An Ex-Calvinist’s Tiptoe Through TULIP – Unconditional Election

I have many thoughts and explanations to put forth on this topic so I will get right to it.

THE DOCTRINE OF UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION

I cite John Calvin to articulate what Reformed Christians refer to as “Unconditional Election” today:

In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment.^[i]

The Westminster Confession expounds,

Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace.^[ii]

These are very definitive statements affirming that God alone decides altogether arbitrarily and randomly who will “get saved” and who will be damned, so that “no one can boast,” [Eph. 2:9].

The argument goes that salvation is primarily a matter of preserving God’s justice, and therefore Christ was punished in order for justice to be served substitutionally for the elect, but God is obliged to damn the vast majority of the human race for eternity in order to be a just God and display His wrath and hatred of wickedness. When questioned about why God does not cause everyone to be become Christian–using verses such as 1 Timothy 2:4 or 2 Peter 3:9 which evidence God’s deep desire for all people to be saved–the Calvinist reasoning is that Scripture gives abundant evidence of two distinct wills in the mind of God. One is His permissive will, which is what actually takes place, what He allows to occur. The other is His desirous will, that which He wishes would occur but which often cannot actually happen due to the constraint to preserve certain phenomena; namely justice.

I will begin my dissection of these assertions with a consideration of the way the Scriptures are being approached by the Calvinist believer. With the advent of Protestantism, the existence of a structured and consistent ecclesiology rapidly vanished among low church groups–which gave way to the Great Awakening movements with their emphasis on dramatic personal conversion events and altar calls. The historic understanding of the Church as a transcendent entity, indeed a sacramental reality greater than the mere sum of its members, was replaced with a private, and in recent times customizable Christianity. Thus it can be argued that passages which were intended to speak of the Church as an organic, covenantal community–a substance that existed as the cohesive climax of God’s plan for the world from the beginning (and these verses are always directed toward a plural subject, literally “you all” not just “you”)–came to be read individualistically, as speaking to God’s personal predetermining of each human being to either Heaven or Hell. From this lens, it might appear that Calvinism has sufficiently accumulated enough Scriptures to validate its belief of predestination as described above, especially with the language of Ephesians 1, Romans 9, John 6:44, Acts 13:48 and so on.

GOD THE AUTHOR OF ALL

Since this understanding eradicates the will of man in choosing or rejecting God, consistent Calvinism must teach the predetermining of more than just salvation and damnation, but the Divine prescribing of every event in history, good or bad. Calvin concluded that God designed the Fall of Adam to occur in the first place since the entirety of human history displays God’s direct orchestration:

. . . by the predestination of God, Adam fell, and dragged all his posterity headlong with him. Is not he, therefore, unjust in thus cruelly mocking his creatures? I admit that by the will of God all the sons of Adam fell into that state of wretchedness in which they are now involved . . . Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it must be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it.^[iii]

And again,

. . . man by the righteous impulsion of God does that which is unlawful.^[iv]

I recently attended a service where Dr. John Piper was the guest speaker. He is one of if not the most prominent Calvinist Evangelicals of our time. At one point in his talk he put forth the argument that if Christians reject the idea that God makes evil happen without Himself being held responsible, then what do we do with the gospel? The Scriptures consistently articulate the death and resurrection of Christ as the foreordained plan of God from before the foundation of the world, and yet Christ’s death was the greatest human evil ever committed in history. Piper also questioned why we pray for God to save people if we do not believe that He can, in fact, make people choose Him.

My response to this last point has already been mentioned and it is central: why then is everyone not Christian? The answer always put forth to this is an abstract, legal compulsion of God to preserve a frankly strange form of justice, and that God has two wills which are often at odds with each other. I would submit at this point that not even Saint Augustine, on whom Calvin dearly depends for the historical validity of his views, would easily reach this conclusion of Divine determinism. He writes in On Free Choice of the Will:

If God foreknew a future will that turned out not to be a will at all, things would indeed happen otherwise than as God foreknew them . . . For if his [the human’s] willing is necessary, how does he will since there is no will? . . . Just as your memory does not force the past to have happened, God’s foreknowledge does not force the future to happen. And just as you remember some things that you have done but did not do everything that you remember, God foreknows everything that he causes but does not cause everything that he foreknows.^[v]

As far as what to do with the gospel story if God does not make evil actions happen, Peter in Acts 2 actually states that Christ’s crucifixion was according to the foreknowledge of God; He simply made a purposed plan around it because He foreknew it. An important element to notice in Scripture is that God’s foreknowledge and His predestination are always together, inseparable. As Augustine explained above, things don’t happen because God knows them, God knows them because they will happen.

It is also important to note that God knows all things eternally, outside of time, and this is why prayer is not merely a means of self-help but a very important factor in the course of human events. Prayers are effective since He hears them before He even creates the world (including our prayers for the dead; see my other article). God also knows all possibilities as well as actualities in the course of history, and His plan is made and foreordained based on us; on what He knows we will do. Prayer itself thus becomes part of Divine Providence.

ARE YOU A MERCIFUL GOD, OR A JUST GOD?

With regard to the importance of God’s preservation of justice, it is a common debate among Western Christians as to how God can and does properly balance His attributes of justice and mercy. Saint Basil would say the following:

Everywhere Scripture joins justice with the mercy of God, teaching us that neither the mercy of God is without judgment nor his judgment without mercy.^[vi]

God’s justice is completely merciful and His mercy is completely just. What this means is that, since God’s character is both completely merciful and completely just, what He is actually constrained to do is be consistent and impartial with everyone. If only justice were to be upheld, all humanity would be condemned for eternity. But God chose to instead have mercy on all. And His justice is upheld in that this mercy is exhaustively given to all without exception. If He decided to only give mercy to some and not others completely arbitrarily, then we would have reason to question the truly just and merciful nature of God because this is unjust. This is not to present a Universalist view of salvation, since not everyone wants His mercy; some are so selfish that they despise God to the point that they desire His wrath. But God never withholds His mercy like a precious commodity from anyone who sincerely desires it.

On this note, the Hebrew word for “judge” is shaphat, meaning simply “to set things right.” The fear of God’s judgment should not resemble a paranoid child who cannot predict the mood swings of an abusive father. Rather Scripture calls us to have a rightful respect for God’s fixing the situation, to not resist His setting each of us right as He repairs and shapes us back into His image. We are designed to be vessels of honor [2 Tim 2:21], and our salvation is not merely an aversion of wrathful punishment, nor merited by good works. We are rather saved for good works [2 Tim 2:21, Eph 2:10]; that is, to be “set right” by being intrinsically reoriented to a righteous reflection and likeness of the Lord. This is what we are praying for when we ask God to save people, including ourselves. I pray for my own salvation every day.

The Reformed believer would argue that God’s not having control over human free will reduces and restricts God to a pitiful figure whose creation has come unhinged, causing Him to become frantic and unable to manage our chaos. But ironically, Calvinism does the same thing to Him by giving Him multiple personality disorder and confining Him to an abstract, unyielding juridical system that makes no sense, by which He MUST abide (even though allegedly He can do whatever the heck He wants to do).

HOW DOES THAT WORK IN THE REAL WORLD?

While the Calvinist understanding of predestination and foreordination may look neatly packaged with Scriptural references in a systematic theology book, when it comes to application in daily life it rapidly loses its sensibility. The late Father Thomas Hopko used the example of watching television, where the nightly news depicts the rampant, brutal murders and persecutions of ISIS and Al Qaeda, the drug-induced rape, murder, thievery, sex trafficking, and endless horrors of even our own local regions, and after many more heart-wrenching stories of utmost perversion the news anchor gives his Walter-Cronkite-like sign off, “But relax, God is in control.” Really? God controlled these people and caused all of this to happen? Then the late night sitcoms air with their customary obscenity, and are we to say, “Well, God is in control of the TV stations and producers and writers, so since He’s sovereign He desired for this perpetual sexual degeneracy and degradation of all of life to be displayed to America tonight”? Father Tom also cited an Auschwitz survivor who he heard say that no one should ever make any statement about God that they cannot say to a group of women who are standing before a great burning mass of embers into which wicked men are throwing their infant children to burn to death.[vii] Can one tell these women, “Relax, God is in control” while they are watching their babies burn?

To be sure, Scripture is clear that even when calamities occur that are directly the result of human action, it is from the Lord. This is because God must be wholly Sovereign for us to trust Him and know with assurance that His promises will come to play out, because to Him all of history is one consistent present, and all is known, anticipated, and allowed by Him. But this does not override our free will; rather His Sovereignty is what allows us to have a free choice. In the garden of Eden the purpose of His placing the tree there was to produce a choice so that man was not forced into allegiance to God out of necessity. But God knew He was going to Fall and He placed it there anyway as the Enabler–the Instrument through which the whole story was able to play out. This is why I embrace the doctrine of “synergy,” that human history is one great duet of sincere Divine Sovereignty in harmony with sincere human free action that cooperate in all things. This “synergy” comes from the Greek sunergeo, and is used in the following Scriptures: Mark 16:20; Romans 8:28 (that is, when we screw up, God can work it out for good); 2 Corinthians 6:1; James 2:22 (faith in synergy with works, the latter being part of the former); and while the word is not used, the concept is seen in Philippians 2:12-13. We still find these concepts in roots of that word like “symphony,” where all those involved in the orchestra have to work together, and if they are not focused on the conductor, they will play too loud or soft, lose their place, etc. because they start doing their own thing and are not letting themselves be led in total unison.

In the words of Athanasius:

Wherefore, children, let us hold fast our discipline, and let us not be careless. For in it the Lord is our fellow-worker [sunergon], as it is written, “to all that choose the good, God worketh with them for good” [Rom 8.28]^[viii]

WORK WITH ME HERE

Space does not permit me to go into detail on Romans 9, the favorite chapter of Reformed theology, but I highly recommend this podcast which does so. It simply does not stand to reason that God arbitrarily decides to make Bob good and righteous, or Jill evil and wicked, and control them as to whatever they are in life, due to a mysterious, unquestionable motive to make some objects of wrath and some of mercy so that He can sufficiently exude both impulses. Again Augustine attests:

God, who made you without you, will not save you without you.^[ix]

One last illustration from Father Tom Hopko is that of a Ping Pong table in relation to human and Divine correspondence throughout the course of time. There is not a perpetual “ping, pong, ping, pong,” back and forth with God as we pray and He answers, we do things, and He reacts. Rather, God is outside of time and He therefore in His foreknowledge, predestination, predetermined will, and so forth, goes, “PING!” from all eternity, and we who are in time live out the course of history responding to this in our own lives with “pong, pong, pong, pong.”^[x] God is not helpless in the wake of the mess we have made of things, but neither is He a dictator that is controlling our every move. He desires reciprocity and true relationship with His creatures, but these are inevitably on the condition that we will embrace Him. I would continue but it is time for a lunch I was predestined before the foundation of the world to consume.

[wpex more=”View Sources” less=”Hide Sources”]

[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Allen (trans.), 7th American edition. vol. II, Book III, Chapter 21, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. 1936), p. 181.

[ii] Gerald Irvin Williamson, The Westminster Confession of Faith, (Philipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publication Co., 1964), Section 1, Chapter 2, p. 33.

[iii] Calvin, Institutes Book III, chapter 23, secs. 4, 7.

[iv] Calvin, Institutes Book IV, chapter18, sec. 2

[v] Saint Augustine of Hippo, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. By Thomas Williams Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc. 1993, p. 76

[vi] Saint Basil the Great. Commentary on Psalm 116:5-6. Quentin F. Wesselschmidt (ed.). Thomas C. Oden (Gen. ed.). Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament VIII. “Psalms 51-150.” Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press. 2007. p. 287.

[vii] Fr. Thomas Hopko. “God is in Control – Revisited.” Speaking the Truth in Love. Podcast. Ancient Faith Radio. Oct. 23, 2014.

http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/god_is_in_control_revisited

[viii] Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Anthony, 19.

[ix] Saint Augustine, Sermon 169, 13 (PL 38,923)

[x] Hopko, “God is in Control – Revisited.”

[/wpex]

7 responses to “An Ex-Calvinist’s Tiptoe Through TULIP – Unconditional Election”

Tom Rach

November 11, 2015

“These are very definitive statements affirming that God alone decides altogether arbitrarily and randomly who will “get saved” and who will be damned, so that “no one can boast,” [Eph. 2:9].

God does not randomly or arbitrarily chose anyone: Where did you get that idea from Calvin or the Westminster Standards? You might be able to destroy your “Straw Man – God”, but that is not Calvin’s God that you are presenting in your “opening statement”

Joseph Green

November 12, 2015

I was simply making a seemingly obvious observation from the quotes I had just cited.

Loading…

Reply

Jeff Hart

November 11, 2015

Thanks for your work on this. I appreciate the perspective, although (unsurprisingly) I have some significant areas of disagreement.

First, I think it’s necessary to emphasize Calvin’s use of the word “incomprehensible” in the first quotation you provide. I think I mentioned this in a comment on your last piece, but the tricky thing here is reconciling God’s sovereignty with human responsibility. I think the Bible clearly presents both, and it does so without trying to reconcile them–it views them as friends, to paraphrase Chesterton. Therefore, it is not our place to try to explain how the two work out together in meticulous detail. Because God is transcendent, because his ways are higher than ours, we will encounter mystery at some point whenever we talk about God. It’s this fact that leads Herman Bavinck to say that “mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics.” We need to resist the temptation to try framing everything in terms that are comprehensible to us, especially when considering God’s sovereignty and human freedom/responsibility. From what I know of the EO Church, you probably have an appreciation for this point, so it’s not necessarily an area of disagreement, just a caution I would like to lay out at the outset.

Second, I would challenge your use of the words “arbitrarily and randomly.” To say that God’s will is not compelled by the (foreseen) actions of his creatures is not the same as to say that his will is random or arbitrary. God’s will is the outflow of his character, and his character is anything but arbitrary. He can’t do “whatever the heck he wants to do,” but only that which is consistent with his essential character. Nor does he have “multiple personality disorder.” To use the theological term, he is simple, without composition of parts or division. God is goodness, truth, beauty, love, and holiness (to name only a few), but that doesn’t give him multiple personalities. In the same way, to say that he manifests his mercy to some but not to others does not make him two-faced, even if it is not known or understood by us why he would choose to do so. Ultimately, there is coherence in God because he is One.

To understand this more fully, we need to go back to Exodus 3 and the story of Moses and the burning bush. In this passage, we learn about God’s aseity, the fact that he is wholly independent of his creation. He is the I AM, and he depends on no one for his being. Just as the fire burned without consuming the bush, God can exist apart from his creation; he doesn’t need the creation in order to be who he is. This also means that God is not compelled to act by anything outside himself. It was not necessary for him to create, nor was it necessary for him to provide a means of salvation for the fallen human race. He is not bound by some external Platonic forms or laws of logic, but only by his own character. As creatures, however, we do not have the same independence. Rather, it is in God that we live and move and have our being. Apart from God, we would cease to exist. Apart from God, nothing new comes into existence, and that includes human actions. Our actions must therefore be decreed by God (in some sense) because otherwise we ourselves would be God, creating something new out of nothing whenever we choose to act. For this reason, God cannot be compelled to offer salvation on the basis of foreseen human actions. For God to do so would be for him to obliterate the Creator/creature distinction and make man, not himself, sovereign over all. You lay out this sort of critique just before the “Real World” section, but I would actually say that it’s worse, from the Reformed perspective, than you even let on. Beyond reducing God to “a pitiful figure whose creation has come unhinged,” it renders Christ’s work a failure. I imagine you’ll come back to this point when you tiptoe to the “L,” so I’ll leave it at that for now.

So far, this all leads to your section “God the Author of All.” Here, I would affirm that God’s providence is meticulous. He has decreed everything that has and will ever come to pass–down to the falling of a sparrow and the number of hairs on our heads–not on the basis of foreknowledge, but on the basis of his good pleasure. His foreknowledge is based on his decree; he foreknows things because he decreed them and things happen because he decreed them. So yes, God knows them because they will happen, but they will only happen because he decreed that they will. And he only decrees what is consistent with his good and holy character.

I do not believe that this leads to determinism, but rather that it establishes an environment in which we have genuine freedom/responsibility all while God remains truly sovereign. (You say something very similar to my position on this point when you write that “His Sovereignty is what allows us to have a free choice.” In fact, you sound a lot like the Westminster Confession there ;-)) Again, precisely how both can be true at the same time is beyond our powers of comprehension (in part due to the mysterious nature of the interplay of God’s eternity and our temporality, which you also mention). But this does not mean that they are ultimately incompatible. The Bible doesn’t seem to think they are incompatible. I think perhaps the most we can say is that God has ordered the world in such a way that we are genuinely responsible for our decisions even while every decision we make has been decreed by God from eternity.

Regarding how the Reformed view of God’s decrees works in the real world, I could easily turn the scenarios you lay out back on you. What comfort is it to say in the wake of disaster, Oh, don’t worry, God’s not really in control of that? I draw far more comfort knowing that there is a good God who has seen fit to allow evil (indeed, even experience evil!) for purposes that are good beyond my wildest imagination. Of course, that’s not necessarily the pastorally wise answer to give to someone who has just experienced tragedy, but it should play in at some point, and when it does, it can provide great comfort.

In conclusion, let me just say that we’re clearly in VERY deep waters, so my comments are FAR from sufficient for addressing the issues we’ve encountered. Also, let me apologize for rambling and veering off in places from the main content of your article. It’s just difficult because so many things are tied together in this discussion.

Joseph Green

November 12, 2015

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your extended efforts at explaining your position on these issues. I do agree with you on some points, and due to the brevity of these articles, I have probably oversimplified things that need a lot more clarification so that they are not taken to extremes.
Of course I am with you that mystery is central to the faith. You are probably aware of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s popular quote:
“The goal of Christianity is not to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us increasingly aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as He is the source of our wonder.”

I understand what you are getting at as far as the simplicity of God and that it would thus be impossible for Him to have “multiple personality disorder” when it comes to His Oneness and the outflow of His mercy and justice as attributes of His character. In using that term I was referring to the dissection of God has having two wills that are often conflicting, where He seems to be compelled by some external force to go with His permissive will instead of His desirous will. And I thank you for clarifying with the terms “permit,” or “allow” as this is the distinction I would use in matters such as the “real world” section; that God is not “in control” such that He made people do these hideous things, but that He is in control such that He “permitted” them, and nothing could occur without His sovereign permission. If that is what is being suggested than I do not have a problem affirming His “control.” If it were then argued that this is no different since God is still permitting evil to occur, I would respond that in order to not permit any evil to occur God would have to go ahead and strike us all down. The fact that evil things happen is a clear tribute to His mercy on us; not His direct control of and impelling people to be evil.

I understand and affirm also that God is beyond any kind of logical school of thought we humans have established and that He cannot be confined to such a box.
HOWEVER:
It is one thing to affirm the importance of mystery and go beyond Aristotelian or Platonic logical constructs in order to tap into the Divine Life of God. But I believe it is a gross abuse of this point when, having encountered a clear contradiction and unjust distortion of God’s goodness, mercy, and love such that He is meticulously making all things, including evil, occur and yet only humans who were decreed and predestined to be this way are held responsible and punished forever without the possibility of repenting and being saved, that the only response given to this is that you are a totally depraved monster who cannot understand the ways of God and it does not have to make sense so just shut your mouth.

Well, wait just a minute now.

I would very certainly say that the Bible finds God’s absolute control and decree of every event incompatible with our genuine freedom, but true freedom does not make one a “god.” I think here again we are getting into a difference of anthropology from our respective traditions. While Calvinism today may not affirm Calvin’s “obliteration” model of the human being’s retaining the image of God, the totally depraved tenet inevitably causes Calvinism to make humans so exhaustively insignificant and altogether outside of God’s work in the world, including salvation, that the fact of our being made in God’s image is nuanced such that we are denied such basic elements of human existence as making a choice and acting spontaneously due to the freedom in which God has designed us, as reflection of His nature. As Athanasius said, “God became man so that man could become God.” Our goal is to become truly human, such that we are living in connection with the living God and ourselves reflecting and acting out His spontaneous freedom, active will, and goodness.

I also, again, would pose the question, where is this view of God’s meticulous providence causing even evil actions as well as foreordination of people’s salvation and damnation altogether removed from the person’s character, beliefs, or actions found in any theologian or Church Father, or doctrine or creed or practice of the Church prior to the sixteenth century? To me the fact that all this is so late and cannot be unearthed from the historic Church (if it is looked at consistently, in context, and without Calvinist presuppositions) is a sea of red flags that something is very much out of place. Clearly even Augustine would reject this. Remember Saint Vincent’s mandate: let us adhere to what has been believed everywhere, always, by all, for that is the truly catholic faith.
I hope you can find the time to read some of Saint John Cassian on this topic, (found here) as he treats it rather thoroughly.

Thanks again for your thoughts and rebuttals.

Loading…

Reply
Joseph Green

November 12, 2015

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your extended efforts at explaining your position on these issues. I do agree with you on some points, and due to the brevity of these articles, I have probably oversimplified things that need a lot more clarification so that they are not taken to extremes.
Of course I am with you that mystery is central to the faith. You are probably aware of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s popular quote:
“The goal of Christianity is not to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us increasingly aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as He is the source of our wonder.”

I understand what you are getting at as far as the simplicity of God and that it would thus be impossible for Him to have “multiple personality disorder” when it comes to His Oneness and the outflow of His mercy and justice as attributes of His character. In using that term I was referring to the dissection of God has having two wills that are often conflicting, where He seems to be compelled by some external force to go with His permissive will instead of His desirous will. And I thank you for clarifying with the terms “permit,” or “allow” as this is the distinction I would use in matters such as the “real world” section; that God is not “in control” such that He made people do these hideous things, but that He is in control such that He “permitted” them, and nothing could occur without His sovereign permission. If that is what is being suggested than I do not have a problem affirming His “control.” If it were then argued that this is no different since God is still permitting evil to occur, I would respond that in order to not permit any evil to occur God would have to go ahead and strike us all down. The fact that evil things happen is a clear tribute to His mercy on us; not His direct control of and impelling people to be evil.

I understand and affirm also that God is beyond any kind of logical school of thought we humans have established and that He cannot be confined to such a box.
HOWEVER:
It is one thing to affirm the importance of mystery and go beyond Aristotelian or Platonic logical constructs in order to tap into the Divine Life of God. But I believe it is a gross abuse of this point when, having encountered a clear contradiction and unjust distortion of God’s goodness, mercy, and love such that He is meticulously making all things, including evil, occur and yet only humans who were decreed and predestined to be this way are held responsible and punished forever without the possibility of repenting and being saved, that the only response given to this is that you are a totally depraved monster who cannot understand the ways of God and it does not have to make sense so just shut your mouth.

Well, wait just a minute now.

I would very certainly say that the Bible finds God’s absolute control and decree of every event incompatible with our genuine freedom, but true freedom does not make one a “god.” I think here again we are getting into a difference of anthropology from our respective traditions. While Calvinism today may not affirm Calvin’s “obliteration” model of the human being’s retaining the image of God, the totally depraved tenet inevitably causes Calvinism to make humans so exhaustively insignificant and altogether outside of God’s work in the world, including salvation, that the fact of our being made in God’s image is nuanced such that we are denied such basic elements of human existence as making a choice and acting spontaneously due to the freedom in which God has designed us, as reflection of His nature. As Athanasius said, “God became man so that man could become God.” Our goal is to become truly human, such that we are living in connection with the living God and ourselves reflecting and acting out His spontaneous freedom, active will, and goodness.

I also, again, would pose the question, where is this view of God’s meticulous providence causing even evil actions as well as foreordination of people’s salvation and damnation altogether removed from the person’s character, beliefs, or actions found in any theologian or Church Father, or doctrine or creed or practice of the Church prior to the sixteenth century? To me the fact that all this is so late and cannot be unearthed from the historic Church (if it is looked at consistently, in context, and without Calvinist presuppositions) is a sea of red flags that something is very much out of place. Clearly even Augustine would reject this. Remember Saint Vincent’s mandate: let us adhere to what has been believed everywhere, always, by all, for that is the truly catholic faith.
I hope you can find the time to read some of Saint John Cassian on this topic, (found here) as he treats it rather thoroughly.

Thanks again for your thoughts and rebuttals.

Loading…

Reply
1. Jeff Hart
  
  November 12, 2015
  
  Thanks for the reply. A few follow-up thoughts. *EDIT: Well, I guess it’s a bit more than a few. Hope you’re enjoying this as I am.*
  
  To begin with, I must admit that my language was probably imprecise at times in my previous comment. I’m still learning/practicing how best to articulate some of these doctrines in my own words (which is one reason that I’m happy at times to rely on the wording of the Westminster Confession (WCF for future reference)). So I appreciate push-back as it helps me refine my thinking on these matters (and I hope my push-back does the same for you!).
  
  In using the language of “permit” and “allow,” I want to avoid two extremes; on the one hand, that God just sits idly by as we commit sinful deeds outside of his control, and on the other hand, that God is just some cosmic puppet master “impelling” us to both evil and good actions. Neither of these extremes fit with Reformed doctrine nor, indeed, the witness of scripture. Here, I would say that the language of the WCF is helpful (this is actually the section I referenced in my previous comment that sounds like something you said in your article). Sections 3.1-2 say: “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”
  
  So I would still maintain God’s meticulous sovereignty in ordaining “whatsoever comes to pass,” but I would say that (in a way I’m unable to fully comprehend) his ordaining does not mean that he “impels” people to evil or “causes” evil. People are to blame for their evil deeds (and for causing creation to groan in light of our sin), not God, as I think scripture makes abundantly clear.
  
  Again, the struggle here is that scripture affirms both human responsibility (see God’s commands to and rebukes of Israel, or the numerous New Testament imperatives) and divine sovereignty in the strongest of terms (see Genesis 1, Exodus 3, Job, various Psalms, Romans 9, Ephesians 1, etc.) without resolving the tension that we feel. In light of this evidence, I simply don’t think we can say that we’re dealing with a “clear contradiction.” We’re dealing with an *apparent* contradiction, but one that is also apparently not without resolution in God.
  
  That being said, I would want to amend your statement that “it does not have to make sense so just shut your mouth” to say that “it does not have to make sense *to us* so just shut your mouth” — which, I think, is exactly Paul’s point when he writes in Romans 9:20 “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” It’s also basically what God says when he answers Job starting in chapter 38. I admit, that’s a difficult pill to swallow, but I see no alternative other than to deny the most basic sense of these texts.
  
  Since you mentioned this again, I just want to reiterate a point I made in my comment to your last article about Calvin: Calvin did not believe, at least not in the Institutes, that the imago dei was erased in the fall. Badly damaged yes, but not wholly erased. While I can’t say for certain that no one in the Reformed tradition has held a total annihilation view, I can at least say that such a view is the exception (and that it’s not Calvin’s position).
  
  I certainly think we see precedent for the views I have been espousing in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian theology, but I will admit that my reading in the early church is simply not wide enough at this point to say much more. I will say that it often happens in church history that doctrines are not refined or stated explicitly until there is a controversy to respond to. In the case of the debate over free will and divine sovereignty, the Reformers were responding in large part to the innovations of Molina (with his concept of middle knowledge) and therefore needed to make finer doctrinal distinctions than had been previously made.
  
  Last, I think a caution about chronological snobbery is in order. While I think our modern tendency is to look with disdain upon the voices of distant history, the reverse can happen as well. So while I agree that theological innovation should raise some red flags, I’m also hesitant to raise the voice of the early church to a position where we are unable to disagree with them or correct any of their theological errors or oversights.
  
  And thanks for the John Cassian suggestion…. I’ll add him to my (ever-expanding) reading list and hopefully get to him someday.
  
  Loading…
2. Joseph Green
  
  November 13, 2015
  
  Thanks Jeff.
  While I still contend a “clear contradiction” here, I know that most Calvinists believe that Scripture reconciles the two in God and that God is not a puppeteer even though He predestined everything. However, many Calvinists (such as R.C. Sproul Jr.) are taking the natural conclusions of these Calvinist premises and affirming that God is in fact the author of evil, but that this is ok because ultimately good and bad are not actually good and bad, they’re just categories that God has assigned to certain things for us to follow (which frankly is quite like Islam). Anyway, I also hope you can listen to the short podcast I reference in the article on Romans 9, it’d be very helpful.
  Have a great weekend!
  
  Loading…

Tom Rach

November 11, 2015

“These are very definitive statements affirming that God alone decides altogether arbitrarily and randomly who will “get saved” and who will be damned, so that “no one can boast,” [Eph. 2:9].

God does not randomly or arbitrarily chose anyone: Where did you get that idea from Calvin or the Westminster Standards? You might be able to destroy your “Straw Man – God”, but that is not Calvin’s God that you are presenting in your “opening statement”

Loading…

1. Joseph Green
  
  November 12, 2015
  
  I was simply making a seemingly obvious observation from the quotes I had just cited.
  
  Loading…
  
Jeff Hart

November 11, 2015

Thanks for your work on this. I appreciate the perspective, although (unsurprisingly) I have some significant areas of disagreement.

First, I think it’s necessary to emphasize Calvin’s use of the word “incomprehensible” in the first quotation you provide. I think I mentioned this in a comment on your last piece, but the tricky thing here is reconciling God’s sovereignty with human responsibility. I think the Bible clearly presents both, and it does so without trying to reconcile them–it views them as friends, to paraphrase Chesterton. Therefore, it is not our place to try to explain how the two work out together in meticulous detail. Because God is transcendent, because his ways are higher than ours, we will encounter mystery at some point whenever we talk about God. It’s this fact that leads Herman Bavinck to say that “mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics.” We need to resist the temptation to try framing everything in terms that are comprehensible to us, especially when considering God’s sovereignty and human freedom/responsibility. From what I know of the EO Church, you probably have an appreciation for this point, so it’s not necessarily an area of disagreement, just a caution I would like to lay out at the outset.

Second, I would challenge your use of the words “arbitrarily and randomly.” To say that God’s will is not compelled by the (foreseen) actions of his creatures is not the same as to say that his will is random or arbitrary. God’s will is the outflow of his character, and his character is anything but arbitrary. He can’t do “whatever the heck he wants to do,” but only that which is consistent with his essential character. Nor does he have “multiple personality disorder.” To use the theological term, he is simple, without composition of parts or division. God is goodness, truth, beauty, love, and holiness (to name only a few), but that doesn’t give him multiple personalities. In the same way, to say that he manifests his mercy to some but not to others does not make him two-faced, even if it is not known or understood by us why he would choose to do so. Ultimately, there is coherence in God because he is One.

To understand this more fully, we need to go back to Exodus 3 and the story of Moses and the burning bush. In this passage, we learn about God’s aseity, the fact that he is wholly independent of his creation. He is the I AM, and he depends on no one for his being. Just as the fire burned without consuming the bush, God can exist apart from his creation; he doesn’t need the creation in order to be who he is. This also means that God is not compelled to act by anything outside himself. It was not necessary for him to create, nor was it necessary for him to provide a means of salvation for the fallen human race. He is not bound by some external Platonic forms or laws of logic, but only by his own character. As creatures, however, we do not have the same independence. Rather, it is in God that we live and move and have our being. Apart from God, we would cease to exist. Apart from God, nothing new comes into existence, and that includes human actions. Our actions must therefore be decreed by God (in some sense) because otherwise we ourselves would be God, creating something new out of nothing whenever we choose to act. For this reason, God cannot be compelled to offer salvation on the basis of foreseen human actions. For God to do so would be for him to obliterate the Creator/creature distinction and make man, not himself, sovereign over all. You lay out this sort of critique just before the “Real World” section, but I would actually say that it’s worse, from the Reformed perspective, than you even let on. Beyond reducing God to “a pitiful figure whose creation has come unhinged,” it renders Christ’s work a failure. I imagine you’ll come back to this point when you tiptoe to the “L,” so I’ll leave it at that for now.

So far, this all leads to your section “God the Author of All.” Here, I would affirm that God’s providence is meticulous. He has decreed everything that has and will ever come to pass–down to the falling of a sparrow and the number of hairs on our heads–not on the basis of foreknowledge, but on the basis of his good pleasure. His foreknowledge is based on his decree; he foreknows things because he decreed them and things happen because he decreed them. So yes, God knows them because they will happen, but they will only happen because he decreed that they will. And he only decrees what is consistent with his good and holy character.

I do not believe that this leads to determinism, but rather that it establishes an environment in which we have genuine freedom/responsibility all while God remains truly sovereign. (You say something very similar to my position on this point when you write that “His Sovereignty is what allows us to have a free choice.” In fact, you sound a lot like the Westminster Confession there ;-)) Again, precisely how both can be true at the same time is beyond our powers of comprehension (in part due to the mysterious nature of the interplay of God’s eternity and our temporality, which you also mention). But this does not mean that they are ultimately incompatible. The Bible doesn’t seem to think they are incompatible. I think perhaps the most we can say is that God has ordered the world in such a way that we are genuinely responsible for our decisions even while every decision we make has been decreed by God from eternity.

Regarding how the Reformed view of God’s decrees works in the real world, I could easily turn the scenarios you lay out back on you. What comfort is it to say in the wake of disaster, Oh, don’t worry, God’s not really in control of that? I draw far more comfort knowing that there is a good God who has seen fit to allow evil (indeed, even experience evil!) for purposes that are good beyond my wildest imagination. Of course, that’s not necessarily the pastorally wise answer to give to someone who has just experienced tragedy, but it should play in at some point, and when it does, it can provide great comfort.

In conclusion, let me just say that we’re clearly in VERY deep waters, so my comments are FAR from sufficient for addressing the issues we’ve encountered. Also, let me apologize for rambling and veering off in places from the main content of your article. It’s just difficult because so many things are tied together in this discussion.

Loading…

1. Joseph Green
  
  November 12, 2015
  
  Hi Jeff,
  
  Thank you for your extended efforts at explaining your position on these issues. I do agree with you on some points, and due to the brevity of these articles, I have probably oversimplified things that need a lot more clarification so that they are not taken to extremes.
  Of course I am with you that mystery is central to the faith. You are probably aware of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s popular quote:
  “The goal of Christianity is not to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us increasingly aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as He is the source of our wonder.”
  
  I understand what you are getting at as far as the simplicity of God and that it would thus be impossible for Him to have “multiple personality disorder” when it comes to His Oneness and the outflow of His mercy and justice as attributes of His character. In using that term I was referring to the dissection of God has having two wills that are often conflicting, where He seems to be compelled by some external force to go with His permissive will instead of His desirous will. And I thank you for clarifying with the terms “permit,” or “allow” as this is the distinction I would use in matters such as the “real world” section; that God is not “in control” such that He made people do these hideous things, but that He is in control such that He “permitted” them, and nothing could occur without His sovereign permission. If that is what is being suggested than I do not have a problem affirming His “control.” If it were then argued that this is no different since God is still permitting evil to occur, I would respond that in order to not permit any evil to occur God would have to go ahead and strike us all down. The fact that evil things happen is a clear tribute to His mercy on us; not His direct control of and impelling people to be evil.
  
  I understand and affirm also that God is beyond any kind of logical school of thought we humans have established and that He cannot be confined to such a box.
  HOWEVER:
  It is one thing to affirm the importance of mystery and go beyond Aristotelian or Platonic logical constructs in order to tap into the Divine Life of God. But I believe it is a gross abuse of this point when, having encountered a clear contradiction and unjust distortion of God’s goodness, mercy, and love such that He is meticulously making all things, including evil, occur and yet only humans who were decreed and predestined to be this way are held responsible and punished forever without the possibility of repenting and being saved, that the only response given to this is that you are a totally depraved monster who cannot understand the ways of God and it does not have to make sense so just shut your mouth.
  
  Well, wait just a minute now.
  
  I would very certainly say that the Bible finds God’s absolute control and decree of every event incompatible with our genuine freedom, but true freedom does not make one a “god.” I think here again we are getting into a difference of anthropology from our respective traditions. While Calvinism today may not affirm Calvin’s “obliteration” model of the human being’s retaining the image of God, the totally depraved tenet inevitably causes Calvinism to make humans so exhaustively insignificant and altogether outside of God’s work in the world, including salvation, that the fact of our being made in God’s image is nuanced such that we are denied such basic elements of human existence as making a choice and acting spontaneously due to the freedom in which God has designed us, as reflection of His nature. As Athanasius said, “God became man so that man could become God.” Our goal is to become truly human, such that we are living in connection with the living God and ourselves reflecting and acting out His spontaneous freedom, active will, and goodness.
  
  I also, again, would pose the question, where is this view of God’s meticulous providence causing even evil actions as well as foreordination of people’s salvation and damnation altogether removed from the person’s character, beliefs, or actions found in any theologian or Church Father, or doctrine or creed or practice of the Church prior to the sixteenth century? To me the fact that all this is so late and cannot be unearthed from the historic Church (if it is looked at consistently, in context, and without Calvinist presuppositions) is a sea of red flags that something is very much out of place. Clearly even Augustine would reject this. Remember Saint Vincent’s mandate: let us adhere to what has been believed everywhere, always, by all, for that is the truly catholic faith.
  I hope you can find the time to read some of Saint John Cassian on this topic, (found here) as he treats it rather thoroughly.
  
  Thanks again for your thoughts and rebuttals.
  
  Loading…
  
2. Joseph Green
  
  November 12, 2015
  
  Hi Jeff,
  
  Thank you for your extended efforts at explaining your position on these issues. I do agree with you on some points, and due to the brevity of these articles, I have probably oversimplified things that need a lot more clarification so that they are not taken to extremes.
  Of course I am with you that mystery is central to the faith. You are probably aware of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s popular quote:
  “The goal of Christianity is not to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us increasingly aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as He is the source of our wonder.”
  
  I understand what you are getting at as far as the simplicity of God and that it would thus be impossible for Him to have “multiple personality disorder” when it comes to His Oneness and the outflow of His mercy and justice as attributes of His character. In using that term I was referring to the dissection of God has having two wills that are often conflicting, where He seems to be compelled by some external force to go with His permissive will instead of His desirous will. And I thank you for clarifying with the terms “permit,” or “allow” as this is the distinction I would use in matters such as the “real world” section; that God is not “in control” such that He made people do these hideous things, but that He is in control such that He “permitted” them, and nothing could occur without His sovereign permission. If that is what is being suggested than I do not have a problem affirming His “control.” If it were then argued that this is no different since God is still permitting evil to occur, I would respond that in order to not permit any evil to occur God would have to go ahead and strike us all down. The fact that evil things happen is a clear tribute to His mercy on us; not His direct control of and impelling people to be evil.
  
  I understand and affirm also that God is beyond any kind of logical school of thought we humans have established and that He cannot be confined to such a box.
  HOWEVER:
  It is one thing to affirm the importance of mystery and go beyond Aristotelian or Platonic logical constructs in order to tap into the Divine Life of God. But I believe it is a gross abuse of this point when, having encountered a clear contradiction and unjust distortion of God’s goodness, mercy, and love such that He is meticulously making all things, including evil, occur and yet only humans who were decreed and predestined to be this way are held responsible and punished forever without the possibility of repenting and being saved, that the only response given to this is that you are a totally depraved monster who cannot understand the ways of God and it does not have to make sense so just shut your mouth.
  
  Well, wait just a minute now.
  
  I would very certainly say that the Bible finds God’s absolute control and decree of every event incompatible with our genuine freedom, but true freedom does not make one a “god.” I think here again we are getting into a difference of anthropology from our respective traditions. While Calvinism today may not affirm Calvin’s “obliteration” model of the human being’s retaining the image of God, the totally depraved tenet inevitably causes Calvinism to make humans so exhaustively insignificant and altogether outside of God’s work in the world, including salvation, that the fact of our being made in God’s image is nuanced such that we are denied such basic elements of human existence as making a choice and acting spontaneously due to the freedom in which God has designed us, as reflection of His nature. As Athanasius said, “God became man so that man could become God.” Our goal is to become truly human, such that we are living in connection with the living God and ourselves reflecting and acting out His spontaneous freedom, active will, and goodness.
  
  I also, again, would pose the question, where is this view of God’s meticulous providence causing even evil actions as well as foreordination of people’s salvation and damnation altogether removed from the person’s character, beliefs, or actions found in any theologian or Church Father, or doctrine or creed or practice of the Church prior to the sixteenth century? To me the fact that all this is so late and cannot be unearthed from the historic Church (if it is looked at consistently, in context, and without Calvinist presuppositions) is a sea of red flags that something is very much out of place. Clearly even Augustine would reject this. Remember Saint Vincent’s mandate: let us adhere to what has been believed everywhere, always, by all, for that is the truly catholic faith.
  I hope you can find the time to read some of Saint John Cassian on this topic, (found here) as he treats it rather thoroughly.
  
  Thanks again for your thoughts and rebuttals.
  
  Loading…
  
  1. Jeff Hart
    
    November 12, 2015
    
    Thanks for the reply. A few follow-up thoughts. *EDIT: Well, I guess it’s a bit more than a few. Hope you’re enjoying this as I am.*
    
    To begin with, I must admit that my language was probably imprecise at times in my previous comment. I’m still learning/practicing how best to articulate some of these doctrines in my own words (which is one reason that I’m happy at times to rely on the wording of the Westminster Confession (WCF for future reference)). So I appreciate push-back as it helps me refine my thinking on these matters (and I hope my push-back does the same for you!).
    
    In using the language of “permit” and “allow,” I want to avoid two extremes; on the one hand, that God just sits idly by as we commit sinful deeds outside of his control, and on the other hand, that God is just some cosmic puppet master “impelling” us to both evil and good actions. Neither of these extremes fit with Reformed doctrine nor, indeed, the witness of scripture. Here, I would say that the language of the WCF is helpful (this is actually the section I referenced in my previous comment that sounds like something you said in your article). Sections 3.1-2 say: “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”
    
    So I would still maintain God’s meticulous sovereignty in ordaining “whatsoever comes to pass,” but I would say that (in a way I’m unable to fully comprehend) his ordaining does not mean that he “impels” people to evil or “causes” evil. People are to blame for their evil deeds (and for causing creation to groan in light of our sin), not God, as I think scripture makes abundantly clear.
    
    Again, the struggle here is that scripture affirms both human responsibility (see God’s commands to and rebukes of Israel, or the numerous New Testament imperatives) and divine sovereignty in the strongest of terms (see Genesis 1, Exodus 3, Job, various Psalms, Romans 9, Ephesians 1, etc.) without resolving the tension that we feel. In light of this evidence, I simply don’t think we can say that we’re dealing with a “clear contradiction.” We’re dealing with an *apparent* contradiction, but one that is also apparently not without resolution in God.
    
    That being said, I would want to amend your statement that “it does not have to make sense so just shut your mouth” to say that “it does not have to make sense *to us* so just shut your mouth” — which, I think, is exactly Paul’s point when he writes in Romans 9:20 “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” It’s also basically what God says when he answers Job starting in chapter 38. I admit, that’s a difficult pill to swallow, but I see no alternative other than to deny the most basic sense of these texts.
    
    Since you mentioned this again, I just want to reiterate a point I made in my comment to your last article about Calvin: Calvin did not believe, at least not in the Institutes, that the imago dei was erased in the fall. Badly damaged yes, but not wholly erased. While I can’t say for certain that no one in the Reformed tradition has held a total annihilation view, I can at least say that such a view is the exception (and that it’s not Calvin’s position).
    
    I certainly think we see precedent for the views I have been espousing in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian theology, but I will admit that my reading in the early church is simply not wide enough at this point to say much more. I will say that it often happens in church history that doctrines are not refined or stated explicitly until there is a controversy to respond to. In the case of the debate over free will and divine sovereignty, the Reformers were responding in large part to the innovations of Molina (with his concept of middle knowledge) and therefore needed to make finer doctrinal distinctions than had been previously made.
    
    Last, I think a caution about chronological snobbery is in order. While I think our modern tendency is to look with disdain upon the voices of distant history, the reverse can happen as well. So while I agree that theological innovation should raise some red flags, I’m also hesitant to raise the voice of the early church to a position where we are unable to disagree with them or correct any of their theological errors or oversights.
    
    And thanks for the John Cassian suggestion…. I’ll add him to my (ever-expanding) reading list and hopefully get to him someday.
    
    Loading…
  2. Joseph Green
    
    November 13, 2015
    
    Thanks Jeff.
    While I still contend a “clear contradiction” here, I know that most Calvinists believe that Scripture reconciles the two in God and that God is not a puppeteer even though He predestined everything. However, many Calvinists (such as R.C. Sproul Jr.) are taking the natural conclusions of these Calvinist premises and affirming that God is in fact the author of evil, but that this is ok because ultimately good and bad are not actually good and bad, they’re just categories that God has assigned to certain things for us to follow (which frankly is quite like Islam). Anyway, I also hope you can listen to the short podcast I reference in the article on Romans 9, it’d be very helpful.
    Have a great weekend!
    
    Loading…

Conciliar Post