Monthly Archives: March 2006

The fatwah

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Still more.

Note: I have altered the claims of this entry in keeping with a couple of posts (I made him give me two witnesses before backing down) in the comments section. I still think the “fatwah” has a sort of unique quality that can’t be appreciated without reading it, so here it remains:

And last thing is, it’s time to start disciplining. And here I’m talking to ministers who are members of Presbytery, and delegates to Classis. Men, it’s time to get some spine. It is time, and past time, to stand up and act. I am up to here with excuses. It is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and we have been entrusted as shepherds with the souls of sheep. You think you’re getting away with something – “oh, I’m so busy.” Don’t tell me about busy, tell Jesus. He shed His blood for these people, and there are wolves in the pen. In my pen, there are wolves. And there are wolves in your pen. It is time to lay down your lives and do what needs to be done. And I charge you as a fellow minister, in the name of Christ, you must do your duty, or you will answer for it. If the gospel doesn’t move you to this, then you need to look at your heart. Let’s pray.

More Professor of Church Hysteria

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Postscript to this:

First of all, John Barlow writes that you ought to read. Not only is Jon insightful and pithy, but he shows that the word “fatwa” works quite well in a Presbyterian context rather than one of international Islamic terrorism. Very sad.

Also, before all the Professor’s enemies have been put under tha ban and cleansed from the land because of their defilements, you might show the temerity of reading for yourself. Rich Lusk’s podcast is a treat, but on this topic there are several great essays available online. To start, consider Baptismal Efficacy: Past, Present, and Future.

Finally, since the Prof speaks well of his colleague, Dr. Michael Horton, I think I will end this post with some linked quotations. Sadly, the linked articles or dead, but if you have access to the past issues of the magazine, it won’t be hard to track this stuff down:

In no particular order

  1. Among other things, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are supposed to unite us not only to Christ, but to his body. In other words, the unity of Christ’s people is at least one key fruit of these marvelous means of grace.
  2. Unlike the Supper instituted by Christ, this new practice [private “communion” by oneself] is private rather than public, subjective rather than objective, and does not even require the specific material elements commanded by Christ! Evidently the spiritual and moral effects are all that matter.
  3. Not only did the Reformers oppose Rome’s meritocracy; they fiercely opposed the opposite tendency to subjectivize the Sacraments by making them mere signs or tokens to evoke piety. For this, too, would only lead the struggling believer to look for help within himself. From the mid-sixteenth-century confessions to the Westminster Confession of 1647, the entire confessional testimony of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches defends the objective character of the Sacraments as means of grace.
  4. Making use of the Sacraments is not like turning on a faucet to drink water, but like being given a gift. It is not a moral quality within us that makes the Sacraments effective (as in Rome), but the objective promise, received in faith through the mighty working of the Holy Spirit. This phrase, “received in faith,” does not mean that faith makes the Sacraments effective any more than that faith itself justifies. We know that it is God who justifies us, on the basis of Christ’s righteousness and not our faith, and the same is true of the Sacraments. Sacraments remain Sacraments, just as Christ remains Christ and the Word would be true if nobody ever accepted it as such. But the reality they exhibit and confer must be embraced.
  5. The Scots Confession of 1560 declares, “And so we utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls” (Ch. 21). “The Holy Spirit creates [faith] in our hearts by the preaching of the holy Gospel and confirms it by the use of the holy Sacraments” (Heidelberg, Q.65). The Second Helvetic Confession reminds us that what is given in the Sacraments is not merely “a bare and naked sign,” but Christ himself, with all of his saving benefits. It warns against the “sects,” who “despise the visible aspect of the sacraments,” exclusively concerned with the invisible (Ch. 19). The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England repeat their sister churches in affirming this point (Art. 25). “The sacraments become effectual means of salvation,” according to the Westminster Larger Catechism, “not by any power in themselves or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered; only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ by whom they are instituted” (Q.161).
  6. Moving to our day, most Reformed theologians have upheld the confessions. Princeton’s A. A. Hodge wrote, “Christ uses these sacraments, not only to represent and seal, but also actually to apply, the benefits of his redemption to believers.” Furthermore, according to Hodge, while they are not Sacraments, the church ought to retain as ordinances confirmation, absolution, marriage, and ordination.
  7. It is important to realize that the Calvinistic Baptists hail not from Anabaptism, but from English Puritanism. Unlike the various “sects” of the so-called Radical Reformation, the Baptists were in other respects committed to the magisterial Reformation, but separated from their Reformed churches over the issue of infant Baptism. What is odd about our day is that the more radical elements of Anabaptism, rather than even the more moderate views of the Baptists, show up occasionally in our churches. It is, therefore, astonishing that so many who go by the name “Reformed” in our day seem to deny, at least in the practical treatment of these Sacraments, the efficacy of these means of grace.
  8. In many conservative Reformed and Presbyterian circles, it is as if the prescribed forms for Baptism and the Supper were too high in their sacramental theology, so the minister feels compelled to counter its strong “means of grace” emphasis. In this way, the Sacraments die the death of a thousand qualifications. The same is true when we read the biblical passages referring to Baptism as “the washing of regeneration” or to the Supper as “the communion of the body and blood of Christ.” Why must we apologize for these passages and attempt to explain them away? Our confessions do not do this. Our liturgical forms (if we still use them) do not do this, but we feel compelled to diminish them these days.
  9. We hear quasi-gnostic sentiments even in Reformed circles these days, such as the “real baptism” that is spiritual, as opposed to “merely being sprinkled with water,” or the “real communion” with Christ in moments of private devotion. How can we truly affirm the union of earthly and heavenly realities in the Incarnation? Or how can we regard the Word of God as a means of salvation if it is but ink and paper or human speech? A subtle Docetism (the ancient gnostic heresy that denied Christ’s true humanity) lurks behind our reticence to see these common earthly elements as signs that are linked to the things they signify. Surely the Sacraments can remind us of grace, help us to appreciate grace, and exhort us to walk in grace, but do they actually give us the grace promised in the Gospel? The Reformed and Presbyterian confessions answer “yes” without hesitation: A Sacrament not only consists of the signs (water, bread and wine), but of the things signified (new birth, forgiveness, life everlasting).
  10. And yet, the experience of Reformed and Presbyterian churches in the odd world of American revivalism has challenged the confessional perspective. In The Presbyterian Doctrine of Children in the Covenant (Yale, 1940), L. B. Schenck noted, “The disproportionate reliance upon revivals as the only hope of the church…amounted to a practical subversion of Presbyterian doctrine, an overshadowing of God’s covenantal promise.” As Richard Muller has carefully shown in his Calvin Theological Journal article, “How Many Points?”, our system has been reduced to a pale reflection of its former self.

    Eugene Osterhaven states, “Thus the Reformed tradition, with most of the Christian church, believes it pleases God to use earthly materials–water, bread, and wine–in the reconciliation of the world to God.”

  11. But does Scripture teach this? The best way to answer that is to simply read the passages, where Baptism is called “remission of sins” (Acts 2:38), and those who believe and are baptized will be saved (Mk. 16:16). Paul announced, “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). The Sacrament and faith were not separated in Paul’s mind, for apart from the latter the benefits of the former were not received although the Sacrament was performed.
  12. In Baptism we were buried and raised with Christ (Rom. 6:3-5). Far from viewing Baptism as a human work, Paul said “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by his grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Tit. 3:5-7).
  13. . A. Hodge writes, “Men were exhorted to be baptized in order to wash away their sins. It is declared that men must be born of water and of the Spirit, and that baptism as well as faith is an essential condition of salvation. The effect of Baptism is declared to be purification (2 Kings 5:13, 14; Judith 12:7; Lk. 11:37-39).”
  14. We simply cannot say that we take a literal approach to the text while interpreting these clear passages as allegorical of a spiritual reality detached from the obvious reference to physical sacraments.
  15. Analogous to the relation between Christ’s human and divine natures united in one person, the earthly signs of water, bread and wine are united with the things signified: regeneration, forgiveness, and adoption. This “sacramental relation” is central to the Reformed understanding of these passages. It helps us to avoid either a ritualism that places the efficacy in the signs themselves and a spiritualism or rationalism that deprives the signs of their efficacy. So when we read that Baptism is “the remission of sins,” we embrace neither baptismal regeneration nor spiritualization. The sign is not the thing signified, but is so united by God’s Word and Spirit that the waters of Baptism can be said to be the washing of regeneration and the bread and wine can be said to be the body and blood of Christ. To say that Christ is not in the water, bread and wine is not to say that he is not in the Baptism and the Supper, since both Sacraments consist of signs and things signified.
  16. A Word and Sacrament orientation touches our senses, but also fastens us to the reality which they offer beyond themselves. The Word consecrates the Sacraments, not transubstantiating the substances of bread and wine into body and blood, but making these visible signs means of grace. Unlike our own clever substitutes, the Sacraments lead us beyond the signs to the Lamb. Calvin goes so far as to stress the relationship between the physical character of the elements and our own bodies, suggesting that God “testifies his benevolence and love toward us more expressly by the sacraments than he does by his word” (Institutes 4.14.6).
  17. The Sacraments do not give us something different from the Word; rather, both conspire to give us Christ. We have no trouble when Scripture tells us that “the Word of God is living and powerful” (Heb. 4:12), or that the Gospel is “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 2:16). When we say that someone was converted by hearing a sermon, we are not attributing saving efficacy to language, or ink and paper in their own right. Rather, we are claiming (whether we realize it or not) that God has graciously taken up these human things and, by uniting them to the heavenly treasures, has made them effective himself. Precisely the same is true of the Sacraments.
  18. A Sacrament is distinct from other important spiritual disciplines not only because it is attached to a definite divine promise, but because it is God’s activity.
  19. Far from opposing Christian duties, the Sacraments make them possible. In such duties (prayer, talking to others about Christ, praise, discipline), we are the speakers and actors, but in Word and Sacrament, God is the one speaking and acting. There is a place for our response in grateful praise and obedience, but we can only be thankful after we have been given something and obedient after we are grateful. As the gracious indicative makes way for the imperative in the preached Word, the sacraments give and we bring nothing of ourselves but our cry for grace.
  20. This two-age model (“this present age” and “the age to come”) forms the horizon of the New Testament and our own Christian experience. Jesus presents this model (Mk. 10:30; Lk. 20:34), and it is found throughout the epistles. Hebrews 6 warns lapsed believers from committing apostasy by returning to Judaism and Gentile paganism. These are people who “were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come…” (Heb. 4-5). In the ancient Church, “enlightened” was a term for the baptized, while tasting of the heavenly gift most likely refers to Holy Communion. Through these means of grace, says the biblical writer, especially “the good word of God,” the members of the visible Church have actually tasted the powers of the age to come.
  21. Referring to moods in the Greek, the indicative is a declaration of what God has done and of who we are in Christ as a result. It defines us. For instance, if a neighbor going on vacation were to ask, “Is Fred a good person with whom to leave my pet Iguana?”, and Fred’s friend replied, “Fred is a veterinarian,” that reply would be indicative of Fred’s reliability. Similarly, when Paul asks, “Should we continue to sin that grace may abound?”, his answer is, “Heaven forbid! How shall we who have died to sin live any longer in it.” He goes on to ask, “Do you not know that you were baptized into Christ?” In other words, it is incongruous for a person who is baptized into Christ to go on living in sin so that grace may abound. Baptism into Christ defines the believer and has given him or her an entirely new identity. It is that identity that reorients behavior…

    Paul’s entire argument in Romans six rests on the fact that something has already happened. He does not say, “If you yield your body to righteousness, you will die to sin,” but rather, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him” (v.6). He does not say, “Make sure that sin does not master you,” as many believe that sin can master a so-called “carnal” Christian. Rather, he states, “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (v.14)….

    The objective determines the subjective, the divine announcement of what has already been done for and to the believer in Christ dictates the Christian life.

  22. For those of us who were raised in fundamentalist, evangelical or pentecostal sects, the experience of “rebirth” comes neither through the Word of the Gospel nor through the water of Baptism, but through a “Spirit Baptism” that is direct and immediate. The Word is primarily seen as an instrument for coaxing the individual into accepting the new birth. The new birth, especially if one judges by the testimonies of converts, is not so much the result of hearing with human ears, in human words, a declaration of things that happened in human history. In short, it is not so much the preaching of the Cross, but the preaching of “my personal relationship with Jesus,” the day when “Jesus came into my heart,” that is central. Lee again: “Whereas classical Calvinism had held that the Christian’s assurance of salvation was guaranteed only through Christ and his Church, with his means of grace, now assurance could be found only in the personal experience of having been born again. This was a radical shift, for Calvin had considered any attempt to put ‘conversion in the power of man himself’ to be gross popery.” In fact, “Rebirth in God is the exact opposite of rebirth into a new and more acceptable self, as the self-acclaimed born again Christians would see the event”
  23. In Baptism, we have been swept into the new creation and in the Supper we are actually fed with the body and blood of Christ as pilgrims on the way to the Promised Land, and yet, by promise already living there. How all of this actually happens, we cannot say exactly.
  24. The church consists not only of its officers, but of the totality of its members. It is this group of believers, priests in baptism and yet working in secular vocations, who call ministers to serve them.

“God cannot make us set forth one step….”

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Four hundred and fifty years ago, and twelve days and an odd number of hours (depending on the time in which the service was held), in Geneva, Switzerland, John Calvin preached on Deuteronomy 28.15-24. At the beginning of the sermon he explained why God not only encouraged with promised blessings, but warned with threats. This is what he said (according to his English translator):

We have seen the past several days how God entreats His people with promises. Now on the opposite side, He adds threats. And that is not without a good reason, for we see how slow we are when it comes to submitting ourselves to obeying God. Our feet are swift enough to run to evil, as the prophet Isaiah says (59:7), and as it is spoken of in the Proverbs (1:16; Rem. 3:15), but God cannot make us set forth one step to behave ourselves properly, and therefore we must be compelled to it by force. Nevertheless, God certainly begins with gentleness and goodness. And that is why He first sets forth His blessings to those that serve Him. He might very well have begun with threats, but He did not. In so doing He makes a test to see whether we are apt to be taught, by showing Himself fatherly towards us, and by making it to be seen that he seeks nothing other than our benefit, welfare, prosperity, and quietness.

His modern editor footnotes a statement in this quotation. He writes:

Did Calvin really say, “God cannot make us set forth one step to behave ourselves”? Maybe; at least his translator did. If so, this shows that Calvin was not such a stickler for precise language that he refused to use common jargon to get across his ideas. Everybody knew that Calvin believed in irresistible grace. Secondly, Calvin is speaking of God’s “inability” in a covenantal sense, not in a decretal sense. God is unable to get through man’s sinfulness by means of covenantal promises and threats; obviously, God is fully able to change men by means of regenerating grace. Calvin is not so focussed upon decretal theology that he is unable to speak freely about the covenant.

Professor of Church Hysteria

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I just heard a lecture that was, despite my low expectations, worse than I expected it to be in its portrayal of its targets, its use of Scripture, and its appeal to Reformed traditon. A pretty typical example is the point at which we are informed that the “federal visionists” all agree with a Tridentine anathema.

No, the anathemas within the Reformed Balkans (I can hardly say, “Reformed community,” can I?) are coming from a different quarter.

As a Reformed minister who gets sometimes tarred by the big black brush being waved so energetically in these dark days, I remind readers they are free to check out anything they like here or at my theological website.

I made the Ugly News Network

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Press I can be proud of.

But I think Horne is correct that the PCA will soon become “truly national and international and the archaic regionalisms [will] simply wither and die…” When that happens, we “racists” will want nothing to do with the PCA, and this will delight Mark Horne and many others.

No, it will delight just about everyone. And if anyone needed a reason to hope and pray and work for the PCA to grow into a more cosmopolitan and multicultural witness to the truth, if the Bible’s Great Commisssion is not imperative enough, perhaps this promised cleansing will give it to you.

By the way, apart from the obvious vileness here, has anyone thought of how inherently suicidal it is to identify oneself with a stop in history that is always receding in the rear view mirror on a one way street? Does anyone really think they could go back and fit in a Southern Presbyterian Church in 1845? Does anyone think “the South” really exists?

Of course it exists, Mark. Everyone knows that the culture in Alabama is different than the culture in Massachussetts.

Sure it is. And the history of these places going back to the antebellum period has a great deal to do with this difference.

But people think more than that. They think that “the South” now is the same thing that was there in 1845. But you can’t step in the same river twice, especially when it is now running in new courses with new feeder streams. Who is to say that the difference between present-day Alabama and present-day Massachussetts are more significant than the differences between present-day Alabama and 1845 Alabama?

What sort of continuity can Southern-partisans really claim? Agreeing with words that survived from writers of the period? Perhaps buying a couple of artifacts on Ebay? Dressing at costume parties? All that could just as easily be done with classical Greece. Ancestry and heritage are illusionary connections. It is all nothing more than a different sort of Society for Creative Anachronism, except the SCA is openly acknowledge as a hobby rather than a heritage. Do we really want the history of the Church driven by schisms that are nothing more than hobbies?

Regions shift all the time. Peoples appear and disappear with the vissicitudes of time and place, conflict and peace, immigration and emigration. To try to dig up some regional entity from the past and try to reanimate it is doomed to failure. The most you will get is a zombie.

The righteousness of God, 4

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God is a righteous judge,
And a God who has indignation every day.
If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;
He has bent His bow and made it ready (Psalm 7.11, 12).

David’s inspired lyrics do not sound very encouraging to modern ears–especially to modern Christian ears. The idea that God is a righteous judge is something we typically think of as threatening. If we are to be saved from God’s wrath we need protection from God the righteous judge. After all, David also sang, “do not enter into judgment with Your servant, for in Your sight no man living is righteous (Psalm 143.2).

The fact is that Christian believers can only avoid the fearful judgment of God because Jesus faithfully obeyed God and shed his blood on their behalf. Death is God’s curse on sin and Jesus’ blood demonstrates that the curse has already found a victim. If we belong to Christ then our sins have been dealt with on the cross.

However, many act as if this good news means we no longer have to deal with a righteous judge like David did. But this is not true. The fact that God is a righteous judge is precisely the hope of believers. Consider how the Apostle Paul uses David’s title for God in Psalm 7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (Second Timothy 4.7, 8).

The good news is not that we no longer deal with God as a righteous judge. The good news is that God through Christ as a righteous judge promises to forgive our sins and reward our labors. Even though we sin and must rely on the forgiveness of sins continually, if we fight the good fight, finish the course, keep the faith, then the Lord Jesus is saving up for us crowns of righteousness which he will one day award to us.

David was quite aware that God’s character as a righteous judge was his only hope. He fully expected God to reward his integrity just as Paul knew Jesus would. Consider the consider Psalm 7.8-11.

The Lord judges the peoples;
Vindicate me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and my integrity that is in me.
O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, but establish the righteous;
For the righteous God tries the hearts and minds.
My shield is with God,
Who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge,
And a God who has indignation every day.

Even in Psalm 143 in which David confesses he is not righteous, he still believes it is God’s righteousness that ensures that God will not bring him into judgment: “Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness! And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, for in Your sight no man living is righteous” (vv. 1b, 2). God’s righteousness, like his faithfulness, means not only that he punishes sins, but that he keeps his promises. If God has promised mercy to sinners then God’s righteousness demands that he show them mercy. If God has promised to reward sinners with crowns of righteousness if they fight the good fight, finishes the course, and keeps the faith, then as a righteous judge he cannot fail to award them with those crowns.

Of course, there is still reason to fear the Lord as righteous judge. How many people make a profession of faith at one time and then later abandon the Christian life? They need to wake up and remember the other side of Christ the Judge’s righteousness:

If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;
He has bent His bow and made it ready.
He has also prepared for Himself deadly weapons;
He makes His arrows fiery shafts (Psalm 7.12, 13).

TO BE CONTINUED

The best way to defend soteriological Calvinism?

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I had objections to the doctrine of predestination but, eventually, these were overcome. What happened is R. C. Sproul’s original (black hair, turtleneck, plaid pants) lectures on “The Holiness of God”powerfully reintroduced me to my own depravity and guilt. The new understanding of my depravity broke down my objections to facing the passages that talk of our need for God’s invincible grace. The new understanding of my guilt broke down my objections to facing the passages that spoke of God’s sovereign rights to have mercy on whom he chooses.

From that point on, I was sure that all objections to decreetal calvinism stemmed from an underestimation of our depravity and our guilt in comparison to God’s holiness.

But what if there are Arminians who are not concerned about such issues?

What if they simply want the cross of Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation in the Gospel to be as deeply revelatory of God’s nature as anything else in Scripture?

It was Athanasius, I think, who said we learned something more essential about God when we named him “Father” from the revelation of His Son, Jesus, than when we named him “Uncreate” from the revelation we find in creation. The point was that creation was God’s volition but that begetting the Son, and being begotten of the Father were eternal relations. God could have chosen not to create and would have been no less God, but he could never fail to beget the Son. Knowing the Son is the Son and the Father is the Father is a grasp of God’s essence much more than knowledge of God as Creator.

And here is the problem. Salvation is supposed to be a revelation of God. It can’t be given equal weight with the trinitarian relationships, of course; if God could choose whether or not to create then the cross could also be chosen or not. But, within creation and the revelation therein both special and general, when we compare the wrath of God to the love of God, wrath looks like it is more fundamental and more revelatory of God’s character.

Think about it. What do we know about God’s character? What must be true about God beyond any possible contingency? The answer is: God must inflict penal suffering on sin. What is fundamental about God is that he punishes. That he is loving and merciful is true, but it could just as easily not be in regard to sinful human beings.

From one angle, this all makes perfect sense. Mercy can’t be obligated, of course. But when it comes to understanding God’s fundamental nature, what it can sound like is that it would make no difference to who God is if he were to damn all creation. He would still be a holy and righteous God. (Come to think of it, inasmuch as Sproul’s lectures were intended to make the listener open to TULIP, the entire project was theological: to relativize love and make it subordinate to holiness. God can decide to be forgiving but fundamentally he must establish separation, control, perfectionism, and punishment.)

Every time a Calvinist tries to get an Arminian to see things differently, he might well be saying something that sounds quite different to the Arminian than what he intends. I have assured and do assure people every time the issue comes up that we should not be amazed that sinners are reprobate but instead should be amazed and thankful that any sinners will ever be saved. Soteriologically and legally this is fine. Theologically it sounds like we have no real revelation of God’s character in his salvation of sinners. The fundamental reality is wrath and the contingency is sometimes that wrath gets put on Jesus instead of the sinner. And this rhetorical gap only widens as we talk about who amazing it is that God saves, how suprising and how strange. Are the doctrines of grace a revelation of or an exception to God’s essence?

I have known of professing Christians who struggle with assurance for no apparant reason. I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a sort of existential or metaphysical angst. Yes there is grace and salvation but the bedrock character of God is punitive justice. Wrath is the fundamental metaphysic. And I think we see other problems cropping up in the Christian life, though if someone wishes to simply deny this, I have no argument to make. Recall Jack Miller’s query as to whether believers who affirm that God loves them are willing to concede that God likes them? Is our presentation of God’s love for sinners something like Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice? Does God confess that he loves us in spite of his better judgment and even against his character? Do we give that impression? Would it be good news if we did? Yet it is hard to know how we can affirm slavation as a gratuitous gift without risking sounding like this. Obviously God wasn’t obligated to forgive anyone. Nevertheless, there is tension present in affirming this. It sounds like we don’t know God and this may be the reason why the particularism of Calvinism is resisted.

Is it possible much promotion of calvinism is designed to distract listeners/readers from this problem? Of course, the distraction involves truths about God’s holiness, our sin, and God ability to save. No one is trying to be distracting. But when we find people resisting, maybe it is not because they want to believe they are less depraved than they really are or that God is less capable of salvation. Maybe they want to believe that God is love–that the giving up of his Son is just as revelatory of God’s character as anything else.

So what to do?

First off, I think we should beat Arminians to the punch in bringing up this objection. Let’s admit to it and face it.

Secondly, let’s say that, as powerful as such considerations are, exegesis still trumps our feelings. Of course, by that I don’t mean that our feelings are wrong. On the contrary, it is obvious from reading the Bible that God wants us to have those feelings. Rather, the point is that those feelings must somehow be compatible to what the Bible teaches about predestination and salvation. Even if everything doesn’t fit together as neatly in our minds, it still remains true that the Bible teaches God’s ultimate plan for all things, total depravity, unconditional election (nothing foreseen is the basis for it), limited atonement (God’s motive for sending Jesus was personal), invincible grace, and the preseverence of the eternally elect.

Thirdly, lets emphasize The Free Offer of the Gospel and Common Grace. Here John MacArthur’s excellent comments are a helpful corrective to a lot of hypercalvinism is a great help. But there is a lot of great stuff out there including John Piper, Robert Dabney, and, of course, John Calvin. A couple of things are important here:

  1. Creational Grace The difference between monotheism and everything else–atheism, pantheism, deism, or polytheism–is that the latter means that one can and should have ultimate grattitude and ultimate trust. Reality is not the product of chance, whether impersonal forces or competing personal agents, but a gift of grace. The awful truth of sin and reprobation is found in the fact that people have refused to given thanks and refused to trust (Romans 1.18ff). The background and presupposition of depravity is God’s initiating love.

    We believe that man was created pure and perfect in the image of God, and that by his own guilt he fell from the grace which he received, and is thus alienated from God, the fountain of justice and of all good, so that his nature is totally corrupt. And being blinded in mind, and depraved in heart, he has lost all integrity, and there is no good in him (Gallican Confession, Article IX).

    Everytime we tell of sin we have a chance to tell people of the goodness and love of God that we have and continually deny and distrust. This doesn’t answer every possible question one might have but it does reinforce the metaphysical reality that God is the giving God (James 1.5)

  2. The offer of mercy and grace is sincerely given to all who here it. Even in affirming that the resistance to God’s kindness will lead to perdition Paul does not hesitate to affirm that God’s kindness is intended to bring us to repentance (Romans 2.4, 5). We need to teach God’s decree but not allow it to be used to portray God as either insincere or stingy.

This won’t solve every issue, but it will help us all remember that an ontology of love is something that wrath must somehow fit into rather than love being an inexplicable raft on a sea of fire.

Fourth, lets remember the danger of relying on the printed word to persuade people of the truths of predestinaton and monergistic salvation. When people hear new doctrines (new to them) they have nothing but their imaginations to guess how these new principles would alter their lives. It is much better to introduce people to new communities where people can see that these truths are embodied in love. Otherwise, many may reject the doctrines of grace thinking that, in order to be in the image of God, they must be selective in their love. And worse, some who do embrace these teachings may miscalculate and become the charicatures we all want to avoid. (Think of John MacArthur’s words in the article linked above: “I am troubled by the tendency of some-often young people newly infatuated with Reformed doctrine-who insist that God cannot possibly love those who never repent and believe. I encounter that view, it seems, with increasing frequency.”)

Fifth and finally, when one sees photographs of people who lived their lives in the American frontier wilderness, one often sees people hardened by the elements. And, in our literature and moveies we often see those who survive scoffing at the “tenderfoots” and “soft” Easterners who pass by on trains. Let us not grow hard because we have mistakenly been thinking of reality as hostile, and if we have grown hard, lets not rationalize this by mocking Christians who seem more concerned about portraying a God who is generous than one who is the ultimate cause of all things. One shouldn’t have to choose between those options but if one does, it is not at all clear that one is superior to the other.

Why didn’t Elijah call Obadiah effeminate?

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From Jim Jordan’s “Elijah’s War with Baal”

In the third year — the year of judgment and resurrection — God told Elijah to show himself to Ahab. So, Elijah set out from Zarapheth in Sidon (he’d been hiding in Jezebel’s home territory!) and came toward Samaria.

He met Obadiah, Ahab’s Prime Minister, and told him to find Ahab. Here is how the conversation might have gone:

Elijah: “Well, behold the compromiser! Hey, puppy, tell your master I want to see him.”

Obadiah: “Listen, you fanatic! Because of you a lot of good people have been tortured and killed. Don’t call me a compromiser; I managed to keep a hundred of your fellow prophets alive after you left town! It’s extremists like you who make it harder for all the rest of us.”

Elijah: “Look, if all you softies would come out on the front lines and be counted, maybe we could accomplish something. But no, not you! You’ve got a cushy job with Jezebel. You want that nice retirement. As long as people like you stay in your liberal churches and try to `work in the system,’ we’re never going to get anywhere. Naked confrontation is the only way.”

Obadiah: “Oh, yeah? Well, let me just tell you something, Mr. Hero. Last month Ahab was about to put to death about five hundred of your people, and I talked him out of it. These people were under suspicion because of you and your activities. It was I who saved them. You’re needlessly stirring things up.”

Wait, wait! That’s not how it went, is it? Sadly, though, I imagine if a modern Elijah and a modern Obadiah met, that is probably how it would go.

You see, Elijah knew that he was only part of the solution, and so did Obadiah. God needed both the insider and the outsider. He needed both the prophet and the chamberlain. Is there something here for us, today?