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Saturday, October 24, 2009

For the love of Benji

According to Ben Witherington (Asbury Theological Seminary):
Christ died for the sins of the world, and to ransom that world. 1 Tim. 2.4-5 puts the matter succinctly. God our savior "wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and human beings, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all people." One could compare this to John 3.17, "God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but to save the world", or the repeated refrain in Hebrews that Christ died once for all time, for all persons, and so on. (See the discussion of these matters in my forthcoming volumes on NT Theology and Ethics entitled The Indelible Image).


http://evangelicalarminians.org/For%20Whom%20Did%20Christ%20Die.Ben-Witherington

Of course, quoting Scripture is not the same thing as exegeting Scripture. This is especially ironic considering the fact that Witherington is a NT scholar. He’s giving us some tendentious prooftexting in lieu of exegesis.

But this is not just a matter of finding sufficient proof texts (of which there are many more), it is a matter of one's theology of the divine character. God is love, holy love, to be sure, but nonetheless love, and as 1 Tim. 2.4 says, the desire of God's heart is that all persons be saved. It is not just the elect whom God loves, but as John 3.16 says, the world, for whom Christ was sent to die. It follows from this that Christ's atoning death is sufficient for the salvation of all persons, but only efficient for those who respond in faith to God's gracious provision of redemption.

Is that what follows? I don’t see where he exegetes the sufficient/efficient dichotomy from his chosen prooftexts.

Even more foundational is the understanding of the meaning of saying that God is love. Among other things, this means God is committed to relating to those created in his image in love. Now real love must be freely given, and freely received. It cannot be predetermined, manipulated, coerced or else it becomes contrary to what the Bible says love is (see 1 Cor. 13).

Once again, where’s the exegesis? How is 1 Cor 13 at odds with predetermination?

In the debate between whether the primary trait of God is God's sovereignty or God's love, it seems clear that God exercises his power in love, and for loving ends.

Is that the nature of the debate? Why is it a case of which divine trait is God’s primary trait?

And as far as that goes, what about the difference between sovereign love and ineffectual love?

Even his acts of judgment, short of final judgment, are not meant to be punitive but rather corrective and restorative. God in short, is unlike vindictive human beings, very unlike them.

i) Does this mean that God’s historical judgments are loving whereas his eschatological judgments are vindictive?

ii) It’s also hard to see how the flood, or the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the execution of the Canaanites–to take a few prominent examples–was remedial punishment for the victims.

Thus Hosea relates that God says "All my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger ... For I am God and not a human being." God, the divine parent, is not less loving than the best of human parents, God is more loving.

Well, that’s an interesting way of putting it. How would a loving parent deal with a teenage son (or daughter) who’s a drug addict?

Wouldn’t a loving parent be prepared to do whatever it takes? If a parent could wean the kid from drug addiction through coercion or manipulation, wouldn’t a loving parent resort to such measures? Rescue the child from a self-destructive habit by any means necessary?

If Christ is the perfect incarnation of the character of God, then the answer to the question, for whom did Christ die, becomes theologically self-evident--- for the world which God created and still loves.

If God loves whatever God makes, and God seeks the restoration of all his fallen creatures, then God would also make atonement for the fallen angels.

7 comments:

  1. So, if God is indeed Love (and Scripture does, in fact, say He is), what does that mean? What are its (His) attributes?

    The question is how creating a reprobate person at all is consistent with the divine nature of Love. To make sure we are defining things correctly, I would consider a "reprobate" someone who was created for the purpose of revealing God's eternal hatred of iniquity, who was not given the choice of coming into being for that purpose and who was not given the ability, understanding, freedom or opportunity to obey God.

    One common understanding of Love is that it grants a certain freedom to the object of its care to return that affection (or not), but, at the same time, earnestly desires that it be returned.

    This is not the manifestation of Love in Calvinism which grants neither freedom nor a desire for good to be returned. In a sense, God desires the reprobate to continue to hate Him so that He can manifest His wrath.

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  2. John,

    The verse you are alluding to, 1 John 4:8, must be taken in the context of the epistle of 1 John as a whole.

    First, the immediate context:

    "7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

    Notice that the statement, "God is love," is not simply a blanket statement. It is specifically directed toward believers from God, and because of this, this love is to be directed from those believers toward other believers and reciprocally back toward God.

    Second, the statement, "God is love," is meant to be parralel to the other "God is" statement in the first chapter of the epistle:

    "5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. "

    Thus, "God is light" and "God is love" are parallel (or perhaps 'complimentary') statements both having to do with ethical holiness toward God and toward other believers, respectively.

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  3. "This love is to be directed from those believers toward other believers"

    If we donate our time to raising money for charity for kids with cancer, we should first verify that those kids believe in Jesus?

    If I see someone stranded on the side of the road, I'll be sure to ask them about their theological beliefs before I decide whether to get out of the warmth of my car.

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  4. John,

    This teaching is not alien to the bible. You do good first to those who are in the household of faith, then to those who are outside. It's not either/or but rather first/second.

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  5. JOHN SAID:

    “So, if God is indeed Love (and Scripture does, in fact, say He is), what does that mean? What are its (His) attributes?”

    “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”

    “The question is how creating a reprobate person at all is consistent with the divine nature of Love.”

    For some reason, you’re assuming that if someone is loving, he must love absolutely everyone and everything. Must a loving husband love every other woman besides his wife?

    Must a loving man love Tupperware and butter knives?

    “To make sure we are defining things correctly, I would consider a "reprobate" someone who was created for the purpose of revealing God's eternal hatred of iniquity, who was not given the choice of coming into being for that purpose and who was not given the ability, understanding, freedom or opportunity to obey God.”

    i) To begin with, your objection is broader than reprobation. Your objection would apply to just about every other position short of universalism. And even universalism isn’t all that loving–once you read the fine print.

    ii) None of us had a vote on whether or not we’d exist.

    iii) The reprobate don’t reject God because they lack knowledge of God. Rather, they hate what they know. Darkness hates the light.

    iv) Those who complain about reprobation don’t believe in it, while those who believe in reprobation don’t complain about it. You’re projecting onto the reprobate a mentality which, by definition, they don’t share.

    It’s like folks who get carried away with the “problem” of animal pain. What does it feel like to be a poor little mouse in a world full of snakes? But the mouse doesn’t feel that way.

    “One common understanding of Love is that it grants a certain freedom to the object of its care to return that affection (or not), but, at the same time, earnestly desires that it be returned.”

    i) God is not a smitten adolescent who hankers for attention from his love interest.

    ii) Humanly speaking, the most intense forms of love tend to be involuntary and uncontrollable.

    “This is not the manifestation of Love in Calvinism which grants neither freedom nor a desire for good to be returned.”

    God doesn’t create us because he needs something from us. It’s not a quid pro quo.

    “In a sense, God desires the reprobate to continue to hate Him so that He can manifest His wrath.”

    As I’ve often pointed out, that’s not the only role which the reprobate play in the economy of redemption.

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  6. "The reprobate don’t reject God because they lack knowledge of God. Rather, they hate what they know. Darkness hates the light."

    I would think that, in many cases, people reject not God but rather bad or even incorrect notions about Him. Everyone does this, whether it's the Unitarian or the Calvinist: the Unitarian rejects what they believe is a caricature of God's justice while the Calvinist rejects what they find to be a weak and ineffectual God.

    Some people resort to atheism if they were presented with a superficial or even callous and wicked faith while growing up. Is it any wonder that Nate Phelps (son of Fred) is now an agnostic? While this may reflect some intellectual laziness on their part, this variety of agnosticism/atheism is, IMO, not a true rejection of God and could in the future be remedied.

    This isn't to say that there could not be people who, when faced with God in His actuality and entirety would reject Him of course.

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  7. Unbelievers suppress and supplant the natural knowledge of God, available in general revelation.

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