One of the weird problems with correcting Arminianism and, to be crude about it, convincing Christians that Calvinism is true, is that they are easily vulnerable to other errors. I can’t prevent all such problems in one post, but I want to try to point the way forward.
READ MY POST: Biblical Calvinists Acknowledge That God Loves All People: Refuting a Pseudo-Calvinist Fallacy – Kuyperian Commentary.
As someone who has spent quite a number of years as a Christian portapottie servicer, Carl Trueman’s disdain for Kuyper and the “transformers” (though he oddly also holds Kuyper up as a standard for judging others) caught my interest.
READ THE POST: Be The Christendom You Want To See In The World – Kuyperian Commentary.
ONE
Jayn was awakened by the slop bucket being dumped from the window of the room above hers. The sound was not enough to fully rouse her, but the patron in the penthouse had been taken ill the night before and his chamber pot was extremely full. Some of the night’s results splashed on the her window sill and the gentle breeze wafting through the open curtains soon began to carry with it an odor that would not let her drowse. Most mornings the stifling air of Shard would have brought in a stench from the whole city all night, and Jayn, once successfully asleep, would not have noticed any additional aroma. But on this morning the wind had turned from the West, from the plateau country, from home, blowing down on the city.
So the stink was undeniable.
As her nostril’s twitched in her sleep, her eyelids did as well—rapid eye movement as her dreams shifted and she re-lived the Handed Grizz collapsing upon her as it died, suddenly leaking foulness. She was gasping for air and, as her father weakly tried to pull her out from under the corpse, every breath was an agony to her ribs.
Then she woke panting, fingers twitching for a knife that wasn’t there anymore. She whipped her head back and forth trying to understand why she could still smell the Grizzly even though she was in a small room lit by the morning sun coming through the one window, not in the Dagnex wilderness under a winter moon.
But that was two years ago. It was just a dream. The odor became less intense as the breeze died down.
She remembered where she was and got out of bed. Changing into work clothes meant allowing her night wrap to fall to the floor and then kicking it onto the bed. Then she grabbed the green linen long dress and pulled it over her head. It was a pretty color but was otherwise almost as simple as something Jayn could have made from a bag by cutting arm and head holes. Jayn had actually made such a garment for herself more than once. But this one was bought in the beggar’s district with slightly better fabric and slightly greater skill. Jayn had paid twice what it was worth because she felt sorry for the one-handed seamstress. It was only later, telling Pa-pah about it, that she learned one of the girl’s parents, or perhaps some other self-appointed famlord, had probably disfigured her hand to produce precisely that response in a soft-hearted customer.
This had made Jayn feel horrible and want to burn the dress, or do something even more hasty involving tracking the girl’s mutilator to introduce him (or her) to the Lord’s law of retribution. But her father’s wisdom had prevailed.
The remembrance made her glance at his sleep mat (he had insisted that Jayn use the one real bed in the room.) It had been rolled up and stood on an end in the corner by the door. Otherwise Jayn would be stepping on it as she stood in the room. “Where are you, Pa-pah?” She wondered. It was not surprising, if he awoke before she did, that he would leave the room and get his mat out of the way to give her some limb space for changing.
As Jayn pushed her feet into her boots, pulling them out to get her ankles past the hidden sheaths, the breeze revived and shoved thoughts about her father out of her mind. “That smell! Where?” Finally she glanced at window and saw the dark stain on the sill and the brown spots on the light curtains. She stepped toward it, not able to believe that a stranger’s excrement was painting part of her room.
And then she saw her father, walking along the cobblestone street with a package of brown paper in each hand. His green cape with the horrible brown cloth repair was unmistakable at any distance. She noted to herself that they both needed to learn to dress better if they were really going to enjoy their newly won wealth. Even staying in one room seemed silly now that their payday had arrived. Frugal habits had a way of clutching to you.
As Pa-pah walked past the space separating two greenish clay brick buildings, the sun hit his hair and lit it up like a ruby. Jayn briefly considered calling to him to grab a bucket of water on his way up. But then she thought better of it. He was bringing breakfast. She should go down and get the water. Her sister Rachel would tell her that was the right thing to do. Of course, Rachel was always insisting on that kind of work. No matter how busy she had been during the day, when she would see Pa-pah and Jayn arrive back from the hunt. She would wordlessly drop what she was doing and grab the bridles of the steedsaurs and lead them to the trough. Once the pump had been broken and Jayn witnessed Rachel hand carrying bucket after bucket of water to feed their steeds.
Then it happened—thought of Rachel and all else was swept away.
From the alley between the buildings that her father was walking by, Jayn saw something shadowy in the air above cast a semi-transparent shadow over her fathers. Suddenly he was rolling in to the main street, his arms at his sides. It took her a blink to figure out that a net had just been cast on him. It had weights tied to it’s edge. It settled completely over Pa-pah and the momentum of the weights had made him crumple at the knees and then totter over.
Jayn screamed.
Suddenly the dirt street that had been empty of all but her father was filled with almost two dozen people. Almost all of them were dirty and ill-dressed. Many were boys and a few were men—all male. A few, she didn’t count how many, had bows on their backs. There were two who came from an alley astride steedsaurs, the special-bred low-running quadrupeds that could be used more easily in the city. They both had coats with the symbol of the three moons on their lapels, all colored red and yellow. That reminded Jayn that she was seeing some tatters of red and yellow among some other members of the crowd.
One of the two mounted men spoke as the ruffians swarmed over her father’s prone body. Jayn thought she saw horns pushing out of his forehead from underneath his tight dull miktrin helm, but his arms, which were bare, seemed as pasty as anyone else’s in Shard, so Jayn assumed he was human. The horns must be part of his headgear.
“You are summoned to serve the Oman military. This summons is in accordance with the protection treaty between Ome and this city of Shard. You are henceforth to give up secular occupations and relationships and devote yourself wholly to the protection of Ome.” He spoke fast, so fast it was as if it were all one word.
Even a hintergirl like Jayn knew what the uniform of Ome meant. Before the officer had finished rattling off his message, she had grabbed her rig off the floor by the window and jumped head first out of it, being careful not to come into contact with the filth on the sill.
TWO
No one saw Jayn’s headfirst dive out the window. A witness would have thought she was an experienced city burglar. But she had only been in Shard for a week. Her instincts came from years of chasing small game through the cumulus trees that grew at the edge of the Dagnex. She had been chased once by a fanged glide-squirrel and discovered that she was able to leap and swing branch to branch twice as fast as she had thought.
She had looked out the window several times in the four days they had been in the inn. Jayn knew there was a clothes line on a pulley coming out of the wall, several forearms above the second floor balcony. Except for the stairwell landing, she had never been on the second floor, and had no idea if the balconies were off of private rooms or not. Hopefully she would be able to do her work quickly enough that it wouldn’t matter. Her left hand held the rig and she reached out with her right hand and grabbed the line. It cut into her hand and her shoulder jerked as her feet passed her head and pointed down to the floor of the balcony. Her skirt was flapping wildly and probably immodestly. Nothing she could do about that. Worrying about it would only slow her down.
Three stumbling men had rushed her fallen father as he lay wrapped in the net. One was beating him with a stick, no doubt hoping to convince him to hold still. The others (while trying to avoid the stick, and giving some commentary in curses about their efforts) grabbed the net to pull their victim somewhere.
On Jayn’s rig, three sheath-locked daggers of different sizes and shapes were most prominent. Not as prominent were the two pouches, both buttoned shut. One was light end shapeless; the other heavy and lumpy. From the light pouch, Jayn pulled a coiled rope that fluttered in the breeze when she grabbed hold of it and shook it out. And the breeze no longer stank to her. It smelled of home. She wondered if she would ever see it.
Focus!
Jayn dropped the rig to the balcony floor so she could unbutton the heavy purse without the contents dropping out. The flap opened to reveal dull metal objects shaped like small eggs with narrowed ends. She grabbed one and put it at the midpoint of her rope where there was kind of cradle shaped in spreading fabric. She grabbed the other end in the same hand and began swinging her weapon above her head. It traveled in a circle above her that had a radius of almost a stride.
The sling whistled familiar music to Jayn’s ears—an anthem of food on the table and sometimes the ballad of a last chance to save a life, her own or her kin, from becoming some creature’s meat. This was her first time hearing it in reference to a person. She was about to kill a man.
And she did.
The man with the stick somersaulted forward and lay still in the muddy street. This was the wrong target. The two who were dragging her father did not stop moving. Someone had come from the alley out of sight pushing a large wheel barrow among the mob. It only took seconds for Jayn to scoop up another lead bullet and get it swinging again, but she was losing time. Second shot collapsed one of the two who were putting her father in the wheel barrow, after he spun around once. But the other made the final push to get the netted bundle that was her father onto the wheel barrow. It started moving back the direction it had come, out of sight around the corner into the opposite alley alongside the other side of the inn.
Something dark sprang into view and Jayn bobbed her head over. A stone cut her ear as it passed by. It wasn’t pretty, but Jayn had felt pain before and she knew you had to keep going. She saw the young cutthroat who had pitched it. He had yelled as he threw so others were looking up to her place on the balcony. She noticed another ruffian unsling his bow.
This couldn’t work. Her father was already being wheeled around the corner and she would be dead or worse if she tried to go after him on the street. She needed to back away.
She scooped up her rig by the open pouch of bullets, hoping her grip would keep any from dropping out. As she did so she rotated and ran through the wide entranceway. It was a hallway not a private room. The second floor seemed designated to large rooms that could be rented. Right now all seemed deserted.
“Lucky.”
She ran down the hallway to what she guessed was the middle of the building where another hallway intersected. Then she turned left and ran down to another open doorway that led to a balcony just like the one she had left. Just as she got there the officer passed under. She ignored him and looked back at who else was coming down the street toward her.
Most of the members of the press gang were glancing behind them, as if Jayn’s attack had alerted them they were being assaulted back on the street. No one realized she was trying to flank them. Only one man was pushing the wheel barrow that was carrying her pah. He looked up and actually saw her standing above him whirling her sling over her head. Then his head shot back and his whole body was jerked backward to the ground. She grabbed her third bullet and was whirling again when she heard a foot step behind her.
Pivoting, Jayn had time only to notice a grinning face with a few yellow teeth and bare muscled arms. He must have run up the stairs by the front door. Redirecting her energy, Jayn struck at his head with her loaded sling as if it were a melee weapon. He ducked. She tried to lower her aim as the bullet came around again in its fast orbit. He put his hand up into the path of the sling well inside the cradle. The ruffian grunted in pain when it wrapped around his hand but he still pulled it away from her. She held on to her end but was no longer in control as he dragged her closer.
Then he grabbed Jayn by the bangs above her forehead with his other hand, yanking her back away from the balcony inside the doorway.
THREE
Her attacker obviously had hoped to punch her in the head as he held it in place. But while his left hand held a fistful of hair near the scalp—Jayn felt the pain later but didn’t remember noticing it at the time—his right fist was wrapped up in the sling. Jayn twisted it around her wrist two or three times so he only had a forearm of space to work with. By holding her arm stiff and straight out, the ruffian could not get a blow into her face—at least not one with his strength behind it. So he began yanking back and forth trying to escape the leash that held him back.
He was a young man dressed in a leather vest and a dark kilt. Strong both of of limb and of stench—the latter from the typical gutter aversion to bathing that was a matter of pride to many of the street thugs of the city. Jayn had slaughtered too many animals growing up to let the smell distract her, but she knew she only had seconds. He would free himself from that sling in a moment’s struggle and beat her to death, or else keep her alive and conscious to do worse.
“This would be a stupid way to die.”
She should never have let him sneak up on her. How could she, a huntress, be so stupid as to let herself get stalked like that?
She kicked up her knee toward the man’s groin. It was a predictable move and one the ruffian easily frustrated the kick by a slight turn of the hips. But Jayn was feinting. Both her boots had small sharp knives concealed in them. Bringing up her knee allowed her to reach one with the free hand. She had practiced the move a hundred times in a row in four sets, first the right boot and then the left, first the same hand and then the cross hand, every night she was on watch. In the dark she could not use her eyes to guide her so even now she could keep her gaze fixed on the mocking eyes of her assailant and not give him a hint of what she was doing with her hand.
If she attacked his face or belly he would have seen what was coming and probably dodged. A scar across the left side of his face told her he had already survived at least one knife fight. But she didn’t try to swing out away from her at him. He was holding her hair in a tight grip after all. The pulsing vein in his wrist was practically next to her left eye. And her small blade was sharp enough for a man to shave with without needing to wet his skin. She slid it upward fast, so fast he probably saw the blood spray before he felt the pain.
Jayn didn’t notice anything but that her head was now free. She swung around by the rope of the sling still binding her to her enemy as if she were dancing at a Ghanite wedding. She then pulled in just close enough to give his sling-entangled left wrist a slash to match his right one.
He screamed loud and pulled hard, finally getting his bloody arm free of the coiled sling. Then he turned and ran toward the balcony. He was going to leap over and hope his friends would help him with the bleeding.
That left Jayn now unhampered with a sling that still had a bullet in the cradle. But she first had to unwind the ends of it from her wrist, and she only had seconds to do so. In her rush she managed to dislodge the bullet from the cradle. It hit the floor with a thud. Her eyes were fastened on it, realizing that she would never get it back in and sling it around enough times to use before her opponent had escaped. Then she heard a wet sound and a responding gurgle.
She looked up in time to see the man fall backwards from atop the stone wall of the balcony clutching his throat. An arrow had pierced from just below his chin through the back of his neck. Blood began running down the pavement toward her. Whoever the architect was, he had really botched the job of leveling the floor. Three more arrows shot blind and high, glancing off the ironwood beam that ran across the top of the hall doorway leading to the balcony. The group below had realized that someone was attacking them from the building and they had at least four archers now on alert. If she had come forward with her sling to the balcony’s edge, her throat would have had the hole in it.
Jayn crouched down and scooted to her rig lying on the balcony where she had dropped it. Then she scooted back out of range and thought hard as she put it over her shoulder. Daggers and purses in place (she also wiped and replaced her boot knife), Jayn headed back down the passageway away from the balcony. There was no way she could venture over the balcony and the gang had probably already left that street behind. In any case, she couldn’t fight multiple bowmen, arrows nocked, with a weapon that required a moment of whirling over her head. She’d be a pin cushion before she could let the bullet fly. Her only chance was to descend to street level and leave through an exit on the other side of the building. Then she would need to travel in a wide circle and hope she could catch up with her Pa and his captors.
This early in the morning, the stairwell was only dimly lit by the skylight at the top of the fourth floor. Thinking of muggers, Jayne rested a hand on one of the daggers in her rig. But no attacker was lurking in the shadows. She passed into the lobby where the large, wide open windows let in more light and breeze. A maidserf was replacing the flowers on the tables, but there was no one else there except the concierge behind the counter. They made eye contact and Jayn nodded curtly at him, acting as if holding a sling ready to whirl was nothing that required an explanation. Then she strode through the hallway that led to the back entrance out into the street.
The back of the hotel was much filthier than the other side. The street running East-West was almost an alley except that this quarter of Shard was too busy and too crowded to allow for even this area to be left unused to commerce. Another maidserf was here with a mop wiping down the dusty ceramic sidewalk of the hotel. Across the street a short, stocky, bald man with a white goatee was sliding open wide doors to reveal his stock of clay idols and carved ivory charms. Jayn held her breath and jumped over the drainage ditch that ran along between it and the road. Looking to her left, she saw what looked like her crowd winding onto another road that went right. She could cut across this street to the alley and then hopefully catch up to them.
“Halt, by order of the patrol.”
The voice was calm, but Jayn immediately stopped walking and turned to face the source. There were two patrollers, both in the standard black leather armor under cloaks and wearing the masks. The insignia of Shard covered their torsos in red and blue—“blood and bruise” was the saying. She didn’t know which one had spoken. Both held crossbows casually at waste level, pointed in the direction of the ground at Jayn’s feet. Both crossbows were loaded and drawn.
FOUR
As calmly as she could, though she was panting from exertion and her heart was beating hard enough for her to feel: “As you order, Guardsmen.”
“Just say guards,” said the shorter one. Female voice. Jayne remembered overhearing hotel guests mention that was a recent change in the patrol and how it was not without controversy in the city. She nodded.
The taller one sounded impatient, perhaps with her or perhaps with his female partner. “Why are you carrying a loaded projector?”
The words were strange to Jayn. For a moment, she felt confused, not being able to take her eyes off the barbed tips of the bolts protruding from the crossbows. Then she remembered and glanced down at her right hand, still clutching the sling that dangled at her feet, the dull led bullet embedded in the cradle.
“Surely you know the city’s weapon limits.”
No projectile weapons. Jayn did know.
She dropped the sling and then to her knees, arms reaching up, palms out in local supplication form. “Please, I was not carrying. I have been attacked and was responding as is my right. I was in my room when it began and that is why I ran out with this—she gestured at the long strip of fabric with the bullet lying beside it shining with the reflected sunlight. My father, Sebastian Heerow, has been abducted by some mob. Slavers, I assume. He is a peaceful man—a trader here from the Highland Frontier. Please do not allow him to suffer this crime in The City Of No Night. I beg you to summon a posse.”
Jayn kept her head down in a posture she hoped would be taken for humility. The truth was that she feared her face would betray her. Slavers operating in broad daylight in Shard, even if early in the morning, was a claim that sounded like it came from over a half-century ago before the Oman settlement on soul commerce. But the last thing she wanted to tell the Patrol was that her father had been taken by an Oman Sea Host press gang. That too sounded outlandish because it was so rare. But it was also probably legal—a footnote in the peace treaty. The city residents would hate it—at least the steady ones. The dregs hired to actually participate were another matter. But no matter how much Ome was hated the city’s Patrol would never back her play if they knew this was a press gang.
Jayn made a mental note that she must forget she had ever heard the leader say the words of impressments to her father. All she saw was a mob nab her pah. That was her story and she must stick to it.
For the first time since the nightmare started she prayed. Silently.
“Lord hates lying lips. Let this be an exception.”
Continued from this post.
Frankly, if I write everything that I think is worth mentioning in Packer’s introduction, I am afraid I’ll never get to John Owen’s actual text. So I’m not sure how many more of these I will be posting before I jump into the book.
By the way, you can find Packer’s essay here (with one important difference I’ve noticed; see below).
Re-reading further, I am wondering how I could be so lacking in basic critical thinking or discernment.
Here is the point where I gave in to such an unholy thought:
The Spirit’s gift of internal grace was defined by the Arminians as “moral suasion,” the bare bestowal of an understanding of God’s truth. This, they granted—indeed, insisted—does not of itself ensure that anyone will ever make the response of faith. But Calvinists define this gift as not merely an enlightening, but also a regenerating work of God in men, “taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.” Grace proves irresistible just because it destroys the disposition to resist. Where the Arminian, therefore, will be content to say: “I decided for Christ,” “I made up my mind to be a Christian,” the Calvinist will wish to speak of his conversion in more theological fashion, to make plain whose work it really was:
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night:
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke; the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off: my heart was free:
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.”Clearly, these two notions of internal grace are sharply opposed to each other.
Packer sets up a basic theological contrast that I believe is correct. Because he is speaking at as a “Calvinist,” an Arminian might object. I haven’t kept up with Arminian responses lately, so you should bear that in mine. Nevertheless, from what I (think I) know, Packer isn’t saying anything too controversial.
But at the point where I inserted some boldface in the above quotation, his argument takes a surreal turn.
His argument can be summarized:
But Packer’s choice of Y is incredible. The hymn he quotes is from a notorious anti-calvinist and Arminian: Charles Wesley.
The web page of Packer’s essay unhappily leaves out the footnote wherein Packer acknowledges to the reader that he is quoting an Arminian. Here it is:
Granted, it was Charles Wesley who wrote this; but it is one of the many passages in his hymns which makes one ask, with “Rabbi” Duncan, “Where is your Arminianism now, friend?”
So then, with the footnote, here is the argument in all his glory:
Hello?
What Packer has just shown us is that at least one firm Arminian is not only prone (not just once but in “many passages”) to give glory to God in a way that Packer not only approves, but holds forth a a great example of the piety which he wishes us all to emulate.
And yet he continues on as if he has demonstrated a point in his case.
And when I read this as a recent convert to Calvinism I extolled this essay as pure gold that every Arminian should read to see how wrong they are.
Did I not know how to read?
I may have some ideas about how Calvinists and Arminians find it difficult to talk to one another, but this will do for now.
I found this article by Dr. D.A. Carson really difficult to understand or profit from. I simply don’t think the Kingdom of God should be such a difficult problem. The fact that it spawns such verbiage is itself evidence that there is something wrong with Evangelicals.
Can I, off the top of my head, convince you, the reader, that you cannot possibly have a general grasp of the Bible if the Kingdom of God is a riddle that remains to be solved?
Like most things, it begins in Genesis One. God creates the world by his sovereign word, but he does so with the intention of ruling through delegated sovereignty.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
So Genesis 1 is a story about, yes, a God who has power. But it is the story of the beginning of the Kingdom of Humanity–a kingdom that is at the same time the Kingdom of God. The whole point of the story of the Bible is that God prefers for us to exercise authority on his behalf rather than doing it himself.
READ THE REST: Do Evangelicals Need To Be Reborn? Reacting to D. A. Carson’s Article on the Kingdom – Kuyperian Commentary.
I have decided to re-read John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. I’m reading the Banner of Truth paperback scan with the introduction by J. I. Packer.
J. I. Packer makes it clear that the Gospel is at stake in John Owen’s defense of “Limited Atonement.” This is the kind of thing where, if Packer is right, then the issue is really important. But if Packer is wrong, then he is being highly schismatic.
I may deal more with that later. What I want to notice in this blog post is that Packer has what a reader could interpret as two different versions of limited atonement in the first few pages of his introduction. On page 4 he sets out the five points:
(1.) Fallen man in his natural state lacks all power to believe the gospel, just as he lacks all power to believe the law, despite all external inducements that may be extended to him, (2.) God’s election is a free, sovereign, unconditional choice of sinners, as sinners, to be redeemed by Christ, given faith, and brought to glory. (3) The redeeming work of Christ had as its end and goal the salvation of the elect. (4.) The work of the Holy Spirit in bringing men to faith never fails to achieve its object. (5). Believers are kept in faith and grace by the unconquerable power of God till they come to glory.
However, on page 7 he specifies that, the redeeming work of Christ actually accomplishes the salvation of the elect in a significant way.
Calvinists, however, define redemption as Christ’s actual substitutionary endurance of the penalty of sin in the place of certain specified sinners, through which God was reconciled to them, their liability to punishment was forever destroyed, and title to eternal life was secured for them.
In my opinion, the most natural reading of the second description–the understanding I remember deriving from these words when I first read Packer in my youth–is plainly wrong.
When Saul of Tarsus was on the road to Damascus he was chosen by God for eternal salvation, but he was also an enemy of God, liable to punishment for his sins, and had no title to eternal life. God had decreed to bring him to repentance and faith and union with Christ to grant him that title, but he had no claim on it yet. God had not given it to him yet.
On the formula offered above, if Stephen called out to Saul, as he saw him overseeing the garments of the Sanhedrin, and warned Saul he was under God’s wrath for his hardness of heart and violence against the Church, Stephen would be making a claim that was not true. The penalty for Saul’s past, present, and future sins had already been paid. The wrath of God was already satisfied for him.
The Westminster Confession contradicts this position:
God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them. (“Of Justification” – Chapter 11, paragraph 4).
I remember reading the Confession and yet never really thinking about what this paragraph was telling me. If memory serves (and it may be inaccurate) part of the reason I couldn’t really acknowledge this paragraph was precisely because I had read J. I. Packer’s introduction to The Death of Death by John Owen. It blinded me. I remember the recruiter from Westminster Theological Seminary, talking to me at Houghton College (late 80s) and mentioning that Arminians had no theory of the atonement at all. And I of course thought that made perfect sense at the time. Now I realize I had implicitly denied justification by faith.
What I find odd is that Packer wants to affirm a Trinitarian salvation. On page 6:
For to Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners. God–the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power, and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of the Father and the Son by renewing.
But if Jesus has already given us title to eternal life, and made us no longer liable to eternal punishment, then I don’t see how this Trinitarian salvation holds up. The Spirit then, is not working to achieve salvation but is, in fact, simply an effect of salvation. He works to prevent unregenerate unbelievers from dying and going to heaven because God has already removed his wrath from them.
I have other problems with this second description. Allow me to quote it again with the next sentence included:
Calvinists, however, define redemption as Christ’s actual substitutionary endurance of the penalty of sin in the place of certain specified sinners, through which God was reconciled to them, their liability to punishment was forever destroyed, and title to eternal life was secured for them. In consequence of this, they now have in God’s sight a right to the gift of faith, as the means of entry into the enjoyment of their inheritance.
That is simply not what Calvinists believe, it is not logically demanded from Calvinism, and (unless John Owen can prove otherwise) it is not biblical. People are not adopted at the cross–in billions of case, before they actually exist–and then discover the enjoyment of this inheritance later in life when they are converted to faith by the Spirit. Anyone who has memorized the Westminster Shorter Catechism knows this is the case:
Q. 34. What is adoption?
A. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of, the sons of God.
And when are we adopted? The Catechism gives us the time frame:
Q. 29. How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?
A. We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ, by the effectual application of it to us by his Holy Spirit.Q. 30. How doth the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?
A. The Spirit applieth to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling.Q. 31. What is effectual calling?
A. Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.Q. 32. What benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life?
A. They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption and sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them.
No one has legal benefits, rights, or privileges before God as unbelievers who are not justified, even though God has chosen them for salvation and sent Christ to die and rise for them with their salvation as the end or goal of that work. We become heirs when we repent and believe. We don’t do this ourselves, God’s Spirit gives us faith by grace.
Since Packer is declaring what “Calvinism” is, I’m going to suggest it might be helpful to go to the source. Here is John Calvin, Book 3, of The Institutes of the Christian Religion:
THE WAY IN WHICH WE RECEIVE THE GRACE OF CHRIST: WHAT BENEFITS COME TO US FROM IT, AND WHAT EFFECTS FOLLOW
Chapter I: The Things Spoken Concerning Christ Profit Us by the Secret Working of the Spirit
1. The Holy Spirit as the bond that unites us to Christ. WE must now examine this question. How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son–Not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.
Calvin’s words immediately line up with the Westminster Standards from a century or so later. They don’t work that well with Packer’s description of the work of Christ–the one he insists all Calvinists believe in.
This is not a book review because I have not yet read Reza Aslan’s Zealot. Allan Nadler is no inerrentist, but he shows quite well many of Aslan’s intellectual shortcomings–though I might quibble with Nadler later on. What I want to do in this post is equip people, whether Christians or unbelievers, on how to talk and think about “the historical Jesus” so they aren’t taken in by pretenders by Aslan.
The basic historical question about Jesus is this:
WHY DO WE REMEMBER HIM?
That question can be asked in many different ways, but the bottom line is, even if he was only a genius at PR, or even if only he had some highly influential follower who promoted him, something has to explain the fact that, out of all the people who lived in Palestine at that time, his name is known to us.
When people do historical research, they don’t want to conclude that something “just happened.” They want to provide intellectually satisfying explanations. So any theory of how Jesus arose in history has to meet that challenge. Otherwise, it only amounts to the guess that Jesus somehow got lucky.
When Jay and I started building our websit (which more or less became quiet due to battle fatigue) I had several things I put up in files. However, some things that I felt were valuable existed (for me) in hard copy only.
And I didn’t own a scanner.
Here is a list of things, according to my memory, which I hand typed into my PC.
I think that’s everything.
“In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sensual pleasure, and so loses the power of his own initiative.” –Abraham Kuyper
Let us imagine that there is a nation somewhere that is ruled by a wicked government. Let us further imagine that God doesn’t like the nation’s current regime and is looking for a way to change it.
You’re thinking, “But God is omnipotent so he doesn’t ‘look for a way.’”
Right, but I’m speaking of God’s actions within certain God-ordained constraints. God said he would not destroy Sodom for the sake of ten righteous persons (Genesis 19). So we can say, without denying God’s omnipotence that he was looked for an excuse to save Sodom and didn’t find it.
But what would be the God-ordained constraint that would make Him “look for a way” to replace a wicked government with another.
READ THE REST: Why Hating Government Keeps It In Power – Kuyperian Commentary.
I took most of the material from an earlier post on this blog:
This is one of my favorite Bible stories. It shows David trying to run an honest protection racket as best he can. The pressure must have been immense. Consider who followed David:
David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men. (1 Samuel 22:1-2, ESV)
I don’t think you want four hundred “bitter of soul” men with swords hungry and angry at you. Later, after the group had grown to six hundred (1 Sam 27.2), they almost decided to stone David to death because of a defeat they suffered under his leadership (1 Sam 30.1-6).
So David upon hearing that a rich farmer/rancher was not going to provide rations for his militia, immediately promised to exterminate him and every male in his company, referring to them by their capacity to urinate standing up. In other words he deliberately reverts to crude soldier talk that depersonalizes the people he plans to murder (Notice the ESV totally euphemizes what David says about the men he promises to kill).
Abigail, the wife of Nabal the foolish ranch and farm owner, intercedes. She makes two things clear:
Thus:
When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant. Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent. Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal. And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live. If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And when the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.” (1 Samuel 25:23-31, ESV)
David responds in part by frankly admitting that he was intending on committing the sin of homicide. “Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand!” Samuel 25:33, ESV) David doesn’t say his planned reprisal was justified he admits it would have left him guilty of what Abigail claimed: shedding blood “without cause.” He also admits that he, king though he may be, is supposed to allow room for the wrath of God, and allow YHWH to save him, rather than take his own vengeance. He should have trusted God to provide for his men and protect him from their anger.
So, in the past, I have seen this story as one with a happy ending. David turns away from murder and learns to not pillage even when he thinks he is being mistreated by a lack of hospitality. David has to somehow restrain himself from the real temptation of exercising power the way other kings would exercise it. And God vindicates Abigail’s word. God fights for David and kills Nabal once David has renounced his plan to commit his own vengeance.
So all’s well that ends well.
But the story doesn’t end well.
When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife. When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.
David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim. (1 Samuel 25:39-44, ESV)
The remark about Palti sets us up for one of the more sad scenes from David’s exaltation (2 Samuel 3.12-16). But apart from that, this story ends with David violating God’s commands for kings in Israel:
“When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. (Deuteronomy 17:14-17, ESV)
David, even in exile, is asserting his authority and kingly status by establishing a polygamous dynasty for himself. To David’s credit, it takes another generation for his precedent to work out to the full blown result in his son Solomon, whose heart is “turned away” by his wives. But it starts here. David thinks he knows what it means to be a king, and he has learned that it means to have several wives (and later concubines as well).
So did David really learn his lesson? I think the story ends with an ominous feeling. And it makes me re-read David’s own confession when he meets with Abigail:
And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.” (1 Samuel 25:32-34, ESV)
Again, David doesn’t say “male,” but refers to urination methods to identify which sex he was going to kill. Perhaps I’m overly suspicious, but it seems as if David is still posturing for the sake of his men-at-arms. And why spell out what would have happened as an oath before God? (“For surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives..”) It makes me wonder if David still wants to re-assure people that he would have done the deed, rather than simply confess to wickedness.
Hard to say.
But I can say that the story shows us David being prevented from one sort of self-aggrandizement but seduced by another.
Does this story have a moral for us? I suppose some people think one should never read an OT story moralistically. Here we see that David, as a type of Christ, but still stuck in the corruption of the Old Adam, falls short of the one to Whom he points.
OK fine. But I still think there is a moral.
Politics is an arena fraught with temptation that can be covered easily with self-deception. People can avoid one danger and fall into another. Beware.
