happens. Ephesians 1:11 says that God "works all things according to the counsel of His will". Revelation 4:11 states that all things were created and exist by God's will. Ephesians 1:10 says God's plan is "for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and on earth." In other words, everything that happens is part of God's plan/will; nothing takes Him off-guard and He has a purpose for everything that may happen whether we see it or not. (This is a fact that all Christians struggle to believe) This ultimate purpose is simply the pursuit of His own glory as reflected in His own actions and in the redemption or judgment of creation.

It's important to distinguish this will of whatever happens from God's will for our moral actions as revealed in the Bible, as of course the two are often at odds with each other. Others often use terms like God's "revealed will" and "hidden" or "secret" will to distinguish between the two, but this unfortunately implies that God has two contrary, clashing wills within Himself and that He deliberately hid things from us that He could have revealed in the Bible's moral teachings. What is often termed God's "revealed will" for us to perform, I will call His "desire". This goes right into another point about God...

God does not have two wills, but one undivided will that is never thwarted or frustrated. In Mark 3:23-24, Jesus refutes the idea that He could be driving out demons by the power of Satan by highlighting the absurdity of Satan working at cross purposes with his own mission: "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand." If the kingdom of this world is not divided against itself, how much less could the kingdom of God be divided? This is the unfortunate implication of talking about God as having two different wills.

God predestines (or elects) some individuals for salvation, and in the process chooses others for damnation; this choice was made before any of us were born. This not-so-simple fact lies on the undisputed common ground of Calvinism and Arminianism, which I have well supported in posts 3 and 4. The two positions may disagree on the precise nature of and reason for this election, but they both affirm that it happens. See those posts for more evidence; for now I will simply cite Ephesians 1:4: "...even as [God] 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 through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will." Note the last part, which makes clear that predestination is simply the part of God's overall will that pertains to salvation. Also, in John 15:16 Jesus says that "You did not choose me, but I chose you", making clear that God's choice of us takes preeminence over our choice of Him.

God's Goodness

God is love. 1 John 4:8 Not "love is God", but God is the very definition and perfect embodiment of what love is.

Out of love, Jesus died for our sins so that by faith we can share in His death and resurrection, enjoy relationship with God, and have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not die but will have eternal life." (John 3:16) This is the distilled essence of the gospel. My church did a sermon series that asked how you would "tweet" the gospel. There is my answer. (Actually, it's 150 characters, so I would tweet a link to this post. Twitter is ridiculous.)

God is the source of all good, even our faith and repentance. Paul's verse-quoting mashup in Romans 3:10-18 makes clear the extent of our depravity. The only reason the world isn't hell on earth (or a smoking cinder) is because, as mentioned above, God does not abandon His creation but continues to sustain it and prevent us from being as sinful as we could be. James writes that "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above" (1:17) Every stage of our salvation and sanctification is done by God; even our faith itself is a gift from God (Acts 5:31, 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25).

God wants all people to be saved. 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:32. I will not further argue this point here, except by saying that if God does not sincerely desire the salvation of all people, then He is not perfectly loving, because it would possible to imagine a God more loving than the true God.

God can work good through our acts of evil. This is strongly implied by the fact that all things, even acts of evil, are part of God's plan and therefore accomplish some good purpose. For an example, see Genesis 50:20, where Joseph said of his brothers selling him, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."

God is perfectly truthful; He cannot lie or deceive anyone. "God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and he will not do it? Or has he spoken, and he will not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19) "And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret." (1 Samuel 15:29) Titus 1:2 outright says that "God never lies". Proverbs 30:5 says that "Every word of God proves true." I am strongly affirming this now because later I'll be dealing with some difficult verses that seem to contradict God's truthfulness.

God is not the author of sin. This is probably the most crucial of all my points to the development of my position on providence. It can be broken down into three subpoints. First, God does not cause anyone to sin, because if He were the source of the sin He condemns man for, He would cease to be both good and just, which He certainly is. (Luke 18:19, Deuteronomy 32:4) No evasions or talk of God's ways being "higher than our ways" here; there is no way to affirm that a good, just God would cause anyone to sin.

Second, God does not tell or command anyone to sin, because they would be faced with the impossible choice of either obeying God by sinning, or disobeying Him and therefore sinning. So God telling someone to sin is the same as His causing them to sin. If you say that God can suspend His law in special cases, this contradicts Matthew 5:18 where Jesus states that "not an iota, not a dot will pass from the Law until all is accomplished." This would also mean that God is divided against Himself, which as we saw above is not the case.

And thirdly, God does not tempt anyone to sin. James 1:13.

Human Responsibility

We are responsible for our actions as moral agents. This is the core of what I mean by "human responsibility". The fact that God judges us according to what we have done (Revelation 20:12) necessarily means that we are held responsible for what we do. This has a wide variety of implications about human nature that are too subjective to post here, so I will save them for the beginning of the next post.

We are slaves to sin and cannot free ourselves or make ourselves holy on our own. Though we are responsible for our own actions, we are also unable to consistently act according to God's standards. We are said to be slaves to sin (Romans 6:17) in our natural state; without Jesus we can't please God or bear any good fruit (John 15:5) Since we are responsible for our actions, this slavery is not on our will; no one is forcing us to sin, but our very natures are fallen into sin so we keep freely choosing other things over God.

Because of unbelief, not every person is saved; salvation is conditioned on our faith. Again see John 3:16, or Luke 7:50 which affirms the connection between faith and salvation even more strongly. Also Romans 9:32, where Paul affirms that the reason some in Israel didn't attain the righteousness they sought was that they did not pursue it by faith, but by works.

We are made holy and conformed to God's image by the power of the Spirit (but not apart from our own will and responsibility). Philippians 2:12-13 is a good statement of this mysterious partnership between the Holy Spirit and us in which each member is essential to sanctification of an individual. Romans 8 is a beautiful exposition of God's crucial role in our transformation from rebellious sinners to obedient and loving children.


Finally, a bit of preparation for my next post. I think the central questions that Calvinism and Arminian answer differently go something like: what is the nature of God's providence, His reign over and work through every event in history? How do His will and ours work together in deciding events, and how do we explain the difference between what He commands in the Bible and the world? Why is everyone not saved? They are two different systems of interpreting the Bible to answer these questions, but as I said about baptism, though the truth of the Bible is not up for debate here, the veracity of any system for reading it is. Calvinism and Arminianism are both internally consistent, but can they be inferred from the rest of scripture? In my opinion, the presence of unresolved contradictions in Calvinism--brushed under the rug with Romans 9:20--is strong evidence that it cannot.

So, we have all this biblical data. But a list of scripturally supported facts does not constitute a complex doctrine like providence in any coherent sense; though organized into three categories, the points are largely unrelated and indeed it's hard to see how some of them (not everyone is saved, but God wants everyone to be saved?) Can be true at the same time. Next time I will finally get into how I have learned to assemble and reconcile these facts into a single picture of God's providence.

Providence, Part V: Evaluation

This is part 5 of my series on providence. Table of contents:

1. Introduction and apology
2. A brief history of the soteriological debate
3. Overview of Calvinism
4. Overview of Arminianism
5. Comparing, contrasting, and evaluation of Calvinism and Arminianism
6. The Biblical data

     6.5. Interlude: The God Who Seeks Us

7. My position on providence
8. Applications of this position to the soteriological debate
9. Practical applications and conclusion

Disclaimer: All of the views expressed in this post are absolutely my own and not those of my church, my small group, or any other religious entity I am or have been involved with.

The last three posts in this series have been difficult. I've learned that I have trouble simply doing non-evaluative studies of subjects with a minimal amount of my own opinion; as a J on the MBTI scale it's hard for me to spend so much time figuring out what others think or what has happened while shutting out most of what I think. Well, that is about to change. Here is what I think about Calvinism and Arminianism. I'm not going to get into what I personally think about providence until post 7, but as will become quite clear soon, my position falls much closer to Arminianism than Calvinism.

First, I'd like to point out and decry the tendency debates among Calvinists and Arminians have to focus entirely on comparing and contrasting the respective five points of each. The parallels that exist between these points seem to invite these comparisons and so they are often weighed against each other to decide the matter. This is unhelpful and, I think, ineffective at actually resolving these debates. These points all descend from a particular, internally consistent system of interpreting the Bible.

As I showed in the previous two posts, Calvinists and Arminians don't simply stake their claim on the parts of the Bible that support their position and try to nullify the parts that damage it; they can each look at the same passage and interpret it completely differently, each in a way that supports their system. Calvinists can argue from Romans 9 to prove unconditional election all they like, but an Arminian need not be convinced as he is already set in his own way of reading this chapter.

In this way debates over the individual points usually don't get far because each side is arguing from the perspective of its own system for interpreting the Bible, and these arguments don't carry the same weight in the other side's system because they interpret the evidence differently. It's the same reason internet debates between Christians and atheists are exercises in futility; both argue for their worldview using evidence that has been interpreted through the lens of that worldview, while the other side sees it differently. A evaluative decision between Calvinism and Arminianism has to look deeper, at the views of God, human nature, and the Bible that give rise to these two different ways of reading it--the guiding views of God I talked about at the end of each post. And so, before I get into any discussion of the individual points, it is these underlying perspectives and motivations that I will be evaluating.

Strengths of the Calvinistic Perspective

I would say the great strength of the Calvinistic view (above and behind the five points) is its majestic view of God as discussed in post 3. It puts the utmost emphasis on God's sovereignty as Lord and Creator over all things, even the depths of the hearts of people. God does not simply leave His creation to fend for itself but has a perfect plan for it according to His good pleasure to work all things, even the evil actions of people who rebel against Him, for His glory. The salvation of men is not left to any contingency but is firmly in His capable hands. This view of a righteous God who can never in any wise be defeated or thwarted in what He sets out to do and does not let evil happen but actively works good by it is rightly a source of great peace and comfort to Calvinists.

In keeping with its complete trust in God to elect and save, Calvinism also has a very high view of the efficacy of the Atonement. Its insistence that Jesus' death did not merely make salvation possible but actually secured it for individuals along with everything that comes with it comes from a sincere love for Jesus and for the gospel. The Atonement is seen as the crowning glory of God's perfect, immutable plan for all of eternity, the way for God to perfectly accomplish His purpose of election.

Shortcomings of the Calvinistic Perspective

My criticisms of the Calvinistic view can be broken down into five main points. (Which I will not attempt to organize into an acronym)

1. It loses sight of God's essential goodness and justice

This is the classic "Calvinism makes God the author of evil" objection; as I will explain, I do not find any of the defenses against this accusation very convincing. In its quest to make God as sovereign and autonomous as possible, exercising "meticulous control" over a fallen creation, it raises some serious questions about His moral nature. I do not think Calvinism provides satisfactory answers to the questions it raises.

One of my strongest convictions, which I think I share with Arminians, is that God does not cause anyone to sin. If He does, then His goodness and justice both become meaningless and He is no longer worthy of our love or praise. For what does God's holiness mean if He is the creator of the sin and evil He detests, and what does His justice mean if He punishes us for doing what He caused us to do? What difference is there between good and evil if God causes both and works both for His glory? How is evil not another equally just way for God to work all things to His glory? This conviction puts limits on just how much sovereignty we can ascribe to God, at least in the realm of human activities.

It also clashes dramatically with Calvinism's understanding of God as the "primary cause" of all things. (Calvin, Institutes, 16.8) As I mentioned in post 3, Calvinism operates on a "cause and effect" rather than an "influence and response" model of human behavior; the doctrine of Irresistible Grace is built on this understanding. I often seen Calvinists, when confronted with this question, revert to speaking about God's working through evil in permissive, rather than active, terms--perhaps God causes the good acts of men, but does not cause and only permits the evil they do. But this concept of the "permissive will" of God is more of an Arminian concept than a Calvinistic one, and indeed is denied by Calvinism. Calvin, in chapter 18.1 of his Institutes, writes:

It seems absurd that man should be blinded by the will and command of God, and yet be forthwith punished for his blindness. Hence, recourse is had to the evasion that this is done only by the permission, and not also by the will of God. He himself, however, openly declaring that he does this, repudiates the evasion. That men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on any thing but what he has previously decreed with himself and brings to pass by his secret direction, is proved by numberless clear passages of scripture.

So Calvin, in the chapter in which he defends his theology from accusations that God is the author of sin, only intensifies them. To this doctrine, Arminius responds:

Because, according to this doctrine, he moves to sin by an act that is unavoidable, and according to his own purpose and primary intention, without having received any previous inducement to such an act from any preceding sin or demerit in man.

And elsewhere:

This Predestination is inconsistent with the nature and properties of Sin, because Sin is called "disobedience" and "rebellion ", neither of which terms can possibly apply to any person who by a preceding divine decree is placed under an unavoidable necessity of sinning.

Arminius cleverly catches the implication of God's "meticulous control" over all things, even human wills, which no one can avoid or resist, that this necessarily makes Him the cause of not only our righteousness but also our sin.

Also, as I mentioned before, Calvinism's answer to the question "Why is everyone not saved?" is, ultimately, "Because God does not wish or try to save everyone." When did it become acceptable to believe this about God, even take pleasure in it? Indeed Calvinism, by making God the sole planner and effecter of salvation, begs the question of why God doesn't simply save everyone, which would not do any damage to His justice as it was perfectly satisfied by the Atonement. Calvinists have to explain away verses about the universality of God's compassion and mercy on sinners like 1 Timothy 2:4 and many other verses brought up by Arminians in support of universal atonement, dampening their meaning by calling the meaning of words like "all" and "world" into question, which is an awkward solution at best.

In all its fervor about emphasizing God's sovereignty, Calvinism comes perilously close to losing sight of God's essential goodness and mercy or to viewing them as simply the flip side of His wrath as part of His grand, mysterious plan. The goodness and love of God are not hidden attributes, nor should you have to exercise faith to believe that they are really true of God. The gospel is the ultimate revelation of God's love and mercy, and I think that if it ever seems to call them into question, you are thinking about it wrongly.

2. It justifies its view of God by abusing the concept of His "good pleasure"

The most common response I hear from Calvinists to this objection that God is not loving for not saving everyone is something along the lines of, "God does not owe anything to sinful man; we owe everything to Him. He has mercy on whom He will have mercy (Romans 9:16), predestining people for good or evil as part of His perfect plan, according to His good pleasure (Ephesians 1:9). Who are you, O man (Romans 9:20) to judge God's designs by human standards of justice and fairness? For His ways and thoughts are above ours as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah 55:9), and He is not obligated to save anyone because we justly deserve destruction for our sinfulness."

A few things I will pick out of this response:

• God's will or "good pleasure" is assumed to be atomic, impenetrable, incomprehensible to humans by being far beyond and above us. Calvinism answers the difficult questions it raises about God's nature by retreating to this "good pleasure" as the justification for it all. Any attempts to question it are necessarily assumed to be based on human (that is, fallen; unreliable) standards and reason, even if those arguments are based on other parts of God's revelation of Himself in the Bible.
• In its desire to free God from all constraints on His will, it asserts that He is not obligated in any way to sinful man, ignoring the fact that God graciously obligates Himself to us by His promises (such as John 3:16) and His perfect faithfulness to keep these promises. He was not obligated to make these promises, but now we can trust and rely on His holding to them.
• And, perhaps most seriously, it makes some seriously misguided assumptions about God's "good pleasure". In making that the unifying justification for everything Calvinism ascribes to Him, Calvinism creates a picture of a God who, while unconditionally denying individuals the chance to be saved and experience all of His perfect goodness, smiles serenely and says "All is going according to plan, according to My good pleasure." This is a picture not of a good and glorious God, but of a psychopath.

The fact is that God's "good pleasure" is not atomic or incomprehensible, and we can gain some facts about how it works. When God says things like "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy", F. Leroy Forlines writes, we should not simply leave it there and conclude unconditional election but should respond by asking, "On whom does God will to have mercy?" Or, in this case, "What does God actually take pleasure in? What does God actually desire?" Now is not the time for a thorough study of this matter, but here are a few illustrative examples:

• His son, Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22)
• Sanctifying us through "grace-driven effort" (Philippians 2:13)
• Giving good gifts to His children (Luke 12:32)
• Those who love and fear Him (Psalm 147:11)
• Uprightness (1 Chronicles 29:17)
• The wicked coming to repentance (Ezekiel 33:11)
• The salvation of everyone (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9)
• Predestinating the elect (Ephesians 1:5)

And what does God take no pleasure in?

• The death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11) or of anyone (18:32)
• False/empty religion (Malachi 1:10, Hebrews 10:6,8)
• Faithlessness (Hebrews 10:38)

God's "good pleasure" is in fact much more comprehensible and transparent than Calvinism makes it out to be. These verses clearly show that taking pleasure in ordaining acts of evil or predestining people for destruction is antithetical to God's nature. Rather than deciding God's nature based on His actions in the Calvinistic system (a school of thought known as voluntarism), it makes much more sense to learn about God's nature and reason that He wills and acts according to this nature (known as essentialism).

Of course, it's easy to see how Ephesians 1:5 can be taken in support of Calvinism, so I will briefly offer an alternate interpretation: God takes pleasure in predestining individuals for salvation, but not in predestining those He knows will not be saved. The idea of God taking no pleasure in something He does (not getting His way!?) will no doubt horrify Calvinists, but if He is as sovereign as they say, the alternative is the psychopathic picture of God we saw above. I will get much more into this in post 7, but for now let me suggest that God's ultimate purpose in all that He does is the glory of His name, not His "pleasure" as we may think of it, and that the two are not equivalent. By justifying its difficult points with God's "good pleasure", Calvinism misses the sincerely-caring, condescending (in the sense of Jesus becoming man and humbling Himself to identify with us) view of God in favor of that of an imperious, all-powerful judge and sovereign.

3. It misunderstands human nature and how God works with it

As I mentioned in post 3, Calvinism has a compatiblist view of free will (or incompatiblist view in the case of hyper-Calvinism, which denies free will altogether). But, as it turns out, you can believe free will is compatible with different things. I agree with Calvinism in that free will is compatible with divine determinism (more on that later), but Calvinism goes on to say free will is compatible with divine causation. The doctrine of irresistible grace is the best example of this. It portrays regeneration as the Holy Spirit doing a powerful work in our heart that causes us to freely believe in God. (Perhaps by realigning our hearts to desire Him, so that in doing what we desire most we believe) I think this is a contradiction in terms.

Again, see the above quote in which Calvin names God as the "primary cause" of all things and goes on to expound on the completeness of His control over our affairs. Lorraine Boettner in his landmark book The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination echoes this though, naming God as the "primary cause" of human affairs and humans as the "secondary cause" (p. 222)

A common objection against Calvinism is that it removes any responsibility from us to make any effort to believe or be sanctified. I don't think this is the case, but only because the application side of Calvinism is not consistent with its thinking on free will. If God truly causes us to believe, all the times salvation is conditioned on "our" faith become meaningless. God powerfully influencing us to believe in a way that we never could without Him does not have this difficulty. If God truly caused the Fall in the sense of withdrawing some measure of grace from Adam and Eve so that they inevitably sinned, then good and evil become meaningless. A truly cause-and-effect view of human nature is incompatible with "free will" and moral responsibility.

Another point relates to how salvation works. A lot of Calvinistic writings I've read are so focused on God's plan of election and predestination that it becomes the "true" reason we are saved, not the real condition we are given, namely faith (John 3:16). Again, the reason given in Romans 9, the chapter used most often to prove unconditional election, that not all Jews are saved, is nothing like "God unconditionally chose some and not others", but "not all believed." (Romans 9:32) Predestination has nothing to do with Jesus' proclamation, "Your faith has saved you" in Luke 7:50. This is not necessarily a factual error, but a case of misplaced emphasis.

One other thing to point out here is Calvinism's interesting placement of regeneration before faith or justification in the "golden chain" of salvation. This divorces regeneration from the rest of sanctification for the sake of supporting the points of total depravity and irresistible grace. In other words, you are "born again" before you are saved. Regeneration, rather than being the birth of our eternal life in Christ, happens before it with no context, then we are saved. I don't see it necessary to point out the sheer bizarreness of this from a doctrinal standpoint any further. Just because you can read the Biblical testimony on regeneration this way does not mean you should.

4. It defends itself with an "argument from mystery"

While it probably isn't in reality, from reading Calvin's writings on providence and predestination I get the feeling that his favorite verse of scripture is Romans 9:20: "But you are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me like this?'" I refer to the use of this verse, especially the first part, to defend the Calvinistic perspective on predestination as the "argument from mystery"--it is foolish or prideful to ask why God unconditionally predetermines things the way He does, and if you do so you are judging God. In this way Calvinism lays out many apparently contradictions and defeats any attempts to resolve them except its own.

The arrogance of assuming the complete truth of Calvinism and interpreting any challenges to it as talking back to God is astounding, but unsurprising if you see it as the only way to read the Bible. Not all challenges to unconditional election are made by human standards of justice and fairness; it is possible to judge interpretations of the character and actions of God based on what He has told us about Himself, as I have been attempting to do. The nature of God, not His bare "good pleasure" or will, gets the final say.

Lastly, this is not an argument against Calvinism, but to date in my research I have not read even one Calvinist who appears to actually understand Arminianism or view it as anything other than a logically flimsy strawman system to either dismiss or constantly rip on (Boettner is almost unreadable because of his constant jabs at his conception of Arminianism). Grudem is the closest I have read to this understanding (or Geisler, if you consider him a Calvinist), as well as my friend Mitch, who I can't claim to have "read". Calvinists: just like in anything else, before entering into a debate, make a point of actually understanding the opposing side from its own perspective.

5. It incorporates numerous other confusions of concepts and false dichotomies

I will go through these quickly:

Confusion of faith and "merit"/works. Calvinists seem to think that if salvation is really conditioned on our own faith, then this is tantamount to man saving himself by some work that he does. Never mind that the Bible treats faith and works as completely separate things; Romans 9:32 directly contrasts the two; see also Ephesians 2:8-9 (note: according to the Greek grammar, salvation, not faith, is said to be the gift of God here) and Galatians 2:16.

God being in "meticulous control" over all things and utter chaos/humans and demons having the power to thwart His plan. If God isn't in total control of all things, the reasoning goes, if humans have any power to determine their own actions, then this means they can oppose God's plan for all things, and we can't have that! Calvin cites Augustine as saying, "If anything is left to fortune [not God], the world moves at random." It is either the Calvinistic view of God's providence or a blind, uncaring universe ruled by chance and contingency. Really?

Man having no spiritual agency and salvation by works. Calvinists like the image of man pre-salvation as "spiritually dead", like Lazarus in his tomb. From this they conclude that, prior to regeneration, man has absolutely no power to seek God, respond to God, love God, or comprehend anything of the spirit; he is dead, and dead people can't do anything! The only alternative they see is, at best, semi-Pelagian; man saving himself either by simply doing good works or by believing in God all by himself! (Nevermind that taking advantage of God's promise to offer salvation to anyone to believes is in no way saving oneself) Once again, this narrow perception of only two extremes leads Calvinism to choose the more Biblical, but still misguided one.

Man possessing absolutely free will and the constrained Calvinistic view of free will. I will only touch on this one briefly because the main source I've heard it from is my pastor. "Free will" does not necessarily mean "being able to do absolutely whatever you want", so that our inability to sprout wings and fly becomes a rebuke to free will. Only God has this kind of freedom, but I don't think this is what anyone means when discussing free will.

The pleasure and glory of God. See point 2 above.

And one last thing that occurred to me: I really don't see how to reconcile the Calvinistic view of God's total sovereignty over evil with the kind of pitched, militaristic language Evangelicals use to talk about free will. If Satan and his fallen angels are really only serving God (if unwillingly), why get so worked up about them? Why not just trust God to shepherd them wisely and with our best interest in mind?

6. The Individual Five Points

With my position on the assumptions and conceptions on the perspective of Calvinism in place, I can move on to briefly discuss the five individual points. It will suffice for me to show which of the above misconceptions each is based on and to offer my own interpretation of the Biblical data (in post 7).

Total Depravity

As I mentioned in post 3, Calvinism's perspective on total depravity departs from the Arminian view mainly in its understanding of free will and human nature (cause-and-effect vs. influence-and-response).   To a Calvinist we are so far gone that God has to cause us to believe by regeneration; to the Arminian we are still unable to desire or seek God on our own, but the influence of His spirit calling us allows us to respond to Him with faith. People having, by prevenient grace, the ability to freely respond to God's acting on our hearts is no threat at all to the doctrine of total depravity.

Unconditional Election

I believe unconditional election is a case of eisegesis: the reading of the Calvinistic perspective into passages like Romans 9 to support something the Bible never clearly says. Given no clear Biblical proof of why God elects some and not others, and plenty of verses on why we are not elected or saved, Calvinism concludes that God is absolutely free to have mercy on whom He wills, not intrinsically constrained by anything outside the pleasure of His will.

Here is the shocker: I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. What I disagree with is how Calvinism extends it to say that God does not take anything outside Himself into account at all in predestination, which is where the conception of God arbitrarily going "duck, duck, damn" comes from. (Point 2 above) Just because we cannot force God to elect us by anything we do or are does not mean He does not still consider our natures or lives in His decision. Ironically, Calvinism, ruling out any consideration of individual people from God's decision in the desire to make His sovereign will truly free, ends up constraining it in a different way. As Forlines points out, since salvation is conditional, there is no reason why election can't be (in some different, confusing, eternal sense).

Limited (Definite) Atonement

This doctrine is how Calvinism most directly answers the question of why everyone is not saved: God does not wish or try to save everyone. Again, I have dealt with the dangers of this belief in points 1 and 2; God does wish (or desire, or please) that everyone be saved. This doctrine stands on its own perhaps less than any of the others; it relies on systematically denying the common-sense reading of a great deal of passages on the universality of God's compassion and the atonement, which in my opinion should cast a lot of doubts on your argument.

Irresistible (Effective) Grace

I have dealt with this doctrine, its placing of regeneration before salvation, and its interpretation of the Bible's reliance on Calvinism's cause-and-effect view of free will above. (Point 3)

Perseverance of the Saints

Again, this doctrine is basically saying that, once He has regenerated them, God causes the elect to persevere in faith until the end (point 3). In response to the criticism of Boettner and others that Arminianism provides no real assurance of salvation by conditioning it on continued faith, I would respond that Calvinism really isn't much more helpful; the question is not Will I continue to believe? but Is my faith real? Am I elect? Neither question is answered with certainty until we meet God.

Strengths of the Arminian Perspective

Okay. I am pretty much done talking about Calvinism now. I feel able to say less about Arminianism because a) my disagreements with it are not nearly as sharp and b) much of my thinking in subsequent posts will incorporate it. On to what makes Arminianism great!

First, Arminianism obviously takes a very high view of God's perfect love, benevolence, goodness, moral perfection, and grace. Where Calvinism seems more concerned with God making and perfectly seeing to completion a plan that involves people, Arminianism is much more after God's direct affection for His children. It avoids all of the difficult questions raised by God being meticulously involved with sin or unconditionally predestining people. The picture of God as a father who identifies with His children, shares in their joys and sufferings, and truly wishes all of them to find their greatest good in Him that I mentioned Calvinism misses out on, Arminianism has in spades.

And Arminianism's response to the burning question "Why is everyone not saved" is, I think, much more reasonable and consistent with who we know God to be. Not everyone is saved because not everyone believes, because God has graciously offered everyone salvation on the condition that they let Him help them to believe in Him and love Him. In this way it puts the gospel and God's love and benevolence front and center, with His harshness and wrath a necessary consequence of the damnable sin of rejecting Him.

Shortcomings of the Arminian Perspective

A (perhaps necessary) consequence of this focus is that Arminianism does see God's sovereignty much less actively and powerfully than Calvinism does, though while still affirming it. Whereas Calvinism has to twist the meaning of verses that deal with the universality of the atonement and God's love, Arminianism, with its embrace of God's "permissive will", has to at least get a bit awkward in how it interprets verses that Calvinists gleefully cite on the directness of God's governance of the world.

Arminianism, because of its incompatibilistic perspective, also tends to see no middle ground between its conception of libertarian free will, and no free will at all. This is just the dichotomy on free will seen by Calvinists, viewed from the other side. Yet it does hold that free will is compatible with divine foreknowledge, just not divine determination. I tend to agree with Calvinists when they point out that there is less difference between these things than you may think. Anyway, the difficulty in reconciling God's sovereignty or foreknowledge with libertarian, undetermined free will has long been a major difficulty for Arminians and has led to dangerous schools of thought that have given Calvinists plenty of ammunition against it, like Molinism and open theism.

While it's true that Arminianism is not intrinsically opposed to predestination, it is also softer on this point than Calvinism, which has become nearly synonymous with the term. I think the interpretation of predestination being "God predestining Jesus as savior" really misses the point of passages like Romans 9 that directly speak of us, not Jesus, being the ones who are predestined--as does theology supporting corporate election.

Arminians also tend towards a very "hands-off" view towards God's dealing with sin, seeing it as the only alternative to God being the author of sin. Whereas Calvinism begs the question of why sin exists in the first place, Arminianism begs the question of how sin doesn't deal a serious blow to God's sovereignty, and it has trouble with passages where God does seem to be more directly involved with acts of sin. (More on that in post 10)

And finally, while I don't think true Arminianism is overly concerned with human free will over the nature of God, it is very, very easy to think otherwise.

Common Shortcomings

Obviously Calvinism and Arminianism have most of Protestantism and reformed doctrine in common as their strengths, so in favor of not writing my own systematic theology yet, I'll skip that. Instead I'll move on to some ways in which I think both perspectives fall short.

First, I think they both miss out on a really eternal perspective of God. There is a tendency to anthropomorphize God's workings and decrees, or view Him as an omnipotent, omniscient being who otherwise exists in time and moves through it like we do while enacting His perfect plan. One way I see this is theologians hinting at God making different parts of His plan at different times. If God has perfect knowledge of all things and is unchanging to boot, then we can't think of Him in any way as making and executing His plans (or "decrees") concurrently like we do. Also in Calvinism's conclusion that since God's election was decided "before the foundation of the world", it can't be based on anything about us because we weren't born yet. More on the applications of this in post 7.

Another big way I see this misconception play out in more serious debates is in the whole infra/supra/sublapsarianism debate. I didn't understand what it was about for the longest time, and I still can barely believe I do. Debating which parts of God's eternal, perfect, unchanging plan were made first? Why not debate which member of the Trinity came first? Somewhat related are the attempts made by both unconditional and conditional elections to offer simple rules explaining why God elects and predestines the way He does. Do we try to explain any other part of God's plan (like why He permits wars, or uses disease in peoples' lives) in this way?

Both sides also tend to conflate election (which is eternal and part of God's plan) and faith and salvation (which happens in time), saying that one directly leads to the other. In Calvinism this looks like trying to apply the unconditionality of election to salvation, minimizing the crucial role faith plays in the process and making it more of an effect of election than a condition of salvation; Arminianism goes the other way in tying election completely in with faith; God simply elects those who will have faith. I think that simply trying to make one of the two an aftereffect of the other is an oversimplification that diminishes their crucial role in the "scheme of things".

I see both sides, in their (I would say excessive) discussions of free will, assuming a simplified picture of human nature as very little besides the will; man is simply a will in an otherwise inert body that is acted on and chooses things (especially faith in God) and the question is how he chooses those things in relation to his external influences. Except for token sections that take on a more holistic perspective, writings of both sides tend to neglect the roles of personality, desires, affections, intellect, etc. in how we come to believe and take faith. They also tend to talk about faith as if it is a single, crucial decision you make, so all the weight falls on how that one decision is made, rather than viewing faith as a lifelong commitment to God.

And, finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there is an almost irresistible tendency in any conversation about Calvinism and Arminianism to make it about the individual, corresponding five points and playing them against either other without looking beneath the surface at why the sides' interpretations of scripture are so different.