Light & darkness

“What makes debate between Calvinists and their opponents so difficult is that it really boils down to a difference of basic hermeneutical principle. What makes Calvinism difficult for many to accept is the fact that they see the Bible pointing in the direction of a hermeneutical center, and that center is love. When the I John 4:8 says God is love, for agapocentrists, this isn't just a statement that God is loving, (except, of course, when he's unconditionally reprobating people), it is rather, that this is an essential characteristic of God that provides the fundamental motivation behind everything.”

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/09/agapocentrism.html

i) That’s a good example of Reppert’s perfunctory prooftexting. It’s as if he ran his finger down a concordance and counted the number of times 1 John uses the word “love.”

However, if you actually bother to study the thematic developments in 1 John, he presents a radically polarized outlook. For John, there are two antithetical, inner circles.

On the one hand there is the circle comprising God and Christians. God loves Christians and Christians love God.

On the other hand is the circle comprising the world, the Antichrist, and the devil.

The world loves its own. As a corollary, the world hates God, hates those whom God loves, hates those who love God.

Conversely, John warns Christians not to love the world. If you love the world, you don’t love God. If you love God, you don’t love the world.

So John sees the world in terms of contrasting images: light and darkness, the children of God and the spawn of Satan.

John (in 1 John) defines love in very exclusive and exclusionary terms.

iii) Of course, John also says that Christians were saved from the world. So we have a tension.

The resolution to this tension is found in the Fourth Gospel, where we have a doctrine of election. Those the Father gave to the Son, before the foundation of the world.

iv) Keep in mind, to, that in the Johannine corpus, the love of God does not extend to the devil.

v) I’d add that “love,” while a leading theme in 1 John, is by no means the only leading theme. God is love, but God is truth. Truth, knowing the truth, doing the truth, is a major motif as well.

And that is set in contrast to lies and liars.

iv) This brings us to another Johannine motif which Reppert disregards. Reppert acts as though, to be a loving person means to be indiscriminately loving. But consider this paradigmatic Johannine description:

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (Jn 3:19-20).

To love one kind of thing is to hate what is unlike the kind of thing you love. If you love the light, you hate the darkness; if you love the darkness, you hate the light.

“With respect to the Law, Jesus seems to set love up as the hermeneutical center: love God and your neighbor and in so doing you will fulfill, at least in spirit, the whole of the Law.”

Well, there are different ways of determining what’s “central.” There is, for example, the way the story ends. In a sense, it doesn’t matter how the story begins, or what happens in-between. It’s the destination that counts. That’s what sticks. That’s for keeps.

What are you a sheep–or are a goat? According to Jesus, God treats some men as sheep and other men as goats. The eternal fate of one stands in stark contrast to the eternal fate of the other.

Doesn’t that tell you something about God’s ultimate priorities?

“Paul, with respect to what came to be known as the Three Holy Virtues, faith, hope and love, put love as the greatest.”

i) And here’s something else that Paul said in the very same letter:

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10).

ii) In addition, Reppert defines love as acting in the best interests of a second party. But by that definition, Christians don’t love God. After all, a Christian can’t act in God’s best interests. There’s nothing we can do for God.

“With respect to any question on limits on the scope of love (Who is my neighbor?) Jesus, through the parable of the Good Samaritan, undercut the conception of 'in group' versus 'out group' which, to a regrettable extent, infects all human efforts to love others.”

Well, if Reppert is going to apply this parable to God, then where was God in this story? Was God a good neighbor to the victim? Wasn’t God in a position to prevent the muggers from harming the man in the first place?

Yet as soon as you pose that question, Reppert suddenly shifts grounds. He’ll say something like, “It's easy to see that if people are given a free will, God cannot be systematically insulating the world from its effects without in effect taking that free will away. If a billy-club turns into nerf every time I try to hit someone over the head, or if I start to throw up every time I lust, I am effectively unfree. Welcome to the world of Clockwork Orange.”

But even if, ad arguendo, we accept that rejoinder on its own terms, then where does it leave the parable of the Good Samaritan? Doesn’t that give the priest and the Levite a perfect excuse not to get involved? If they witness a mugging in progress, they can say to themselves, “I dare not intervene, since I’d be insulating the world from the consequences of their God-given liberty. So I’d better cross the street to given the muggers a wide berth. Mustn’t interfere.”

“I had complained against Calvinism that it leaves an unacceptable gap between what God wants us to do and what God himself does. Of course, Steve and Peter have both pointed out that there are plenty of situations in which, depending on who you are, what is right for you to do is different from what it is right for someone else to do. But I was not talking about specific actions, I was talking about the traits of character that God manifests and the God expects humans to manifest.”

Let’s see. God himself executed the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, while he commanded the Israelites to execute the Canaanites. Sometimes he exacts judgment directly, while at other times he delegates that task to humans. Where’s the gap?

“John tells us those who don't love don't know God because that is who God is.”

No, that’s not what John says. John tells us those who don’t love the “brethren” (i.e. fellow Christians) don’t’ know God. The inner circle of love. And that’s set in contrast to those outside the circle–who occupy a different, opposing circle.

“He doesn't say ‘those who aren't wrathful don't know God, because God is wrath’.”

To the contrary, he says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 Jn 2:15-17).

For John, what Christians love has its corollary in what they hate. Love and hate are mutually defining.

“But in agapocentric theology there is a symmetry between the character God commands us to have and God's character.”

And in Johannine theology, there is a symmetry between the character God commands us to have and God's character. Like father, like son.

And that symmetry includes a symmetrical loathing of all that’s opposed to the things of God.

“To me, that leaves us, not with an Omnipotent Fiend perhaps, but certainly with a God with a divided character that seems to me schizophrenic.”

There’s nothing schizophrenic about loving good and hating evil. Those are two sides of the same coin.

“However, the character of God is the same for universalists as for Arminians.”

Yes, they share a common error. And universalism is a more consistent version Arminianism, in one respect–while open theism is a more consistent version of Arminianism, in another respect.

“But doesn't everyone have a hermeneutical center? Doesn't everyone read passages that are harder to understand from the point of view of their hermeneutical center through passages that express that center?”

We shouldn’t superimpose a meaning on a text which cuts against the grain of the text (and context).

“Does agapocentrism make the problem of evil more difficult? There is a sense in which it does. Persons who advance the argument from evil expect God's goodness to involve loving all persons, which agapocentrists agree with. They also have a tendency to equate love for us with a pursuit of our own temporal happiness, which agapocentrists need not accept.”

To detach our temporal experience from our eternal experience isn’t that cut-and-dried.

Take a woman who’s a pious churchgoer. She also has a grown daughter. Her daughter is her life. They talk on the phone several times a day. See each other several times a week. Mom expects her beloved daughter to be a central part of her life until she (Mom) dies of old age.

One day, a man murders her daughter. On that day, not only does the daughter’s life come to an end, but emotionally speaking, the mother’s life also comes to an end. She no longer has anything to live for. She lingers. Blames God. Can’t forgive him for allow that to happen. Becomes bitter and inconsolable.

Can’t stand church. Can’t stand the Bible. Her life is ruined. Irreparable harm.

Now, Reppert may believe in postmortem repentance and restoration. But that’s like breaking someone’s bone so that you can set the broken bone. Put it in a cast. Give the patient painkillers.

Yet even if the bone finally mends, why break someone’s bones in the first place?