Sorry 'bout the length btw.

 

Daniel, can you explain how your understanding of God's sovereignty can be defended against charges of determinism?

Or do you hold to that idea?

 

Jim - I don't think God forces us to do anything.

Why do you drink?

I will tell you why, you drink because you have no control whatsoever over what you are. You were designed to thirst in response to dehydration, and you respond to that design by drinking when you become thirsty.

I will note that perhaps, if you were so inclined, you could pursue some bizarre, fringe environment such that you take all your liquids intravenously, and you take drugs and whatnot to keep you from experiencing thirst and thus this through monumental, self-inflicted, medical interference you manage to create an artificial environment whereby you are able to overcome God's design that you be thirsty - I say, I note that perhaps such a thing is possible, but the question I asked is not whether or not you could create a situation whereby you never thirst again - it is simply why do you thirst at all?

The answer is, you thirst because God designed you in such a way that you need liquids to live, and you experience thirst when it is time for you to take them in.

I don't think God has made you a puppet in this - that is, while God is certainly in control providentially, I see no reason for God to impose himself upon your will such that he "forces" you to drink water. He merely made you so that you would thirst, and you respond to His design. You can use your free will to ignore that design for a time, but eventually you -will- choose to drink if liquids are available.

Thus God has sovereignly determined that you will drink, but has done so in a way that does not offend or deny your free will.

Does God, from the beginning know when you will thirst? Does God have providential influence over seasons, weather, situations, etc? Certainly. Is it possible that God, through providence not only knows when you will have each drink - but has even determined beforehand to make a world and care for it providentially so that you will slake your thirst in perfect accord with His predetermined design? Is God wise enough for that? Can God really create a world where you experience thirst according to His design, and you slake that thirst according to your own free will, without derailing God's own plans however granular they may be?

If God is sovereign, is it necessary for our free will to do injury to that sovereignty - must we demand that God is so limited that He cannot ordain minutia "because" of our free will - or can we allow that God is sufficiently wise and discerning enough to run the world providentially in such a way that our free will is never once compromised, but never the less plays out exactly in accord with God's will?

I think God is able to do that. I think God created this universe with a determined purpose, and that purpose is not affected by our free will; but rather our free will is knit into that purpose like a hand in a glove.

When I say that God is sovereign, therefore, I do not mean by that that God imposes upon our free will, but rather that God gives us perfect and untarnished freedom to choose to respond to His creation according to the nature He allows us to have, and that our responses - free as they are - never the less are perfectly governed by God's will.

Does this mean that God forces us to sin? Of course not. We sin because we want to. What it means is that God has allowed men to sin because it served the purpose of creation to do so.

If we want to say that God didn't "allow" sin - that Adam's fall was a horrible tragedy that God didn't see coming - we are certainly ignoring the fact that God chose us in Christ before Adam was ever created. Likewise we must ask ourselves why, if God stopped Abimelech from sinning with Sarai (Abraham's wife) -- why I say, didn't He stop Adam from sinning in the first place?

Can God still be righteous if He creates a person He knows will eventually sin against Him?

The answer --must-- be yes, if we are to believe the bible, for clearly God didn't have to "allow" Adam to sin, but created Him anyway - knowing full well that He would sin, and orchestrating creation to accommodate that sin. God could have just created Adam in a "glorified" body right? I mean, If God planned our salvation before Adam was created, he certainly planned to eventually give us glorified bodies... right? So why not give Adam his glorified body right now and skip all the sin stuff? Surely God could have done that - and I offer this - I think God would have done just that, if allowing sin to corrupt His creation were in fact, not part of God's plan.

Which is all to say that I do hold to determinism, but probably not the way you think of determinism. I think that God's sovereignty is perfect - right down to determining the moment by moment orbit of every single electron orbiting every single atom in the entire created universe. When scripture says that God knows the number of hairs on our head, the word there means that he determines the number of hairs on our head, and not that he simply knows how many are there. I believe that God is THAT sovereign, and I believe that because that is what I find in scripture.

I don't think our free will is compromised by God's sovereignty - for I regard God's sovereignty as big enough to swallow that up without any trouble - that is, I believe that I can do whatever I want, but whatever I want is always going to be exactly in accord with what God has determined from before creation was created.

Whether I go to heaven or hell was been determined before Adam was created, and should I go to hell it would not be God's fault by my own - for I have certainly both earned and deserved it - even if God planned it to be so. Likewise, if I should receive grace and be saved, I shall pass through the judgment - not because I earned it, but because Christ earned it and God determined to apply it to me before the foundation of the world. If I have desired to be saved, that desire does not originate from within me, but from within God who has shown mercy.

Thus heaven and hell shall be populated by those who deserve only hell; but because God determined beforehand to manifest His glory by saving undeserving people from His wrath - that is, according to the good counsel of God's will, and in accord with His sovereign purpose He extends mercy to individuals whom he elects to show mercy to - I say, these shall pass through the judgment unscathed.

I think when one understands God's sovereignty, the "charge" of determinism isn't necessarily a something one cares about.

I don't want to rattle on too much here. Let me know if that makes sense.

 

Well Daniel, you obviously have a far greater mind than my own to understand God's sovereignty in this way and not suffer great consternation.

Please explain to me how this understanding of determinism does not lead to a fatalistic worldview including the dreaded hyper-Calvinistic tendancies?

Also, is not your usage of the term free-will somewhat faceteous? We both know that man is not free to do anything but serve sin.

 

Jim, I want to be sure we mean the same thing when we talk about fatalism and hyper-Calvinism.

Fatalism, as I understand it, and as the name implies, suggests that irregardless of what one may or may not do, they are "fated" to some certain, inescapable end. The idea is that if you are fated to go to heaven, you will go, and if you are fated to go to hell you will go - and nothing you can (or will) do can change that.

Hyper-Calvinism, as I understand it, perverts the doctrines of grace such that God's election is portrayed as Him dragging unwilling sinners into heaven while at the same time locking out repentant sinners who desperately want to enter in.

As I answer your question, I will do so presuming we share the same understanding of these terms.

If my understanding leads to fatalism, then what you are saying is that my understanding means that people who genuinely turn to God in faith will only get to hell if they are elect, and people who sin all their life and never to to Christ will only go to hell if they are not elect.

I don't believe there is anything in what I have written that makes that suggestion.

Rather I remain consistent, I believe, in showing that we are only free to act within the scope of the spiritual death we are born into. That is, there is no spiritual life within us that is going to turn to God, and left to our own devices, though the gospel were preached to us each and every day - not a single person would have enough spiritual life in them to turn to Christ in faith. That is what death looks like. We can go to the graveyard and preach the gospel all we want - no one is going to rise out of the grave and hear it, because they are all dead.

The charge of fatalism cannot stick because that would suggest that some of these dead people are not really dead. You see, in order to desire heaven, one must be alive - so you can't have a scenario where God is locking the door on people trying to get in because no one is trying to get in. Likewise, you can't have God dragging dead people into heaven, because scripture has no such category.

While there is predestination, it is certainly not of the fatalistic variety - that is, it isn't as if we end up where we going regardless of what we do. What we choose to do will decide where we go - the only thing about that is what we choose to do has already been determined by God before He ever created us.

If we come to this discussion with the wrongful notion that everyone is (by default) able to come to God - we are not thinking biblically.

The entire race, being spiritually dead, means that no one wants to come to Christ, or ever will want to come to Christ; because they cannot come to Christ - because that would be an act of virtue, a righteous thing - and there is no righteousness in us. Dead does not mean, a tiny, teensy weeny little bit alive. It means dead. Lazarus did not rise from the grave because he was only mostly dead - Christ's command gave life to Him.

Hyper-Calvinism says that God elects some to heaven and elects others to hell.

The problem with that is that in order to have an election, you need to elect someone from out of a group. When we elect a mayor, he or she is elected from the general population. If there is no population, there cannot be an election. You have to first have a group then you can elect people from that group, otherwise you are not having an "election".

So the idea of God "electing" people for heaven, and the rest for hell doesn't make any sense - because that would mean that there was some group that was neither elect nor non-elect prior to the election. I wonder if that is clear enough?

You see, election, understood properly, would mean either there was a group of innocent people from whom God elected to make some guilty, or that there was a guilty group from whom God elected to count some as righteous. You need a homogeneous group to elect from if you are going to have an election. If you have a group that is neither one nor the other, and you "elect" some to go one way, and some to go the other such that there is no remainder when you are through - then you have not elected a group from within another - you have merely divided a group into two categories.

Not that we make our argument from a clear understanding of what an election is - for one can remain ignorant of such a distinction and still understand the concept.

We tend to want to put things into chronological order when we discuss these sorts of things, even if time has no meaning in eternity - yet for our temporal perspectives, it seems good to do so, if for no other reason than to understand how it would look to us.

When God made his "election" was he choosing from a group that was innocent, or guilty? If we say innocent - then we must conclude that there was no purpose for this election, for none were guilty. If we say guilty, then we must conclude that God's election was not a matter of sending some to heaven and others to hell - but rather a matter of regarding all as going to hell, and determining to save some from that fate.

Do you see this Jim? Do you not see that to elect innocent men to heaven is ridiculous? If everyone is innocent when God makes his choice, then the only choice God is making is which innocent people is he going to allow to corrupt themselves and thereby earn hell. That is certainly a horrible image of God, and worthy of all scorn and disgust.

I hope you will see that either we are all innocent or all guilty - and if all innocent then election means that God determines to send innocent men to hell, and if we are all guilty when God makes his election, then election means that God is allowing guilty sinners to receive the wages of their sin, yet showing mercy on some of these guilty sinners - those whom he elects to do so for - and allowing them, in spite of their sin - to enter into heaven by a supreme act of mercy in sending His own Son into creation, as the incarnate God who demonstrate His own character (love) by not only saving some, but doing so at the expense of His own Son's life, so that His own righteousness and glory are not compromised in saving the guilty (since they receive God's wrath in full in Christ).

Thus I don't think anything I am saying leads one to conclude, as the hyper-Calvinist concludes, that God chooses some for heaven and some for hell - nor do I think there is anything in what I have said that suggests that our destinies are fixed regardless of what we do - rather the only conclusion I believe I present is that all our actions reflect God's sovereign will - resulting in the salvation of the elect, and only the elect.

Put simply Jim, I think that experientially speaking, only those who come to Christ desiring to be saved from their sins and who place their trust in Christ to do so will be saved, and that those who by their sin earn their condemnation, and who never come to Christ in faith - I believe that these will go to hell. If a person comes to Christ, it is because God has drawn Him to Christ as the scriptures say - it is not because that person has circumvented God - and if God calls a person, that person will come no matter what.

I don't believe that everyone who wants to get into heaven is called however. I expect that Judas wanted to get into heaven, and Caiaphas, and any number of Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes and lawyers. It isn't those who want to go to heaven that get there, it is those who genuinely want to be reconciled to God that get there - and only those whom God calls will ever desire this - because it is not a carnal desire Jim, it is a spiritual one - and the natural man has no spiritual desires, God has to put it there - we call that the "grace" that is irresistible, not because it turns a man into a robot, but because there is nothing to resist - just as a man becomes thirsty because he is designed to be thirsty, the moment God determines to make a man thirsty for Him, that man is marked, he -will- come to the fount and drink, not because he is forced, but because he has been granted that thirst.

I wonder if this makes sense to you or not? Let me know.

 

Daniel, I think I understand you much better now. I appreciate your patience. So from what I can gather you see the doctrine of election as the pivotal point of all truth in understanding and interpreting scripture.

From what I understand now, I see election (or as you say sovereignty) as the foundation of Calvinistic doctrine on which all other points either stand or fall. This somewhat makes sense as the TULIP is a sort of progression.

I would like your thoughts on this comment I recently read on a blog.

"While scripture indicates that none of us seek God or come to Him of our own accord, it never indicates that people are unable to respond to the gospel when they hear it. In fact, everything regarding preaching the gospel assumes the reverse. It appears clear that the gospel itself carries within it the power to enable hearers to believe it. If you want to call that power of the gospel "prevenient grace," then I believe in prevenient grace."

 

Jim, I would say the comment from the other blog is not accurate when it says that scripture never indicates that people are unable to respond to the gospel when they hear it. In John 10 Jesus describes Himself metaphorically as the good shepherd - whose sheep "hear" his voice. This was not to suggest that the other sheep were deaf, but rather that, the sheep who were not Christ's would by no means heed His call. In verses 25-27 Jesus explains why these people could not come to Him: "Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me."

Not that we need to rely on metaphors, to make the point - Jesus said plainly in John 6 that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws ("drags") that person to Jesus.

Or Paul gives us some fodder too in his first epistle to the Corinthians, wherein, in the fourteenth verse of the second chapter we read: But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. What is Paul referring to when he says, "the things of the Spirit of God"? Looking back in the context Paul is referring to that teaching which he first brought to the Corinthians - the teachings about Christ; what we might simply refer to as "the gospel". Paul was saying the same thing he says everywhere - but just in a different way; the reason some don't receive the gospel is not because Paul isn't persuasive enough - but because the natural man (i.e. the man God hasn't quickened) cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God - they are foolishness to him, nor can he understand them because they are spiritually discerned (and he is carnal).

I wonder if I really need to reiterate the many texts that speak to this truth? You have likely heard them all quoted many times by now.

When I preach the "good news" my presumption is not that all men can comprehend it, but that no men can comprehend it unless God opens their understanding.

When Paul says that he is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because the gospel of Christ is the "power" of God unto salvation -- I don't understand the word power to mean "spiritual energy" - as though it worked independant of God. I think it simply means, as the Greek allows, that the gospel is "the means by which the work is done".

Not that I am trying to drain any spiritual life out of the text - but rather that I am not convinced that the text suggests that the gospel itself has 'energy' to save. The gospel is, practically speaking a truthful accounting of who Jesus is, and what He has done for mankind. That truth sets as many free as place their genuine trust in it. In that sense the truth about who Jesus is and what He has done most certainly -is- the means by which the work of salvation is done - but only in those who can receive spiritual things; in other words - if it is the gospel that gives life (rather than (as scripture teaches) the Spirit who gives life) then this "power" is to the power to wake the dead. But scripture describes not the gospel as waking the spiritually dead out of their condemned slumber - but the Holy Spirit.

Which isn't to say that the quote is all that far off, for I believe the full picture is somewhat close: The Holy Spirit, works through the preaching of the gospel to initiate faith in men. Not the gospel in a vacuum, but the Holy Spirit giving life so that the truth is not only assented to as true, but trusted and understood.

Does that make sense?

 

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."br/>Rom 1:16

Daniel, this verse seems to declare that the gospel does indeed have some form of power to save; but only in conjunction with belief (faith). Now you may argue that God only grants faith to the elect hence only they are granted salvation. Nevertheless faith does not come apart from hearing the Word of God.

So in this sense, the gospel is indeed the vehicle by which God moves to grant faith to men. Whatever method folks may believe this conviction takes place, we must all agree that there is no room for boasting as Eph 2:8-9 perfectly states.

Perhaps this is why we see so little power of God today; the gospel is not being proclaimed with boldness and authority as it ought. There is a beautiful mystery whereby God anoints the preaching of the Word to impart faith in the hearers. He has given us the privelege and awesome responsiblity of bringing the good news to every creature.

 

Jim, the good news is just that - news. It isn't magical in and of itself, yet it desribes the work of salvation that God has accomplished. Unless the Holy Spirit, in an act of grace (for no one deserves this), grants the hearer (ours out into their heart ...if you will...) a love for God, they will by no means turn away from their sins and towards God for reconciliation - even if their minds superficially assent to the truth of the gospel claim.

The news itself is, as you describe, a vehicle for God's power - and while good and true, it isn't intrinsically powerful as if God had given it some kind of utterly autonomous power. If that were the case, we wouldn't have to preach the gospel at all, since it would have the power to save regardless of whether we preached it or not - we could just put up a billboard to zap those who passed by and happened to read it. Also this would mean that the power that the gospel has is flawed, since it has gone forth from God, but only sometimes succeeds in what God has sent it forth to do.

I think the reason we see so little of God's power today is because we live in a society where we have no need of God, except to get us into heaven. How many of us pray in the morning that God will feed us and our family that day? If you have a fridge full of food, and a good job - chances are, you are not going to be looking to the cupboard and not God for provision. Likewise, who has time to think of God when children are in school all day being taught to love the world instead of Him? Who has time for God when our evenings are spent in front opiating ourselves into a stupor through television, or (now) the internet - or gaming, or soccer, or leisure in general? When God is becomes all about the "after life" we don't see him in our present life.

I think that is the real problem - the gospel that people are preaching is that God is going to save you from hell... later.. instead of God is going to save you from sin and rebellion right now.

 

(ours out into their hearts...

is supposed to be

(pours out into their hearts...

 

Sigh - I am in a hurry this morning apparently...


chances are, you are not going to be looking to the cupboard and not God for provision

is supposed to read:


chances are, you are going to be looking to the cupboard and not to God for provision...

 

"I think that is the real problem - the gospel that people are preaching is that God is going to save you from hell... later.. instead of God is going to save you from sin and rebellion right now."

Very true Daniel, very true!