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Sunday, February 17, 2008

Why Does One Man Believe?

Anonymous wrote:

Calvinists appeal to Lazarus in as an illustration of the the unregenerate man's encounter with the new birth:

Calvinist, James White, explains: “On the level of spiritual capacity the unregenerate man is just like Lazarus: dead, bound, incapable of ‘self-resurrection.’ It would be patently absurd to demand that Jesus first ask Lazarus for ‘permission’ to raise him to spiritual life. Corpses are not known for engaging in a great deal of conversations. No, before Lazarus can respond to Christ’s command to come forth, something must happen. Corpses do not obey commands, corpses do not move. Jesus changed Lazarus’ condition first: Lazarus’ heart was made new; his mind revitalized. Blood began once again to course through his veins. What was once dead is now alive, and can heart the voice of his beloved Lord, ‘Come forth!’ The term ‘irresistible’ then must be understood as speaking to the inability of dead sinners to resist resurrection to new life.” (The Potter’s Freedom, pp.284-285)

Rather than show why I disagree with this being a valid description of the unregenerate man's experience with the new birth, I will instead offer and explain an alternative illustration for the Arminian view of regeneration.
Actually, I think you need to deal with the way that Scripture depicts the new birth. It various depicts it as a birth, not by the will of man but of God, as a result of the wind blowing, and a resurrection, and being made a new creation.

Mark 3:1,3,5 (ESV, Emphasis mine)
1 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand...3 And he said to the man with the withered hand, Come here. ..5 (then Jesus) said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

How is this an alternative view? First, the man with the withered hand had no ability to "heal himself." This parallels the Arminian's view of depravity. Arminians rightly proclaim man could not save himself in the same way this man could not heal himself.
A few preliminary observations:

1. The text is, in context, related to Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath and Lord over sickness.

2. Consequently, it is disanalogous to the state of man before he is "saved." This Arminian interlocutor is forgetting that men are dead in their sins, not sick. It does not make sense for him to use this as an illustration of the inability of men, for if he was consistent with his statement, he would affirm the man could not even rise up to come to Jesus at all.

Moving on...

1. It's true Arminians affirm, at least in principle, the inability of man to save himself.

2. Our quarrel with them, however, lies in the fact that their doctrine of UPG, if consistently followed out, makes that inability cease to be a functional category, which this Arminian, in using the text in this way, has borne out for us rather nicely. He does not, in fact, see men as unable to come, unable to save themselves, etc. Men are not, for him, dead in sin and unable to rise, they are merely sick.

Second, Arminians rightly believe that without prevenient grace, yes, the wooing/drawing influence/direction of the Holy Spirit, the unregenerate man would not repent of sin and come to Christ believing in Him in the same way that the man with the withered hand would not have been healed had Christ not came to him and said "stretch out your hand."

Scripture never speaks of the Holy Spirit "wooing" anybody. When it speaks of drawing, it says clearly that all who are drawn come. "Everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to me."

Where does Mark 3 have anything to say about UPG? Since he's chosen this text as an illustration, he needs to find it to make this illustration stick. By way of contrast, the use of the Lazarus story as an illustration by Dr. White and others obviously contains everything needed to demonstrate the effectual call. Jesus does not call everybody. He calls only one. He calls a dead man. That man rises from the dead and then comes out of his grave.
Third, Arminians do not believe that choice to believe with the will from the heart in response to this prior grace gives one room to boast. In the same way, this can be compared to the man with the withered hand's response to Jesus. Does his response which got him healed give room for him to boast? After all, he did choose to do what Jesus told him to (i.e. stretch out the hand). He was healed as he stretched out his hand after Jesus said to do so.
This misconstrues our objection. Why, given UPG, does one man reach out and not another? We do not object to the fact of a choice. Rather, the question is, "What lies behind that choice?" The Arminian says UPG, but, at most, this results in a state of equipoise. Within the constraints of LFW, why, then does one man believe and not the other? If this action results from the agent, in an unregenerate state, then what is the reason for it? Please answer this question. We keep asking it for a reason.

UPG only moves the answer to this question back by one step, for UPG relieves the bondage only to place the will in a libertarian state.

If the Calvinist wants to claim that the idea that faith precedes regeneration gives room for boasting, they must also say the same thing with the man with the withered hand, that Jesus gave this man room for boasting.

If it arises from his own libertarian free will and not the grace of God alone, e.g. effectually then yes, it does.

This is something Calvinists wont do/say, and rightfully so.

Because we deny LFW and we affirm grace alone. We affirm that such grace moves effectually, not ineffectually. It is qualitative, not quantitative.

It logically follows then that such their claim against the Arminian is unwarranted and erroneous.
It does not logically follow, for your argument is fallacious.
Therefore, they need to refrain from making such a claim.
We will gladly do so when you provide a cogent answer for why one person believes and not another, given the constraints of LFW. It would really help a great deal if you would provide an exegetical argument for LFW while you're at it.

10 comments:

  1. Let us go ahead and use the illustration of the man with the withered hand.

    On what basis does the Arminian conclude that the afflicted man in question had the inherent power to obey Christ's command? Wasn't that his problem in the first place? By definition a man with a withered hand can't "stretch it out"--it is palsied! εξηραμμενην, dessicated, shriveled.

    Jesus didn't say "show us your hand," he told him to "stretch it out," an act that would require a hand that was whole.

    Jesus does not say: "if you do so, then I'll heal you"? The text says says: that to the amazement of all (not least of which the man healed) he did what he should not have been able to do, namely obey the command and present his hand, which was healed in front of everyone in the act of obedience.

    Whence came this obedience?

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  2. I had the same thoughts Bruce :-) Great minds think alike!

    Our anonymous Arminian makes his fatal mistake in assuming that the man was not healed until he stretched his hand forth, when as you've rightly pointed out the man could not stretch his hand out until after it had already been healed.

    In fact, it's rather difficult to get this to work under any Arminian ideas. Assuming Arminianism, we have Christ healing and yet not healing the man--instead, making it possible for the man to be healed if only he'd stretch forth his hand. Christ did "His part" and the man had to do "his part" to make it happen. Of course, the man couldn't do anything at all unless he was completely healed. And if he was completely healed, then he'd be able to stretch out his hand before the command was given.

    Thus I agree that this illustration actually is quite harmonic with the concept of Regeneration preceding Faith. It's difficult to see how it could make any sense at all for the Arminian though.

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  3. I think this is even exemplified by the two thieves on the cross. They are both witnessing the same Jesus, the same experience, the same scene, yet one recognizes him as Lord and no the other.

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  4. Did you guys lift this from the combox at AP or did "anonymous" leave the same comments here somewhere?

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  5. BTW, the point is that the stretching out of the hand was an act of faith which Christ did not cause irresistlibly.

    Another example would be the blind man healed in John 9. He was commanded to "go and wash" and did so in faith. He was then healed. When he was Interrogated he repeatedly made mention of the command to go and wash and his washing in obedience to that command, yet he never tried to take credit for his healing, and clearly it would have been ridiculous if he had.

    That is the point. There is no more room to boast in saving ourselves by receiving God's gift through faith, then there is room for the man born blind to boast that he healed himself, etc.

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  6. kanga--
    You never answered this question: where did his ability to stretch out his hand come from? He didn't have it of himself. No more than a blind man can see or a lame man can walk by willpower. Where does saving faith come from? Check out Phil 1:29 for the answer.

    And if he received the ability from God, then are you suggesting that he could have still NOT been healed--as if he refused that which had been given him? God began his good work in him. Does he not finish it, Phil 1:6? Who do you know of in Scripture who was "half-healed"?

    In your theology, could Jesus have failed to heal the man, maybe embarrassed himself in front of the synagogue? Was Mark "selective" in only choosing from Jesus' "successes"? Sound's like an atheist's argument.

    From Mark 2:1 onward, we see the invincible power of Jesus exercising authority over every situation. When he so wills, he totally dominates every opposing power. The demons are scattered. Do men have greater power to resist God than demons?

    Your whole argument is based on the premise: God does something for me, because I first do something for him. So what if you say "God loved the world, and me in it, first"? You still say that God stops someplace, and then waits until you do something in your own strength. And because of YOUR act, he continues on. Congratulations, you just made God's work dependent on yours.

    If you and Joe-Blow both hear the same evangelistic message, and you believe and he doesn't, did YOU do the right thing, and he fail? If the difference is IN you two, and not in God's preference and determination to save one of you over the other, how is that NOT a reason for you to boast?

    Were you more reasonable than your friend? Did you have a "better" soul? Or was it a "random" act, and your salvation and his non-salvation the result of probability and statistics? What's the difference? Try on 1 Cor 4:7.

    The last part about "saving ourselves" is classic Pelagianism. Frankly, I'm glad God saved me out of the depths of a bottomless, shoreless ocean, when I was dead in trespasses and sins. I'm sure I had no knowledge of his grace prior, nor any desire for it, and a natural-born antipathy toward God, Rom 3:10-11.

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  7. Hey Bruce,

    I understand where you are coming from. No one is suggesting that man has the ability to accept the Lord's work without a prior act of grace. The issue I was trying to address had to do with the insistance that unless faith is the result of irresistible regeneration, then it is a "work" in which one can boast.

    My latest post on sanctification addresses some of your objections here, and I will be posting again shortly focusing more on the whole "boasting" issue as I indicated at the end of that post. Of course I don't expect you to agree with my conclusions but I welcome any input you may have over at AP.

    God Bless,
    Ben

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  8. Ben,

    You wrote No one is suggesting that man has the ability to accept the Lord's work without a prior act of grace. What exactly is that prior act of grace in this example of the man and his hand?

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  9. Did you guys lift this from the combox at AP or did "anonymous" leave the same comments here somewhere?

    Your own combox.

    I understand where you are coming from. No one is suggesting that man has the ability to accept the Lord's work without a prior act of grace.

    We realize that. We don't even need to discuss that. We know you have a doctrine of UPG to your great credit I might add. Many of the people we're used to dealing with, like the Ergun Caner people, don't. Thank you for articulating this doctrine. Seriously, really, it makes a world of difference and is one reason I've said on more than one occasion I can work with an Arminian like you vs. a semiPelagian like Caner.

    The issue I was trying to address had to do with the insistance that unless faith is the result of irresistible regeneration, then it is a "work" in which one can boast.

    1, It is if grace is quantitative, not qualitative. That presupposition runs throughout Arminianism. Where is the supporting argument? It doesn't matter if grace is 99 percent and cooperation 1 percent.

    2. UPG only puts the question back by one step. "What causes thee to differ?" We keep asking this and you all either can't or won't answer.

    3. Consequently, apropos 1, faith becomes a kind of meritorious, not merely an instrumental condition. It is mustered from your now autonomous freed will, not from a state of qualitatively effectual grace. Ergo, the charge that faith is a "work" sticks.

    BTW, the point is that the stretching out of the hand was an act of faith which Christ did not cause irresistlibly.

    As has been pointed out, he could not have done so at all if Christ had not healed him already. Follow the grammar of the text. Bruce has already pointed that out. He was told to stretch out his hand, and that required the hand to be whole. He was healed not as a result of him stretching out his hand. Rather, his hand was healed as he stretched it out.

    And the illustration was used to illustrate, if you'll recall, the need for "cooperation" in contradistinction to the raising of Lazarus. We have no problem with the idea of "cooperation." What we have a problem with is the idea that man must cooperate with grace in order to be regenerated. The illustration that was invoked was disanalogous.

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  10. What is the best Biblically supported view of "doctrine of UPG"?

    It seems that this is like common grace to Calvinism; just the Arminian has it do much more than just common grace. Am I right to think that UPG is used to counter total depravity? It seems that UPG is the only difference the Arminian side has with the two types of Pelagianism.

    If anyone can point me to where I can learn and study about this UPG I would appreciate it.

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