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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| If Jesus is delaying in order to save everyone, can Jesus ever return? |
In 2 Peter 3:9 we read, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." [ESV].
There are a few words in this sentence that point us elsewhere for context. The word, "promise" for instance. In order to understand the verse, we need to know what promise Peter is referring to. The context answers that question for us - the promise Peter is referring to he mentions only a few sentences earlier: the promise of Christ's return.
Peter starts off here by saying that the delay in Christ's return is by no means due to slackness on the Lord's part. God's promise has not been set aside because of some slackness in God, but it is God's will to put Christ's return is on hold until all to come to repentance.
Hold up here for a second.
If I say that the ball is not green, we know only one thing about the ball - that whatever color it is, it isn't green. We could have said that the ball was entirely blue, and it would follow that the ball was not green - but if we say that the ball is not green, we are using the language of negation to stress the balls lack of greenness and typically we use this sort of expressive tool when our context is more fully expounded by the former rather than the latter. If I am in a room and everyone else has a green ball, and some authority asks each of us to describe the color of our particular sphere, and twelve people in a row say that their ball is green, I could say my ball is blue, but if I say that it is "not green" I emphasize the contrast far more fully than I would if I merely said my particular orb was of the bluish persuasion.
When Peter says that the "Lord is not slack" - he could simply said that the Lord -is- disciplined concerning His promises; or maybe, the Lord is hard working concerning his promises; but Peter chose to tell us that the Lord was "not slack" concerning His promises. Typically, we use that sort of negation when what we want to say about a thing is that it isn't like some other thing.
Peter has just mentioned that in the last days scoffers will heckle the idea that the Lord is going to return. They will reason that because everything continues as it ever did it is foolish to think that Christ will return, and that judgment will come. Yet Peter says that this is just as it was in Noah's day, just before the flood.
So when Peter says that God is not slack, he is answering beforehand, as it were, the charge that these scoffers will make - and his answer is that the coming of Christ is not delayed, as though God were slack, but that the Lord is not going to come until all should come to repentance.
Now, here is where some people get into the mire a bit.
The text clearly says that the reason Christ hasn't come back yet is because He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. If we lift this verse out of Peter's epistle and examine it by itself, we could actually dismiss the very argument that Peter is trying to make. Peter is arguing that Christ -will- return, but if cut this verse out and separate it from the text in which we found it, it seems to suggest that Christ will not come back until there are no more sinners left who might repent. In fact, if Christ returns at all, He will damn all those sinners who would have repented had he waited another year. Thus if the Lord is --truly-- not willing that any should perish, and is in fact waiting for more and more men to repent - then there are only two ways for the Lord to return - either all men die, or all men repent.
We can't get wishy-washy here. Either the text says that God is holding back until all men repent, or it doesn't - we can't have it both ways.
Yet if we are willing to put the text back in its context, we will not have this difficulty.
First of all, let's be clear on what Peter is arguing:
[1] Christ will return
[2] Christ is purposely delaying His return
[3] The reason for Christ's delay is that He is not willing for "any" to perish, and that "all" would come to repentance.
One question we must ask ourselves, if we are to continue, is whether God's will here can be thwarted. Sure we could just quote Isaiah 46:10 ("...My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please..."), but if we do that, we have to go there and make sure that the meaning we are pulling from that verse is the same one the verse puts there, and not just a convenient phrase that fits our argument.
So we ask one rational question: If Jesus is delaying in order to save everyone, can Jesus ever return? Maybe we worded that too strongly, let's water it down and see if it makes a difference: If Jesus is delaying in order to save "as many as possible" can Jesus ever return?
It should be evident, that is Jesus is trying to save as many as possible then he cannot return so long as there is the possibility that even one person might repent. Right?
Now, let's water it down just one more step: If Jesus is delaying in order to save "a goodly amount", can Christ ever return?
Why did we ask the last one? We asked it because it is the first one that changes the clear meaning of the text. The text says that there is a delay, and the delay has a reason, and the reason is that the Lord is not willing that any should perish. The only way we can allow Christ to return is if change the reason for his return from "not willing that any" to not willing that too many"
But as I said, if we put this back in its context, we don't have this problem.
Let me 'splain.
Ask yourself a question, who is Peter referring to when He says that the Lord is longsuffering toward us.
To be fair, there is a textual consideration to deal with here. The oldest manuscripts show the pronoun here as humas which means "you all" - and by oldest I am talking about a multitude of texts dating back as early as the third century. Latter day texts introduce a variance, replacing humas with "hemas" - which means "us". When I say latter day texts, I am talking about texts from the twelfth to fifteenth century. It may be that a thousand years later the Byzantines corrected the much older Alexandrian texts... but frankly, I doubt it. I am more inclined to believe that the older texts (and we have many) are probably more accurate simply because there was less time for variants to enter into the text by copyist errors etc.
So I am going to go with longsuffering toward "you all"...
So who is Peter referring to when he says, "you all"? His readers? Okay, I will buy that - I mean, that is how I would right if I were writing to a group of people, and I wanted to refer to them, I would use a pronoun like "you all" to do so. In fact, just a verse earlier Peter refers to the people he is writing to as his "beloved" - which I take to either mean, beloved of God (most likely), or simply beloved of Peter - which amounts to the same thing, for Peter is obviously not writing an open letter to just anyone, but a letter directed at a specific group of believers.
So when Peter says that Christ hasn't returned yet because He is long suffering towards all of those whom Peter was writing to, if we can find out whom Peter was writing to, we should be able to figure out whom the Lord is delaying his return for, which is presumably the same people whom the Lord desires should not perish, but come to repentance.
Presumably the beloved that Peter is writing to are described well enough in the salutation in chapter one. That was the flow at the time you know - you said who you were, and then you said who you were writing to, then you greeted who you were writing to, then you began your letter.
Looking back at the salutation we read that the recipients of this epistle were those who had obtained like precious faith with Peter and those who were with him by the righteousness of their mutual God and Savior Jesus Christ. That is, Christ was delaying his return in order that those who have and would obtain a similar faith would perish, but would find repentance. But Peter says a helpful thing up in verse one - he says that this is the second epistle he has written this group. Assuming that 1Peter is the first epistle, we can glean a bit more about whom Peter refers to as beloved, and whom it is that Christ delays waiting for their repentance that they may not perish...
Here Peter refers to them as, "...the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ"
Do you see that? Peter is writing to a group whom he refers to as elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
So Peter's argument then is that Christ is not slack in returning, but is waiting for every elect sinner to repent before He returns in order that none of them perish.
As a believer I have a choice from this passage as to what it means:
[1] Jesus is either trying to save everyone, and not only failing to do so, but He is even unable to return because doing so would thwart His own plan to try and save everyone...
or
[2] Jesus has chosen whom He will save already, and delays His return because He is waiting for all His sheep to come in the fold - that is, He is waiting for every elect sinner to be born, live, and come to faith in repentance, so that when the last elect sinner repents, Christ will return.
I am inclined to the second position because I see that all over the bible in every way possible.
I know that some think of election and predestination as God dragging some people kicking and screaming into heaven against their will, and slamming the door at the same time in the face of those who are desperately trying to get into heaven - but that isn't how it works.
The truth is none of us want God. We hate Him, and want nothing to do with Him, and will only grow in that direction more and more as time goes on. Unless God intervenes in our life, we will never, ever desire to be reconciled to Him. We may STRONGLY desire to avoid wrath - but while self preservation will certainly motivate a person to attempt in all ways possible to escape from the wrath to come - it will never motivate a sinner to be reconciled into a right (i.e. obedient and submitted) relationship with God. The sinner doesn't want reconciliation - the sinner wants God to die so that no one can punish the sinner for their sins. The sinner hates God's judgement, and hates the God who has the power to judge. He does not come to God because there is no life in him.
Do you understand that?
When a person believes they believe because God has drawn them to Himself so that what was impossible becomes possible - they come into a God given desire to be reconciled to God - a desire that God doesn't owe any of us, but is given as a gift of grace to those whom God, according to the wisdom of His own counsel, decided to do long before the world was ever created. It isn't that God chooses some innocent people to be born, sin, then go to hell, and other innocent people to be born, sin, and be given grace by which they come to a saving faith in Christ and escape hell. It is that all men are born, and sin, and stand condemned before God, but God has determined beforehand that those whom He foreknew He would elect to extend that grace by which they see themselves as sinners, and desire to be reconciled to God.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea that salvation is all up to me, it is about as humanistic as can be - and since the culture I live in is predominantly driven by the philosophy of humanism - I am quite comfortable with the notion that my salvation depends both on luck (thank goodness I was lucky enough to hear the gospel) and on personal merit (I thank myself that I am not like other men who hear the gospel and ignore it, but instead I chose to repent and believe, and when I did so God saved me in response to my own sovereign choice). I say, I like that me-o-centric soteriology as much as the next guy - I mean, it is pretty much the default isn't it? You don't need a bible to come up with that - it is basically the way every other religion works right? You find the right hoops to jump through, you chose to jump through them and butta-bing, you're in.
But that isn't what I read in scripture. What I read in scripture is that God is sovereign, and that while I am perfectly free to deny or indulge any desire I have - I cannot cause myself to have desires that are not there. I cannot choose to "no longer experience temptation" for instance. I mean, I can choose how I react to sinful temptations, but I cannot change my spots any more than the leopard can. I am truly limited in my moral free agency. I am not merely spiritually sick in my trespasses and sin, I am dead - and dead does not mean that I have a wee sliver of life. I am not neutral, but at enmity with God, we all are. So that when scripture says that no one can come to the Son unless the Father draws him - I don't rinse that away, but nod in agreement. Of course I cannot come to God - if I could do that, I could do it all and wouldn't need to come to God.
Yet I know this: sin is not merely something we do, it is something that owns us - and the person who thinks they can walk out of that cage all by themselves in order to come to Christ, doesn't understand who it is who sets the prisoners free. I cannot walk out of the cage of enmity, the cage of my spiritual deadness - and suddenly have faith - any more than a corpse can rise from the grave of its own accord.
I am not an innocent man, but guilty - we all are guilty. The reason people go to hell is because they hate God and reject Him. they don't want to be reconciled to Him because that would mean giving up their rebellion - giving up their (imagined) right to rule themselves - giving up their sin. No one is willing to do that because that, my dear reader, is the leopard's spot they cannot change. We are condemned because each and every last one of us refuses to come to God - indeed, we hate God. God isn't being mean when He sends such a one to hell - He is being just, for hell is the only fitting place for anything that refuses to subject itself to God, that is, to anything that refuses to be reconciled to God in repentance.
So I don't think God is picking innocent people to go to hell, and other innocent people to escape hell. I believe that God has determined to put His mercy and grace on display in electing some of us guilty, condemned already sinners to salvation, so that in spite of our selves God makes himself known to us even as Christ did to Paul on the Damascus road. He comes to us, loving us while we are yet sinners, and regenerates us and gives us a new desire - or to extend the metaphor - He changes our spots so that we can do by grace what previously was impossible for us - repent and believe. Not some trying to get in and being turned away while others are taken in who don't want to be there, rather God takes from amongst those who hate and reject Him, an elect group whom He chose beforehand to grant grace to, and these upon receiving grace respond to it as a duck responds to water - they act in perfect accord with their new nature, and repent and believe.
Period.
Okay I know I got off topic there at the end, but I like to tie up lose ends whenever I can. Sorry about the typos, It is late and I am going to post it without fixing it up. How's that for frivolity?Labels: dividing the word, Election, predestination |
posted by Daniel @
9:11 PM
3 comment(s)
 
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| Dictators and Governors. |
God is sovereign right? Right.
No matter what sort of theology you like, you will at least pay lip service to the notion that God is sovereign. We may not all agree on what sovereignty entails, but we can all agree that whatever it is, God -is- it.
Which leads me to discuss two ways that God's sovereignty might be understood. There are (no doubt) many ways that God's sovereignty could be understood, but I am only going to consider two ways, and these but briefly.
 he first way is to regard the sovereignty of God in this way - He is an omnipotent Dictator. If our understanding of God's sovereignty is thus, we regard God as making everything that happens, happen. He is sovereign in that everything that happens in all of creation does so because God directly and divinely wills it to happen in precisely the way it eventually happens. Every "action" that takes place throughout all of creation looks to God Almighty for its direct and immediate cause. Free will, in this system is an illusion, for every thought, motive, or action is actually controlled by the sovereignty of God. In other words, this understanding of sovereignty emphasizes God's control over creation.
Notwithstanding, should we understand God's sovereignty as being primarily a matter of His being in direct and constant control of all that happens in creation, we should have an easy answer for questions about predestination and election. Surely we reason, if God's sovereignty is defined according to an universal automatonic presumption - that is, if God's sovereignty can be described in terms of God determining every action in creation, such that every action is caused directly by God Himself - then we need understand the doctrines of election and predestination as being the natural result of God's sovereignty - since God causes everything.
The most significant problem with that model is perhaps philosophical.
If God causes me to follow Christ, can I (by any means) take credit for being drawn thus? If my drawing was not according to my own choice or merit, but according to God's sovereignty (as defined by his controlling all things) then my election is the result of God sovereign control over me, since I can in no way resist God's will.
But if we are going to premise our election on this kind of sovereignty, we ought to be consistent, because if the sovereignty of God means that God causes all things, then every time I disobey God, it is only because God has willed that I do so, and I cannot resist God's will.
That is where the philosophy comes in.
How can I be held guilty for obeying God's sovereign decree that I disobey Him? The best answer to this philosophical conundrum is that God can do whatever He wants, because He is God after all, and that no matter how unjust it appears on the surface, we ultimately lack a sufficient moral perspective to judge God for doing it this way. I consider that particular defense on par with the playground defense of "I say it works this way, nyah, nyah!"
he other take I want to mention understands God's sovereignty in this way: That while God was certainly the first, direct cause of everything in creation, He nevertheless gave authority to Adam over the earth and over created, and in so doing allowance was made in God's sovereignty for His will to be be done indirect through man - and through providential causality. God was still perfectly sovereign, nothing in all of creation could happen unless the Lord allowed it to happen - but God unlike the first six days, where God was dictating everything that happened in all of creation, on the seventh day God rested - His sovereign control over all of creation was no longer characterized primarily by direct intervention, but now was carried out through Adam, the primary mediator between God and creation.
Only Adam fell.
We want to be fair here too. In our first scenario we were basically saying that Adam sinned as a result of God determining beforehand to impose upon Adam's will in some way so as to directly cause Adam to perform a sinful deed which was by definition, quite contrary to the perfect nature God had created Adam with. In our second scenario, we are saying that God providentially ordained that Adam would sin and when Adam did, it God was not behind him pulling the strings.
The difference is not as simple as saying "directly" for one and "indirectly/providentially" for the other - though that might seem to be all we are doing. So in all fairness we ought to distinguish with greater clarity what we are saying.
In the second scenario, God designed Adam with a built in vulnerability - he was not impervious to temptation and sin. This was not a corruption, or a design flaw, it was by perfectly in accord with God's sovereign will and his express design. Adam would fall.
We pause at this point to remind the reader that even though God created Adam as being susceptible to sin - yet God did not force Adam to sin. We might argue that it was wrong for God to make Adam this way - but that is the argument of the pot makes with the potter, "Why have you made me thus?" Setting aside the image of the pot and the potter, we reason could just as easily word it this way, "How can God hold a man accountable for doing something that God could have prevented by designing Adam to be impervious to temptation and sin?"
I hope when we state it that way, it is a little more clear. God is not to be blamed for Adam's sin, even if God designed Adam in such a way that Adam would sin. Adam was given authority on earth by God, and he used that authority (freedom) to rebel against God, and God cannot be blamed for Adam's abuse of authority just because God gave Adam the authority.
God's sovereignty in the second model therefore, is primarily described by (but not limited to) direct intervention - that is, God was the cause of all things prior to giving Adam authority over creation, and from that time on, at least with respect to the visible creation, God's sovereignty was primarily providential and indirect - all things that happened were "allowed" to happen by God, but God was sovereign in his providential rule as opposed to by directly intervening on behalf of every action in the universe.
This second model answers the question of election and predestination by saying that God calls His children to himself providentially, in exactly the same way God providentially allowed Adam to fall, that is, God ordained it before hand, and creation responded in exact accordance with that ordination, providentially. God in this model allows the authority given to Adam to run its course, but God's will is not thwarted by this corrupted authority, in fact God uses it as a potter uses clay, to bring about his will no matter what. All things, in this model, work together in bringing about God's will, in spite of the corruption. The grandest difference between the two models, I suppose is that the latter doesn't make God the direct cause of sin, but makes man and only man, responsible for sin.
The second model does not suggest that God doesn't or cannot directly intervene in a thing - but rather it doesn't require God to do so with regards to election, predestination, and sin.
The former method, I suppose, more closely resembles the doctrine known as double predestination. Double predestination simply means that God not only predestined some people to go to heaven, but he simultaneously predestines the rest to go to hell. The rational behind this, I believe boils down to a false dichotomy, but those who buy into it typically exalt God's sovereignty one notch too far.
The latter method, I suppose, would lead one to conclude that while God ordained Adam's fall (and by extension: the whole human race) yet it was not done in such a way as to make God culpable for Adam's sin, and consequently, Adam's damnation. We reason that if God created an innocent race, even if he created them prone to fall, that whatever condemnation they themselves earn is fitting - and that God would not be unjust even if created a billion universes, and in each such universe He allowed the whole of the human race therein to perish in its sin - yet God could not be held to blame for even one soul that finds itself condemned - because each one who rebels does so to the damning of their own free will, to the damning of their own soul. Given therefore that in this scenario God doesn't ordain men to hell, but rather allows men to sin, and by their sin purchase hell - in this model we have more of a single predestination - where by God saves some sinners from His own wrath which they themselves have earned by their own rebellion - yet in spite of their rebellion God elects beforehand to be merciful to some and draws them to Himself and saves them.
The former I suppose has God as more of a Dictator, directing every action, and being thereby culpable for all actions in all creation, while the latter paints God as more of a Governor who allows everything that happens to happen, and disallows everything that does not come to pass according to his own sovereign will - but has given freedom/authority to mankind over creation, such that God is no longer culpable for the decisions a man makes, although God (being sovereign) is not thwarted in achieving the purchase of the church - in spite of the fall, and in spite of sin, and rebellion, and corruption - God works in spite of all those things to save those whom He has determined to show mercy to.
Anyway, nothing terribly profound I suppose, but I was reading over at my friend Bryan's blog something about it, and thought I could comment on it here as well.Labels: Bryan's blog, predestination, Theology, Unconditional Election |
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posted by Daniel @
11:29 AM
11 comment(s)
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