Framing the Debate

There is one truth that applies to all debates: consistency in itself is no real test of the truth. In one sense this is maddening. We naturally think that if we present enough evidence for our view the other person will eventually come around. We hope not only to survive a point/counter-point discussion to outlast an opponent’s best arguments, but also to one-upmanship him into a corner until he concedes that ours is the correct view. Setting aside for the moment whether we should even have such a competitive spirit, let us at least note that debates in real life seldom turn out so tidy. Most people are stubborn in their views and resist the idea of changing their minds even in trivial matters. When people are wrong they tend (wittingly or not) to adopt an additional lie to support the first lie, a.k.a. ‘maintaining the fiction.’ Reformed thinker Cornelius Van Til rightly points out how this additional lie is the adopting of a deeper, consistent irrationality in order to support an existing ‘rationality.’^vi

Consider the following example of maintaining the fiction. Suppose you meet someone who carries around an exact copy of your Bible and tells you he believes in God and everything written in God’s Word. To your alarm, however, you discover that he thinks nearly every word in the Bible means the concept God is a purple turtle in the sky. Every word from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 means this same thing to him except one verse, John 4:24: God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. This verse troubles him. You point out that the word ‘God’ in the Greek is the same word used in other verses in the Bible, and so ‘God’ must be understood to be a spirit in other Bible verses where He is mentioned. Your new acquaintance faces a choice. Either he must believe the truth you’ve shown him and move toward a better understanding of the Bible, or he must adopt a deeper irrationality to support his existing irrationality. Suppose he chooses the latter. Instead of conceding your point, he decides at length that every word in John 4:24 means the same thing as all the other words in the Bible. Consequently, every word of the Bible to him now means God is a purple turtle in the sky. He has moved to a position where he is now totally immune to your argument that God is a spirit. So here’s the question: Is he any less consistent in his theology than you are in yours, even if you believe the truth of the Bible at every point, and he believes a lie? No, he is not less consistent. Both of you can cite chapter and verse, discuss hermeneutics, profess to believe in the plenary inspiration of God, etc., and yet be equally consistent in presenting your opposing views.

As we delve, then, into the remainder of this book it should be remembered that both supporters and critics of Calvin can make rebuttals to every major and minor point the other side makes. Verses are interpreted with different meanings, and even the most fundamental qualities of God, including His moral character, are understood differently. As both sides offer opposite definitions of God’s sovereignty, both sides cannot be right. I find it personally discouraging to think that either side has built an edifice of error, i.e., that one group is furthering the fiction each time their system is challenged. One would have hoped professing Christians would be of the same mind and arrive at the same definition regarding God’s sovereignty, but such has not been the case since at least the time of Augustine in the 4th century. I urge my readers to therefore prayerfully consider the arguments in this book, since they will decide for themselves what is the Spirit of truth, and what is the spirit of error.

He Loves Me. He Loves Me Not.

My own journey in working through the issue of divine sovereignty took years. After graduating from a Reformed Christian college where I had come to believe that God could only foreknow history if He had predetermined it, I proceeded to graduate school where I soon faced a quandary. Periodically, I sat at a cafeteria table across from a friend of mine I’ll call ‘Susan,’ and this young woman asked the same vexing question of us Christians every time we urged her to consider Jesus. Knowing we were Calvinists she concluded every discussion in the same melancholy way: “But what if I’m not predestined to be saved?” Her gaze was penetrating, a bit exasperated, and she always spoke with a dead earnestness that belied the possibility that her skepticism was tinged with any secret hilarity. What was I to say?—Yeah, Susan, maybe you’re right; maybe you are damned for all eternity and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. In fact, all of this was settled long before you and I were born.

Needless to say, this unsettling experience helped me to eventually make a de novo review of everything I believed about the sovereignty of God. And in the process of studying this issue I learned something else: I decided every Calvinist ought to forge his views while sitting across from someone claiming to represent the majority—i.e., the warm-blooded damned who may be no more worse than himself, before he accepts Calvin’s theology in the detached, cooler climate of a seminary classroom. And so at length I began asking myself questions: Was God’s control over all persons, events, and history as absolute as I had been taught? Was that idea really represented in the Bible? Or again, would God cease to be God if He allowed someone to supersede His will? Who indeed was God in the plainest terms, and how did He interact with His creation and people?

Despite being raised essentially as a free will Baptist in a Methodist-background church, I eventually came to understand as an undergraduate student why someone would become a Calvinist. The Scriptures supporting John Calvin’s view of God seemed ironclad and inescapable. The list of passages teaching God’s total and absolute sovereignty was a long and compelling list: God worketh all things after the counsel of His will; All things work together for good to them that love God; For whom He foreknew He also did predestinate; Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, Who art thou to reply to God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?; I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will harden whom I will harden; …vessels of wrath fitted for destruction; As many as were ordained unto salvation believed; etc. I had conceded in my early 20s that Calvin must be right, for how else could God foreknow history unless he had already predetermined what events should transpire? Ironically, after a handful of years I left Calvinism after examining more carefully this same ‘reason.’ I eventually came to understand that predeterminism, at least as John Calvin and his disciples understood it, led to a theology of inconclusiveness. By taking into account all of Calvin’s statements about God’s sovereignty, and not just some of them (here and then there), I found that nothing conclusive could be said about the moral character of God, the moral and existential statuses of man, or even whether good and evil were morally separable. As I now hope to show, the reason Calvinists do not come to these same conclusions is because they embrace a theology whose fundamental component is a contradiction that cannot lead to conclusions. As this statement is a serious charge against Calvinistic theology, we must see if it can be reasonably sustained.

______________________________________________________________________

^vi Van Til, Cornelius. The New Modernism. (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1947; 2nd edition). In his evaluation of Kierkegaard’s effect on Barth and Brunner, Van Til notes that Kierkegaard intensified the pace of irrationalism brought on by Georg Hegel by a more consistent application. Says Van Til: “It follows that Kierkegaard’s charge against Hegel, that he had placed movement in logic or formed an existential system, is tantamount to saying that Hegel had, in spite of his best effort, not made brute fact brute enough, or contingency contingent enough. And this logically includes the charge that Hegel had not made abstract logic abstract enough. That is to say, Kierkegaard sought to cure what he called Hegel’s rationalism by an administration of still more irrationalism; but in order to make this administration, he must himself be a still greater rationalist than Hegel was.” (p. 54). Hence, Van Til sees in the neo-orthodoxy of Barth the carrying through of Kierkegaard’s consistent application of irrationality: “Each time a philosopher or theologian becomes more irrationalist than his predecessors, he becomes also more rationalist. Such, we have noted, was the case with Hegel and with Kierkegaard. Such is, we think, also the case with Barth.”(p. 68).

“The first question, almost anywhere, as it was at Harvard, too—’How can you talk about the existence of an all-loving and an all-perfect God, when there is so much of evil in this world? Does it not strike you as contradictory?’ “

—Christian apologist and university guest lecturer, Ravi Zacharias, responding to D. James Kennedy about the most frequently asked questions by university students.

*** 

“If the believer finally sees himself obliged to speak of God’s ‘inscrutable decrees’, he is admitting that all that is left to him as a last possible consolation and source of pleasure in his suffering is an unconditional submission. And if he is prepared for that, he could probably have spared himself the detour he has made.”

—Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

***

CHAPTER ONE

The First Problem of Theology

When Anne Darwin died at age 10 after a two-year struggle with the aftereffects of scarlet fever and suspected tuberculosis, it had a tremendous impact on her father, the naturalist, Charles Darwin. According to the eminent Darwin scholar, E. Janet Browne:

Anne was … the apple of her proud father’s eye, his ‘favourite child’, he confessed to (his friend and cousin William Darwin) Fox. More than any of the other children she treated him with a spontaneous affection that touched him deeply; she liked to smooth his hair and pat his clothes into shape, and was by nature self-absorbedly neat and tidy, cutting out delicate bits of paper to put away in her workbox, threading ribbons, and sewing small things for her dolls and make-believe worlds.ⁱ

Charles was so overwrought with Anne’s death that he could not bring himself to attend his daughter’s burial or visit her grave.ⁱⁱ Brown, in fact, claims that the traumatic impact of Anne’s death led Darwin to become an atheist.ⁱⁱⁱ Seven years later, and despite his lingering regrets over how his Christian wife, Emma, might be affected, Darwin published his landmark book, On the Origin of Species. In it Darwin outlined his new theory of nature in which species evolved in a natural world through natural processes. Not at all confrontational himself, Darwin would leave it to his disciples to figure out the implications his theory would have on religion. But it was plain from the first that Origin left little necessity for a personal God who claimed to have an abiding interest and love for His creation.

Such tragedies as the death of Anne Darwin or of any child remind us that the first problem in life, as in Christian theology, is the problem of evil. The question persists: Why do bad things happen in the world if God is truly sovereign and good? Indeed, what answer can we Christians give to one who has lost a child to disease, a loved one to violent crime, a house to a flood, or a career to unjust office politics? How do we tell people that many Evangelicals believe that all these experiences are ordained and predestined by a loving Providence? Well-known Christian pastors and/or authors, such as James D. Kennedy, Charles Stanley, John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll, R.C. Sproul [all of whose ministries, by the way, I have personally benefited from (esp. Dr. Stanley’s)], and a host of others too numerous to mention, have represented a rising tide of pastors and theologians across the conservative, denominational spectrum who explain the problem of evil along the line of John Calvin and his disciples. For God to be God, the argument goes, He must be in control of everything at all times. For God to allow someone or some thing to supersede His will at any point would mean that God ceased being God. If the internet is any judge of the preponderance of this view among today’s Evangelicals, John Calvin’s view is by far the dominant one.

Calvin’s view on the predestination of all events is not without its controversy, of course. Not many folks, Christian or otherwise, feel at ease with the idea that God has chosen some people for heaven, ’sovereignly passed over’ others for hell, and is doing it all for reasons known only to Himself. Nor under the umbrella issue of God’s sovereignty, in which the subjects of Foreknowledge, Election, Predestination, and Adoption have been debated, has the problem of evil gone away for the Calvinist. In fact, the idea of God’s sovereignty is so problematic that its notoriety has sometimes reached beyond Christian in-house debates. Here I recall a certain multiple-choice SAT question during my high-school days in the mid-70s. It asked me to define ‘the paradox of Christianity.’ I didn’t feel comfortable with answering a question that assumed Christianity rested on a fundamental contradiction, though I knew the test answer was B) the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. So entrenched, apparently, was Calvin’s view of the sovereignty of God, that even the public education-minded SAT examiners assumed no distinction between Christianity and Calvin’s understanding of Christianity. It was as though other biblical interpretations did not exist.

When I said a moment ago that Calvin’s explanation of evil is ‘problematic,’ I was only saying what at least one Calvinist himself has already stated. Popular speaker and Reformed theologian, R.C. Sproul, in his book, Chosen By God, admits with candor:

Surely the most difficult problem of all is how evil can coexist with a God who is both altogether holy and altogether sovereign. I am afraid that most Christians do not realize the profound severity of this problem. Skeptics have called this issue the “Achilles’ Heel of Christianity.” . . . For years I sought the answer to this problem, scouring the works of theologians and philosophers. I found some clever attempts at resolving the problem, but, as yet, have never found a deeply satisfying answer.^iv

Elsewhere in his book, Sproul claims that he also came to discard such analogies as “parallel lines meet in eternity” that were being used by some Christians to explain the paradox of Calvinism.^v

Regardless of whether one is an adherent or critic of Calvinism, the problem of evil is admittedly a tough question. Moreover, sometimes the Bible is hard to understand on difficult issues. The apostle Peter himself said that some things in Paul’s writings were ‘hard to understand,’ and it is primarily in Paul’s books that the subjects of Foreknowledge, Election, Predestination, and Adoption are discussed. But there is hope in Peter’s phrase. The fisherman-turned-apostle said that some of Paul’s writings were hard to understand, i.e., he did not say they were impossible to understand. Unfortunately, today’s evangelicals appear to believe that the problem of evil is impossible to understand. Doesn’t the Bible, they say, tell us that evil is a mystery? Aren’t God’s ways inscrutable and His judgments past finding out? Shouldn’t we just embrace the seeming contradiction that God decides what events shall happen, yet not be blameless for the evil events that happen?

Notwithstanding the widespread support for Calvin’s theology among today’s Evangelicals, this book contends that Calvin’s teachings on the sovereignty of God and the problem of evil are biblically incorrect (and therefore dangerous to the Church). This book also argues that Calvin’s views have so decimated Evangelical apologetics that rational debate on the issue of divine sovereignty is hardly understood within Evangelicalism anymore, even by many pastors and teachers. Furthermore, this kind of Calvinistic model has led to an inability to express true biblical Christianity to those outside (or even inside) the Evangelical faith. What is offered instead is a confusing amalgam of believing in Christ and believing for believing’s sake, since, in the case of the unbeliever, he is asked to entrust his soul to the same ‘caring’ God who is said to have foreordained all the animus of human experience, including Hitler’s fascism, Stalin’s communism, religions that oppose Christianity, and whatever other atrocities and contradictions history may offer. Thus despite all the confident-sounding rhetoric Calvinists make about keeping God safely ensconced in His own sphere of Being, what has largely taken place within Evangelical apologetics is a complete breakdown of definition. The result is an Evangelical apologetic where God is no longer distinct in His person or His moral character.

______________________________________________________________________

ⁱ Browne, E. Janet. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Darwin].

ⁱⁱ Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition, 1994).

ⁱⁱⁱ Browne, E. Janet. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Darwin]. [Note: Darwin himself claimed he was agnostic, not atheist.]

iv Sproul, R.C. Chosen By God. (Wheaton, Illinois; Tyndale House Publishers, 1994). p. 28.

^v Sproul pp. 39-40 “The more I thought about the analogy the more I realized that it did not solve the problem. To say that parallel lines meet in eternity is a non-sense statement; it is a blatant contradiction… I don’t like contradictions. I find little comfort in them. I never cease to be amazed at the ease with which Christians seem to be comfortable with them. I hear statements like, “God is bigger than logic!” or “Faith is higher than reason!” to defend the use of contradictions in theology.” Despite appearances, Sproul fails to spot contradictions consistently, and ultimately defines various terms (such as Augustine’s bogus distinctions between “free will” and “liberty”) irrationally, so that, in effect, “free will” equals (so to speak) parallel lines, while “liberty” equals the intersection of parallel lines in eternity. Much of Sproul’s methodology follows a system whereby synonyms (free will and liberty) or chronologically simultaneous events (becoming born again and becoming a son upon believing) are defined differently in order to allow for dialecticism. In the former example, for instance, Augustine does not use the same exact word twice, and Sproul allows this trick to fool him into accepting Augustine’s argument that free will exists in a system that is absent liberty. And so I find it ironic that Sproul is upset about the ease with which Christians accept contradictions.

Archive for the ‘Table of Contents’ Category from the book.

Table of Contents
Saturday, February 28th, 2009 by dangracely

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: The First Problem of Theology ………………………..p. 32

Charles Darwin and the problem of evil. How many Evangelicals assign all events to God’s ‘absolute sovereignty,’ but then try to excuse Him from the problem of evil. Why a better answer is needed.

CHAPTER TWO: Framing the Debate ………………………………………p. 36

Why consistency of viewpoint is no test of the truth.

CHAPTER THREE: Defining Doublethink ………………………………..p. 40

The dangerous contradiction of believing two ideas that are diametrically opposed to each other. How Evangelical apologetics has resorted to this ‘foundation’ of doublethink. How doublethink is recognized even in some secular literature as a precarious problem.

CHAPTER FOUR: Dialecticism: Like a Rocking Horse …………………p. 51

How the positing of God’s absolute sovereignty and man’s free will form a contradiction, and how it parallels Hegelian relativism. Its similarity to a rocking horse ride, as described in my own experience as a former believer in God’s absolute sovereignty.

CHAPTER FIVE: Man and the Origin of Sin ……………………………..p. 63

The agenda of God and the addendum of man. How God wanted Joseph to be sold as a slave, but not through the sinful jealousy of his brothers. What the word “it “ means in the statement, Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.

CHAPTER SIX:Translation as Interpretation …………………………….p. 68

How the ‘passive’ participle “fitted” in Romans 9:22 (vessels of wrath fitted for destruction) is spelled the same way in the middle voice in Greek, and what it suggests for interpretation. How the traditional interpretation of Romans 8:28 (in the KJV) is in conflict with 2 Corinthians 6:14-15. The biblical importance of maintaining the first principle of logic (A cannot equal non-A ) when approaching the issue of God’s absolute sovereignty.

Interlude: A Personal Journey ………..p. 81

CHAPTER SEVEN: Is Divine Sovereignty One or Two Wills? ………..p. 84

How Calvinism is irrational, since it claims that God’s sovereign will directs all events, but not sinful events. Examining Jerry Bridges’s claim that God is blameless, since man’s disobedience is merely against God’s revealed will. How Calvinism thus posits the contradiction of two different wills, i.e., an absolute sovereign will and a revealed will, while saying there is only one (absolute sovereign) will.

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Importance of Context ………………………….p. 89

How false assumptions are made by taking Scripture out of context, and how they give an appearance of supporting the Calvinistic doctrine of divine, absolute sovereignty. Taking Lamentations 3:37-38 out of context, as seen in Jerry Bridges’s book, Trusting God Even When It Hurts.

CHAPTER NINE: The Limits of a Sovereign God ………………………p. 97

Job 1—2 discussed to show that God was incited by Satan, and that Job’s trials were not God’s ‘perfect plan’ for him. The Devil’s specialty—presupposing and accusing his enemies of selfish motive. How God is thus accused of bribery if He blesses man, or accused of mean-spiritedness if He judges him.

CHAPTER TEN: Does God Rule OVER or IN Everything? …………..p. 115

Biblical passages explored where God is present but not directing specific weather events. The reason Calvinist-leaning pastors are glad to promote God’s sovereignty. The Church’s dismissal of certain gifts of the Spirit, such as proclamation and knowledge, which are designed to protect the Church from false doctrine. How Loraine Boettner and R.C. Sproul exemplify Christians who ought to operate within their own spiritual gifts and not try to usurp other gifts for which they are not fit.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Does God Control Everyone’s Heart? …………p. 144

More examples from Jerry Bridges designed to prove that God’s sovereignty reigns over the hearts of kings and therefore over the hearts of everyone else. How the (generically considered) king of the Solomonic Proverbs and Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, are taken out of their biblical contexts to try to prove that God is absolutely sovereign.

CHAPTER TWELVE: Does Voting Count in God’s Election? ……….p. 159

Comparisons in Romans 9 which show Paul’s attempt to continue his Romans 4 argument about the distinction between grace and works. The contrasts are 1) unbelieving Israel with believing Israel; 2) Abraham’s behavior prior to the birth of Ishmael versus Abraham’s subsequent behavior surrounding the birth of Isaac; 3) Ishmael with Isaac; 4) Esau with Jacob; 5) Pharaoh with Moses; and 6) vessels of wrath with vessels of mercy. God’s ‘election’ specifically stated as conditioned not upon works, but upon His calling. How this calling is biblically defined not as bare calling, for such calling must assume the provision of the Son, which Paul does not expressly state, but which must be assumed if the calling is be effective. So too, by extension, may it also be inferred that the Provision may be received, i.e., as demonstrated by Abraham’s faith (Rom. 9:7-8), as suggested by the context.

***Also, how Ray Stedman’s quote about Jacob essentially ignores Jacob’s personal faith. How personal faith in Christ is possible because man can choose between good and evil. How Jesus’ statement in John 6:44 about a man who cannot come refers to 1) man’s actual inability to provide his own atonement; 2) man’s willful inability to come due to his stubbornness; and 3) the Father’s protocol by which man may come toward the Son, contrasted (earlier in John 6) with the human protocol of man coming to the Son to make Him King, to gain for themselves miraculous daily feedings of physical food, while yet ignoring their own spiritual needs. Actual inability vs. willful inability distinguished. Paul’s statement in Romans 8:5-8, meaning that the mind set on the flesh cannot come, and how this refers merely to the impossibility of seeking God and sin simultaneously. Thus, how can a man come, if he is unwilling to come (as exampled in principle by another question—How can a man be a good husband if he is unwilling to be a good husband?). Further, how may (Gr. dunamai) a man come to the Son unless it be according to the Father’s, not man’s, protocol? For the Father’s protocol was that the Son should be lifted up on the cross to draw all men to Himself. This way man could take of the Manna from heaven and not live by physical bread alone. But man’s protocol was (and is) far different. It is seen in the multitude described in John 6, who, having received a miraculous feeding from the Son, intended to take Him by force and lift Him up immediately to Kingship (apart from the cross). For, as Jesus noted, they sought to live by physical bread alone (see John 6, esp. vss. 15, 26-27).

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ‘We Had to Destroy that Village to Save It’ p. 194

What the Bible really says about man’s sinfulness. Simon the Pharisee as an example proving that all men do not sin uncontrollably or intend to sin to the same extent. Acts 2:15-16 showing that even Gentiles justly excuse one another (in some sense) according to a proper conscience. Total Depravity (which denies the ability of a man to choose good) as an unbiblical view. Calvinism’s meaningless distinction between Total and Utter Depravity. How the words draw, drew, and dragged in the New Testament and Septuagint show a distinction in forcefulness regarding God’s drawing of men to a consideration of the cross (Jn. 6:44), compared to God’s haling of a man before Him in judgment (Lk. 12:58). How the word called means “to invite” in the phrase, Many are called, but few are chosen (thus, who truly invites by irresistible coercion?). How Calvinists conversely believe that God’s calling is a unilateral act of irresistibility (force). How this leads them to say that a man’s desire has been changed, when in fact it has been negated. Thus, a man’s new ‘desire’ is nothing other than the construct of God forcefully applied. How this defines ‘man’s mind’ as merely God’s constructs upon a certain physical creation. How the man, for that matter, could be a laundry basket for all the distinction that Calvinism requires. How such a view equates man’s mind to God’s.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Pharaoh and the Hardened Heart …………p. 242

The Calvinistic doctrine of Reprobation examined. How God’s foreknowledge actually includes contingent histories (Mt. 11:21), and how Calvin, Luther, Edwards, and Pink all conversely claim that God has foreknowledge solely because he has predetermined what shall come to pass. The clever but misguided lingual method of argument Calvinists employ to justify their general position.

Examining how three distinct Hebrew words were improperly reduced to meaning one English word, i.e., to harden, in the KJV exodus narrative. The idiomatic use of language that describes God as the causal agent in events where it is contextually understood He is merely allowing others to act in deference to His wishes (Job 1—2; 1 Ki. 22). The significance of God ‘hardening’ Pharaoh’s heart at the exact point when Pharaoh’s magicians could no longer stand before Moses. Two outlines showing the three Hebrew words that were translated ‘to harden’ as they occur in the exodus narrative.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Potter and the Pot ………………………….p. 308

A.W. Pink in an extended quote describing Pharaoh and the doctrine of Reprobation. Why Pink’s five points supporting Calvin’s view of reprobation are unbiblical. How Pink (unwittingly) uses a subtle lingual method to achieve irrationality. How Calvinists ignore the detailed contexts of Isaiah 29, 45, and Jeremiah 18 when interpreting Romans 9. How the Old Testament metaphor of pots on a potter’s wheel is contextually understood as God acting in instances of judgment against man’s will, not in eradicating man’s will through divine, irresistible force or decreeing all phenomena. The connection between ‘yet’ in Romans 9:19 (Why doth he yet find fault) with the word ‘endured’ in Paul’s answer ([So] what if God endured vessels of wrath…?).

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Predestination Unto Adoption …………………p. 366

How the Bible defines “adoption” in Romans 8:23 as the future glorification of the body, which believers who already have the firstfruits of the Spirit await. The proper doctrine of adoption as explained by Andrew Telford and T. Pierce Brown in extended quotes. How adoption in Galatians 4 cannot mean ‘a coming into God’s family’ without the term ‘heir’ flip-flopping in adjacent verses to mean an unbeliever in Galatians 4:1. How predestination pertains to the future glorification and inheritance of believers, not to unbelievers ‘coming into the family of God.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Some Remaining Questions ……………….p. 406

Certain important biblical passages not addressed elsewhere in this book discussed here in Q & A format. These include John 15:15 (Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you); Acts 13:48 (As many as were ordained unto salvation believed); and Acts 4:26-30, where a fine distinction is drawn between the idea that everything done by Herod et al. was predetermined by God, and the fact that God determined everything they should do. Also, what the phrase to will means in Philippians 2:13 (For it is God who worketh in you to will, and to do of his good pleasure), and what the Greek words thelo and boulomai respectively mean.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Freedom of the Will ……………………..p. 448

Examining whether man is born with a sin nature that 1) guarantees a deterministic condemnation and 2) predetermines his moral intentions. Observing whether there is any theoretical difference between man inheriting a sin nature and man inheriting the knowledge of good and evil. Romans 5:12-21 and the doctrine of Original Sin examined. The correlative conjunction, and epi ho, in verse 12. Pauline context of “flesh.” Psalm 51:5 discussed.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Jn. 1:13’s Historico-Grammatical Context ..p. 544

Why the phrase in John 1:13 “not of bloods nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man” indicates three categories of essential distinction, and how these categories are not maintained in traditional Evangelical interpretation. The importance in understanding that (a) the historical-grammatical approach to the biblical interpretation of John 1 is necessary, and (b) John’s intended audience involved Greeks. Why, in one aspect of flesh’s polyvalent meaning, the word “flesh” ought to remain essentially consistent between verses 13 and 14. Why an accurate interpretation of this verse does not support the Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity.

CHAPTER TWENTY: Calvinism and Other Pseudologies …………….p.573

The similarities between Calvinism and certain other mystical theologies and ideologies (pseudologies). How such ideological systems (when correctly critiqued) reveal that their propositions were put into an untestable realm, so that belief is based on belief’s sake only. Some comparisons between Calvinism and certain ideologies, including Latter Day Saint theology, evolutionary theory, Existentialism, Catholicism, Multi-culturalism, and Eastern mysticism. Also, the common problem all ideologies face—the problem of the One and the Many.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: Answering the Problem of Evil ………..p. 596

A case history of whether God foreordains all human activity. Also, various arguments by Reformed professor James Spiegel considered, such as (a) whether God could have created a universe in which men could only choose good, and (b) the idea that evil does not have absolute being. The call for all Evangelicals to recognize that man is the uncaused, first cause of his sin, that God rules over all things, not in all things, and that only with this understanding can Evangelicals really know that God is removed from the problem of evil.

SUPPLEMENT: On John Piper’s “Are There Two Wills of God” ….p. 620

Piper’s failure to distinguish between the wicked of Ezekiel, who are described as able to repent, and the wicked of Deuteronomy who are described as beyond remedy because of their unrelentingly stubborn will. Also, the wicked two sons of Eli whose worthless behavior in their positions of high responsibility made divine judgment appropriate. Similarly, the importance of understanding that “death” in the phrase “the death of the wicked” refers in Ezekiel to “the sinner’s way” prior to divine judgment whereas the context of Deuteronomy shows that the word “death” in the phrase “death of the wicked,” if we are to introduce that thought into the context of Deuteronomy 28, would refer to “the sinner’s way” under divine judgment. Examining Piper’s view that God damns some in order that He might save others. The assumption by Calvinist commentators to take all appearances of Gr. hina (that) as referring to irresistible Divine decree. Why the use of irony in Scripture in cases involving fulfilled prophecy at God’s expense requires the conjunction hina instead of kai. Piper’s refusal to recognize contradiction by calling it “different,” not “contradictory.” Piper’s definition of not from the heart (reluctance) as non-compassion. How Piper’s theology of two divine wills enables Evangelicals to move toward ecumenicalism, since (as shown by Piper’s irrational, theological method) a theology may contradict the Bible but merely be regarded as ‘different,’ not ‘contradictory.’ How Paul speaks of false teachers who were not even aware of what they affirmed.

Footnotes Within Footnotes: …………………………………………………p. 705

Calvin’s espousal of parental-transferred depravity. Why ignorance of the law IS an excuse (Lev. 5 and Deut. 19). Problems with Arminianism. The deconstructionism of Karl Barth.

SUBJECT INDEX: ……………………………………………………………..p. 718

SCRIPTURE INDEX: ………………………………………………………….p. 722

CALVINISM: A CLOSER LOOK

Evangelicals, Calvinism, and Why No One’s Answering the Problem of Evil

© 2006-2021 by Daniel Gracely

CALVINISM: A Closer Look

Evangelicals, Calvinism, and Why No One’s Answering the Problem of Evil

The King James Version

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by

The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

The New King James Version © 1980 Thomas Nelson Co.

The author may be contacted at: ddgracely@yahoo.com

Revised and Enlarged Edition

2009

© 2006-2021 Daniel Gracely

Grandma’s Attic Press

Acknowledgement

Without my brother David this book may not have been possible. Certainly it would have been weaker on particular points. His constant encouragement and insight during our long discussions often enabled me to get past some particular Scriptural difficulty. His suggestion, for example, that a child’s inauguration into sin might coincide with that child’s awareness of his nakedness (an awareness of nakedness first experienced by our first parents, Adam and Eve, at the Fall) is just one example which helped me to think through some biblical conundrum while trying to come to a rational and unified understanding of Scripture. Simply put, this book has been made better by his input.

In regard to other indebtedness, I will smile the next time I read of an author thanking his wife for allowing him time to complete a manuscript. I now know the long hours required to finish such a book as this, and I admit to the strain a wife feels while her husband is overly preoccupied with wondering if one sentence he is writing ought to be two. Many thanks, then, go to my wife, Alison (who also helped with some formatting and proofing).

Several friends, Jim Rhynard and Drew Steiger, Dorothy Jones, Drew’s mom, Lin Steiger, and my mother, Nancy Gracely, were also encouraging. Furthermore, various resources were very helpful, including Strong’s Concordance, [apostolic-churches. net/bible/strongs.html, scripturetext. com, and BlueLetterBible.com.

Finally, but first in importance, I thank the Lord for all His help and for sustaining me during the writing of this book.

In Memory

of my father,

Eugene Gracely

and

my uncle,

Elwyn Gracely

for Andrew

(A version of the following was submitted to the X-Calvinist Corner portion of the ArminianPerspectives website.)

I was raised in a Methodist-background church that leaned heavily toward Baptist theology. As a child I attended Sunday School, a Good News Club, and AWANA club, and in all these venues the theology was Baptist throughout. I began college at 20 at Philadelphia College of Bible, then transferred to Glassboro (NJ) State College, and eventually finished my B.A. at Reformed-founded Geneva College in western Pennsylvania; later I attended Duquesne University and SUNY-Binghamton. So having matriculated at a Bible College, a State College, A Christian College, a Catholic University, and a State University gave me a relatively broad exposure to many different philosophical systems, both Christian and non-Christian. Among these, of course, was Calvinism, for while I attended Geneva College I frequently attended a Reformed Presbyterian church, and there I began to accept Calvinistic belief. Incidentally, by the term “Calvinism” I’m generally defining it for the purposes of this testimonial and book as the strong profession that God decrees whatsoever comes to pass.

Although Calvinism never provided me the spiritual comfort it seemed to bring others, I believed in it for about six years or more. Simply put, I was convinced the Scriptures supported it. I think I was also impressed that Calvinism was rooted in a strong, intellectual tradition. Naturally I felt compelled to defend my views. I remember disagreeing with my Dad or uncle (or possibly with both of them), both of whom were ordained ministers, arguing in effect that God could only have foreknowledge about “whatsoever comes to pass” if He had also predestined all events in all their minutia. I also remember strongly espousing Calvinism during a graduate English literature class years later, encouraged by my fair-minded, agnostic Jewish professor, who believed that all viewpoints had a right to be heard, and that the class ought to hear the Calvinistic viewpoint, since it dominated the culture in which the American Transcendentalist authors (whom the class was studying) were active.

Ironically, not too long after this I began to question my Calvinism. Numerous Calvinists, e.g., Jonathan Edwards, Martin Luther, James Spiegel (in his book, The Benefits of Providence) have stated that whatsoever comes to pass has to come to pass, because God ordained it that way. Thus these authors conclude that every event could never have been otherwise. This assumption was the first one I questioned, and it happened one day as I read Matthew 11. There Jesus claimed events could have been different for Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, and Gomorrah, because those peoples would have responded differently had they seen His miracles. In other words, Jesus was saying that other histories could have been possible. Think about that. Yet Calvinists not only claim that God decrees everything, but that He does it for His pleasure. Yet if that were true, why was Jesus upset with Bethsaida and Chorazin, since God (according to Calvinism) was predestining their responses? Or again, if God’s will was always being wrought during Jesus’ ministry, why did Jesus weep for Jerusalem? Or yet again, if John Piper is right in claiming that man is “ultimately not self-determinative,” who is it that quenches the Spirit? Numerous other examples could be given.

Indeed, Calvinism is so fraught with these kind of logical problems that Calvinist apologists, without exception, resort to justifying their theology by appealing to mystery and denying that such ‘explanations’ ARE contradictions. I take a cue from George Orwell, and refer to this approach as doublethinking. In layman’s terms, this means that every one of Calvinism’s definitions describing the nature of God, man, good, and evil, actually contradicts itself. This is why Piper, in the end, has to tell Calvinist disciples not to rely on logic or experience to explain Calvinism, but to make the explanation a textual issue every time. More on that in a moment.

Perhaps equal to any gain someone might receive from my particular testimonial would be what I would recommend to anyone evaluating Calvinism. First, Realize that consistency of argument is no real test of the truth. You can’t ‘one-upmanship’ a Calvinist to concede your viewpoint by out-maneuvering him with clever arguments. As a general example, a Calvinist and I could look at a pair of salt and pepper shakers, and he could insist, against my objections, that what I properly recognize as the pepper shaker is really the salt shaker, that the stuff inside the shaker is really colored “white,” and that it is “salt” which, put under one’s nose, causes one to “sneeze.” Arguments in favor of a false theology operate much the same way, though at a more sophisticated level. Fundamentally, Calvinism always turns meaning on its head. (This is why the debate revolving around Calvinism never dies. Calvinism is able to offer philosophically irrational responses while remaining consistent, and many people assume that consistency of argument proves a position’s truthfulness.) Let me show another example illustrating this non-meaning. If I said, “The man ate the apple that didn’t exist,” observe that, besides talking about a non-existent apple, I should not have said that a MAN ate such an apple, nor that a man ATE such an apple, since no subject and its predicate can be engaged with a non-thing. In other words, all the grammatical components in the sentence “The man ate the apple that didn’t exist,” have no meaning whatsoever. Technically speaking, such a ’sentence’ is not even a sentence. There is an appearance of meaning, but no real meaning. Yet here’s the catch: the hearer cannot help but think of a real apple when he hears the vocal-sound “apple” in that sentence. That’s because of an association with real meaning that he has of the vocal-sound “apple” with real apples in the real world. This association was built over a lifetime, such as when, say, a waiter or waitress might have asked him if he wanted any fresh-baked apple pie, or when his dad told him to go pick apples at the local orchard.

This leads to my second point: Realize that a Calvinist and Non-Calvinist do not share the same meaning of words. This is true even though probably neither one of them realizes they do not share meaning. Remember, Calvinism is merely the invoking of associative meaning, not real meaning. For example, when a Calvinist uses the term ‘God’ in defending the absolute sovereignty of God, he is making nonsense statements. This is what I used to do as a Calvinist. I liken these non-sense statements, or propositions, to the riding of a rocking horse. As a Calvinist rider, I would throw my weight forward toward my belief in the absolute sovereignty of God until I could go no further, whereupon I would recoil backwards toward my belief in human freedom. Thus I would go back and forth in seesaw motion, lest on the one hand I find myself accusing God of insufficient sovereignty, or on the other hand find myself accusing God of authoring sin. All the while, there remained an illusion of movement towards truth, when in fact there was no real movement at all. At length I would allow the springs of dialectical tension to rest the rocking horse in the center, and then I would declare as harmonious propositions which, in fact, were totally contradictory to each other. Calvinist riders still ride out this scenario. This is why, among the Calvinistic writings of Van Til, Sproul, Boettner, A.W. Pink, etc., there are no unqualified statements about the absolute sovereignty of God or the free will of man. If one reads long enough, all-forthright statements about them are eventually withdrawn by qualifying each statement with its exact opposite thought. This explains why every book and article advocating the absolute sovereignty of God ends with its terms unconcluded (though of course Calvinists claim them concluded). So when John Piper tells Calvinists to never mind logic and experience but to make the argument a textual issue every time, I must ask: Of what use is a ‘textual’ issue if the text has been deconstructed to a point where words have no definition, i.e., where the text is not a text? Calvinism is thus revealed as Zen philosophy (I’m not exaggerating), dressed up in Christian-sounding terms which merely evoke associations of meaning, not real meaning. (And so under Calvinism all terms of individuation are lost in favor of an illusory One.)

In the same sense, as long as the Bible student asks himself the doublethinking question, “Now how is it that I chose God, though He chose me irresistibly?” he will never arrive at the true biblical meaning of election. Nor, in the same vein, will the Bible student escape other biblical concepts that Calvinists have likewise overrun and redefined in most Evangelical minds, including the terms predestination, adoption, foreknowledge, etc. My personal opinion is that neither Calvinists nor Arminians really escape these kinds of questions (though I think the Arminian shows a certain or greater predilection of trying to). This is because, technically speaking, while both groups profess a belief in the absolute sovereignty of God and the free will of man, there is a difference of rhetoric in a relative tipping of scales. That is, the Calvinist speaks relatively more from the front rock of the rocking horse, and the Arminian relatively more from the back rock of the same. In other words, Arminians profess more frequently that man’s will is not lost, or not AS lost.

Now observe that another striking example of doublethinking is when Calvinists use the word ‘choice.’ Calvinists will say (in defense of total depravity) “Man has choice, but he can only choose evil.” But readers will note that this is merely a sophisticated way of saying than man has a choice that is not a choice. For obviously if a man can only ‘choose’ one thing, it is not really a choice at all. Yet this is where the Calvinist throws his weight backward on the rocking horse of his theology, insisting that we don’t really understand his position, and that he does believe in choice. Sproul, for example, cites the ‘explanation’ given by Augustine, i.e., that man has freedom, but he has no liberty. Now in the everyday world that we inhabit, the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ are synonyms. But in the Calvinist world these two words are defined as opposites to justify Calvinism’s doublethink. This is a trick that has fooled many people into becoming Calvinists. For Calvinists, by throwing aside lexical control groups that properly inform, e.g., a N.T. Greek verb like “foreknew,” disregard how that particular verb was understood and used by the people of the 1st century in the Mediterranean Basin, and also how that same verb was used in the N.T. besides those instances when God is the grammatical subject of the sentence. In other words, such an attempt by Calvinists to circumvent historical lexical use is nothing more than special pleading. But in fact verbs don’t change meaning just because God is the subject. Such special pleading by Calvinists is really no different in principle than the method of Mormon-founder Joseph Smith, when he claimed to have special glasses that enabled him to translate the pictorial symbols of hieroglyphics.

Third and finally, know that, While the biblical autographa does not support Calvinism, the major English translations often do. The examples are too numerous to mention, though this book includes considerable information on this point. Still, one example, that of Romans 5:12, might be helpful here. Romans 5:12 in Greek is in the format of a correlative conjunction, a point absolutely missed by all major English translations. This correlative conjunction in the context of 5:12ff states that post-Adamic man sinned similarly to, not in, Adam (the Greek hosper (Eng. just as) finding its obvious grammatical completion in the kai outws, a two-word phrase that should have been translated also in this manner, but was rendered instead and so, which leaves the English reader with the wrongful impression of the causative and therefore, a meaning kai outws never takes). In fact, because the NAS (and arguably the KJV) doesn’t recognize the correlative conjunction, it doesn’t even grammatically conclude the verse, doubtless assuming the verse to be nothing more than another example of Paul interrupting himself before completing his thought. Yet the presence of this correlative conjunction challenges the very heart of the doctrine of original sin, a doctrine which has routinely been used to defend the idea of the lost will of man. [I actually do believe that man inherited something in the Fall, but this, I believe, was an extensive and (for man’s lower form), impudent knowledge (not a sin nature), a part, at least, which we allow to distract us from our focus upon God, even unto sin. I believe that Gr. sarx (i.e., flesh) in the context of fallen man includes this knowledge.] As for myself, then, I tire of hearing comments from Calvinists that imply that Bible translation committees obviously know what they’re doing simply because they’re in agreement with each other. This is no more than valuing credentialism at the expense of logic and/or the historical-grammatical hermeneutic. In fact it can be shown that certain later translations subsequent to the KJV frequently defer to the very-influential KJV in controversial passages, such as when the NAS follows the KJV numerous times in translating the Heb. chazak as “hardened” instead of “strengthened” in regard to Pharaoh’s heart, or when the NAS mimics the KJV word “raised” in Romans 9:17 instead of rendering it as “fully roused,” which is what Gr. exegeiro actually means. This latter mimicry once again leaves a wrong impression, in this case the notion that God raised Pharaoh from the cradle to the grave for the express purpose of reprobation.

Since there are various positions regarding Calvinistic arguments, I would urge someone who is truly searching the Scriptures to evaluate positional arguments carefully. And this should be done regardless of how offensive the speaker or writer might personally appear, and regardless of which side he or she is on. Most persons, myself included, like to read material from pastorally gifted people, because it tends to be more palatable. But I have found that many (I do not say all) pastors, despite their seminary training and general knowledge, are not necessarily gifted by the Spirit for the utterance of especial knowledge as outlined and implied in 1 Corinthians 12, i.e., the kind of utterance that stems from the critical analysis of things difficult of perception. In short, don’t assume some admired commentator or your pastor couldn’t be wrong.

Finally, remember that the Bible says that it is a shame and a folly for a man to answer a matter before he has heard it. This means persons ought to know both sides of an issue pretty well before taking it on. For most of us this will mean exhausting study and difficult work (in addition to sometimes having unreceptive hearers and persecution from opponents). But to lack diligence here is to not be fair to the general discussion. Could you represent to a fair degree your opponent’s basic position in his absence and his reasons for it? That, I think, is the litmus test before engaging in much discussion on an issue. Let us all strive, then, to be relatively well informed on any issue to which God’s Spirit has directed our attention, whether that issue is Calvinism or any other issue. And may we all find a church (sadly, I have yet to find one) which has a willingness to hear both sides in a genuine group setting, i.e., like that setting once provided by my fair-minded, agnostic professor.

Incidentally, if you have found my comments helpful, would you please pray for my own encouragement?

Daniel Gracely

Glassboro, New Jersey / Novemeber, 2008