Chapter 17

 

 

Some Remaining Questions

Up to this point I have attempted to reply to certain arguments that are generally believed to prove Calvinism, and to show in contrast what is a true, biblical understanding of God, man, good, and evil. There are, however, other passages Calvinists sometimes use to argue God’s sovereignty that we have not addressed. Furthermore, there are other questions related to divine sovereignty and human freedom not normally discussed in debate (such as whether a man is denied his free will if he spends eternity in hell). My goal here is not to answer every conceivable argument, nor address every Scripture that has been cited in an attempt to support Calvinism, nor give an explanation of every question that could arise in a discussion about human freedom (an attempt that would plainly be impossible). Rather, my goal is merely to answer certain of these remaining questions I think are especially worthy of attention.

 

Question:

 

1 John 2:2 states, “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for [the sins of] the whole world.” But how can Christ be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world if the word propitiation means payment ? For if Christ truly made payment for all sins, then wouldn’t all sins be forgiven and everyone be saved? But obviously not all are saved. Isn’t, then, 1 John 2:2 merely referring to the world of the elect when it uses the word world?

 

Answer:

 

The word for in 1 John 2:2 is the Greek word peri, and means relating to, or concerning. The Interlinear¹¹⁶ translates it thus: “And He is the propitiation relating to our sins, and not relating to ours only, but also relating to all the world.” Thus propitiation is relating to the sins of every man; it is not for in the sense of de facto applied. Let me offer an analogy here. I may give a panhandling drunk five dollars and tell him it is for a sandwich, but that hardly guarantees that the man will not consider it booze money. The money relates to his having a sandwich, but he might make other use of it. This is because the money was given to him, not irresistibly, but as offered to him. Thus he may or may not use it in the way I desire. In fact, I could buy a sandwich and hand it to him, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean he would eat it; instead he might sell it and use the money to buy booze. In the same sense propitiation (payment) has been made relating to or concerning our sins, but the blood of Christ will not be applied to a man’s account unless he receives it as such.

 

Question:

 

John 15:16 says, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you…” Does this verse contradict what John says elsewhere in John 1:12, i.e., “But as many as received him…”? If not, what did Christ mean in John 15:16?

 

Answer:

 

The full verse reads: “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” If, in John 15:16, Christ is referring to his choosing them [lit. naming out (them) from among (others)] for salvation, this is to be understood according to the definition of ‘election’ which involves His ‘calling’ (God’s naming out from among others, (according to his advanced knowledge which is non-determinative), and, by implication, their response as hearers (which is in accord with the teaching of John 1:12). As Jesus said elsewhere, “Many are called (lit., invited or bidden), but few are chosen.” A man does not diligently seek Christ, but Christ seeks the man. (The relevant Greek words are eklegomai (to name out from among )and ekloge (the naming out of ) which have been interpreted (and dubiously translated) to mean “to elect” and “election”).

 

Contextually, this statement in John 15:16 is one in which Christ refers back to when He named out 12 of his disciples from among others, and the service he intended for them. Mark 3:14 tells us: “And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.” [Incidentally, earlier Christ told the disciples to abide (remain, tarry) in Him. This is something all of us as professing followers of Christ are commanded to do, and the verb is active in all cases; therefore the phrase “without Me you power to do nothing,” means, in context, that one powers to do nothing who remains not in Christ.] Now the statement by Christ in John 15:16 occurred at a critical time, and may have been offered as an encouragement. These words were spoken during the last supper after Judas Iscariot had departed, a time when Christ was alone with His true (if soon to be proven weak) disciples. Thus He refrained from telling them certain things because of their present state of sorrow (Jn. 16:12). This is the biblical context. These men, all of whom would eventually suffer death by martyrdom except for John, might have occasion in the future, because of imprisonment or other hardship, to wonder if their equipping as disciples (and therefore their preparation for such ordeals) were all on a false ground—a discipleship they themselves had initiated out of their friendship to Jesus. Of course, these friendships were ones Jesus had initiated. Still, a man near an ‘end-game’ circumstance might doubt his calling and discipleship, or even the Subject of his message, as had John the Baptist. Christ assures them that He first named them out from among others (based on His knowledge in advance that they would believe in Him, and also follow him), and that they themselves had not first named out Him from among others, nor named out themselves as apostles from among the other disciples.

 

Question:

 

Acts 13:48 says, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.”Doesn’t this verse teach that God foreordains who will be saved and who will be lost irrespective of man’s so-called ‘choices’?

 

Answer:

 

In the phrase, were ordained, the word ordained can also mean determined (planned ), as translated a few chapters later in Acts 15:1-2:

 

And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined [planned ] that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.

Now suppose that we were to substitute the word ordained for determined in Acts 13:48, i.e., “When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they ordained that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.”This reading sounds a bit awkward, doesn’t it? Even though ordained in Acts 13:48 is the same word as determined in Acts 15:2, there seems to be something unnatural about it. Technically speaking, I would say that something seems supernatural about it. By this I mean that the word ‘ordained’ is so associated with Calvinistic doctrine when God is the subject, that it makes its relation to another grammatical subject besides God seem all but misapplied. This is because Calvinism, over the centuries, has effectually hijacked the word ‘ordained’ (i.e., wordjacked “ordained”). With little exception the KJV translators reserved this particular word for various instances when God is the subject, or when it was thought He is indirectly implied as the causative subject, and the resulting impression upon the reader has often been one of divine irresistibility.

 

Now observe in Acts 13 that the Antioch Gentiles had previously expressed interest in the gospel and were seeking the truth: “And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath” (Acts 13:42). Contrasting these Gentiles of Antioch with the Gentile hearers at Athens makes an interesting comparison (Acts 17). The Athenians who said they would hear Paul “again of this matter,” were either vague or mocking; (again, the Interlinear suggests that they were mocking and that in fact there was no third, neutral group among the Athenians). Now compare the Athenian response to the Gentiles at Antioch who besought Paul that he speak to them the very next Sabbath. These Gentiles at Antioch had scheduled Paul into their calendar, so to speak, while the unbelieving Athenians, if they even wanted to hear Paul again (though we note that the Interlinear text indicates they did not want to) could expect to hear the newcomer again when the carousel of idea-makers returned again in the course of Athenian life (as Luke says: “For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing”). Thus the understanding of Acts 13:48 is that those who had been, or were having been, determining unto [Gr. eis, i.e., into, unto, to, toward, etc. (the prepositional phrase meaning, determining themselves unto)] eternal life, believed upon further hearing. Note also that the KJV word “ordained,” like the word “fitted” in Romans 9:22, is a perfect passive participle, and therefore arguably should have been translated in the middle voice, ie., if reading a bit awkwardly here, and as many as had been determining themselves unto eternal life, believed. Needless to say, this is a far cry from the NAS’s Calvinistic rendition of “and as many as were appointed unto eternal life believed.” Thus the Antioch Gentiles had grown dissatisfied with their old way of thinking about religion, and were now determining to believe, and therefore sought instruction from Paul. The converse idea about these Antioch hearers—that Luke would pull into his discussion the complicated idea of a sovereign God who irresistibly appointed Gentiles to a place in the kingdom—would certainly have required more explanation if that is what Luke meant. But the entire context of this passage simply does not support such a forced Calvinistic interpretation. Rather, Acts 13, beyond whatever other lessons it teaches, serves as a general encouragement for men to consider earnestly the gospel of Christ.

 

The monolithic preference, then, of translations for were ordained instead of were themselves determining in Acts 13:48, speaks more to the preconceived theological bias of translators in extant translations, than to any fair attempt to render in translation a viewpoint other than Calvinism. We have already seen this translational bias in other passages of the Bible (Rom. 9:22 especially, but also Ex. 7:13 in the KJV, etc.) and by commentaries that have offered questionable interpretations based on a Reformed way of thinking (such as we saw with Galatians 4, regarding the word adoption).

 

Question:

 

Acts 4:26-30 speaks of Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and the nation of Israel rising up against Christ. Verse 28 even says that God’s counsel had determined whatsoever He wanted them to do. Doesn’t this mean that God worked with evil to accomplish His will, and thus foreordained everything done by these parties?

 

Answer:

 

Let us look at the passage:

 

²⁶The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. ²⁷For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, ²⁸For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. ²⁹And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, ³⁰By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.

Consider first the presumption that is often made about this passage. Many think that verse 28 teaches that everything done by Herod et al. was predetermined by God. Reading these verses more carefully, however, reveals that verse 28 is not really stating this idea. Rather, it says that everything God determined that they should do, was done. This might seem to be a fine point of distinction here, but it needs to be made. Let me offer an example to clarify the difference. Suppose you work in a restaurant where you play poker after hours. One day the owner tells you to throw out a particular chair into the dumpster. After receiving these instructions you take a knife and carve some graffiti in the chair’s wooden back rest, smear food into the cloth seat, and pull the underneath wooden supports out of their joints. In fact, you do these things because this has been your opponent’s ‘lucky’ poker chair, and for several nights after work you have been losing badly at cards. Before you remove this chair to the dumpster you slice up the seat, remove the stuffing, and randomly spray paint different parts of the chair. You definitely don’t want to see this chair again! Finally you shove the chair into the dumpster and close and lock the lid on top of it. So here’s the question: Did you do everything the restaurant owner asked you to do? Yes, you certainly did. He asked you to throw out the chair, and you threw it out. Was everything you did, however, what the owner asked you to do? No, indeed, it was not. In fact, he never instructed you to molest the chair but merely asked you to throw it out. The point here is that the owner has an agenda you carried out, but you added your own agenda to it.

 

Along these lines consider what God said of the Assyrian king whom He used to destroy sinful Israel and to exile them out of their land: (Is. 10:5-15)

 

⁵“Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hand is My indignation. ⁶I will send him against an ungodly nation, And against the people of My wrath I will give him charge, To seize the spoil, to take the prey, And to tread them down like the mire of the streets. ⁷Yet he does not mean so, Nor does his heart think so; But it is in his heart to destroy, And cut off not a few nations. ⁸For he says, ‘Are not my princes altogether kings? ⁹Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? ¹⁰As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols, Whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria, ¹¹As I have done to Samaria and her idols, Shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?’ ” ¹²Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks.” ¹³For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, And by my wisdom, for I am prudent; Also I have removed the boundaries of the people, And have robbed their treasuries; So I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. ¹⁴My hand has found like a nest the riches of the people, And as one gathers eggs that are left, I have gathered all the earth; And there was no one who moved his wing, Nor opened his mouth with even a peep.” ¹⁵Shall the ax boast itself against him who chops with it?¹¹⁷ Or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it? As if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up, Or as if a staff could lift up, as if it were not wood!

The key thought about the Assyrian king is found in verse seven: “Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and cut off not a few nations.” Note that God’s instruction was concerning a “nation,” i.e., singular, not plural. God had told the Assyrian king to go against Israel, not Jerusalem, but the king’s motive was different than God’s. The king merely wanted to plunder the nation of Israel for his own personal gain. In fact, the king was planning an entire military plan against other nations for the same purpose and without divine permission. Thus he seems oblivious to the fact that God had granted him a position of power for which he was responsible. Therefore God says he will judge the Assyrian king for his pride.

 

The implication, then, is that God does not use the evil of the king to bring about His glory. For if God did use it, such activity would mean that He works with evil in a cooperative way. Paul, however, says that righteousness can have no fellowship with unrighteousness, nor Christ have concord with the Devil. So it is important to understand that God does not use the Assyrian king because he is evil. He is simply instructing the king to carry out His judgment upon the nation of Israel. Presumably then, God presents a thought to the Assyrian king’s mind, such as, “Go down and destroy sinful Israel.” Even though the Gentile king does not know God in a personal way, God has presented to the king the power and nature of the Godhead through creation, and God has the right to give a command to any of His creatures. When God’s thought is presented to the Assyrian king, however, it is filtered through the grid of the king’s own sinful and selfish mind: I will go down and destroy that bad nation, Israel. I will destroy her idols. I will do the same to other nations. I will gather all their treasures as one gathers eggs from defenseless hens, etc. The Assyrian king could have thought differently. He could have recognized the God of Israel as the only true God, even as Cyrus the king would do in the process of carrying out God’s plan for the Jews. Because Romans 1 tells us that every man is given enough spiritual light from God’s creation to understand who God is, the Assyrian king had no right to say, Well, I didn’t know God, so how could I have recognized His voice? The king should have recognized God’s voice—that’s the point. He did not, however, because he had a different agenda of his own.

 

Even so, those who rose up against Christ during the crucifixion had a different agenda than what God was presenting to them. They did not have to hate Christ to carry out his death. God did not need their sin. It was Messiah’s death—plain and simple, and unattached with man’s false railings—that God in his counsel had decided should be done and to which Acts 4:28 refers. Nowhere does Acts say that God’s counsel determined all the words and deeds of the mob. In fact, Christ’s death did not even have to be at the hand of a mob or even by a malevolent hand. Christ could have been sacrificed even if Israel had repented of their sin and believed in Christ. The brief event of Christ dying and resurrecting would not have even interrupted the prophecies regarding His coming as the great Ruler, especially if the nation of Israel had understood that this work was a necessary step in order for Christ to obtain the full glory of His Kingship as Savior. And so the nation could have understood the plan of God and with an understanding heart offered up Christ as the willing sacrifice for their sin. They could have understood from Daniel’s prophecy that Messiah’s life should be sacrificed after the completion of 62 weeks “from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem,” and therefore committed themselves to fulfill the prophecy with understanding. Thus God could have commanded a believing Israel to act on the Father’s behalf to put Christ to death as the object of God’s wrath and as the sacrifice for the world’s sin. Herod and Pilate could likewise have been sympathetic participants in these events. It is not inconceivable that they could have repented in the weeks or months prior to the appointed hour of Messiah’s death by being greatly moved by the nation itself, and have remained in governmental power long enough to have participated with all the people of Israel and the visiting Judeo-sympathizing Gentiles in presenting the Messiah (to the High Priest ?) to be offered up as the Lamb of God. The High Priest and Jewish elders could have likewise repented prior to this event had they merely responded positively to the ministry of Christ. Had such a scenario taken place, Messiah could have offered Himself as the sacrifice for the world’s sin while surrounded by understanding, penitent sinners, in which case Christ’s death would have been no less glorious.¹¹⁸

 

Again, the death of Christ at the hands of believing sinners need not to have been attended with any more feeling of maliciousness than Abraham had toward Isaac when the patriarch was about to slay his son upon the altar, or that Aaron the High Priest had toward the Passover lamb.

 

I realize that to think of Christ’s death as happening in a manner where He could have been surrounded by believers is foreign to most of us. The standard explanation, however, of God using the sinful anger of man to carry out His ’sovereign’ plan remains unsatisfying. It all but requires that men be sinners in order that righteousness be carried out. This is the kind of theology that wishes to say that ‘all things work together for good,’ i.e., synergistically. Such a turgid theology has yet to explain how God could be holy if, in some sense (as Boettner would put it), He determines that false accusations be leveled against His Son by crucifiers and thieves. Yet this is what the Calvinist asks us to believe—that God guides and governs all the lying words and deeds that men said and did during the crucifixion.¹¹⁹ If this is the case, it remains to be explained by the Calvinist how God can be responsible for evil but not be guilty of it. But what seems left to us are the kind of explanations offered, for example, by James Spiegel, when he writes a kind of apologetic diktat defendingCalvin and Luther’s position on absolute sovereignty:

 

As for the problem of evil, Calvin, again with Luther, eschews the notion that there is any problem of the sort, just because God is absolutely sovereign and therefore can do whatever he wants with his creatures. For this reason, Calvin declares, “it is sheer folly that many dare with greater license to call God’s works to account, and to examine his secret plans, and to pass as rash a sentence on matters unknown as they would on the deeds of mortal men.”^lix

Sad indeed. Is a Christian really supposed to find the above explanation helpful because Calvin declares it? For Calvin says in effect, “How dare one taste to see if the Lord is good! How dare we presume that God’s answer to the problem of evil is not inscrutably hid in unfathomable mysteries! How dare we think we have the ability of will to obey God’s bidding to reason with Him, so that our sins might be washed away!” Thus, by Calvin and Luther eliminating reasonable inquiry into the problem of evil, they have eliminated that vehicle which God Himself claims He uses to bring sinners to the truth. Rather, Christians would do better to maintain that God does allow men to ask Him about the problem of evil; for how else will they understand that He is not responsible for sin nor uses the means of sin to bring about His glory? As Paul says: “And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.” Are we to think the same necessity is not laid upon God, that He should choose to use evil means to obtain ‘righteous’ ends?

 

As I think back to my upbringing in a typical fundamentalist church in the 1970s, I now understand, at least in part, why Calvinistic theology (and its view that God foreordains all things) has since taken hold across much of the Evangelical denominational spectrum. It appears that the word sovereign was used in sermons and in written material even outside the Presbyterian church without really defining the term closely. Nevertheless, it was invoked to describe how God brought about His own glory, though never (so far as I remember) cited in any hard-line discussion about the reprobation of the lost. Across America the deed was done, however, and once the camel’s nose of God’s ‘absolute sovereignty’ was in the door flap, it would only be a matter of time until the entire camel of Calvinistic application would threaten to stand inside the tent, toppling it over. Thus it proceeded innocently enough with statements such as the following one by fundamentalist author, Harry Rimmer, a man normally so excellent in his thinking:

 

How amazed the modern research reader is, to discover that in spite of Satan’s hatred and the mob’s grim conduct, every word and every deed of that entire chorus declares the glory of God as truly as though they had designed to praise Him. Thus, once again God makes the wrath of man to serve Him. And this mighty chorus might almost have been under His personal direction, so thoroughly did they fulfill the prophecies and vindicate the Scriptures.

Although devoid of any insight into the significance of their own words and deeds, they yet declared Him Whom they nailed to that cross to be the Christ Whom God promised, as definitely as though they desired to honor Him thus.^lx

As long, then, as Evangelicals insist that God sovereignly designs the deeds of evil men, so long it will be that no serious Christian apologetic can be offered to the world regarding the problem of evil.

 

Question:

 

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” Doesn’t this teach that faith is a gift that God gives us, which we cannot muster up ourselves?

 

Answer:

 

The key to understanding this verse is to observe the contrast Paul is making. When he says that salvation is “not of works” he is completing the contrast. Either he is comparing grace with works, or the process of grace through faith with works. I think the normal way of reading this verse would be to understand that the subject being contrasted with works is the subject of the sentence—i.e., grace. Recall that the apostle who wrote these verses in Ephesians also wrote Romans 11:6 to show what element is truly to be contrasted with works: “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.”

 

Question:

 

Philippians 2:13 says that God provides the will to do His good pleasure. Some commentators indicate that this refers to God’s absolute sovereign activity in our lives, and that God alone must provide the willing. They say if God did not give us the will, we could never have this will on our own. Also (if somewhat non-sequitur, though I think it ultimately bears on how one interprets Phil. 2:13), throughout your book you sometimes cast aside the translations of those who are highly trained in their craft for what seems to be esoteric interpretations. Shouldn’t you be concerned about coming to the wrong conclusions?

 

Answer:

 

I think that many of us who undertake a discussion about the nature of God’s sovereignty are concerned about getting it wrong.
R.C. Sproul, for example, takes a very decided Reformed position on the matter, yet expresses at the beginning of his book, Chosen By God, his concern about getting the issue of divine sovereignty correct. Furthermore, many of us who discuss this subject must also rely heavily on the training of linguists and their indispensable work. For example, I am completely dependent upon scholars and researchers to show how a Greek word was used in extra-biblical resources in the centuries leading up to, and including, the New Testament era. What I have questioned in this book, however, is the translator’s and/or commentator’s logic of application of particular Greek words in certain passages. For example, take the current question about Philippians 2:13 regarding the phrase, “to will.” Because I doubted that the Calvinistic interpretation of this phrase was correct, I began with a hypothesis:

 

Does Philippians 2:13 teach that God gives us the very will (intention) itself to do what pleases Him?

 

So then I considered Philippians 2:12-13:

 

Therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

I began testing my hypothesis by going online and searching Strong’s concordance. I found that there is more than one Greek word translated will in the KJV. Calvinists have made great use of the word will in Romans 9:19 (”For who hath resisted [God’s] will?”) to claim that man is totally subjugated to God’s absolute sovereignty. It seemed natural to question, then, whether the word will in Romans 9:19 was the same basic word for will in Philippians 2:13 (where it says that God works in us to will ). I discovered it was not. The two-word phrase, to will, in Philippians 2:13 is actually just one word in the Greek, i.e., thelo, and is defined by Strong’s thus:

 

Strong’s word #2309

1) to will, have in mind, intend

1a) to be resolved or determined, to purpose

1b) to desire, to wish

1c) to love

1c1) to like to do a thing, be fond of doing

1d) to take delight in, have pleasure

Following this I looked up the Greek word will in Romans 9:19 and saw that it was a different Greek word—boulomai.¹²⁰This verb for will is rarely used in the New Testament compared to thelo. Boulomai is given thus by Strong’s:

 

Strong’s word #1013:

1) will, counsel, purpose

I then followed Strong’s link to #1014 which gave me this:

 

1) to will deliberately, have a purpose, be minded

2) of willing as an affection, to desire

As for the former word, thelo, Strong’s suggests the presence of a root word link between the two, claiming that thelo was ‘apparently strengthened by an alternative form of 138, to determine…from subjective impulse,’ but noted a difference between thelo and boulomai by noting that the latter dealt more with ‘objective consideration.’

 

As I pondered the six meanings above for the word thelo in Philippians 2:13, I decided that perhaps the best word that accommodated all six meanings was the verb to want. So I looked up the word want in the KJV to see if the Greek word thelo was used. Imagine my astonishment, then, when I found that the word want did not appear as a verb in the (KJV) New Testament in any form. I would never have guessed that. The word want occurs about a dozen times as a noun in the New Testament (from three different Greek words), i.e., as to be in want, etc. None of these words appeared to be related in any suggestive way to either thelo or boulomai. I reasoned then, that some other word must be used in the KJV to express the verb to want. The word desire came to mind as a likely candidate. I looked up desire in Strong’s, and found the word thelo. I felt this was significant, since substituting the word desire for will in Philippians 2:13 now gave me an entirely different sense of the verse:

 

For it is God who worketh in you to desire, and to do of his good pleasure.

Read in context with the preceding verse of Philippians 2:12, the will,spoken of in verse 13, is in fact merely the influence of God upon the believer who is urged to continue following the path of Christ (i.e., working out the implications of his salvation with fear and trembling), not a unilateral activity performed by God upon us or in us irresistibly. Thus Philippians 2:13 is talking about God working in us to both desire and to perform His good pleasure. This means that God both greatly encourages us in the way we should go and equips us to do His work, that is, as we agree with the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. This is not a work, then, that God does apart from our willingness. We do have the ability to resist the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, which is why Paul commanded the Christians at Thessalonica not to quench the Spirit (1 Th. 5:19). The Calvinistic idea, then, that Philippians 2:13 must be interpreted to mean that God has to give the Christian the very will itself to do what is right, is simply not biblical.

 

In this regard I find it interesting that the NAS would translate the Greek word thelo to mean “desire” in Romans 9:18 (”So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires”) but not translate the very same Greek word, thelo, to mean desire in Philippians 2:13. Instead, the NAS treats the verse exactly as the KJV does, choosing the phrase, to will. Thus, for Philippians 2:13 the NAS has:

 

for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

How subtle indeed are the nuances of translation that impute a Calvinistic interpretation for Philippians 2:13. Why, we must ask, if not for a theological agenda, did the Calvinistic KJV translators render Gr. thelo as desire seven times in 2 Corinthians and Galatians, but not do it here? Could it be, that, to have rendered thelo as the word desire in Philippians 2:13 would not have stated the case of divine irresistibility upon all men in all their acts as strongly as these translators would have liked? Rather, we maintain that the real meaning is this—that God works in us by encouraging our desire to do what He wants. Thus, desire (thelo) would fit the text naturally, as opposed to saying that God determined by His counsel and planning (boulomai) that we were going to do the things that pleased Him whether we liked it or not.¹²¹ This latter way of paraphrasing what appears to be the intent of the KJV and NAS sounds rather severe and unfeeling, yet it seems to be the basic impression left by these translations upon its unsuspecting readers.

 

What compounds this error is how Calvinistic presuppositions affect even the fundamental definition of a word in contexts where it is falsely supposed that God’s glory will be at stake if we allow man any predicative ability whatsoever. For notice that Strong’s gives thelo’s primary definition as “will, have in mind, intend.” Now admittedly, perhaps “to will” (understood as “to desire into its congruent will” IS thelo’s primary meaning, but some of the lexical evidence for this definition, as affirmed by Strong’s, is doubtless based upon the KJV plethora of English occurrences of “to will.” In other words, the KJV makes it appear that thelo generally means “to decide,” when in fact thelo (to want) only includes the will IF both the near and far contexts justify that understanding. The important thing to remember is, Context is king. So, for example, if I said, “I do not want to go to work,” but do go to work, then my use of “want” did not include the will. That is, I was referring to desire only. But conversely, if, say, a clerk behind an ice-cream counter asks a child which one of the 30-odd flavors he wants, and the child points to the particular carton of Butter Brickle, and declares “I want that one,” then clearly both the clerk and the child are including the will (choice) in the meaning of “want.” I personally feel that the informal English word “want” is as close (I do not say exact) to a quid pro quo word to Gr. thelo as today’s English readers have. In fact, in my own spot-search for the verb “want” in the works of Shakespeare, I would say, in defense of the KJV, that it appears “will” was a typical word used in the 17th century to express what today in informal English we understand by the word “want.” We will come back to the point about the latitude of meaning of the verb “want” in a moment.

 

Now moving on, I followed a link in Strong’s about the differences between the two words thelo and boulomai. Note that even the experts don’t agree. Says Strong:

 

In many cases these two words are used without appreciable distinction, meaning conscious willing, purpose. But frequently it is evident that a difference is intended, although there is much difference of opinion as to the exact distinction. Thayer says that boulomai “seems to designate the will which follows deliberation”, yelw [thelo], “the will which proceeds from inclination.” Grimm, on the other hand, says that yelw gives prominence to the emotive element, boulomai to the rational and volitive; yelw signifies the choice, while boulomai marks the choice as deliberate and intelligent. The view of Cremer on the whole seems preferable to any other. According to this view, boulomai has the wider range of meaning, but yelw is the stronger word; yelw denotes the active resolution, the will urging on to action, see Rom. 7:15, while boulomai is rather to have in thought, to intend, to be determined. Boulomai sometimes means no more than to have an inclination, see Acts 23:15. Instructive examples of the use of the two words in close proximity are found in Mk. 15:9,15, and especially Mt 1:19.^lxi

Because I believe that man has free will, I had come to the same essential position as Thayer before becoming aware of his conclusions. Since his view seemed friendly to my own, I suppose I could have (lazily) accepted Thayer’s authority under the assumption that his understanding was better than anyone else’s. (At length, however, I would conclude, in deference to Thayer, that thelo could be used to mean bare desire not yet culminated in the will.) I also understood that Cremer’s view was friendlier to Calvinism, since it claimed that thelo was the stronger word; for plainly (we note) that which merely “urges” on to action but cannot guarantee action (resolution, i.e., intention), ought not to be considered as strong as that which demonstrates a consistent lexical meaning of “to plan;” which de facto denotes intention, and thus there seems to be a doublethink in supposing that of the two words, thelo is the stronger. At any rate, being rather skeptical by nature, I decided to check out the claims of Strong’s advocacy of Cremer. They seemed to involve three claims (the last being exampled by two passages).

 

First, a claim was made that thelo “denotes the active resolution, the will urging on to action.” Romans 7:15 was given as a proof, and so I presumed that any verse offered in proof of this claim should be the best possible example, or at least a good example. So I looked up Romans 7:15 and read: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would (thelo), that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” Now when I looked at Strong’s claim that thelo heremeant “the active resolution, the will urging on to action,”I actually saw Paul stating something quite the opposite. Whatever it was that Paul was feeling or thinking, it did not seem to be leading him to the kind of inevitable resolution or action that proved Strong’s point. The verse did, however, seem to suggest Paul’s inclination (not to be confused with intention) to do something which, in fact, Paul says he ended up not doing. How then, I wondered, was Romans 7:15 a proof of Cremer’s view? In fact, “resolution” and “urging on to action” are non-synonymous if, by “to,” we presume Strong’s to mean toward., not into. At best, I find Strong’s definition confusing.

 

Second, Strong followed Cremer in saying, “Boulomai sometimes means no more than to have an inclination, see Acts 23:15.”So I looked up Acts 23:15 and read, “Now therefore ye with the council signify to the chief captain that he bring [Paul] down unto you to morrow, as though ye would (Gr. mello) enquire something more perfectly concerning him: and we, or ever he come near, are ready to kill him.” The Greek word mello can (it appears) mean intend, but mello and the root word from which it comes (melo, meaning to care about) are not related to either thelo or boulomai even in their root word etymologies, and so its comparison with the latter two words seems irrelevant. It remains a puzzle to me why Strong’s would claim that boulomai appears in Acts 23:15.

 

Third, Strong’s suggested that boulomai with thelo be compared in two passages where the two words occur closely to each other—Mark 15:9, 15, and Matthew 1:19. I found the context of the first of these particularly instructive: “But Pilate answered them, saying, Will (thelo) ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? And so Pilate, willing (boulomai) to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.” Taking the hypothetical position that thelo means “desire” makes perfect sense here. Pilate would almost certainly not have used boulomai in addressing the Jews here, i.e., “Who do you determine (intend ), or “who have you decided, that I release unto you?” Had Pilate asked such a question in this manner upon his initial question to the Jews, it would have carried with it some sense (or a sense) that he was simply a minion to carry out their wishes.¹²² But if we take the position that thelo means to be inclined, i.e., to desire, the meaning is clearer, i.e., “Who do you want that I release…?” This way of putting the question recognizes Pilate’s authority, i.e., in effect, “What do you desire me to do, that I might consider it as your ruler?” Finally, in verse 15 we come to boulomai. Pilate was boulomai to content the people. We know from the Bible and Josephus that the relationship between Pilate and the Jews was an uneasy one. Pilate had mingled the blood of some of the Jewish worshipers together with their sacrifices. Yet a program of ongoing intimidation was unlikely to succeed, for rulership in Judea was a tenuous thing. In any event, the feeling was not good between ruler and ruled. It seems unlikely, therefore, that Pilate desired (i.e., we render boulemai hypothetically here to mean desire to test Strong’s view) to do what the Jews wanted, especially regarding a man in whom he found no fault. The problem, then, in Strong’s advocacy for Cremer, is that the various passages cited by Strong to explain the alleged contrast between thelo and boulemai form the ‘contrast’ as Cremer defines it. But note that Cremer defines both thelo and boulemai dialectically, since, on the one hand thelo is defined in its contrast as “the will urging on to action,” a definition which shows Strong’s and Cremer’s failure to understand that the will IS the action (resolution), while on the other hand boulemai is defined in its contrast to mean “have in thought,” which is NOT synonymous with “intend.” Therefore the whole matter becomes a muddled mess when Strong tries to distinguish between thelo and boulemai, because, besides defining both terms dialectically, he and Cremer seem to think that thelo is the stronger word, when in fact only boulemai shows a consistent lexical use of “intend.” To put the matter another way (and setting aside the dialectical issue for the moment), thelo is not shown in any of Strong’s examples to include the will, much less demonstrate itself to be the stronger word. Foras we just saw, thelo cannot mean “intended, determined ” when Pilate first asks the Jews what they thelo. So then, in any discussion (i.e., Strong’s) that proposes at some level to distinguish between the concepts of desire and the will as expressed through the Greek words thelo and boulemai, then by default of what thelo must mean when Pilate first addresses the Jews (i.e., bare desire), then boulemai must mean the approximate opposite of thelo, since Mark 15 is cited by Strong’s as an example which in effect shows a distinction between inclination and intent. (Note that Strong is attempting a contrast, since he states Cremer’s view of boulemai as defined “rather” as…. etc.) Frankly, while I agree with Cremer in the abstract that a single word with the meaning of “inclination” may or may not include intention, I think the lexical evidence shows he has it backwards, since it is thelo,not boulemai,that demonstrates the lexical possibility of bare desire with the potential of reaching into resolution, depending upon context. For, in fact, a survey of the New Testament lexical use of boulemai show numerous instances where boulemai must mean to intend, not never where it must mean mere inclination or merely to have in thought. [I suppose the reason Cremer ended up imagining the lexical evidence supported his dialectical view (which I doubt he even realized was dialectical) was because he accepted Calvinistic assumptions about certain key Scriptures.] At any rate, we should note that Pilate was ultimately boulemai (determined, i.e., intending, as having taken counsel with himself) to do as the Jews wanted, though if possible he would make them feel as though he had relented in doing so. The Jewish leaders knew Pilate would not want another uproar getting back to Rome, and they played the blackmail card for all it was worth, crying out, “You are no friend of Caesar’s if you let this man go.” Thus Mark 15:9, 15 is a passage that substantially shows a difference of meaning between thelo and boulomai.

 

As for Strong’s remaining comparison between thelo and boulemai found in Matthew 1:19, the distinction between the two words is not as clearly drawn in the near context, because the narrative in which thelo and boulemai occur is not a circumstance conducive to expressing some obvious difference in meaning. Having said that, however, we may use the far context to help us understand Matthew 1:19. “Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing (thelo) to make her a public example, was minded (boulomai) to put her away privily.” Again, defining thelo as desire would render the verse thus: “Then Joseph her husband, not desiring to make her a public example, was determined (had planned) to put her away privately.” Again, this makes perfect sense and is supported by the far context of Mark 15. On the other hand, this passage does not really provide a natural contrast in meaning, since the verse could be supposed to mean that Joseph willed not (i.e., intended or decided not) to make her a public example, but desired to put her away privately. So then, since Matthew 1:19 is not a passage conducive to showing a natural difference between thelo and boulemai, one ought to defer to Mark 15 for a clearer contrast.

 

However, it must be kept in mind that Mark 15 is merely one passage, and though thelo does there show a restricted meaning of desire apart from will, it does not prove that thelo should always be thought to have such a restricted meaning. For example, thelo has a meaning which includes intention in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, in which Paul says that “if any would (Gr. thelo) not work, neither should he eat.” I recall someone online pointing out that, by thelo, Paul could not simply have meant (bare ) desire, for then he would be saying that nearly all people should not eat, since nearly all people, though they work, don’t particularly like their work and therefore do not want to work. However, the person making this observation then claimed that thelo obviously could not mean bare desire,by which, in fact, he was implying that it could NEVERmean (bare) desire in any biblical passage that would result in challenging his Calvinistic theology. This is a standard Calvinist method of argument—taking a meaning of a verb that has a wide latitude of meaning depending on its context, but restricting its meaning based on one verse (or with other verses similar to it), and then applying that restricted meaning to other verses where the context does not truly support it. This is what the Bible calls ‘making a Scripture of private interpretation.’ Thus the Calvinist insists on this 2 Thessalonians 3:10 meaning for thelo in all key passages where to understand the word differently would either mean a refutation of Calvinist theology or a failure for Calvinism to gain an advantage. The exact same approach is used by the Calvinist elsewhere, e.g., in their treatment of the word “world.” For example, the Calvinist simply finds some passage where the context obviously shows that the word “world” doesn’t mean “all the world” and then insists that, even so, God did not so love “all the world” but just a part of it, i.e., “the world of the elect.” So too, then, does the Calvinist proceed to take the word “whosoever” to mean “whosoever of the elect,” and so forth. Of course, the question begs itself why John wouldn’t have simply said, “For God so loved the elect,” if that’s what he wanted to say? That is, Why would the Spirit lead John to make the meaning either difficult or idiomatic, in what is a straightforward and non-poetic verse like John 3:16? Again, for Calvinists to treat words in this cavalier manner stems from taking a word from another verse or verses, where the context is different, finding a meaning as justified in those contexts, absolutizing that meaning, and then applying that ‘meaning’ to those passages whose contexts do not support that meaning and which would otherwise remain the problematic passages to Calvinism that in fact they are. The point, then, of making thelo of private interpretation in 2 Th. 3:10 [“this we commanded you, that if any would (Gr. thelo) not work, neither should he eat”]—to make it mean the same thing in Philippians 2:13, i.e., to the effect that God gives us the very will itself to obey, when, in fact, the preceding verse to Philippians 2:13 commands believers, who, we note, ARE able to quench such a command, to work out the implications of their own salvation (thus showing their ability of will) —is a form of special pleading.

 

Now I’ll come clean here and admit to (unwittingly) having done a similar kind of eisegesis a few years ago to my own advantage in an earlier edition of this book, when I made Luke 24:22 of private interpretation. I did this after first properly proving that thelo in Luke 24:22 could NOT include the meaning of will (choice) when Christ said, “Not my thelo, but thine be done,” since Christ never chose to call for angelic rescue at the expense of His Father’s will, and therefore obviously spoke of his desire apart from His will. While I believe this logical interpretation remains correct for Luke 24:22, as well as my conclusion about thelo and boulemai in Mark 15, I had not realized that thelo, depending on the context, did mean in some passages (such as 2 Th. 3:10) not merely the desire but also a congruent will that was present as conceived by the desire. In fact, I had simply assumed that Strong’s would offer the strongest examples to show that thelo could have a meaning which included the will. But since such examples proved nothing of the kind to me, I assumed that thelo ought not to be understood as including the will. Thus the temptation to read a restricted meaning into a particular verb that de facto is not so restricted, is a transgression I now realize many a thinker has committed, myself included. Although I regret having done so, it shows the value of taking into account (as I finally did) a more persuasive opponent of my view, whose vested interest was in proving exceptions to his opponent’s views. For while I found the if this, then that conclusion of his faulty, he at least showed me the deficiency in my own view as well.

 

Having said this, however, let me add the somewhat come-lately thought that it appears to me that every argument assumes its conclusion, whether true or false. As a friend of mine paraphrased this thought perhaps more clearly, The premise ISthe conclusion. This is one reason why Calvinists and non-Calvinists simply claim that it is the other interpreter who makes various biblical scriptures of private interpretation. In the end, then, I think the matter comes down to 1) properly recognizing that the translation is not the autographa; 2) insisting on the historical-grammatical, lexical history of words; and 3) realizing by the Spirit that the proper conclusions will also generally be common sense arguments that even a child would likely understand. Such arguments might be phrased like the following three rhetorical questions: Why would God in the Old Testament often appear exasperated at unrepentant people, if they could not change their ways? Or how can we say that God changes a person’s choice from what that person wants, but then call it the person’s choice? Or how in the future will God condemn people for sinning, if they had no ability to choose differently? Such common sense arguments have led another friend of mine to say of Calvinism, “I call it the unnecessary doctrine.” By this he means that it ought to be self-evident that every man creates thoughts and a will that are his own. But unfortunately the prevalence of Calvinistic theology among Christians remains, since many Evangelicals have been brainwashed by translators who in certain key passages frequently assigned false or misleading lexical meanings to words, and in so doing followed after the rudiments of this world and the philosophy of men, rather than after the Spirit.

 

But to move on to a final point about thelo, one should observe that the push by some theologians, perhaps Calvinists in particular, to make thelo mean “to will” i.e., “to choose,” instead of “to want,” in so many places in the New Testament, appears to have something also to do with the refusal to recognize that “to will” is often just assumed in the predicates of language, whether Greek or English. For one does not say, “I chose to get dressed, and then I chose to eat breakfast, and then I chose to go to work.” Rather, one simply says, “I dressed, ate breakfast, and went to work.” Thus “to will” is simply assumed in many predicates, whether English or Greek—indeed, even as it is assumed that man is the free will creature that he is. Therefore we ought to be inclined not to see the “to will” bogeyman behind every appearance of thelo, but to grant at least the possibility of “desire” in as many biblical passages as the contexts suggest. For again, the rule here, as everywhere, is: Context is king.

 

And so, to bring the discussion full cycle, it seems reasonable to conclude that Philippians 2:13, in context (i.e., the near context of its preceding verse and the far context of the kind of common sense objections that are implicit throughout Scripture as based upon the historical and lexical meaning of words), speaks of God working in us to desire and to do of His good pleasure. God does this through encouraging and affirming the intact (not seared) conscience of every believer. Furthermore, and again, since we have the ability to quench the Spirit’s work in our lives, God does not simply give us the will, whether we want it or not, as Calvinists imply. The Calvinist, of course, will deny our contention for common sense, relying on a doctrine of human depravity that implies that man has no common sense, or that the “common sense” he perceives is false, and that “common sense” is rooted instead in divine mystery and therefore inexpressible and (at least currently) humanly incomprehensible.

 

Now the point in taking my readers through the above process in regard to Philippians 2:13 is not only to show the actual meaning of the phrase to will, but to explain why sometimes this book has found it necessary to question certain views of theologians and commentators regarding their logicand conclusions, since their views are often accepted by us lay persons rather uncritically. For the problem is this: many commentators treat verbs as though they are married off to nouns (typically, “God” when absolute sovereignty is at stake, or “man” when depravity is at stake). But observe that a verb, while not married to a specific noun or nouns, IS married to its historical, grammatical, and lexical latitude of meaning, as understood through the particular context in each of its given appearances.

 

Question:

 

Does Philippians 1:29 teach that God gives us belief? This verse appears to state that we do not initiate the believing ourselves, but that God gives it to us. The verse reads: “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake….”

 

Answer:

 

Philippians 1:29 is interpreted by Calvinists to mean that God foreordains everything the believer experiences, including his belief and suffering. We have answered in previous chapters the two questions of whether saving faith is given by God and whether all suffering is caused by God, and have answered negatively in both cases. Philippians 1:29 is simply a generic statement about the lot of the Christian. That is, the path of the believer will not only involve belief, but also suffering. As Paul says elsewhere, “All they that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” Every Christian suffers persecution in some sense. We are hated by a world which hates Christ, and we belong to a corporate Body, the Church, which is the object of attack by the Devil and his emissaries.

 

Question:

 

Paul says to the Corinthian believers, “For all things are for your sakes” (2 Cor. 4:15). That sounds like the same thought expressed in Romans 8:28, i.e., “that all things work together for good to them that love God.” Does this mean that everything we are exposed to in life (including sin) is for the benefit of Christians who love God?

 

Answer:

 

We have already shown in chapter 6 that Romans 8:28 was not translated accurately in the KJV, that is, if the translators intended to mean that all things in the world, without qualification, work together for good in the case of the believer. So we will consider just the 2 Corinthians passage. Note, then, that the context shows that the all things which Paul refers to is the suffering he details in the verses leading up to verse 15. In verses 8-11 Paul says that Timothy and he were “afflicted in every way.” Paul then explains what he means by ‘everyway.’ He and Timothy were crushed, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. He concludes in verse 12, “So death works in us, but life in you.” He then quotes a phrase from Psalm 116:10 to say that he and Timothy, like the Psalmist, still believe in the Lord in the midst of suffering. Both he and Timothy also realize that the Father who raised Jesus will one day make a presentation of them along with the Corinthian believers. At this point Paul comes to verse 15: “For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.” Paul, in referring to “all things,” is still referring to his and Timothy’s endurance in the face of all kinds of suffering. Paul anticipates that the Corinthians themselves will face suffering when he adds in verse 17, “For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” The idea that suffering produces glory for the believer is not meant to be understood here as means being justified by their end (when such means come from the Enemy). The only sense that our eternal weight of glory can be understood as being produced by evil means in the world, is due to our resistance against evil. The means of our resistance in the Holy Spirit is what ultimately leads to our end, i.e.,our eternal weight of glory. If Paul is saying what some claim—that every evil is really a good working for the believer—then it would make no sense for him to say two chapters later that righteousness, light, and Christ have no possibility of working cooperatively together with unrighteousness, darkness, and the Devil, respectively. Also, note that the book of 2 Corinthians actually begins with the same theme of suffering to which it returns in chapter 4. Paul states in 1:3-7, 11 that whether he suffers or is comforted, all such circumstances will benefit the Corinthian Christians as they pray for him and learn about suffering and comfort. This is yet another sense in which “all things”¹²³ were for the Corinthians’ sakes, i.e., so that they might offer thanks:

 

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. ⁶But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; ⁷and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort…¹¹you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.

Question:

 

Colossian 1:15 states: “For by Him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.” Doesn’t this mean that even the Devil, the Fall, the sin of man, etc., were made to glorify God?

 

Answer:

 

Not at all. Colossians 1:16 is referring to all things that were created. In context this means all things as God created them in their forms, not in their content. Man is, in part, a form; forms are what God makes, though of course God also makes the content of His own thoughts. What man has become through his obedience or disobedience is a result of his content, and God did not make that content. God does try to influence our future content for good, but He does not create the content. (Only man can create his own content.) Indeed, if Colossians 1 was telling us that all things without exception were made for God, why would Paul have made the distinction four verses earlier regarding the desire of God to have us translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son? That is, if everything was created for God, then everything would also be part of the Son’s kingdom, in which case the power of darkness would also be part of the Son’s kingdom—there would be no distinction—so why would God need to translate us from that? But as to the anticipated Calvinist rejoinder that even the Fall, man’s sin, etc., glorifies God, it ought to be observed that we have already answered these points in other portions of this book, especially with the commentary on Romans 8:28.

 

Furthermore, though men and fallen angels have abused their positions of power, this is not an argument that God has ever used their evil for good or for the good of the believer. He foreknows when evil will occur, He counters it (by limiting the degree and/or length of the trial for the sake of the elect, and the believer looks to Him), He opposes evil, and when some tremendous good has prevailed despite evil opposing it, the result may look as though God had used the evil or the evil person. But He has not. The book of Job, as we have already seen, is very instructive on this point of showing God’s goodness to us, a goodness that especially arises in the midst of a believer’s betimes lengthy conflict against evil.

 

Question:

 

I know the Bible teaches there is a hell. But how could a man have free will if he is in hell, since he would have no choice there?

 

Answer:

 

Men are never without their will, e.g., without the choice to give God glory or to withhold their praise, even if they are in hell. How a man thinks of God is never forcibly removed from him. Until recently I thought that when an unbeliever died he woke up in torment and immediately understood the gospel he rejected. While I still believe he wakes up in torment, I no longer think it was ever correct for me to have assumed that an unbeliever truly understands the gospel after he dies. In fact, there are two passages that support the idea that after death men continue to think the same essential way they always did while they were alive. The first is found in Matthew 7:21-23, in which Christ says that many people shall come to Him in that (final judgment) day, confident in the justifying nature of their own works:

 

Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness…’

These people had gone through life convinced that the good things they did would save them from their sins. As seen in the above passage, their thinking did not change after they died. Christ said that many people would make this kind of appeal during the Judgment but be sent to hell. So we see from Scripture that men remain deceived in their thinking even after they are dead. Perhaps the most vivid example of this fact is the man described in Luke 16:19-31. This passage describes an unrepentant rich man who died and went to a place of fiery torment:

 

¹⁹There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. ²⁰But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, ²¹desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. ²²So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. ²⁴Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ ²⁵But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. ²⁶And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’ ²⁷Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore father, that you would send him to my father’s house, ²⁸for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ ²⁹Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ ³⁰And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ ³¹But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’

Notice that this man never says that he has any regrets. He never says to Abraham, “I’m sorry I didn’t think more about Lazarus,” or “I really regret not thinking about God,” or “I’m only getting what I deserve for my sin.” The only concern he shows is for his five brothers. Of such concern Jesus elsewhere gave short shrift—”What reward is there in loving those who love you? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?” (Mt. 5:46). This man never got beyond his selfishness to consider how he ought to love God and his fellow man. The idea that men in hell are denied their free will to give God glory is therefore not supported in the Bible. Again, the Scripture does not give any indication that men in hell will want their thinking changed from what it was during their lifetime. Thus we should ask how a man in hell can acknowledge Christ if he shall remain unwilling to do so? And how much stronger shall a man resist truth in a place where God is no longer pulling him toward a place where he might consider the work of Christ? Thus, in hell men will still have the freedom to think of God how they will, but God will no longer be striving with them to think correctly. Such a man will be like a prisoner in jail who remains unreformed despite his punishment. This was the condition, in fact, of the rich man in Luke 16 after he died. Finally, one might object that a man is not free to leave hell (even though he would certainly want to) and is therefore denied the freedom of his will. The Bible, however, never teaches that the object of our intention will always be realized, but merely that our intention (i.e., our will) shall always remain intact and free.

 

Question:

 

Proverbs 16:4 states: “The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.” Doesn’t this mean that God makes the wicked to be wicked because it pleases Him to do so as the Absolute Sovereign of the universe?

 

Answer:

 

God does not make anybody’s will, and this is the case whether they are righteous or wicked. Furthermore, we have demonstrated in earlier portions of this book why God must be (and is biblically presented as) consistent in His holiness and consistent in His hatred of sin. What is in view in Proverbs 16:4 is the end of the wicked as judgmentally determined by God. God alone is the One who has decided what the final abode of each man shall be, according to his belief or unbelief. For the wicked it is “the day of evil,” that is, the day of calamity. The unbelieving man certainly wishes that he alone could determine the final (eternal) consequence of his actions, for then there would be none that involved punishment. But God Himself (and by Himself) shall decide what the appropriate reward or punishment of every man shall be according to His own holy standard of judgment.

 

Question:

 

Acts 17:26-27a states: “[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. That they should seek the Lord…” Doesn’t this verse mean that God decides who, for example, should be born in America and who should have Christian parents, etc. If I was born in India, I probably wouldn’t be a Christian, because so many people there are Hindu. Hasn’t God decided, then, who will be born where?

 

Answer:

 

While it is true that a child of godly parents, or the succeeding generation of a godly nation, is in a position to benefit from the godly decisions of those who have gone before them, this is because those parents or godly nations have, by their own will, responded positively to God’s instruction. Conversely, a child or generation will not benefit if those who go before the child or generation are godless. Furthermore, the Bible teaches that God is not a respecter of persons, and so we should not think that God arbitrarily decides that one person or nation will be in a place of special privilege. Observe then, that in Acts 17, while it is true that Paul concludes his sermon to the Athenians by stressing the judgment of God which shall come upon all men by the Man whom God has raised from the dead, Paul’s prior remark about the habitations of men must be understood in this light. In other words, Paul is saying that the habitations of men are subject to the judgment of God. Thus when a nation unlawfully (apart from divine instruction) goes beyond its borders to conquer another people or peoples, or fails to carry out God’s judgment on His behalf (see 1 Ki. 20:42), it is subject to God’s unmediated judgment. For some nations act wickedly against other nations, or refuse to carry out His judgment. But God will ultimately subject them to judgment, of which the Old Testament metaphor of the Potter and the pot directly speaks. Thus God sets the boundaries and habitations as irresistibly subject to judgment. That is the context and meaning of what Paul is saying.

 

Question:

 

Psalm 139:16 states (NAS): “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.”Doesn’t this mean that God has ordained everything that happens in our lives, even to the exact length of our life?

 

Answer:

 

The Hebrew word yatsur translated as days by the NAS in Psalm 139:16 is nowhere translated days in the entire KJV Old Testament
(I personally have no very similar resource to check the NAS). This includes nearly 2,000 appearances of the word day and days. The root word for day (Heb. yome) literally means hot. The root word for the NAS’s “days” in Psalm 139:16 is entirely different, and literally means structure (Heb. yatsur) and is defined by Strong’s as limb or part:—member. It occurs just one other time in the Old Testament (Job 17:7) in which both the KJV and the NAS translate it as members (i.e., parts of the body, thus Job: “Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.”) Psalm 139:16 in the KJV reads: “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect;and in thy book all my members (Heb. yatsur) were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”As for the NAS preference for ordained instead of the KJV’s Hebrew transliteration of fashioned, the word can indeed figuratively mean determined, or planned, but of course the point is mute when the Hebrew word yatsur is properly translated as members. For in such a case God would be referring to physicality, which, even if broadly (though, in my opinion, improperly) interpreted symbolically to include the emotional and mental ability of man, or even the ability of man’s will, would still not include the content of the will. In fact, the context of Job arguably suggests a meaning limited to man’s physiological parts. At any rate, it can only be guessed upon what grounds the NAS assumed that the word yatsur ought to mean “days,” in order to have rendered such a translation as they did. I personally can think of no other reason for the NAS rendering of yatsur to the word “days,” except that an assumption was made about David’s thought-development in the Psalm apart from sound, lexical considerations. But, needless to say, we have by this point already observed the NAS’s predilection for a general Calvinistic viewpoint.

 

 

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¹¹⁶Pocket Interlinear New Testament, Jay P. Green, Sr. (editor) Baker Book House, 1986 reprint.

 

¹¹⁷God sustains the form of man and provides him with his very breath and abilities, and offers him wisdom. The king speaks as though he were independent even in the sustenance of his body.

 

¹¹⁸It might be objected here that not all Messianic passages in the Old Testament predict Messiah’s death in a de facto way that makes the Messianic passage compliant with our explanation above. Such an example would be Psalm 22:7, where it says “All they that see me laugh me to scorn…” But if Messiah would have died at the hands of believing sinners, then such a phrase could have applied to the Psalmist alone. As Bible students know, not all Messianic passages maintain a consistent Messianic voice throughout Messianic sections, nor must they, since the passage is often describing the activity of another individual. Furthermore, it should be observed that where such Messianic passages describe the sinful acts of men during crucifixion, they are revealed that way because of God’s foreknowledge, which is non-determinative. Had the human actions been of a different sort, the Old Testament Messianic passage would likewise have been different. Or, if the Messianic passages were still not different, then it would be understood that the Messianic aspect of the Psalm ceased or did not exist at such a point, and that the meaning should be restricted to the Psalmist himself.

 

¹¹⁹Psalm 76:10 does indeed predict that the “wrath of man will praise [God],” and some have thought this means that God is so absolutely sovereign that even sin praises Him (as the Designer of history). This verse, however, can be explained apart from the Calvinistic model. The anger referred to may simply mean believers who are told to be angry and sin not. Nothing in the passage suggests we must understand the verse to mean all the anger of all men at all times; in fact, the Bible explicitly states in James 1:20 that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Another possible explanation is that the anger referred to in Psalm 26:10 is that of unbelievers who will narrowly look upon the Antichrist after his defeat, realizing in a moment of astonishment that he failed them because he was weaker than they had imagined, i.e., “Art thou become as one of us?” (Is 14:10).

 

⁹Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. ¹⁰All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? ¹¹Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. ¹²How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! ¹³For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: ¹⁴I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. ¹⁵Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. ¹⁶They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; ¹⁷That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners? (Is. 14:9-17).

 

¹²⁰Olson states that boulomai appears only once in Romans 9:19, the other occurrences being boule, a weaker form. Although I have followed Strong’s definition of boulomai throughout, I don’t think the argument over the contrast between thelo and boulomai (and boule) is affected per se. Nevertheless, the reader should keep this in mind.

 

¹²¹Even if boulomai did appear in Philippians 2:13, I do not think the near context would justify such a deterministic interpretation.

 

¹²²John (18:39) actually does use boulemai instead of thelo, though in John the two terms are not contrasted against one another as in Mark. The explanation for John’s use of boulemai is thus: Pilate, in the course of the tumultuous meeting between he and the Jews, asks the Jews three times what evil Jesus had done. Thus there is no reason to suppose any contradiction between John’s gospel and Mark’s, for Pilate presumably asked the question regarding evidence for Jesus’ guilt more than once, i.e. both ways—”Whom do you desire that I release,” and “Whom do you decide that I release.” Pilate’s habit was to release a prisoner to them at a Jewish feast. This habit made for an expectation among the Jews for a political concession from Pilate. But Mark (15:8) shows that not until the Jews desired (inferior translation here; Gr. word means begged) did Pilate act according to his custom. Thus Pilate acquiesces to ask the Jews, after they have shown their subordination, who they desired should be released (and so, too, presumably the same relative question as to whom they decided should be released). In this context of subordination Pilate is thus able to include the word decided without losing face. Then Pilate, releasing Barabbas unto them and thus fulfilling his ‘obligation’ according to Jewish expectations, uses the word thelo when asking the Jews what they desired should be done with Jesus, that is, since he knows they could not appeal or barter from a position of further expectation.

 

¹²³Olson has pointed out that when Gr. panta (things) is used with ta it likely has a demonstrative force. Panta occurs 45 times in the New Testament, with ta accompanying it 25 times. Arguably, then, ‘ta panta‘ may be translated “all things” or “all these things,” depending upon the context (which provides the clarification). In fact, in the latter case I believe “all these things” can be used in a demonstrable way in which “these” may still be understood as going from the particular to the general. For example, I might, in my enthusiasm for God’s display of power in creation, wave my arm to indicate my immediate surroundings, exclaiming: “Look at all these things!” Yet by doing so I may or may not imply that my hearer should go from contemplating the particular things to which I am drawing his attention, to contemplating the general universe of things accordingly. The fuller context of my conversation and statements before and after my exclamatory phrase would determine which meaning my hearer should infer. Thus, for 2 Corinthians 4:15, the context appears to show that Paul is referring his Corinthian readers to “all these things” (not “all things”), i.e., the things which he and Timothy had endured and which served as lessons in perseverance.

 

 

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^lixSpiegel, p. 25.

 

^lxRimmer, Harry. Calvary. Berne, Indiana; Berne Witness, Inc., 1939).

 

^lxiStrong, James. [http://www.apostolic-churches.net/bible/strongs/ref/?stgh=greek&stnm=5915].