Mr. Kristof,
Your article on "God & Sex" calls for quite a number of comments. You begin with a leading question: "So when God made homosexuals who fall deeply, achingly in love with each other, did he goof?"
How does this fit into your general argument? Are you using this as a reason to support same-sex marriage? If so, how does it follow?
To begin with, what’s the connection between homosexual boyfriends and marriage? If it’s all about falling in love, then if they fall out of love, that will end the relationship. Ditto: lesbians.
So marriage would be a ball-and-chain to following their heart's desire--if "heart" is the operative organ in question. And, indeed, most homosexuals have open relationships with a variety of promiscuous or serial love-affairs or one-night stands.
Why cling to the hoary convention of marriage? Doesn’t that represent a throwback to those old Victorian hang-ups over sexual liberation? Surely your average catamite is more emancipated than that!
Your question also tries to set up a dilemma: How can Christians condemn homosexuals if God made homosexuals without condemning God in the process?
This bit of sophistry may trip up the unwary, but it’s a false dilemma. Why does a playwright invent the character of the villain or fall-guy? To serve as a dramatic foil or catalyst. Likewise, God raises up evil men like Pharaoh, Herod, Nero, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Caiaphas, Pilate, and others, to serve as so many pieces on his chessboard. They further his overarching designs.
Incidentally, your example conjures up the image of consenting adults. But to judge by the Catholic sex scandal, isn’t the pattern more commonly an older man and an underage boy?
Indeed, this isn’t limited to the Catholic sex scandal. There’s the Platonic school of pedophilia, as well as the cult of pederasty among the Pashtun of Afghanistan--not to mention NAMBLA. Examples, past and present, could easily be multiplied.
You then inform the reader that you’ve been researching the Biblical view of sodomy for the past couple of months. I’m always impressed by the infallible correspondence between your leftwing politics and your leftwing scholarship. It’s almost enough to make me suspect that something above the law of averages must account for so striking a coincidence.
Continuing with the opening moves, you say you "think it’s presumptuous of conservatives to assume that God is on their side."
Speaking for myself, I think it’s more presumptuous to assume that conservatives assume that God is on their side. In apologetics generally, as well as sexual ethics in particular, conservatives do not assume, they argue. They make a reasoned case for their position.
Of course, if your research were ever to stumble upon the opposing side of the argument, you would know this.
Incidentally, why do you bring up evolution in the context of same-sex marriage? What is the evolutionary rationale for homosexual rights? Does it confer a survival advantage on the species? Seems more like a survival disadvantage, wouldn’t you say? Homosexual "unions" don’t make babies, but they do make STDs.
Okay, this is all a warming-up exercise before you get to the point. You accuse Christians of cherry-picking their favorite verses when it comes to the Bible and sex.
And, suppose, for the sake of argument, that your allegation were true. What does that prove? If Christians are inconsistent, then what should they do about it? Inconsistency is a two-way street. You can relieve the inconsistency in a more liberal direction or a more conservative direction. You can deny the Bible outright or you can affirm the Bible throughout.
Parroting one of the popular strategies of the queer lobby, you say that the story of Sodom is about hospitality rather than homosexuality.
Now, even before we get into the details, this is, on the face of it, a false antithesis. Hospitality, or the lack thereof, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can only be inhospitable by doing or not doing something in particular. What concrete form does hospitality or its opposite take?
Suppose we were to say that Hansel & Gretel is about hospitality rather than cannibalism. Well, if you push it into a high enough orbit of abstraction, that is true. But I daresay most readers would feel that cooking little children alive is not the most hospitable way to treat a houseguest. If, for example, Nicholas Kristof woke up in a hot oven, smothered in blueberries and pie-dough, I rather doubt that he would be as patient of these fine Scholastic distinctions.
In fact, yet another strategy of the queer lobby is to admit that the story of Sodom is about homosexuality, but to draw the distinction, not between hospitality and homosexuality, but between consensual sodomy and homosexual gang-rape. Indeed, I know of no standard commentary on Genesis, be it liberal, moderate, or conservative, which interprets the episode as Platonic. Just consult Aalders, Baldwin, Brueggemann, Cassuto, Currid, Hamilton, Hartley, Kidner, Ross, Sailhammer, Sarna, Skinner, Speiser, Waltke, Wenham, Westermann.
You then introduce in Ezk 16:49-50 to bolster your case. But, among other things, the prophet condemns the citizens of Sodom for committing an "abomination." This is, of course, the very same word used to characterize sodomy in Lev 18:22 & 22:13. Now no Jew, conversant with Gen 19--which is about sodomy (even if you limit it to gang-rape)--as well as the Holiness Code--on the subject of sodomy--could miss the implication. Ezekiel is condemning the Sodomites in the very terms of the Holiness Code. The sin in question is the sin of sodomy.
What is more, rape and sodomy are separate sins in the Mosaic Law (Deut 22:25-27). Homosexual gang-rape would be an aggravated sin, a combination and intensification of two distinct sins.
Indeed, sins exert a mutual attraction. One sin draws another sin into its gravity well.
You claim that the classification of this sin is a theological innovation--dating to AD 11C. Actually, this interpretation can be documented in Philo, Josephus, and the OT Pseudepigrapha (e.g., Jubilees; Testament of Naphtali).
You then bring up the matter of Lot’s daughters. But this calls for a number of comments:
i) At most, Lot is placing the code of hospitality above the well-being of his own daughters. This doesn’t reflect Biblical ethics, but it does reflect the social mores of the time.
A Bronze Age Israelite would read this action at two levels. On the one hand, it is consistent with the honor-code of the ANE. On the other hand, it is inconsistent with the Mosaic code.
From the standpoint of a Bronze Age pagan, there is nothing morally shocking, either in the conduct of Lot or the conduct of the Sodomites.
Liberals like you can only take offense at this passage because you have been conditioned by the very value-system of Scripture which you now spurn and scorn.
It is easy for a modern-day reader to condemn Lot for the company he kept. And he is not above criticism by any means. But we must remember that in the Bronze Age, every city was a pagan city. Every city was a cesspool of pagan idolatry and immorality (e.g., Judg 19).
That is why God called Abraham out of Ur. That is why Abraham lived in tents.
ii) Lot may also be bluffing the Sodomites. His daughters were not merely virginal, but betrothed (19:14). So he is daring the mob to violate women who were engaged to two of their own citizens. Would their fiancées go along with that? This is a pressure tactic.
iii) You also miss the moral irony and symmetry of the narrative. In the beginning, Lot offers up his daughters to be gang-raped. In the end, Lot is gang-raped by his daughters (19:30-38). Poetic justice.
You then belittle the Mosaic ban on sodomy by linking it with other items in the Holiness Code, such as the dress code (Lev 19:19). You do the same thing with St. Paul (1 Cor 11). This is a popular tactic, but in several respects misguided:
i) You end your message on the "central message of love," but neighbor-love goes back to the Holiness Code (Lev 19:18), which you demean.
ii) In trivializing the dress code, you betray a shallow grasp of sociology. Fashion is all about making a statement, sending a message. People dress in a certain way to broadcast their social class, or their social alienation, or their occupation. They dress in a certain way to flaunt their sexuality, or muffle their sexuality, or blur their sexuality, or reverse their sexuality.
Dress codes can tell us quite a lot about cultural values. To be sure, some fashion statements are purely conventional. But others are more value-laden. One must judge on a case-by-case basis. Headgear is culture-bound, but hair is a cultural universal. Paul offers a number of reasons for his positions--some customary, others natural.
Incidentally, many women do look more winsome with long flowing hair. Why do you think Botticelli is so popular?
You say that 1 Samuel "can" be read to present David and Jonathan as boyfriends. Based on what? We need to keep several things in mind when we read this account:
i) Mediterranean men, as well as women, are very demonstrative. Have you never noticed this? You seem pretty provincial for a New Yorker.
ii) David and Jonathan were comrades-in-arms. This is where we get the word camaraderie. A military culture is characterized by machismo and male-bonding. This has nothing to do with sodomy. To the contrary, macho men are classic womanizers. The French Foreign Legion had its own traveling harem to service the men.
iii) You are ignorant of idiomatic usage, such as the political import of "love" (Heb.=aheb) in covenantal settings (e.g., 1 Kg 5:1).
You say that "Jesus never said a word about gays." By way of reply:
i) Even if this were true, it’s a red herring. On the one hand, Jesus reaffirmed the abiding authority of the Mosaic law (Mt 5:17-18). Yes, there are stated exceptions, but sex isn’t one of them.
On the other hand, he chose some of his disciples to speak on his behalf (Mt 10:40; Jn 13:20; 15:20). They speak with the same authority as the Master.
ii) Jesus reaffirmed the heterosexual archetype and prototype of marriage (Mt 19:4-6).
iii) Jesus cited, with evident approval, God’s judgment on Sodom & Gomorrah as a type of the final judgment to come (Mt 10:15; 11:23-24).
You say that the relation between the centurion and his sickly servant implies that they were lovers. Again, name me one standard commentary on either Matthew (e.g., Blomberg, Carson, Davies, France, Garland, Gundry, Hagner, Hill, Keener, Morris, Mounce), or Luke (e.g., Bock, Caird, Ellis, Evans, Fizmyer, Green, Johnson, Liefeld, Marshall, Nolland, Stein) which supports this contention.
You mention his statement about eunuchs. This is more cute than acute. Either you can't tell a hyperbolic figure of speech when you see it, or else you resort to ridicule when reason fails you.
You mention a couple of his statements about poverty and riches. Yes, riches can be a spiritual snare. This not a blanket prohibition against private property, per se, as is clear from the Biblical laws governing ownership and inheritance.
Anyway, how does this prove that Christians are guilty of cherry-picking Scripture? Are Christians disproportionately wealthy?
In fact, the usual smear from people like you is that "fundamentalists" are unlettered rednecks from Hicksville.
You also say that Rom 1 does not necessarily condemn lesbianism, for "it’s also possible that Paul was referring to sex during menstruation or to women who are aggressive during sex." By way of reply:
i) Name me one serious commentary on Romans that offers this interpretation (e.g., Barrett, Bruce, Cranfield, Dunn, Moo, Morris, Mounce, Murray, Sanday, Schlatter, Schreiner, Ziesler).
ii) Even if these interpretations were vaguely possible, sound exegesis is not about bare possibilities, but about what is probable.
iii) No, it can’t be about menstruation, for that could also happen in heterosexual activity, whereas the text is talking about homosexual activity--women with women.
As to who takes the lead, both lesbians and sodomites often impersonate the stereotypical interaction of straight couples, with one homosexual man or woman playing the part of the husband, and the other acting out the role of wife. This is reflected in a lot of sexual slang, viz., auntie, queen, bull-dyke, diesel-dyke, butchfemme. And these are just the printable usages.
iv) The parallel wording between Rom 1:26-27 leaves no room for doubt that homosexual activity is in view with reference to both genders.
Since you don’t believe in the authority of Scripture, why play these amateurish games? If you weren’t such a dilettante, and if you weren’t straining to prove a foregone conclusion, you could at least let the Bible speak for itself.
To say that "Paul disapproves of marriage except for the sex-obsessed" is a clownish caricature of his position. Paul points out that there are trade-offs between the single state and the married state. He also notes that marriage is less expedient at some times than others.
This is just sanctified common sense. But to judge by your article, sanctified common sense is the only kind of common sense left to us since liberal common sense is in such short supply.
You also labor under the mistaken impression that Paul is the only NT writer who condemns sodomy. Your ignorance is understandable. If you read only one side of the debate, and the very side which happens to have a vested interest in minimizing the Biblical evidence, you will only know what they want you to know, which isn't much. Yet it is highly likely that 2 Pet 2:7-8,10 & Jude 7-8 identify the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah as the sin of homosexuality.
Gen 2 doesn’t express the sentiment that it’s not good for the "human" to be alone. Yes, "adama" can either be a proper name ("Adam") or a generic designation ("mankind"), but in Gen 2 it is clearly a proper name, denoting a male human being.
What is more, the entire account is centered on the creation of a woman for the man.
However, in the interests of magnanimity, I wish to end my comments on a more generous note. To be an op-ed columnist for the NYT is was a shrew career move, for there are few fields which yield such princely dividends on such a miserly investment of fact. If you can't be a scholar, at least you can be P. T. Barnum.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Holding the line on Holding-2
11. Quote: 'The negation idiom emerges from the Hebrew word lo, which transliterates as "not." On this matter, the principal study has been done by Whitney [Whit. Jer 7:22, 152], who describes the usage of lo in Jer. 7:22 as "a form hyperbolic verbal irony intended to intensify the contrast between what is present in the mind of the audience and what ought to be present." Whitney shows this idiomatic usage of lo elsewhere in the OT: Gen. 45:7-8, Ex. 16:8, 1 Sam. 8:7, 1 Sam. 20:14-15, Job 2:10, Jer. 16:14-15, Ezk 16:47 and Hos 6:6. His conclusion agrees with that of Feinberg [Fein. CommJer, 75]:
...The negative in Hebrew often supplies the lack of the comparative -- i.e., without excluding the thing denied, the statement implies only the prior importance of the things set in contrast to it.
Likewise, Laymon [Laym. IntB, 380]:
Hebrew idiom allows the denial of one thing in order to assert another, and the intention here is not wholly to deny but only to relegate to second place.
We therefore conclude with these scholars that Jer. 7:22 is in no way at odds with the Pentateuch. [X]'s case for disharmony is based upon his inability and/or refusal to grasp the passage in its socio-linguistic context, and it therefore fails to hold up under scrutiny.
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And thus we now pose the Calvinists another question: Is there any reason why the "not" in Romans 9:16 (as well as in a similar passage, John 1:12-13) should not be read in the same sense as the "not" in Jer. 7:22 -- as a negation idiom, not excluding the thing denied, but rather, stressing the prior importance of God's sovereignty in contrast? Given the Hebraic background, I think the burden is upon those who would read "not" absolutely rather than otherwise.'
i) John and Romans were not written in Hebrew to Hebrew-speaking Jews. The linguistic culture of 1C Jews is not all of a piece. According to Angel Saenz-Badillos, in A History of the Hebrew Language (Cambridge 1996), Greek was the lingua franca, while Hebrews was spoken by Judean Jews and Aramaic by Galilean Jews.
And what does Holding identify as the linguistic community of Hellenistic Jews like St. Stephen or the author of Hebrews?
ii) In this general connection, many of the ancients were multi-lingual. Are we to suppose that everyone whom Abraham came into contact with, in his far-flung travels, spoke the mother-tongue of Ur. Moses was at least bilingual (Hebrew, Egyptian), and his royal education may well have trained him in languages of the Levant and Mesopotamia. Did Solomon, the most cosmopolitan of kings, speak only one language? Paul was at least trilingual (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic).
You cannot acquire any conversational fluency if you are consciously translating from your mother-tongue to a second-language. There comes a point when you are no longer thinking in your native language. Kids from one linguistic community who play with kids from another linguistic community quickly pick up an idiomatic command of the second language.
For that matter, why assume that Jewish kids only heard one language at home? Because of interracial marriage, or polygamy, or because one or both parents were educated, or because of house-servants and house-guests, tutors, nurse-maids and field hands, kids could be exposed to more than one tongue from the cradle.
iii) Holding's thesis is self-refuting. If it's impossible for one linguistic community to get inside the mind of another linguistic community, then it is impossible for Holding to get inside the 'block-logic' of a 1C Jew.
iv) To invoke a Hebrew idiom does not discharge Holding of responsibility for showing if and how that idiom figures in any particular passage of Scripture. I'm sure, for example, that an antinomian would love to convert all the negations in the Decalogue to affirmations (you shall lie, you shall steal, you shall murder, you shall philander...).
Suppose we converted all the negations in Rom 1-3 into affirmations: no one is sinless=everyone is sinless.
12. Quote: 'In that light I am waiting for an explanation of how receiving grace somehow equates with "deserving" it. '
This varies with the theological system. In Roman Catholicism you have the category of congruent merit. In fact, this comes close to Holding's stated position: 'Sproul's observation that "if grace is obligated it no longer becomes grace" becomes essentially of no relevance once we are beyond the first round of "gracing."'
13. Quote: 'And a point I have yet to see explained as well is how making a decision qualifies as a "work." The Jews were forbidden to work on the Sabbath; did this prohibit them from thinking or making a decision? Is there any evidence that the Greek word behind "works" (ergon) ever refers to a thought or a decision? It is my earnest wish that an enterprising Calvinist will step to the plate and answer this question, for it seems to me that this is a flawed premise upon which the Calvinistic case rests.'
For starters, try Gal 5:19-21, where works of the flesh include a variety of iniquitous mental acts.
14. Quote: 'Our conclusion, such as can be reached prior to any possible answer to questions offered above, is that the U in TULIP is not grounded as much in Scripture as it is in Western philosophical assumptions and thought-forms being applied to Scripture.'
Isn't that exactly what Holding does when he glosses election in terms of Molinism and Rom 9 in terms of Aristotelian primary causality?
15. Quote: 'To speak of God doing A "because" of B implies a chain of causality that would be impossible for a being who transcends time ... indeed such would again be impossible for a timeless being, since a linear or logical order requires the passage of time to exist and be enacted.'
i) A logical order is an abstract object, not a concrete, spatiotemporal object.
ii) When God decrees the configuration of the world, he decrees ends-means relations, for causal-chains do exist in the natural world.
16. Quote: 'My question for Calvinists in this context would be, does it deny the sovereignty of God, His freedom to do as He pleases, to say that at times He may accomplish what He pleases through the most minimal of actions, and then allows what follows to take its natural course, because it likewise suits His purpose and will to do so? If so, how does this denigrate Him?'
This is a trick question. If God could accomplish his purpose by merely setting up the initial conditions, then that would not detract from his sovereignty. But this assumes the very answer at issue. You might as well ask if a painter can paint part of the canvass, then let the canvass fill in the gaps. A painting doesn't paint itself. Holding has no doctrine of creation. If a painter leaves the canvass half-finished, it stays half-finished.
17. Quote: 'Our commentary on irresistible grace is derived from what you might suppose to be an unlikely source -- David deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity. deSilva shows quite clearly that the relationship between God and men is described in the NT in terms of an ancient client-patron relationship. What this means simply is that rich people give gifts and favor to the poor. God is the rich one (hence phrases referring to the "riches of his glory" [Rom. 9:23] have more meaning than we realize) and we are the poor folk.
Readers may find more details on this social system in deSilva's book, but for us the key is that the specific term at issue, grace, carried within the context of the client-patron relationship a certain meaning that is antithetical to Calvinist doctrine.
Consider these points [deSilva, 104ff]. The word grace was used "to refer to the willingness of a patron to grant some benefit to another person or group." Aristotle defined grace as "helpfulness toward someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the person helped." So far, nothing unusual. Grace, all agree, is God's free gift. But there is more. "Grace" can also be used "of the response to a benefactor and his or her gifts, namely, 'gratitude'..." And this reveals a key point: one of the chief morals of this day was that "grace must be met with grace; favor must always give birth to favor; gift must always be met with gratitude." What this shows us is that, first of all and on a different topic, that of the relation of faith and works, our good behavior is an expected result of grace and not required for it. Second, related to our topic at hand, "there is no such thing as an isolated act of grace. An act of favor and its manifestation (the gift) initiate a circle dance in which the recipients of favor and its manifestations must 'return the favor,' that is, give again to the giver...To fail to return favor for favor is, in effect, to break off the dance and destroy the beauty of the gracious act." [106] Finally: "Neglecting to return a kindness, forgetfulness of kindnesses already received in the past, and, most horrendous of all, repaying favor with insult or injury -- these were courses of action to be avoided by an honorable person at all costs." [111]
From these insights it seems more likely that the paradigm of prevenient grace fits much better what the ancients would have understood to be the nature of the relationship between God and man. God gives grace; man responds -- if favorably, more grace is bestowed; if unfavorably, less is received. And therefore, Sproul's observation that "if grace is obligated it no longer becomes grace" becomes essentially of no relevance once we are beyond the first round of "gracing". The question of whether regeneration precedes faith would be answered, "Yes, it does, and faith is followed by more regeneration if accepted; then by more faith, and on it goes." And oddly enough, this is the picture we have always been given of sanctification in the life of the believer.
And there is more yet. The word "faith" in client-patron contexts [115] referred both to the dependability of the patron to do what he was entrusted to do, and the trust placed by the client in the patron. In this light, the familiar passage in Eph. 2:8-9 -- "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." -- takes on a meaning that is not very amenable to Calvinism. A key question is what "that" refers to -- what is the gift of God? Just grace? Or grace and faith? Calvinists conclude that "that" refers to both items, grace and faith, and there is nothing wrong with that grammatically (it is one option, not the only one), but in terms of the client-patron relationship, it simply doesn't wash. A patron gave a client grace; the patron did not give the client faith. Faith was the client's response to the patron's grace -- or, it referred to the "fidelity" and trust held by the client in his patrons. Thus Eph. 2:8-9 contextually cannot support the Calvinist position, unless we assume that Paul used these words in a way that would not have made sense to his readers. The "faith" is either our response, or else, if it is a gift of God, it means it is His "faith" in us -- or rather, using the word as the ancients would use it, it is the gift of fidelity God has given, His own fidelity in saving us as He has promised. The problem is that commentators on both sides view "faith" in terms of the modern definition which includes cognitive assent. But that is not what is in view in the client-patron template.
Faith, as we have noted elsewhere, contextually means loyalty within the client-patron relationship.
Finally, Calvinist commentators who speak derisively of the suggestion that Arminian views permit a "grace that fails to do what it intended" are offering a misplaced sentiment. By design, grace in a client-patron relationship would never be subject to "pass or fail" because the success was in the very act of grace itself, regardless of who accepted or rejected it. Dishonor and shame was upon the one who rejected the favor, and not a whit was taken from the giver as a result of the rejection. Their very graciousness was what brought them honor and glory (that is, public acknowledgment of worth and social value) -- which was not lessened or compromised by the negative reaction of ungrateful potential clients.'
i) I've only read the first chapter of DeSilva's book. The experience did not inspire me to intensify my acquaintance. There is nothing revolutionary here. It's a rehash of commonplace sociological concepts like shame culture/guilt culture, ascribed/achieved status, &c. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's hardly breaking any new ground.
ii) He claims that the shame culture rubric represents the 'primary axis of value' among 1C Christians and Jews. He offers next to nothing to substantiate this claim. He cites all of three little verses from Proverbs, plus a lot of stuff from the OT Apocrypha. Most of his supporting data comes, not from Scripture, but Greco-Roman writers.
iii) There's no doubt that Greco-Roman society was a shame culture. This is hardly a revelation. You could get that much just from reading about the dutiful Aeneas and the vainglorious heroes of Homer.
And, for this reason, a number of NT passages address themselves to the pagan honor-code. However, they do so, not to endorse the honor-code, or supplant it with another honor-code, but to subvert the whole framework. Salvation is by grace, not by ascribed status or achieved status.
iv) Notice Holding's bait-and-switch. Calvinism is wrong because it fails to take into account Hebrew block-logic; no, Calvinism is wrong because it fails to take into account the Greco-Roman honor-code. Okay, which is it? A Hebrew mindset or a Greco-Roman mindset? To paraphrase his (Holding's) criticism of Calvinism, DeSilva's conceptual scheme is not grounded as much in Scripture as it is in ancient Western philosophical assumptions and thought-forms being applied to Scripture.' Reading St. Paul through the Aristotelian lens of the Nicomachean Ethics is far from Mosaic morality.
v) A client-patron paradigm is so generic that it would be an easy matter to formulate a Reformed client-patron model, or a Pelagian model, or Deist model, or Muslim model, or Hindu model, or Catholic model, or what have you. A patron can make a donation, demanding nothing in return--or a loan, demanding repayment with interest.
vi) Holding uses this rubric as an all-purpose short-cut to the spade-work of detailed exegesis.
vii) He fails to draw any distinction between man-to-man patron/client relations and God-to-man patron/client relations. He further fails to draw any distinction between guilty clients and innocent clients. What does it mean to suggest that if God does us a favor, we do him a favor in return? This is the theology of heathen witchcraft.
viii) To talk about degrees of regeneration evinces conceptual confusion.
ix) Yes, you can redefine faith as faithfulness. And if you say that, you then have to say that we are justified, not by faith, but by our faithfulness. And if you say that, then you're right back to justification by works. This is not Paul, but Pelagius.
x) Yes, you can redefine faith as infused grace ('the gift of fidelity'). This is Romanism. And it fails to do justice to the vicarious character of justification, as articulated by Paul.
xi) No, a human patron cannot engender faith. News flash--God can do things man cannot!
xii) Holding defines faith inclusive as of trust, but denies faith as inclusive of cognitive assent. How can the client exercise trust in the patron unless he assents to the proposition that his patron is trustworthy?
18. Quote: 'In conclusion, I think it is clear that we are doing the Scriptures a disservice when we allow writers of the 16th century, or even the 4th century, to determine for us what men of the first century were thinking or saying. Neither Calvin nor Arminius, as far as may be seen, knew anything of Hebrew block logic or of client-patron relationships, which look to be essential keys to understanding important texts in this debate. '
i) Augustine (4C) knew nothing of client-patron relations? Wasn't Ambrose, a Roman aristocrat, his patron? Calvin knew nothing of client-patron relations? Wasn't Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, his patroness? One could multiply examples.
ii) And what is socio-rhetorical criticism if not an extended exercise in block-logic? It treats people, not as individuals, but as social units.
...The negative in Hebrew often supplies the lack of the comparative -- i.e., without excluding the thing denied, the statement implies only the prior importance of the things set in contrast to it.
Likewise, Laymon [Laym. IntB, 380]:
Hebrew idiom allows the denial of one thing in order to assert another, and the intention here is not wholly to deny but only to relegate to second place.
We therefore conclude with these scholars that Jer. 7:22 is in no way at odds with the Pentateuch. [X]'s case for disharmony is based upon his inability and/or refusal to grasp the passage in its socio-linguistic context, and it therefore fails to hold up under scrutiny.
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And thus we now pose the Calvinists another question: Is there any reason why the "not" in Romans 9:16 (as well as in a similar passage, John 1:12-13) should not be read in the same sense as the "not" in Jer. 7:22 -- as a negation idiom, not excluding the thing denied, but rather, stressing the prior importance of God's sovereignty in contrast? Given the Hebraic background, I think the burden is upon those who would read "not" absolutely rather than otherwise.'
i) John and Romans were not written in Hebrew to Hebrew-speaking Jews. The linguistic culture of 1C Jews is not all of a piece. According to Angel Saenz-Badillos, in A History of the Hebrew Language (Cambridge 1996), Greek was the lingua franca, while Hebrews was spoken by Judean Jews and Aramaic by Galilean Jews.
And what does Holding identify as the linguistic community of Hellenistic Jews like St. Stephen or the author of Hebrews?
ii) In this general connection, many of the ancients were multi-lingual. Are we to suppose that everyone whom Abraham came into contact with, in his far-flung travels, spoke the mother-tongue of Ur. Moses was at least bilingual (Hebrew, Egyptian), and his royal education may well have trained him in languages of the Levant and Mesopotamia. Did Solomon, the most cosmopolitan of kings, speak only one language? Paul was at least trilingual (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic).
You cannot acquire any conversational fluency if you are consciously translating from your mother-tongue to a second-language. There comes a point when you are no longer thinking in your native language. Kids from one linguistic community who play with kids from another linguistic community quickly pick up an idiomatic command of the second language.
For that matter, why assume that Jewish kids only heard one language at home? Because of interracial marriage, or polygamy, or because one or both parents were educated, or because of house-servants and house-guests, tutors, nurse-maids and field hands, kids could be exposed to more than one tongue from the cradle.
iii) Holding's thesis is self-refuting. If it's impossible for one linguistic community to get inside the mind of another linguistic community, then it is impossible for Holding to get inside the 'block-logic' of a 1C Jew.
iv) To invoke a Hebrew idiom does not discharge Holding of responsibility for showing if and how that idiom figures in any particular passage of Scripture. I'm sure, for example, that an antinomian would love to convert all the negations in the Decalogue to affirmations (you shall lie, you shall steal, you shall murder, you shall philander...).
Suppose we converted all the negations in Rom 1-3 into affirmations: no one is sinless=everyone is sinless.
12. Quote: 'In that light I am waiting for an explanation of how receiving grace somehow equates with "deserving" it. '
This varies with the theological system. In Roman Catholicism you have the category of congruent merit. In fact, this comes close to Holding's stated position: 'Sproul's observation that "if grace is obligated it no longer becomes grace" becomes essentially of no relevance once we are beyond the first round of "gracing."'
13. Quote: 'And a point I have yet to see explained as well is how making a decision qualifies as a "work." The Jews were forbidden to work on the Sabbath; did this prohibit them from thinking or making a decision? Is there any evidence that the Greek word behind "works" (ergon) ever refers to a thought or a decision? It is my earnest wish that an enterprising Calvinist will step to the plate and answer this question, for it seems to me that this is a flawed premise upon which the Calvinistic case rests.'
For starters, try Gal 5:19-21, where works of the flesh include a variety of iniquitous mental acts.
14. Quote: 'Our conclusion, such as can be reached prior to any possible answer to questions offered above, is that the U in TULIP is not grounded as much in Scripture as it is in Western philosophical assumptions and thought-forms being applied to Scripture.'
Isn't that exactly what Holding does when he glosses election in terms of Molinism and Rom 9 in terms of Aristotelian primary causality?
15. Quote: 'To speak of God doing A "because" of B implies a chain of causality that would be impossible for a being who transcends time ... indeed such would again be impossible for a timeless being, since a linear or logical order requires the passage of time to exist and be enacted.'
i) A logical order is an abstract object, not a concrete, spatiotemporal object.
ii) When God decrees the configuration of the world, he decrees ends-means relations, for causal-chains do exist in the natural world.
16. Quote: 'My question for Calvinists in this context would be, does it deny the sovereignty of God, His freedom to do as He pleases, to say that at times He may accomplish what He pleases through the most minimal of actions, and then allows what follows to take its natural course, because it likewise suits His purpose and will to do so? If so, how does this denigrate Him?'
This is a trick question. If God could accomplish his purpose by merely setting up the initial conditions, then that would not detract from his sovereignty. But this assumes the very answer at issue. You might as well ask if a painter can paint part of the canvass, then let the canvass fill in the gaps. A painting doesn't paint itself. Holding has no doctrine of creation. If a painter leaves the canvass half-finished, it stays half-finished.
17. Quote: 'Our commentary on irresistible grace is derived from what you might suppose to be an unlikely source -- David deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity. deSilva shows quite clearly that the relationship between God and men is described in the NT in terms of an ancient client-patron relationship. What this means simply is that rich people give gifts and favor to the poor. God is the rich one (hence phrases referring to the "riches of his glory" [Rom. 9:23] have more meaning than we realize) and we are the poor folk.
Readers may find more details on this social system in deSilva's book, but for us the key is that the specific term at issue, grace, carried within the context of the client-patron relationship a certain meaning that is antithetical to Calvinist doctrine.
Consider these points [deSilva, 104ff]. The word grace was used "to refer to the willingness of a patron to grant some benefit to another person or group." Aristotle defined grace as "helpfulness toward someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the person helped." So far, nothing unusual. Grace, all agree, is God's free gift. But there is more. "Grace" can also be used "of the response to a benefactor and his or her gifts, namely, 'gratitude'..." And this reveals a key point: one of the chief morals of this day was that "grace must be met with grace; favor must always give birth to favor; gift must always be met with gratitude." What this shows us is that, first of all and on a different topic, that of the relation of faith and works, our good behavior is an expected result of grace and not required for it. Second, related to our topic at hand, "there is no such thing as an isolated act of grace. An act of favor and its manifestation (the gift) initiate a circle dance in which the recipients of favor and its manifestations must 'return the favor,' that is, give again to the giver...To fail to return favor for favor is, in effect, to break off the dance and destroy the beauty of the gracious act." [106] Finally: "Neglecting to return a kindness, forgetfulness of kindnesses already received in the past, and, most horrendous of all, repaying favor with insult or injury -- these were courses of action to be avoided by an honorable person at all costs." [111]
From these insights it seems more likely that the paradigm of prevenient grace fits much better what the ancients would have understood to be the nature of the relationship between God and man. God gives grace; man responds -- if favorably, more grace is bestowed; if unfavorably, less is received. And therefore, Sproul's observation that "if grace is obligated it no longer becomes grace" becomes essentially of no relevance once we are beyond the first round of "gracing". The question of whether regeneration precedes faith would be answered, "Yes, it does, and faith is followed by more regeneration if accepted; then by more faith, and on it goes." And oddly enough, this is the picture we have always been given of sanctification in the life of the believer.
And there is more yet. The word "faith" in client-patron contexts [115] referred both to the dependability of the patron to do what he was entrusted to do, and the trust placed by the client in the patron. In this light, the familiar passage in Eph. 2:8-9 -- "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." -- takes on a meaning that is not very amenable to Calvinism. A key question is what "that" refers to -- what is the gift of God? Just grace? Or grace and faith? Calvinists conclude that "that" refers to both items, grace and faith, and there is nothing wrong with that grammatically (it is one option, not the only one), but in terms of the client-patron relationship, it simply doesn't wash. A patron gave a client grace; the patron did not give the client faith. Faith was the client's response to the patron's grace -- or, it referred to the "fidelity" and trust held by the client in his patrons. Thus Eph. 2:8-9 contextually cannot support the Calvinist position, unless we assume that Paul used these words in a way that would not have made sense to his readers. The "faith" is either our response, or else, if it is a gift of God, it means it is His "faith" in us -- or rather, using the word as the ancients would use it, it is the gift of fidelity God has given, His own fidelity in saving us as He has promised. The problem is that commentators on both sides view "faith" in terms of the modern definition which includes cognitive assent. But that is not what is in view in the client-patron template.
Faith, as we have noted elsewhere, contextually means loyalty within the client-patron relationship.
Finally, Calvinist commentators who speak derisively of the suggestion that Arminian views permit a "grace that fails to do what it intended" are offering a misplaced sentiment. By design, grace in a client-patron relationship would never be subject to "pass or fail" because the success was in the very act of grace itself, regardless of who accepted or rejected it. Dishonor and shame was upon the one who rejected the favor, and not a whit was taken from the giver as a result of the rejection. Their very graciousness was what brought them honor and glory (that is, public acknowledgment of worth and social value) -- which was not lessened or compromised by the negative reaction of ungrateful potential clients.'
i) I've only read the first chapter of DeSilva's book. The experience did not inspire me to intensify my acquaintance. There is nothing revolutionary here. It's a rehash of commonplace sociological concepts like shame culture/guilt culture, ascribed/achieved status, &c. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's hardly breaking any new ground.
ii) He claims that the shame culture rubric represents the 'primary axis of value' among 1C Christians and Jews. He offers next to nothing to substantiate this claim. He cites all of three little verses from Proverbs, plus a lot of stuff from the OT Apocrypha. Most of his supporting data comes, not from Scripture, but Greco-Roman writers.
iii) There's no doubt that Greco-Roman society was a shame culture. This is hardly a revelation. You could get that much just from reading about the dutiful Aeneas and the vainglorious heroes of Homer.
And, for this reason, a number of NT passages address themselves to the pagan honor-code. However, they do so, not to endorse the honor-code, or supplant it with another honor-code, but to subvert the whole framework. Salvation is by grace, not by ascribed status or achieved status.
iv) Notice Holding's bait-and-switch. Calvinism is wrong because it fails to take into account Hebrew block-logic; no, Calvinism is wrong because it fails to take into account the Greco-Roman honor-code. Okay, which is it? A Hebrew mindset or a Greco-Roman mindset? To paraphrase his (Holding's) criticism of Calvinism, DeSilva's conceptual scheme is not grounded as much in Scripture as it is in ancient Western philosophical assumptions and thought-forms being applied to Scripture.' Reading St. Paul through the Aristotelian lens of the Nicomachean Ethics is far from Mosaic morality.
v) A client-patron paradigm is so generic that it would be an easy matter to formulate a Reformed client-patron model, or a Pelagian model, or Deist model, or Muslim model, or Hindu model, or Catholic model, or what have you. A patron can make a donation, demanding nothing in return--or a loan, demanding repayment with interest.
vi) Holding uses this rubric as an all-purpose short-cut to the spade-work of detailed exegesis.
vii) He fails to draw any distinction between man-to-man patron/client relations and God-to-man patron/client relations. He further fails to draw any distinction between guilty clients and innocent clients. What does it mean to suggest that if God does us a favor, we do him a favor in return? This is the theology of heathen witchcraft.
viii) To talk about degrees of regeneration evinces conceptual confusion.
ix) Yes, you can redefine faith as faithfulness. And if you say that, you then have to say that we are justified, not by faith, but by our faithfulness. And if you say that, then you're right back to justification by works. This is not Paul, but Pelagius.
x) Yes, you can redefine faith as infused grace ('the gift of fidelity'). This is Romanism. And it fails to do justice to the vicarious character of justification, as articulated by Paul.
xi) No, a human patron cannot engender faith. News flash--God can do things man cannot!
xii) Holding defines faith inclusive as of trust, but denies faith as inclusive of cognitive assent. How can the client exercise trust in the patron unless he assents to the proposition that his patron is trustworthy?
18. Quote: 'In conclusion, I think it is clear that we are doing the Scriptures a disservice when we allow writers of the 16th century, or even the 4th century, to determine for us what men of the first century were thinking or saying. Neither Calvin nor Arminius, as far as may be seen, knew anything of Hebrew block logic or of client-patron relationships, which look to be essential keys to understanding important texts in this debate. '
i) Augustine (4C) knew nothing of client-patron relations? Wasn't Ambrose, a Roman aristocrat, his patron? Calvin knew nothing of client-patron relations? Wasn't Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, his patroness? One could multiply examples.
ii) And what is socio-rhetorical criticism if not an extended exercise in block-logic? It treats people, not as individuals, but as social units.
Holding the line on Holding-1
James Holding, who runs Tektonics Apologetics Ministry, has posted a rather lengthy critique of Calvinism.
I'll just content myself with commenting on what strike me as his major arguments. This will be a bit stream-of-consciousness because his own style is so free associative.
1. Quote: 'It is our contention that Romans 9 may be better understood in terms of the rubric of primary causality. But we anticipate the objection that we would be thereby reading into the text a concept not found therein. Our answer is that we would not expect it to be found within Romans 9 or any explanation offered by Paul -- because such an "explanation expectation" would be the product of a Western low-context mind rather than a Hebrew high-context one, like Paul's.'
Even if we were to accept this description of the Hebrew mind, this amounts to a preemptive admission that he's not doing exegesis on Rom 9. Instead, he's using the Aristotelian category of primary causality as an interpretive grid through which to filter Rom 9. But, in that event, this has nothing to do with what Paul meant. It doesn't even attempt to construe the text in light of original intent.
At this point there's nothing for the Calvinist to rebut. The Calvinist has exegeted Rom 9 (e.g., Murray, Piper, Schreiner). Holding has offered no contrary interpretation, based on text and context.
2. Quote: 'The thinking of the ancient Hebrew is not, as ours, concerned with precision. As Marvin Wilson points out in Our Father Abraham, "The nature of Hebrew [the language] is to paint verbal pictures with broad strokes of the brush. The Hebrew authors of Scripture were not so much interested in the fine details and harmonious pattern of what is painted as they were in the picture as a whole. Theirs was primarily a description of what the eye sees rather than what the mind speculates."'
This strikes me an obvious exaggeration. It depends on the subject-matter. It depends on what they're interested in. When it came to personal and social ethics, Jewish thinkers could get very detailed and draw very precise distinctions indeed.
As long as we're going to indulge in breezy generalities about the Hebrew mind, here's one from a more qualified source than Wilson:
'I once asked Prof. Harry Wolfson of Harvard U, a savant in ancient and medieval Greek as well as Jewish philosophy, how he evaluated the Greek mind, as exemplified by Aristotle, vis-a-vis the Talmudic mind. He replied, "if you compare a Greek philosophic treatise with a Talmudic tractate, obviously the Greek is orderly and easy to follow, whereas the rabbinic is disorderly and circuitous. But if you compare the mental horsepower of the Greek philosopher and the rabbinic sage, the latter is superior." That was not the answer I expected, but eventually I realized that Wolfson was right,' C. Gordon, A Scholar's Odyssey (Society of Biblical Literature 2000), 5-6.
3. Quote: 'In terms of theology, this means that God's existence is never argued, but assumed; "God is not understood philosophically, but functionally." God is thought of in terms of what He does.'
This is another exaggeration. Because the Bible is ordinarily addressed to the community of faith, it ordinarily takes the existence of God for granted; but when addressing outsiders, such as Isaiah's indictment of idolaters (Isa 40-48), the Bible does launch into an apologetic for the existence of the true God.
4. Quote: 'Wilson concludes, therefore, that the Hebrews would have had "little or no interest" in many issues we consider important, including the debate over free will and predestination.'
On the face of it, this claim is palpable false. For starters, just read Warfield's article on 'Predestination' (Works 2:3-67), in which he lays out quite a lot of the Biblical data on this topic.
5. Quote: 'Second, Jewish thinking, unlike our own, involved the use of what Wilson calls "block logic." In this item we explained some points about ancient Jewish and Near Eastern wisdom literature which has applicability here:
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The paradoxical nature of Ecclesiastes -- a book filled with statements regarded as being in tension (for example, on one hand mulling over the despair of life, then shortly thereafter encouraging the enjoyment of life) -- has been variously identified as being because Ecclesiastes is either a dialogue of a man debating with himself, "torn between what he cannot help seeing and what he still cannot help believing," [Kidner, Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, 91], or else as the author's "challenge to the man of the world to think his own position through to its bitter end, with a view to seeking something less futile." I prefer the second interpretation, but in either case, the compositional principle is the same, and derives from the ancient Near Eastern methodology, which we might loosely compare to a Hegelian case of combining thesis and antithesis, to arrive at a synthesis; or else for sports fanatics to a game of tennis in which the ball is batted back and forth between opposing points to arrive at a consensus.
In this regard Ecclesiastes is related to other ANE literature with the same, or similar, content and methodology. Works like A Dialogue About Human Misery and Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant (on which, Murphy comments, the "dexterity the slave displays in affirming both the positive and negative aspects of a situation is reminiscent of [Ecclesiastes'] own style" -- Murphy commentary on Eccl, xliii] from Babylon; The Man Who Was Tired of Life from Egypt; and the book of Job from the OT, are all examples of this genre in which problems were discussed and resolved via dialogue. The modern Western mind has little patience with this sort of logical construction, and it is no surprise to see that critics have no appreciation for the implied intent of such literature: "Work out the problem yourselves," vs. "Give me an answer in a can, to go."'
i) Holding is extrapolating from one particular literary genre (wisdom literature) to Hebrew psychology. This is a huge leap of logic. It extrapolates from one genre to all genres, and then extrapolates from a literary genre to national character. Indeed, the fact that Bible writers alternate between different genres goes to show that they are not intellectually straight-jacketed.
ii) There is nothing Hegelian about Job or Ecclesiastes. In both cases, the existential problem lies with God's inscrutable providence. I have offered my own interpretation of both books in my essay on 'Vanity of vanities.'
iii) It should be needless to say that the dialogical genre is a staple of Western philosophy, viz., Socrates, Plato, Berkeley, Hume.
6. Quote: 'Hebrew "block logic" operated on similar principles. "...[C]oncepts were expressed in self-contained units or blocks of thought. These blocks did not necessarily fit together in any obviously rational or harmonious pattern, particularly when one block represented the human perspective on truth and the other represented the divine. This way of thinking created a propensity for paradox, antimony, or apparent contradiction, as one block stood in tension -- and often illogical relation -- to the other. Hence, polarity of thought or dialectic often characterized block logic." Examples of this in practice are the alternate hardening of Pharaoh's heart by God, or by Pharaoh himself; and the reference to loving Jacob while hating Esau -- both of which, significantly, are referred to often by Calvinist writers.'
i) There is nothing paradoxical about the hardening of Pharaoh The Bible cues the reader with a couple of programmatic statements (Exod 4:21-22; 7:2-3), the function of which is to supply a hermeneutical framework for what follows in the subsequent narrative. The text is flawlessly logical. The problem lies with careless readers like Wilson and Holding.
ii) The second illustration is even worse that the first. We would only have an antinomy of God was said to both love and loathe Jacob, both love and loathe Esau. Holding's illustration is simply incompetent.
7. Quote: 'Wilson continues: "Consideration of certain forms of block logic may give one the impression that divine sovereignty and human responsibility were incompatible. The Hebrews, however, sense no violation of their freedom as they accomplish God's purposes." The back and forth between human freedom and divine sovereignty is a function of block logic and the Hebrew mindset.'
i) I've already shown that block-logic is a fiction foisted upon Scripture by Wilson and Holding.
ii) But, assuming for the sake of argument, that block-logic is a feature or even fixture of Scripture, then should that not be normative for Christians?
Wilson and Holding are treating the logic of Scripture as a culture-bound casket which they are at liberty to bury in an unmarked grave. But the Bible-believing Christian is honor-bound by the logic of Scripture.
8. Quote: 'What this boils down to is that Paul presents us with a paradox in Romans 9, one which he, as a Hebrew, saw no need to explain. "..[T]he Hebrew mind could handle this dynamic tension of the language of paradox" and saw no need to unravel it as we do. And that means that we are not obliged to simply accept Romans 9 at "face value" as it were, because it is a problem offered with a solution that we are left to think out for ourselves. There will be nothing illicit about inserting concepts like primary causality, otherwise unknown in the text.'
What paradox? Paul repeatedly explains the relation between divine and human agency in terms of divine priority and purpose (9:11-18,21-23).
Instead of reading what Rom 9 is actually saying, Holding is superimposing his own harmonistic device on the text.
If you really think that Rom 9 presents a paradox, a paradox which Paul saw no need to relieve, then it is illicit of Holding to relieve the paradox.
9. Quote: 'The rabbis after the NT explicated the paradox a bit further. They did not conclude, however -- as is the inclination in the Calvinist camp -- that "a totally unalterable future lay ahead, for such a view contradicted God's omnipotence and mercy." They also argued that "unless God's proposed destiny for man is subject to alteration, prayer to God to institute such alteration" is nonsensical. Of course the rabbis were not inspired in their teachings. Yet their views cannot be simply discarded with a grain of salt, as they are much closer to the vein than either Calvin or Arminius, by over a millennium and by an ocean of thought.'
Let us remember that Rabbinical Judaism codifies the Pharisaic school of thought. It is therefore rife with synergism and merit-mongering. Yes, I know, Sanders would demure, but I've addressed the new perspective in my essay on 'Reinventing Paul.'
10. Quote: 'Consider this now as well with reference to Pilch and Malina's observation that in an ancient context, "mercy" is better rendered as "gratitude" or "steadfast love" -- as in, "the debt of interpersonal obligations for unrepayable favors received." Mercy is not involved with feelings of compassion, as today, but the "paying of one's debt of interpersonal obligation by forgiving a trivial debt." To say, "Lord, have mercy!" (Matt. 20:31) means, "Lord, pay up your debt of interpersonal obligation to us!" Far from being a plea of the hapless, it is a request to pay back previously earned favor from our client (God) whose patron we are.'
i) Yet another exaggeration. There are basically two forms of petitionary prayer in Scripture. One is where the suppliant calls upon God to remember his covenantal promises. The other is a confession of sin, and plea that God not judge us according to our sins, but be merciful.
ii) Even in the former case, we did nothing to earn God's covenant promises. This isn't back-pay for services rendered. To cast the divine party in the role of the client, and the human party in the role of the patron, is such a grotesque inversion of Biblical priorities that we might as well class it with other heresies such as gnosticism.
iii) Whoever said that the Reformed definition of divine mercy must ascribe certain feelings to God?
10. Quote: 'Consider again our example of the three worlds. There is no possible world in which all are saved. God as Prime Mover, He who in sovereign freedom chose one world over all the others possible, in this manner thereby in essence decrees as well who the elect and non-elect will be, without in any way removing our ability to freely choose. Remember that just because God knows we will do X does not mean that we must do X, as if by force.'
i) This, of course, is classic Molinism. Holding offers no exegetical support for such a position.
ii) He also ignores philosophical criticisms of Molinism, such as the grounding objection. In addition, some libertarians (open theism) are critics of Molinism. So the attack is not limited to the Reformed front.
I'll just content myself with commenting on what strike me as his major arguments. This will be a bit stream-of-consciousness because his own style is so free associative.
1. Quote: 'It is our contention that Romans 9 may be better understood in terms of the rubric of primary causality. But we anticipate the objection that we would be thereby reading into the text a concept not found therein. Our answer is that we would not expect it to be found within Romans 9 or any explanation offered by Paul -- because such an "explanation expectation" would be the product of a Western low-context mind rather than a Hebrew high-context one, like Paul's.'
Even if we were to accept this description of the Hebrew mind, this amounts to a preemptive admission that he's not doing exegesis on Rom 9. Instead, he's using the Aristotelian category of primary causality as an interpretive grid through which to filter Rom 9. But, in that event, this has nothing to do with what Paul meant. It doesn't even attempt to construe the text in light of original intent.
At this point there's nothing for the Calvinist to rebut. The Calvinist has exegeted Rom 9 (e.g., Murray, Piper, Schreiner). Holding has offered no contrary interpretation, based on text and context.
2. Quote: 'The thinking of the ancient Hebrew is not, as ours, concerned with precision. As Marvin Wilson points out in Our Father Abraham, "The nature of Hebrew [the language] is to paint verbal pictures with broad strokes of the brush. The Hebrew authors of Scripture were not so much interested in the fine details and harmonious pattern of what is painted as they were in the picture as a whole. Theirs was primarily a description of what the eye sees rather than what the mind speculates."'
This strikes me an obvious exaggeration. It depends on the subject-matter. It depends on what they're interested in. When it came to personal and social ethics, Jewish thinkers could get very detailed and draw very precise distinctions indeed.
As long as we're going to indulge in breezy generalities about the Hebrew mind, here's one from a more qualified source than Wilson:
'I once asked Prof. Harry Wolfson of Harvard U, a savant in ancient and medieval Greek as well as Jewish philosophy, how he evaluated the Greek mind, as exemplified by Aristotle, vis-a-vis the Talmudic mind. He replied, "if you compare a Greek philosophic treatise with a Talmudic tractate, obviously the Greek is orderly and easy to follow, whereas the rabbinic is disorderly and circuitous. But if you compare the mental horsepower of the Greek philosopher and the rabbinic sage, the latter is superior." That was not the answer I expected, but eventually I realized that Wolfson was right,' C. Gordon, A Scholar's Odyssey (Society of Biblical Literature 2000), 5-6.
3. Quote: 'In terms of theology, this means that God's existence is never argued, but assumed; "God is not understood philosophically, but functionally." God is thought of in terms of what He does.'
This is another exaggeration. Because the Bible is ordinarily addressed to the community of faith, it ordinarily takes the existence of God for granted; but when addressing outsiders, such as Isaiah's indictment of idolaters (Isa 40-48), the Bible does launch into an apologetic for the existence of the true God.
4. Quote: 'Wilson concludes, therefore, that the Hebrews would have had "little or no interest" in many issues we consider important, including the debate over free will and predestination.'
On the face of it, this claim is palpable false. For starters, just read Warfield's article on 'Predestination' (Works 2:3-67), in which he lays out quite a lot of the Biblical data on this topic.
5. Quote: 'Second, Jewish thinking, unlike our own, involved the use of what Wilson calls "block logic." In this item we explained some points about ancient Jewish and Near Eastern wisdom literature which has applicability here:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The paradoxical nature of Ecclesiastes -- a book filled with statements regarded as being in tension (for example, on one hand mulling over the despair of life, then shortly thereafter encouraging the enjoyment of life) -- has been variously identified as being because Ecclesiastes is either a dialogue of a man debating with himself, "torn between what he cannot help seeing and what he still cannot help believing," [Kidner, Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, 91], or else as the author's "challenge to the man of the world to think his own position through to its bitter end, with a view to seeking something less futile." I prefer the second interpretation, but in either case, the compositional principle is the same, and derives from the ancient Near Eastern methodology, which we might loosely compare to a Hegelian case of combining thesis and antithesis, to arrive at a synthesis; or else for sports fanatics to a game of tennis in which the ball is batted back and forth between opposing points to arrive at a consensus.
In this regard Ecclesiastes is related to other ANE literature with the same, or similar, content and methodology. Works like A Dialogue About Human Misery and Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant (on which, Murphy comments, the "dexterity the slave displays in affirming both the positive and negative aspects of a situation is reminiscent of [Ecclesiastes'] own style" -- Murphy commentary on Eccl, xliii] from Babylon; The Man Who Was Tired of Life from Egypt; and the book of Job from the OT, are all examples of this genre in which problems were discussed and resolved via dialogue. The modern Western mind has little patience with this sort of logical construction, and it is no surprise to see that critics have no appreciation for the implied intent of such literature: "Work out the problem yourselves," vs. "Give me an answer in a can, to go."'
i) Holding is extrapolating from one particular literary genre (wisdom literature) to Hebrew psychology. This is a huge leap of logic. It extrapolates from one genre to all genres, and then extrapolates from a literary genre to national character. Indeed, the fact that Bible writers alternate between different genres goes to show that they are not intellectually straight-jacketed.
ii) There is nothing Hegelian about Job or Ecclesiastes. In both cases, the existential problem lies with God's inscrutable providence. I have offered my own interpretation of both books in my essay on 'Vanity of vanities.'
iii) It should be needless to say that the dialogical genre is a staple of Western philosophy, viz., Socrates, Plato, Berkeley, Hume.
6. Quote: 'Hebrew "block logic" operated on similar principles. "...[C]oncepts were expressed in self-contained units or blocks of thought. These blocks did not necessarily fit together in any obviously rational or harmonious pattern, particularly when one block represented the human perspective on truth and the other represented the divine. This way of thinking created a propensity for paradox, antimony, or apparent contradiction, as one block stood in tension -- and often illogical relation -- to the other. Hence, polarity of thought or dialectic often characterized block logic." Examples of this in practice are the alternate hardening of Pharaoh's heart by God, or by Pharaoh himself; and the reference to loving Jacob while hating Esau -- both of which, significantly, are referred to often by Calvinist writers.'
i) There is nothing paradoxical about the hardening of Pharaoh The Bible cues the reader with a couple of programmatic statements (Exod 4:21-22; 7:2-3), the function of which is to supply a hermeneutical framework for what follows in the subsequent narrative. The text is flawlessly logical. The problem lies with careless readers like Wilson and Holding.
ii) The second illustration is even worse that the first. We would only have an antinomy of God was said to both love and loathe Jacob, both love and loathe Esau. Holding's illustration is simply incompetent.
7. Quote: 'Wilson continues: "Consideration of certain forms of block logic may give one the impression that divine sovereignty and human responsibility were incompatible. The Hebrews, however, sense no violation of their freedom as they accomplish God's purposes." The back and forth between human freedom and divine sovereignty is a function of block logic and the Hebrew mindset.'
i) I've already shown that block-logic is a fiction foisted upon Scripture by Wilson and Holding.
ii) But, assuming for the sake of argument, that block-logic is a feature or even fixture of Scripture, then should that not be normative for Christians?
Wilson and Holding are treating the logic of Scripture as a culture-bound casket which they are at liberty to bury in an unmarked grave. But the Bible-believing Christian is honor-bound by the logic of Scripture.
8. Quote: 'What this boils down to is that Paul presents us with a paradox in Romans 9, one which he, as a Hebrew, saw no need to explain. "..[T]he Hebrew mind could handle this dynamic tension of the language of paradox" and saw no need to unravel it as we do. And that means that we are not obliged to simply accept Romans 9 at "face value" as it were, because it is a problem offered with a solution that we are left to think out for ourselves. There will be nothing illicit about inserting concepts like primary causality, otherwise unknown in the text.'
What paradox? Paul repeatedly explains the relation between divine and human agency in terms of divine priority and purpose (9:11-18,21-23).
Instead of reading what Rom 9 is actually saying, Holding is superimposing his own harmonistic device on the text.
If you really think that Rom 9 presents a paradox, a paradox which Paul saw no need to relieve, then it is illicit of Holding to relieve the paradox.
9. Quote: 'The rabbis after the NT explicated the paradox a bit further. They did not conclude, however -- as is the inclination in the Calvinist camp -- that "a totally unalterable future lay ahead, for such a view contradicted God's omnipotence and mercy." They also argued that "unless God's proposed destiny for man is subject to alteration, prayer to God to institute such alteration" is nonsensical. Of course the rabbis were not inspired in their teachings. Yet their views cannot be simply discarded with a grain of salt, as they are much closer to the vein than either Calvin or Arminius, by over a millennium and by an ocean of thought.'
Let us remember that Rabbinical Judaism codifies the Pharisaic school of thought. It is therefore rife with synergism and merit-mongering. Yes, I know, Sanders would demure, but I've addressed the new perspective in my essay on 'Reinventing Paul.'
10. Quote: 'Consider this now as well with reference to Pilch and Malina's observation that in an ancient context, "mercy" is better rendered as "gratitude" or "steadfast love" -- as in, "the debt of interpersonal obligations for unrepayable favors received." Mercy is not involved with feelings of compassion, as today, but the "paying of one's debt of interpersonal obligation by forgiving a trivial debt." To say, "Lord, have mercy!" (Matt. 20:31) means, "Lord, pay up your debt of interpersonal obligation to us!" Far from being a plea of the hapless, it is a request to pay back previously earned favor from our client (God) whose patron we are.'
i) Yet another exaggeration. There are basically two forms of petitionary prayer in Scripture. One is where the suppliant calls upon God to remember his covenantal promises. The other is a confession of sin, and plea that God not judge us according to our sins, but be merciful.
ii) Even in the former case, we did nothing to earn God's covenant promises. This isn't back-pay for services rendered. To cast the divine party in the role of the client, and the human party in the role of the patron, is such a grotesque inversion of Biblical priorities that we might as well class it with other heresies such as gnosticism.
iii) Whoever said that the Reformed definition of divine mercy must ascribe certain feelings to God?
10. Quote: 'Consider again our example of the three worlds. There is no possible world in which all are saved. God as Prime Mover, He who in sovereign freedom chose one world over all the others possible, in this manner thereby in essence decrees as well who the elect and non-elect will be, without in any way removing our ability to freely choose. Remember that just because God knows we will do X does not mean that we must do X, as if by force.'
i) This, of course, is classic Molinism. Holding offers no exegetical support for such a position.
ii) He also ignores philosophical criticisms of Molinism, such as the grounding objection. In addition, some libertarians (open theism) are critics of Molinism. So the attack is not limited to the Reformed front.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Tell me the time
What time is it? This is a common question, especially in the modern age. Not only do we have practical reasons for asking it, but we like to pose the same question in relation to the world around us and beyond us.
How does the scientific establishment arrive at a date for the age of the world? (I'm using the "world," inclusively, to include the earth, solar system, and universe as a whole.)
Now, at one level, I think I know the answer (correct me if I'm wrong). When a layman like me reads a high level popularization on the subject, I'm plastered with an array of dating techniques, viz., the rate of cosmic expansion, the scale of the universe in light years, the life-cycle of stars and constellations, radiometric decay rates, tree rings, the law of superposition, and so on.
Okay, I fine with this up to a point. But at a deeper level, it leaves me with a more fundamental question. For this line of appeal strikes me as circular.
For when I read about these dating techniques, I'm thinking to myself, It would take a clock to measure a clock; it would take a clock to calibrate a clock.
Essentially, as I understand it, the mainstream scientist is using various natural processes, especially cyclical processes, as chronometers. And he has a number of natural chronometers to use.
To Illustrate my question, suppose I walk into a clock shop. The clock shop is full of timepieces ticking away. Actually, the word 'ticking' is not quite accurate. For I also see a sundial, a water-clock, an hourglass, and so on.
Now, when I walk into the clock shop, I could be greeted by a number of different scenarios. Suppose that all the timepieces tell the same time? Would that tell me what time it is? Not really. It would let me know that they had all been set to tell the same time. But it would not tell me whether they had been set to GMT, or EST, or Pacific time, or daylight-saving time.
To vary the scenario, suppose that all the timepieces were electric clocks. And let us further suppose that the power had gone out and come back on. The clocks would all give the same time, but they would all be off by the duration of the power outage.
A scientists dates the world by running the clock backwards. But does that tell us when the clock was wound up, or when the clock was set?
To take another scenario, all the clocks give a rather different reading. Indeed, this is what I'd expect when I enter a clock shop.
Now, suppose I look at two different clocks. One has the time at 12:59 PM, and the other at 1:01 PM. Can I tell, by comparing the two clocks, if both are fast, or both are slow, or one is fast, or one is slow, or one is on time while the other is fast or slow? I don't think so.
What I really need, do I not, is not a lot of different clocks, even if they all give the same time, but a master clock. I need to know what they were set to.
And I need to know, do I not, that the reading on the master clock is measured in absolute time rather than relative time. (Of course, modern physics denies absolute time.)
But even the illustration of the clock shop is overly generous. When we're talking about natural chronometers, isn't this more like walking into a clock shop in which all of the timepieces are faceless? Instead, you'd have to infer the time from the machinery. From the rate at which the clock goes tick-tock.
For, strictly speaking, nature is not a clock, or a set of smaller clocks. We simply find it convenient to employ this or that natural process to monitor the passage of time. That's a secondary, man-made application of a natural process. It's not as though the natural process was designed to tell us the time. When guys like Hugh Ross say that young-earth creationism is deceptive, are they not committing an anthropomorphic fallacy?
Sorry to be so roundabout in getting to the point, but I'm trying to explain my process of reasoning. Dropping the metaphor, how does the scientific establishment synchronize all of these natural chronometers in order to arrive at a common age for the world? Is there a master clock?
Back to my original question: how do you measure one clock by another clock? It looks like we've come full circle in more ways that one.
Isn't any figure for the duration of the world bound to be rather selective and arbitrary?
In fairness, some schemes may be more arbitrary than others. In physics, as I understand it, if you change a constant or a variable, you need to make a corresponding adjustment to another constant or variable. If you convert a constant to a variable here, you need to convert a variable into a constant there, or vice versa. Something like that. So the trick is to balance everything out, to come up with a theory that is the most consistent, comprehensive, and simple overall.
Still, there seem to be so many free variables play that I don't know how anyone can get his bearings by looking at the raw data. It seems is though you could go anywhere by starting anywhere. Is there any privileged frame of reference?
But probability is a relative concept. Even probabilities assume a standard of comparison. Is one scheme more likely than another? More likely relative to what? More especially--relative to whom? To God?
How does the scientific establishment arrive at a date for the age of the world? (I'm using the "world," inclusively, to include the earth, solar system, and universe as a whole.)
Now, at one level, I think I know the answer (correct me if I'm wrong). When a layman like me reads a high level popularization on the subject, I'm plastered with an array of dating techniques, viz., the rate of cosmic expansion, the scale of the universe in light years, the life-cycle of stars and constellations, radiometric decay rates, tree rings, the law of superposition, and so on.
Okay, I fine with this up to a point. But at a deeper level, it leaves me with a more fundamental question. For this line of appeal strikes me as circular.
For when I read about these dating techniques, I'm thinking to myself, It would take a clock to measure a clock; it would take a clock to calibrate a clock.
Essentially, as I understand it, the mainstream scientist is using various natural processes, especially cyclical processes, as chronometers. And he has a number of natural chronometers to use.
To Illustrate my question, suppose I walk into a clock shop. The clock shop is full of timepieces ticking away. Actually, the word 'ticking' is not quite accurate. For I also see a sundial, a water-clock, an hourglass, and so on.
Now, when I walk into the clock shop, I could be greeted by a number of different scenarios. Suppose that all the timepieces tell the same time? Would that tell me what time it is? Not really. It would let me know that they had all been set to tell the same time. But it would not tell me whether they had been set to GMT, or EST, or Pacific time, or daylight-saving time.
To vary the scenario, suppose that all the timepieces were electric clocks. And let us further suppose that the power had gone out and come back on. The clocks would all give the same time, but they would all be off by the duration of the power outage.
A scientists dates the world by running the clock backwards. But does that tell us when the clock was wound up, or when the clock was set?
To take another scenario, all the clocks give a rather different reading. Indeed, this is what I'd expect when I enter a clock shop.
Now, suppose I look at two different clocks. One has the time at 12:59 PM, and the other at 1:01 PM. Can I tell, by comparing the two clocks, if both are fast, or both are slow, or one is fast, or one is slow, or one is on time while the other is fast or slow? I don't think so.
What I really need, do I not, is not a lot of different clocks, even if they all give the same time, but a master clock. I need to know what they were set to.
And I need to know, do I not, that the reading on the master clock is measured in absolute time rather than relative time. (Of course, modern physics denies absolute time.)
But even the illustration of the clock shop is overly generous. When we're talking about natural chronometers, isn't this more like walking into a clock shop in which all of the timepieces are faceless? Instead, you'd have to infer the time from the machinery. From the rate at which the clock goes tick-tock.
For, strictly speaking, nature is not a clock, or a set of smaller clocks. We simply find it convenient to employ this or that natural process to monitor the passage of time. That's a secondary, man-made application of a natural process. It's not as though the natural process was designed to tell us the time. When guys like Hugh Ross say that young-earth creationism is deceptive, are they not committing an anthropomorphic fallacy?
Sorry to be so roundabout in getting to the point, but I'm trying to explain my process of reasoning. Dropping the metaphor, how does the scientific establishment synchronize all of these natural chronometers in order to arrive at a common age for the world? Is there a master clock?
Back to my original question: how do you measure one clock by another clock? It looks like we've come full circle in more ways that one.
Isn't any figure for the duration of the world bound to be rather selective and arbitrary?
In fairness, some schemes may be more arbitrary than others. In physics, as I understand it, if you change a constant or a variable, you need to make a corresponding adjustment to another constant or variable. If you convert a constant to a variable here, you need to convert a variable into a constant there, or vice versa. Something like that. So the trick is to balance everything out, to come up with a theory that is the most consistent, comprehensive, and simple overall.
Still, there seem to be so many free variables play that I don't know how anyone can get his bearings by looking at the raw data. It seems is though you could go anywhere by starting anywhere. Is there any privileged frame of reference?
But probability is a relative concept. Even probabilities assume a standard of comparison. Is one scheme more likely than another? More likely relative to what? More especially--relative to whom? To God?
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Without a doubt
My maternal grandfather was a minister in the Church of God (Anderson). A long time ago the Church of God underwent a crisis over “the necktie controversy,” as it was called. For many years, Church of God ministers had preached against the wearing of neckties as a mark of worldliness, or as they put it, in the quaint King James phraseology, a “superfluity of naughtiness” (Jas 1:21).
This sort of thing will strike most Christians, not to mention most unbelievers, as the height of absurdity, as indeed it was.
Yet it goes to a perennial issue in the life of the church, and that is the assurance of salvation. Can I know that I am saved? And, if so, how can I know it?
Many distinctives of many denominations, sects, and cults function as strategies that map a short-cut to the assurance of salvation. Indeed, the list is almost endless, viz., glossolalia, snake-handling, tradition, apostolic succession, auricular confession, the altar call, sacraments and sacramentals, perfectionism, antinomianism, asceticism, the secret rapture, the regulative principle, the King James-only, the Filioque clause, the five fundamentals, creationism, literalism, inerrancy, papal infallibility, the Tridentine Mass, &c.
From this list we can all pick out some things we agree with, or disagree with, some things we can make fun of, but to the extent that we can find ourselves somewhere in the list, those we poke fun at can make fun of us in return.
Despite their superficial variety, all these things share one thing in common, which is how they can be deployed to supply the assurance of salvation.
A reader might object that some of the items I’ve listed are important, even all-important, to the faith. I don’t deny that. Certain beliefs and rituals are essential in their own right.
But the problem occurs when what is right and true is put to the wrong use. When men vest their assurance of salvation in the wrong object, it fosters a false assurance. It may or may not be a valid object of faith, but even if otherwise valid, it may not be valid as a form of assurance.
What all these differing strategies try to achieve is to eliminate the subjective dimension of assurance, and, instead, anchor it in something public, statable, datable, addressable, ordoable, in some external form of words or deeds; in sum: to achieve a state of certainty by process of eliminating any ambiguity.
But there are several things wrong with this:
i) Even if one or another of these strategies were to succeed, religious certainty, if it takes a false object, is of no avail to the believer.
ii) Many of these strategies merely swap objective for subjective uncertainties. When is a sacrament valid? Is apostolic succession unbroken? What are the criteria? Even if the criteria are objective, their application remains subjective.
In Scripture, our assurance of salvation comes from faith in Christ. It’s really that simple.
But many do not feel that it’s so simple. What about sin? What about doubt?
We must remember, though, that grace is subjective as well as objective, that God is sovereign over our heart no less than he is over the world around us. The God in whom we vest our faith is the God of faith--as object and origin in one.
A believer may sin, but his sins are the sins of a believer. A believer may doubt, but his doubts are the doubts of a believer.
Both believer and unbeliever sin, but although an unbeliever may regard his transgression as an evil, he does not regard it as a sin--a sin against God Almighty. And for that same reason, he doesn’t regard some sins as even an evil.
A believer may doubt, but his doubt normally takes the form, either of self-doubt, or of a faith perplexed. His doubt is parasitic upon his faith.
There is a difference between doubting your salvation simply because you can, and doubting because you ought. To doubt for the sake of doubting, just because you can imagine yourself to be self-deluded, is not a good reason to doubt.
This is a spiritual form of paranoia, like a man who suspects that he’s being followed. When he turns around, or glances at a store front window, he never sees a pursuer. Ah, but that may only be because his stealthy pursuer always manages to duck for cover just in the nick of time, right?
He enters a house, goes out the back door, and swings right around to prove that no one is following him. But maybe his pursuer backed out the front door and hid in the bushes, or maybe his pursuer went through the back door as well, and is circling around the house. Should he peek around the corner?
As you can see, constantly looking over your shoulder is an unhealthy state of mind, and can, spider-like, spin a sticky web out of its own substance. You become hopelessly entangled in the threads of your overheated imagination. But, of course, the way to become unstuck is to put your imaginary doubts back into their toy box.
Like a little boy who is deathly afraid of a monster lurking under his bed, his father may take him by the hand and show him that there is no monster under the bed. Ah, but what if the monster disappears every time his dad enters the room, and reappears as soon as he leaves? There is no answer, except to outgrow his childish fears.
This sort of thing will strike most Christians, not to mention most unbelievers, as the height of absurdity, as indeed it was.
Yet it goes to a perennial issue in the life of the church, and that is the assurance of salvation. Can I know that I am saved? And, if so, how can I know it?
Many distinctives of many denominations, sects, and cults function as strategies that map a short-cut to the assurance of salvation. Indeed, the list is almost endless, viz., glossolalia, snake-handling, tradition, apostolic succession, auricular confession, the altar call, sacraments and sacramentals, perfectionism, antinomianism, asceticism, the secret rapture, the regulative principle, the King James-only, the Filioque clause, the five fundamentals, creationism, literalism, inerrancy, papal infallibility, the Tridentine Mass, &c.
From this list we can all pick out some things we agree with, or disagree with, some things we can make fun of, but to the extent that we can find ourselves somewhere in the list, those we poke fun at can make fun of us in return.
Despite their superficial variety, all these things share one thing in common, which is how they can be deployed to supply the assurance of salvation.
A reader might object that some of the items I’ve listed are important, even all-important, to the faith. I don’t deny that. Certain beliefs and rituals are essential in their own right.
But the problem occurs when what is right and true is put to the wrong use. When men vest their assurance of salvation in the wrong object, it fosters a false assurance. It may or may not be a valid object of faith, but even if otherwise valid, it may not be valid as a form of assurance.
What all these differing strategies try to achieve is to eliminate the subjective dimension of assurance, and, instead, anchor it in something public, statable, datable, addressable, ordoable, in some external form of words or deeds; in sum: to achieve a state of certainty by process of eliminating any ambiguity.
But there are several things wrong with this:
i) Even if one or another of these strategies were to succeed, religious certainty, if it takes a false object, is of no avail to the believer.
ii) Many of these strategies merely swap objective for subjective uncertainties. When is a sacrament valid? Is apostolic succession unbroken? What are the criteria? Even if the criteria are objective, their application remains subjective.
In Scripture, our assurance of salvation comes from faith in Christ. It’s really that simple.
But many do not feel that it’s so simple. What about sin? What about doubt?
We must remember, though, that grace is subjective as well as objective, that God is sovereign over our heart no less than he is over the world around us. The God in whom we vest our faith is the God of faith--as object and origin in one.
A believer may sin, but his sins are the sins of a believer. A believer may doubt, but his doubts are the doubts of a believer.
Both believer and unbeliever sin, but although an unbeliever may regard his transgression as an evil, he does not regard it as a sin--a sin against God Almighty. And for that same reason, he doesn’t regard some sins as even an evil.
A believer may doubt, but his doubt normally takes the form, either of self-doubt, or of a faith perplexed. His doubt is parasitic upon his faith.
There is a difference between doubting your salvation simply because you can, and doubting because you ought. To doubt for the sake of doubting, just because you can imagine yourself to be self-deluded, is not a good reason to doubt.
This is a spiritual form of paranoia, like a man who suspects that he’s being followed. When he turns around, or glances at a store front window, he never sees a pursuer. Ah, but that may only be because his stealthy pursuer always manages to duck for cover just in the nick of time, right?
He enters a house, goes out the back door, and swings right around to prove that no one is following him. But maybe his pursuer backed out the front door and hid in the bushes, or maybe his pursuer went through the back door as well, and is circling around the house. Should he peek around the corner?
As you can see, constantly looking over your shoulder is an unhealthy state of mind, and can, spider-like, spin a sticky web out of its own substance. You become hopelessly entangled in the threads of your overheated imagination. But, of course, the way to become unstuck is to put your imaginary doubts back into their toy box.
Like a little boy who is deathly afraid of a monster lurking under his bed, his father may take him by the hand and show him that there is no monster under the bed. Ah, but what if the monster disappears every time his dad enters the room, and reappears as soon as he leaves? There is no answer, except to outgrow his childish fears.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Grace, faith, and freewill-2
Moving on to chapter 6, you say that “Berkhof’s statement of the issue is not correct. Arminians do not believe that God intended by the atonement to save all people” (103).
Yet on p106, you say that “universal atonement matches the plain Biblical assertion that God wills the salvation of all.” So, God wills the salvation of all, but God did not intend the atonement for the salvation of all. This is less than self-explanatory. Who is confused--you or Berkhof?
In attempting to reconcile a universal atonement which falls short of universal salvation, you say: “The answer is that the expression of God’s desire for all men to be saved must be understood in the light of his (more basic) desire that all men have, as created in his image, the freedom of choice to decide for or against him” (109).
This calls for quite a number of comments:
i) To begin with, you suddenly drop the “plain Biblical assertion” for something that is not plainly asserted in any of your Arminian prooftexts. And if you need to qualify the force of your own chosen prooftexts, then in what sense do they prove your point?
If they don’t assert universal atonement in distinction to universal salvation, then do you have a single direct prooftext for your distinctive position?
Unless you have some independent grounds for your position, your appeal assumes what it needs to prove. For if your prooftext, as it stands, cannot prove you position, but must be modified in light of your position, then you appeal is question-begging. It only proves your point on the assumption that it can be suitably retrofitted consistent with your assumption. Rather than proving universal atonement, you have glossed it in light of universal atonement. This is viciously circular.
ii) Apropos (i), you are no longer exegeting 1 Tim 2:4 or 2 Pet 3:9. You are, instead, glossing the verses in light of some harmonistic device that is extraneous to the text before you.
iii) Where does the Bible ever say that man’s will is more basic than God’s will?
iv) Where does the Bible ever unpack the imago Dei in terms of freewill?
v) You position boils down to the contention that God cannot save sinners. He can save the willing, but not the unwilling. But, of course, they are unwilling because they are sinners.
Like homeowners who keep the plastic wrapping on their lamps and sofas, you have a doctrine of the atonement that works just beautifully as long as it never comes into contact with an actual hard-bitten sinner. This is a theological system for the art museum, and not the mean streets of the world.
On p110, you cited a number of the standard prooftexts for your position. Some of these I’ve dealt with already, and others I will address at a later point.
But to comment on a few, how does 1 Jn 2:2 prove your point? Has our Lord adverted the wrath of God for everyone in the world?
How does Rom 5:18 prove you point? Have all men (without exception) been justified?
How does 2 Cor 5:14,18-19 prove your point? Has our Lord reconciled everyone in the world to God?
Oh, yes, you may drag in your potential/actual distinction to cut these verses down to size, but you cannot find that distinction in the verses themselves, or the surrounding context. Far from proving you point, it looks like you have to spend a certain amount of time defending your position against the otherwise unqualified force of the very verses you invoke. Each one must be cut-and-tailored for the Arminian to squeeze into while squeezing out the Calvinist and the universalist. Isn’t this special pleading from start to finish?
On p112, you bring up Mt 23:37. How is this incompatible with Calvinism? Mt 23:37 alludes to a conditional covenant with the house of Israel (v38; cf. Jer 12:7; 22:5). This is preceptive, not decretive.
On p113, you cite Rom 14:15 and 1 Cor 8:11 to prove that Christ died for the damned. Now, Paul is dealing here with cases of conscience. Do you really imagine a true believer is damned just because he suffers from an overly-scrupulous conscience? Is this what you think that Paul is saying here? Is that Paul’s idea of pastoral theology? Is that your idea of pastoral theology? Is that the sort of advice you give the weak brethren when they come to you for counseling? Do you confirm their worst fears by sending them home with the warning that they are teetering on the brink of hell? If anything, that admonition would push them right over the edge.
Boy, and people say that Calvinism is stern! Your Arminian theology is entirely too harsh for a hardnosed Calvinist like me! Seriously, I find much more sensible the interpretation offered by John Stott, Romans (IVP 1994), 365-66, and Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians (Zondervan 1994), 163. I should add that neither of them is going to bat for the cause of five-point Calvinism.
It is true that apollunai is commonly used with reference to the final judgment, but to read the eschatological context back into the bare meaning of the word when the controlling context is absent is simply fallacious.
In this same connection you bring in 2 Pet 2:1. Here, however, Peter is comparing false prophets in the OT to false teachers in the NT. The false teachers were “purchased” in the same generic sense that the false prophets were “redeemed” when God delivered the Exodus generation from Egyptian bondage.
“Agorazo” is not a technical term for Christian redemption. And it doesn’t bear the same specialized import as it would in Reformed dogmatics. You are committing yet another semantic anachronism.
Your argument would only work if Peter were using the word to denote the same concept as the doctrine of redemption in Reformed theology. But the Petrine usage is at several removes from Reformed usage.
It is also uncertain whether “despotes” has reference to the Father or the Son.
You recycle Sailer’s old argument that “unlimited atonement is the view that best accounts for the blame attached to men for rejection of Christ” (118). You and Sailer cite Jn 3:18; 8:24; 2 Cor 6:14; 2 Thes 2:11-12; 1 Jn 5:10-11; Rev 21:8.
This might have the makings of an impressive argument. Unfortunately, none of your prooftexts say as much as you need they to say to cinch the argument. None of them state that the unbelievers in view are guilty for failing to believe that Christ died for them.
To the extent that they even spell out the grounds of condemnation, they either have reference to the person of Christ (Jn 3:18; 8:24; 1 Jn 5:10), or his work on behalf of believers (1 Jn 5:11).
Both points go to the character of the opponents in 1 John. On the one hand, they deny that Jesus is the Anointed Son of God, come in the flesh. On the other hand, they deny that Christians are entitled to enjoy the assurance of salvation by the blood of Christ.
You cite Rom 3:22-25 to show that the provision is as broad as the sin. Once again, though, this either proves too much or too little. Paul doesn’t speak in terms of bare provision. He says that all are justified (v24).
Again, you fudge on the idea of provision. You fail to make provision for unbelief. Unbelief is sin. So you fail to make full provision for sin. A provisional atonement that is contingent on faith, where no provision is made for faith itself, or the absence thereof, is not a universal atonement, but a terribly truncated atonement. You might as well give a blind man a roadmap.
Moving on to chapter 7, you devote several pages to an analysis of the cosmic usage in 1 John. At one level, this marks an advance over the customary appeal, in which the meaning of kosmos is treated as self-evident.
To summarize your results, you say that in 1 John, kosmos is used as an antonym for believers, and a synonym for unbelievers. You also draw a distinction between a personal and impersonal import. To this I’d say the following:
i) This is quite uncharacteristic of Arminian theology, which ordinarily defines kosmos as “everyone.” I don’t say that as a criticism of your position. But it marks a wide departure from the usual appeal.
ii) You don’t show how the usage in 1 John compares with the usage in the Fourth Gospel.
iii) Are the personal and impersonal significations related in some more general way, or are these two distinct and independent senses of the word?
iv) What do the lexicographers have to say? Among another meanings, Loux & Nida define kosmos as the world-system or worldly standards (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 41.38). This is similar to Cottrell & Turner, who give, as one meaning, human and supernatural rebels against God, along with the systems under their control (Linguistics & Biblical Interpretation, 176).
Both BDAG and the EDNT lay stress on this ethical dimension. In Johannine usage, the kosmos stands for the fallen world-order, and all that this entails.
Is this personal or impersonal, and is there a uniform meaning to which the usage of John and 1 John are correspondent?
Instead of the personal/impersonal, distinction, perhaps an abstract/concrete distinction would be more helpful. The personal/impersonal relation is disjunctive in a way that is not necessarily so with the abstract/concrete distinction. For an abstraction may be a generality based on a representative sampling of concrete instances.
The “fallen world order” is an abstract concept, but it derives from personal instances. Moreover, it carries an ethical connotation, which again, has a personal origin in the character of sinful agents.
Is there one word or word-group in English which best captures the abstract and moral overtones of kosmos? If we were to render kosmos as the “worldly” “worldling,” “worldliness,” and “worldly-minded,” I think that these variant forms of the basal noun (world) would offer a consistent and sensical meaning in most all of its Johannine--and not a few of its Pauline--occurrences. And this is quite compatible with Reformed theology.
You quote Nicole quoting Murray as taking kosmos in an exclusive rather than inclusive sense: “Christ is the only propitiation available to anyone in the whole world” (124).
You, however, draw the lines quite differently: “John’s purpose is to say that believers, even when discussing the benefits of Christ’s atonement death for themselves, must remember that he also died for the whole world, including the lost” (132).
But is that John’s purpose? D. A. Carson has a very different take, based on his reconstruction of the opponents: “John is confronting a crisis precipitated by the secession of some members who have been powerfully influenced by some form of protognosticism...In this light, the so-called tests are...[given] to reassure believers that their fidelity to the gospel, along the lines indicated, was itself reason enough to enable them to regain their quiet Christian assurance,” “Reflections on Assurance,” Still Sovereign, T. Schreiner & B. Ware, eds. (Baker 2000), 274.
On this view, John’s purpose is not to exhort believers on how they ought to view unbelievers, but rather, to reassure unsettled believers that, contrary to the protognostic heresy of the false teachers, Christ is the sole and all-sufficient Savior.
In good Arminian fashion, you discuss prevenient grace. But you only offer three prooftexts for your view (Jn 6:44; 16:8; Acts 16:14).
Yet none of them show that God’s grace is merely enabling, but resistible. In Acts 16:14, the divine action not merely enables Lydia to believe, but terminates in faith.
You quote the first clause of 6:44, but not the second, which assumes the success of the operation. You also disengage v44 from vv37,39.
You construe 16:8 as having subjective reference to the inner moral suasion of the Spirit, whereas it is far more likely to have reference to the objective witness of the inspired Apostles, who assume and resume the prophetic mantle of the covenantal law-suit.
Frankly, this whole sections is as a fine a specimen as any of someone who begins with his theological belief-system, then goes trolling about in search of a prooftext.
In chapter 10, you cite several Johannine verses to prove the priority of faith to regeneration.
As to Jn 1:12, the distinction between huios and tekna is that John reserves the former for Christ, and the latter for Christians.
You also ignore the relation of v12 to the relative clause in v13, the purpose of which is to trace the phenomena of v12 back to its wellsprings in the will of God.
I’d add that your interpretation also makes a hash of Jn 3:1-8, which is an expansive gloss on of Jn 1:12-13.
As to 1 Jn 5:1, the perfect participle could just as well be rendered, “whoever believes in God will have been begotten of God,” or, more idiomatically, “has already been begotten of God.” That is not the only possible rendering, but it’s grammatically unimpeachable.
At best, the verse is ambiguous, and therefore neutral on this question. And on the one occasion where John does clarify the causal relation, regeneration takes precedence (3:9).
Even I. H. Marshall, a doctrinaire Arminian who affirms the priority of faith, doesn’t share your interpretation of 5:1: “Faith is thus a sign of the new birth...Here...John is not trying to show how a person experiences the new birth; his aim is rather to indicate evidence which shows that a person stands in the continuing relationship of a child to his Father: that evidence is that he holds to the true faith about Jesus,” The Epistles of John (Eerdmans 1984), 226-27.
For a man who has taught NT Greek over the years, you are oddly insensitive to Greek grammar. And you are just as tone-deaf of spiritual metaphors. The point of procreative imagery is that we can do nothing to beget our own existence.
Death/resurrection imagery serves the same purpose as birth/rebirth imagery. The dead cannot bring themselves back to life.
Jesus, John, and Paul employ these metaphors because this transparent picture-language conveys an instantly and unmistakably clear idea.
You cite Jn 5:24 to prove the priority of faith to regeneration. But to redeploy Marshall’s own distinction, is faith a cause of regeneration, or a sign of regeneration?
Far from supporting the Arminian contention, this verse supports the inamissibility of grace. As Andreas Kostenberger observes, "Jesus' statement that believers 'have' eternal life in the here and now, having 'crossed over from death to life' already in the past (5:24; cf. 1 Jn 3:14), ran counter to contemporary Judaism, which considered the attainment of eternal life to be a future event," John (Baker 2004), 188.
You also cite Jn 12:46 to prove the priority of faith to regeneration. However, this conveniently ignores the predestinarian context of Jn 12, where unbelief is attributed to judicial hardening (vv37-41).
For the standard monograph on Isa 6 and its NT appropriation, cf. C. Evans, To See and Not Perceive (Sheffield: JSOT 1989).
Moving on to chapter 11, you say that the Calvinist is prying into the secret things of God when he infers the perseverance of the saints from the covenant of redemption (Jn 5:30,43; 6:38-40; 17:4-12). You also say that “nowhere is there direct indication that such a covenant was made, and even more important is the fact that the terms of such a covenant are not revealed--especially not whether those promises were or were not conditional” (189).
By way of reply,
i) Calvinists are not appealing to the secret will of God, but to the revealed will of God. You yourself cite some of the prooftexts, only to brandish the above disclaimer.
Well, what is your alternative interpretation of Jn 5:30,43; 6;38-40; 17:4-12?
And how could the promises be conditional if this is a covenant between the Father and the Son? Although it is possible for a covenant between God and man to be conditional, inasmuch as the human party may commit breach of contract--unless he is preserved by God’s grace-- yet how can a covenant between two divine parties ever be liable to nonperformance?
And you continue to assume, without benefit of argument, that conditionality implies uncertainty. That is a non-sequitur. It all depends. In contract law, you may have a surety (e.g. Heb 7:22!) to makes good on the contract if the second party defaults.
This represents a failure on your part to get inside the head of the opponent. For an Arminian, conditionality implies uncertainty because the outcome ultimately hinges on the weak reed of freewill. Of course, that is not the framework within which Reformed theology would embed conditionality.
You utterly maunder the meaning of Jn 17:11-12. The apostasy of Judas is no evidence that the prayers of Christ for his people are ineffectual. In this very verse (12) the reader is told that Judas’ betrayal was a prophetic necessity--referring back to 13:18-19. The Fourth Gospel is at pains to point out that Jesus chose Judas in full foreknowledge of his impending apostasy and treason (6:64,70-71; 13:10-11,21). It is essential to Johannine theology that Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, is faithful in keeping his spiritual charges from defection (Jn 6:37-39; chapter 10; 17:11-12a).
Moving on to chapter 12--by way of a general observation, Calvinism doesn’t deny that members of the covenant community can and may commit apostasy. Rather, Reformed theology distinguishes between a gracious remnant and a graceless mass of nominal believers. In addition, the NT letters are addressed to a mixed multitude of true believers, immature believers, and nominal believers.
Now, you may reject these distinctions, but for you to bring up examples of possible or actual apostasy (p200) is in no way incompatible with the Reformed doctrine of perseverance.
BTW, there is a parallel distinction, is there not, in Arminian theology--at least the Wesleyan variety? John and Charles did not think that all churchmen were true believers. To the contrary, they thought the Church of England was full of Pharisees. They preached the doctrine of the New Birth to baptized communicates of their own denomination. Indeed, they viewed themselves as having been gospel hypocrites before undergoing their own awakening, did they not?
On Gal 5:4, what the Galatians are in danger of defecting from is not the experience of justification, but the doctrine of justification.
On Jn 10:27-29, you say “it assumes that they remain his sheep” (201). Yes, and no. It assumes that they will, indeed, remain his sheep because he will preserve all those whom the Father entrusted to his safe-keeping. If the promise is conditional, it is conditional, not on the sheep, but the shepherd. That’s the whole point of the passage. Therein lies the assurance.
On Rom 8:29-30, you describe this as a “picture of what happens for those in whom God’s purpose is fully accomplished, without even discussing the question of whether any condition is required for any part of it to be accomplished” (202).
No, what it expressly says is that God’s purpose will be accomplished for the elect from start to finish. And if this carries a faith-condition, then that condition will be met in each and every case.
Moving on to chapter 13, you rest your objection to perseverance on two pillars: Heb 6:4-6 and 2 Pet 2:18-22.
On Heb 6:4-6,
i) The fundamental flaw in your reading of the text is the way in which you jump right into the middle of the letter (6:4-6), and therefore miss the comparison between OT and NT apostates.
But in order to understand this passage we must go back to where the author introduces the apostasy motif. Because the author is addressing Messianic Jews who are tempted to revert to Judaism, he draws a parallel between NT apostasy and OT apostasy. This comparison is introduced in the first of five apostasy passages (2:1-4). Then in 3:6-4:13 he elaborates on the character of the OT apostates. By the way in which our author structures his own argument, therefore, this precedent is paradigmatic for the case of NT apostasy. And his remarks in 6:4-6 will allude to this passage. If there were a radical discontinuity in the religious experience of OT and NT apostates, then our author’s analogy would break down at the critical point of comparison.
ii) What does the author mean by having a share in the Holy Spirit (6:4)? Before we can attempt a specific answer we must first ask about the general contours of our author’s pneumatology. He doesn’t have much to say on this subject, but what he does tell us is confined to the external rather than internal work of the Spirit (2:4; 3:7; 9:8; 10:15). There is a possible reference to his agency in the Resurrection (9:14).
The point, rather, is that both the Old and NT apostates had a share in the ministry of the Spirit by virtue of his agency in the inspiration of Scripture. More precisely, both groups had been evangelized (4:2,6).
When you cite verse like Gal 3:14, you are using Hebrews to channel Pauline theology. This is a category mistake. The author of Hebrews never penetrates beneath the phenomenology of faith and categories of cultic holiness. He does not share St. Paul’s interest in depth psychology, perhaps because that is not germane to the purpose of his letter, which is concerned with covenant theology and Messianic Judaism.
Likewise, regeneration is a Johannine category. You seem to be doing systematic theology under the guise of exegetical theology. But systematic theology is a higher-ordered discipline. Each author ought to be construed on his own terms, in light of his own chosen usage--both express and allusive. You need to break the habit of using one author as a prism through which to view another.
Likewise, again, the verb (metochoi), taken by itself, is theologically innocent. This is not a technical term for Christian experience.
iii) The author takes the rebellion at Kadesh as his test case (Num 14 via Ps 95). Having tasted the "goodness of God’s word" (6:5) echoes the experience of the OT apostates (4,2,6,12; cf. Num 14:43). Tasting the "powers of the coming age" has immediate reference to the sign-gifts (2:4), but this experience also has its OT analogue (Num 14:11,22).
I agree with you that the verb (geuomai) is not reducible to “tongue-tasting.” However, you commit a semantic fallacy in insinuating that the import of the verb is defined by the object it takes, and therefore varies with its variable object. Does geuomai have a humble human import in Jn 2:9, but take on a divine import in Mt 27:33?
iv) Appealing to 10:32 to explain 6:4 is an exercise in futility:
(a) If 6:4 is ambiguous, taken by itself, then that same ambiguity will infect the parallel passage;
(b) The question at issue is not whether the verb (photizomai) is a metaphor for conversion, but whether it denotes conversion in the dogmatic sense, such that you can invoke this verse to compare and contrast the doctrine of conversion in Hebrews with the doctrine of conversion in Arminian and Reformed theology. That is not something you can extract from a natural metaphor. Picture-language is too open-textured to speak with such precision.
v) On Heb 6:2,6, it is a mistake to import into the word "repentance" the full payload of later dogmatic usage. Moreover, it is evident from his usage elsewhere (12:17) that the author doesn’t use the word as a technical term for Christian conversion.
vi) As to Heb 10:29 (p115), it is anachronistic to construe "sanctify" as it has come to be used in systematic theology. The author tells us that the apostate was sanctified by blood of Christ rather than action of the Spirit. That automatically removes it from the dogmatic category. His usage is figurative and consciously cultic (9:13,20; cf. Exod 29:21; Lev 16:19, LXX). It is concerned with a status rather than a process. By taking it to mean what it would normally mean in Pauline theology, you are blending separate domains of discourse. Moreover, it also possible that the verb takes the "covenant" as its object.
I can only conclude that either you never read James Barr’s book on The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford 1961), or else it went right over your head, for you continually reproduce the word-study fallacies of Kittel and company.
vii) It is lopsided to center our analysis of Hebrews on the apostasy motif when, in fact, the letter pivots on the dual theme of threat and assurance. Moreover, the author rounds out his dire warnings on an optimistic note (cf. 6:9ff.; 10:30,39).
Furthermore, the author accentuates the efficacy of Christ’s atonement and intercession (4:14; 7:16,24-28; 8:6; 9:12,14-15,26-28; 10:12-18,22) in express contrast to the inadequacies and insecurities of the OT system (5:2-3; 7:18-29,27-28; 9:9-10,13; 10:1-4,11). He allows no room for a breach between redemption accomplished and redemption applied.
The reason that a member of the Old Covenant community could apostatize was due to the drag-factor of an evil heart (3:8,12; 7:18), whereas the New Covenant rests on the better promise of a new heart (8:10,12; 10:16).
viii) Finally, an Arminian is in no position to say that hypotheticals are meaningless. Sufficient grace is a hypothetical, often turned into counterfactual when resisted. A potential universal atonement is a hypothetical, often turned into counterfactual when resisted.
The metaphysical difference is that you, as an Arminian, index modality to the will of man whereas a Calvinist is indexing modality to the will of God.
On 2 Pet 2:18-22, the question at issue is not whether the apostates were one-time converts to the faith. Rather, the question turns on the content of conversion--on two divergent doctrines of conversion: the Reformed and the Arminian.
2 Pet 2:18-22 doesn’t address that specific contention. There is nothing said about the religious experience of the false teachers that rises above the level of their having been evangelized. So your appeal fails to even graze the opposing position.
By having offered such a thoroughgoing defense of Arminian theology, and attack upon Calvinism, Reformed theology is signally vindicated when the arguments for Arminian theology and Arminian counterarguments against Reformed theology are so impotent. For that we are all in your debt.
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Yet on p106, you say that “universal atonement matches the plain Biblical assertion that God wills the salvation of all.” So, God wills the salvation of all, but God did not intend the atonement for the salvation of all. This is less than self-explanatory. Who is confused--you or Berkhof?
In attempting to reconcile a universal atonement which falls short of universal salvation, you say: “The answer is that the expression of God’s desire for all men to be saved must be understood in the light of his (more basic) desire that all men have, as created in his image, the freedom of choice to decide for or against him” (109).
This calls for quite a number of comments:
i) To begin with, you suddenly drop the “plain Biblical assertion” for something that is not plainly asserted in any of your Arminian prooftexts. And if you need to qualify the force of your own chosen prooftexts, then in what sense do they prove your point?
If they don’t assert universal atonement in distinction to universal salvation, then do you have a single direct prooftext for your distinctive position?
Unless you have some independent grounds for your position, your appeal assumes what it needs to prove. For if your prooftext, as it stands, cannot prove you position, but must be modified in light of your position, then you appeal is question-begging. It only proves your point on the assumption that it can be suitably retrofitted consistent with your assumption. Rather than proving universal atonement, you have glossed it in light of universal atonement. This is viciously circular.
ii) Apropos (i), you are no longer exegeting 1 Tim 2:4 or 2 Pet 3:9. You are, instead, glossing the verses in light of some harmonistic device that is extraneous to the text before you.
iii) Where does the Bible ever say that man’s will is more basic than God’s will?
iv) Where does the Bible ever unpack the imago Dei in terms of freewill?
v) You position boils down to the contention that God cannot save sinners. He can save the willing, but not the unwilling. But, of course, they are unwilling because they are sinners.
Like homeowners who keep the plastic wrapping on their lamps and sofas, you have a doctrine of the atonement that works just beautifully as long as it never comes into contact with an actual hard-bitten sinner. This is a theological system for the art museum, and not the mean streets of the world.
On p110, you cited a number of the standard prooftexts for your position. Some of these I’ve dealt with already, and others I will address at a later point.
But to comment on a few, how does 1 Jn 2:2 prove your point? Has our Lord adverted the wrath of God for everyone in the world?
How does Rom 5:18 prove you point? Have all men (without exception) been justified?
How does 2 Cor 5:14,18-19 prove your point? Has our Lord reconciled everyone in the world to God?
Oh, yes, you may drag in your potential/actual distinction to cut these verses down to size, but you cannot find that distinction in the verses themselves, or the surrounding context. Far from proving you point, it looks like you have to spend a certain amount of time defending your position against the otherwise unqualified force of the very verses you invoke. Each one must be cut-and-tailored for the Arminian to squeeze into while squeezing out the Calvinist and the universalist. Isn’t this special pleading from start to finish?
On p112, you bring up Mt 23:37. How is this incompatible with Calvinism? Mt 23:37 alludes to a conditional covenant with the house of Israel (v38; cf. Jer 12:7; 22:5). This is preceptive, not decretive.
On p113, you cite Rom 14:15 and 1 Cor 8:11 to prove that Christ died for the damned. Now, Paul is dealing here with cases of conscience. Do you really imagine a true believer is damned just because he suffers from an overly-scrupulous conscience? Is this what you think that Paul is saying here? Is that Paul’s idea of pastoral theology? Is that your idea of pastoral theology? Is that the sort of advice you give the weak brethren when they come to you for counseling? Do you confirm their worst fears by sending them home with the warning that they are teetering on the brink of hell? If anything, that admonition would push them right over the edge.
Boy, and people say that Calvinism is stern! Your Arminian theology is entirely too harsh for a hardnosed Calvinist like me! Seriously, I find much more sensible the interpretation offered by John Stott, Romans (IVP 1994), 365-66, and Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians (Zondervan 1994), 163. I should add that neither of them is going to bat for the cause of five-point Calvinism.
It is true that apollunai is commonly used with reference to the final judgment, but to read the eschatological context back into the bare meaning of the word when the controlling context is absent is simply fallacious.
In this same connection you bring in 2 Pet 2:1. Here, however, Peter is comparing false prophets in the OT to false teachers in the NT. The false teachers were “purchased” in the same generic sense that the false prophets were “redeemed” when God delivered the Exodus generation from Egyptian bondage.
“Agorazo” is not a technical term for Christian redemption. And it doesn’t bear the same specialized import as it would in Reformed dogmatics. You are committing yet another semantic anachronism.
Your argument would only work if Peter were using the word to denote the same concept as the doctrine of redemption in Reformed theology. But the Petrine usage is at several removes from Reformed usage.
It is also uncertain whether “despotes” has reference to the Father or the Son.
You recycle Sailer’s old argument that “unlimited atonement is the view that best accounts for the blame attached to men for rejection of Christ” (118). You and Sailer cite Jn 3:18; 8:24; 2 Cor 6:14; 2 Thes 2:11-12; 1 Jn 5:10-11; Rev 21:8.
This might have the makings of an impressive argument. Unfortunately, none of your prooftexts say as much as you need they to say to cinch the argument. None of them state that the unbelievers in view are guilty for failing to believe that Christ died for them.
To the extent that they even spell out the grounds of condemnation, they either have reference to the person of Christ (Jn 3:18; 8:24; 1 Jn 5:10), or his work on behalf of believers (1 Jn 5:11).
Both points go to the character of the opponents in 1 John. On the one hand, they deny that Jesus is the Anointed Son of God, come in the flesh. On the other hand, they deny that Christians are entitled to enjoy the assurance of salvation by the blood of Christ.
You cite Rom 3:22-25 to show that the provision is as broad as the sin. Once again, though, this either proves too much or too little. Paul doesn’t speak in terms of bare provision. He says that all are justified (v24).
Again, you fudge on the idea of provision. You fail to make provision for unbelief. Unbelief is sin. So you fail to make full provision for sin. A provisional atonement that is contingent on faith, where no provision is made for faith itself, or the absence thereof, is not a universal atonement, but a terribly truncated atonement. You might as well give a blind man a roadmap.
Moving on to chapter 7, you devote several pages to an analysis of the cosmic usage in 1 John. At one level, this marks an advance over the customary appeal, in which the meaning of kosmos is treated as self-evident.
To summarize your results, you say that in 1 John, kosmos is used as an antonym for believers, and a synonym for unbelievers. You also draw a distinction between a personal and impersonal import. To this I’d say the following:
i) This is quite uncharacteristic of Arminian theology, which ordinarily defines kosmos as “everyone.” I don’t say that as a criticism of your position. But it marks a wide departure from the usual appeal.
ii) You don’t show how the usage in 1 John compares with the usage in the Fourth Gospel.
iii) Are the personal and impersonal significations related in some more general way, or are these two distinct and independent senses of the word?
iv) What do the lexicographers have to say? Among another meanings, Loux & Nida define kosmos as the world-system or worldly standards (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 41.38). This is similar to Cottrell & Turner, who give, as one meaning, human and supernatural rebels against God, along with the systems under their control (Linguistics & Biblical Interpretation, 176).
Both BDAG and the EDNT lay stress on this ethical dimension. In Johannine usage, the kosmos stands for the fallen world-order, and all that this entails.
Is this personal or impersonal, and is there a uniform meaning to which the usage of John and 1 John are correspondent?
Instead of the personal/impersonal, distinction, perhaps an abstract/concrete distinction would be more helpful. The personal/impersonal relation is disjunctive in a way that is not necessarily so with the abstract/concrete distinction. For an abstraction may be a generality based on a representative sampling of concrete instances.
The “fallen world order” is an abstract concept, but it derives from personal instances. Moreover, it carries an ethical connotation, which again, has a personal origin in the character of sinful agents.
Is there one word or word-group in English which best captures the abstract and moral overtones of kosmos? If we were to render kosmos as the “worldly” “worldling,” “worldliness,” and “worldly-minded,” I think that these variant forms of the basal noun (world) would offer a consistent and sensical meaning in most all of its Johannine--and not a few of its Pauline--occurrences. And this is quite compatible with Reformed theology.
You quote Nicole quoting Murray as taking kosmos in an exclusive rather than inclusive sense: “Christ is the only propitiation available to anyone in the whole world” (124).
You, however, draw the lines quite differently: “John’s purpose is to say that believers, even when discussing the benefits of Christ’s atonement death for themselves, must remember that he also died for the whole world, including the lost” (132).
But is that John’s purpose? D. A. Carson has a very different take, based on his reconstruction of the opponents: “John is confronting a crisis precipitated by the secession of some members who have been powerfully influenced by some form of protognosticism...In this light, the so-called tests are...[given] to reassure believers that their fidelity to the gospel, along the lines indicated, was itself reason enough to enable them to regain their quiet Christian assurance,” “Reflections on Assurance,” Still Sovereign, T. Schreiner & B. Ware, eds. (Baker 2000), 274.
On this view, John’s purpose is not to exhort believers on how they ought to view unbelievers, but rather, to reassure unsettled believers that, contrary to the protognostic heresy of the false teachers, Christ is the sole and all-sufficient Savior.
In good Arminian fashion, you discuss prevenient grace. But you only offer three prooftexts for your view (Jn 6:44; 16:8; Acts 16:14).
Yet none of them show that God’s grace is merely enabling, but resistible. In Acts 16:14, the divine action not merely enables Lydia to believe, but terminates in faith.
You quote the first clause of 6:44, but not the second, which assumes the success of the operation. You also disengage v44 from vv37,39.
You construe 16:8 as having subjective reference to the inner moral suasion of the Spirit, whereas it is far more likely to have reference to the objective witness of the inspired Apostles, who assume and resume the prophetic mantle of the covenantal law-suit.
Frankly, this whole sections is as a fine a specimen as any of someone who begins with his theological belief-system, then goes trolling about in search of a prooftext.
In chapter 10, you cite several Johannine verses to prove the priority of faith to regeneration.
As to Jn 1:12, the distinction between huios and tekna is that John reserves the former for Christ, and the latter for Christians.
You also ignore the relation of v12 to the relative clause in v13, the purpose of which is to trace the phenomena of v12 back to its wellsprings in the will of God.
I’d add that your interpretation also makes a hash of Jn 3:1-8, which is an expansive gloss on of Jn 1:12-13.
As to 1 Jn 5:1, the perfect participle could just as well be rendered, “whoever believes in God will have been begotten of God,” or, more idiomatically, “has already been begotten of God.” That is not the only possible rendering, but it’s grammatically unimpeachable.
At best, the verse is ambiguous, and therefore neutral on this question. And on the one occasion where John does clarify the causal relation, regeneration takes precedence (3:9).
Even I. H. Marshall, a doctrinaire Arminian who affirms the priority of faith, doesn’t share your interpretation of 5:1: “Faith is thus a sign of the new birth...Here...John is not trying to show how a person experiences the new birth; his aim is rather to indicate evidence which shows that a person stands in the continuing relationship of a child to his Father: that evidence is that he holds to the true faith about Jesus,” The Epistles of John (Eerdmans 1984), 226-27.
For a man who has taught NT Greek over the years, you are oddly insensitive to Greek grammar. And you are just as tone-deaf of spiritual metaphors. The point of procreative imagery is that we can do nothing to beget our own existence.
Death/resurrection imagery serves the same purpose as birth/rebirth imagery. The dead cannot bring themselves back to life.
Jesus, John, and Paul employ these metaphors because this transparent picture-language conveys an instantly and unmistakably clear idea.
You cite Jn 5:24 to prove the priority of faith to regeneration. But to redeploy Marshall’s own distinction, is faith a cause of regeneration, or a sign of regeneration?
Far from supporting the Arminian contention, this verse supports the inamissibility of grace. As Andreas Kostenberger observes, "Jesus' statement that believers 'have' eternal life in the here and now, having 'crossed over from death to life' already in the past (5:24; cf. 1 Jn 3:14), ran counter to contemporary Judaism, which considered the attainment of eternal life to be a future event," John (Baker 2004), 188.
You also cite Jn 12:46 to prove the priority of faith to regeneration. However, this conveniently ignores the predestinarian context of Jn 12, where unbelief is attributed to judicial hardening (vv37-41).
For the standard monograph on Isa 6 and its NT appropriation, cf. C. Evans, To See and Not Perceive (Sheffield: JSOT 1989).
Moving on to chapter 11, you say that the Calvinist is prying into the secret things of God when he infers the perseverance of the saints from the covenant of redemption (Jn 5:30,43; 6:38-40; 17:4-12). You also say that “nowhere is there direct indication that such a covenant was made, and even more important is the fact that the terms of such a covenant are not revealed--especially not whether those promises were or were not conditional” (189).
By way of reply,
i) Calvinists are not appealing to the secret will of God, but to the revealed will of God. You yourself cite some of the prooftexts, only to brandish the above disclaimer.
Well, what is your alternative interpretation of Jn 5:30,43; 6;38-40; 17:4-12?
And how could the promises be conditional if this is a covenant between the Father and the Son? Although it is possible for a covenant between God and man to be conditional, inasmuch as the human party may commit breach of contract--unless he is preserved by God’s grace-- yet how can a covenant between two divine parties ever be liable to nonperformance?
And you continue to assume, without benefit of argument, that conditionality implies uncertainty. That is a non-sequitur. It all depends. In contract law, you may have a surety (e.g. Heb 7:22!) to makes good on the contract if the second party defaults.
This represents a failure on your part to get inside the head of the opponent. For an Arminian, conditionality implies uncertainty because the outcome ultimately hinges on the weak reed of freewill. Of course, that is not the framework within which Reformed theology would embed conditionality.
You utterly maunder the meaning of Jn 17:11-12. The apostasy of Judas is no evidence that the prayers of Christ for his people are ineffectual. In this very verse (12) the reader is told that Judas’ betrayal was a prophetic necessity--referring back to 13:18-19. The Fourth Gospel is at pains to point out that Jesus chose Judas in full foreknowledge of his impending apostasy and treason (6:64,70-71; 13:10-11,21). It is essential to Johannine theology that Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, is faithful in keeping his spiritual charges from defection (Jn 6:37-39; chapter 10; 17:11-12a).
Moving on to chapter 12--by way of a general observation, Calvinism doesn’t deny that members of the covenant community can and may commit apostasy. Rather, Reformed theology distinguishes between a gracious remnant and a graceless mass of nominal believers. In addition, the NT letters are addressed to a mixed multitude of true believers, immature believers, and nominal believers.
Now, you may reject these distinctions, but for you to bring up examples of possible or actual apostasy (p200) is in no way incompatible with the Reformed doctrine of perseverance.
BTW, there is a parallel distinction, is there not, in Arminian theology--at least the Wesleyan variety? John and Charles did not think that all churchmen were true believers. To the contrary, they thought the Church of England was full of Pharisees. They preached the doctrine of the New Birth to baptized communicates of their own denomination. Indeed, they viewed themselves as having been gospel hypocrites before undergoing their own awakening, did they not?
On Gal 5:4, what the Galatians are in danger of defecting from is not the experience of justification, but the doctrine of justification.
On Jn 10:27-29, you say “it assumes that they remain his sheep” (201). Yes, and no. It assumes that they will, indeed, remain his sheep because he will preserve all those whom the Father entrusted to his safe-keeping. If the promise is conditional, it is conditional, not on the sheep, but the shepherd. That’s the whole point of the passage. Therein lies the assurance.
On Rom 8:29-30, you describe this as a “picture of what happens for those in whom God’s purpose is fully accomplished, without even discussing the question of whether any condition is required for any part of it to be accomplished” (202).
No, what it expressly says is that God’s purpose will be accomplished for the elect from start to finish. And if this carries a faith-condition, then that condition will be met in each and every case.
Moving on to chapter 13, you rest your objection to perseverance on two pillars: Heb 6:4-6 and 2 Pet 2:18-22.
On Heb 6:4-6,
i) The fundamental flaw in your reading of the text is the way in which you jump right into the middle of the letter (6:4-6), and therefore miss the comparison between OT and NT apostates.
But in order to understand this passage we must go back to where the author introduces the apostasy motif. Because the author is addressing Messianic Jews who are tempted to revert to Judaism, he draws a parallel between NT apostasy and OT apostasy. This comparison is introduced in the first of five apostasy passages (2:1-4). Then in 3:6-4:13 he elaborates on the character of the OT apostates. By the way in which our author structures his own argument, therefore, this precedent is paradigmatic for the case of NT apostasy. And his remarks in 6:4-6 will allude to this passage. If there were a radical discontinuity in the religious experience of OT and NT apostates, then our author’s analogy would break down at the critical point of comparison.
ii) What does the author mean by having a share in the Holy Spirit (6:4)? Before we can attempt a specific answer we must first ask about the general contours of our author’s pneumatology. He doesn’t have much to say on this subject, but what he does tell us is confined to the external rather than internal work of the Spirit (2:4; 3:7; 9:8; 10:15). There is a possible reference to his agency in the Resurrection (9:14).
The point, rather, is that both the Old and NT apostates had a share in the ministry of the Spirit by virtue of his agency in the inspiration of Scripture. More precisely, both groups had been evangelized (4:2,6).
When you cite verse like Gal 3:14, you are using Hebrews to channel Pauline theology. This is a category mistake. The author of Hebrews never penetrates beneath the phenomenology of faith and categories of cultic holiness. He does not share St. Paul’s interest in depth psychology, perhaps because that is not germane to the purpose of his letter, which is concerned with covenant theology and Messianic Judaism.
Likewise, regeneration is a Johannine category. You seem to be doing systematic theology under the guise of exegetical theology. But systematic theology is a higher-ordered discipline. Each author ought to be construed on his own terms, in light of his own chosen usage--both express and allusive. You need to break the habit of using one author as a prism through which to view another.
Likewise, again, the verb (metochoi), taken by itself, is theologically innocent. This is not a technical term for Christian experience.
iii) The author takes the rebellion at Kadesh as his test case (Num 14 via Ps 95). Having tasted the "goodness of God’s word" (6:5) echoes the experience of the OT apostates (4,2,6,12; cf. Num 14:43). Tasting the "powers of the coming age" has immediate reference to the sign-gifts (2:4), but this experience also has its OT analogue (Num 14:11,22).
I agree with you that the verb (geuomai) is not reducible to “tongue-tasting.” However, you commit a semantic fallacy in insinuating that the import of the verb is defined by the object it takes, and therefore varies with its variable object. Does geuomai have a humble human import in Jn 2:9, but take on a divine import in Mt 27:33?
iv) Appealing to 10:32 to explain 6:4 is an exercise in futility:
(a) If 6:4 is ambiguous, taken by itself, then that same ambiguity will infect the parallel passage;
(b) The question at issue is not whether the verb (photizomai) is a metaphor for conversion, but whether it denotes conversion in the dogmatic sense, such that you can invoke this verse to compare and contrast the doctrine of conversion in Hebrews with the doctrine of conversion in Arminian and Reformed theology. That is not something you can extract from a natural metaphor. Picture-language is too open-textured to speak with such precision.
v) On Heb 6:2,6, it is a mistake to import into the word "repentance" the full payload of later dogmatic usage. Moreover, it is evident from his usage elsewhere (12:17) that the author doesn’t use the word as a technical term for Christian conversion.
vi) As to Heb 10:29 (p115), it is anachronistic to construe "sanctify" as it has come to be used in systematic theology. The author tells us that the apostate was sanctified by blood of Christ rather than action of the Spirit. That automatically removes it from the dogmatic category. His usage is figurative and consciously cultic (9:13,20; cf. Exod 29:21; Lev 16:19, LXX). It is concerned with a status rather than a process. By taking it to mean what it would normally mean in Pauline theology, you are blending separate domains of discourse. Moreover, it also possible that the verb takes the "covenant" as its object.
I can only conclude that either you never read James Barr’s book on The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford 1961), or else it went right over your head, for you continually reproduce the word-study fallacies of Kittel and company.
vii) It is lopsided to center our analysis of Hebrews on the apostasy motif when, in fact, the letter pivots on the dual theme of threat and assurance. Moreover, the author rounds out his dire warnings on an optimistic note (cf. 6:9ff.; 10:30,39).
Furthermore, the author accentuates the efficacy of Christ’s atonement and intercession (4:14; 7:16,24-28; 8:6; 9:12,14-15,26-28; 10:12-18,22) in express contrast to the inadequacies and insecurities of the OT system (5:2-3; 7:18-29,27-28; 9:9-10,13; 10:1-4,11). He allows no room for a breach between redemption accomplished and redemption applied.
The reason that a member of the Old Covenant community could apostatize was due to the drag-factor of an evil heart (3:8,12; 7:18), whereas the New Covenant rests on the better promise of a new heart (8:10,12; 10:16).
viii) Finally, an Arminian is in no position to say that hypotheticals are meaningless. Sufficient grace is a hypothetical, often turned into counterfactual when resisted. A potential universal atonement is a hypothetical, often turned into counterfactual when resisted.
The metaphysical difference is that you, as an Arminian, index modality to the will of man whereas a Calvinist is indexing modality to the will of God.
On 2 Pet 2:18-22, the question at issue is not whether the apostates were one-time converts to the faith. Rather, the question turns on the content of conversion--on two divergent doctrines of conversion: the Reformed and the Arminian.
2 Pet 2:18-22 doesn’t address that specific contention. There is nothing said about the religious experience of the false teachers that rises above the level of their having been evangelized. So your appeal fails to even graze the opposing position.
By having offered such a thoroughgoing defense of Arminian theology, and attack upon Calvinism, Reformed theology is signally vindicated when the arguments for Arminian theology and Arminian counterarguments against Reformed theology are so impotent. For that we are all in your debt.
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Grace, faith, & freewill-1
Dear Dr. Picirilli,
Over the years I’ve made an effort to read all the leading critics of Calvinism, viz., Cottrell, Craig, Duty, Douty, Erickson, Forster/Marston, Grider, Gromacki, Hodges, Hughes, Kendall, Klein, Leightner, Marshall, McNight, Osborne, Pinnock, Ryrie, Sailer, Scaer, Shank, Strehle.
More recently, I’ve read Geisler (Chosen but Free) and Walls (Why I am not a Calvinist). And now I’ve just finished your book: Grace, Faith, Freewill (Randall House 2002).
I don’t read this material because I’m Arminian. In fact, I’m a Calvinist. But I like to keep up with the competition. Of the recent entries, yours is the best. You also get bonus points for affirming the authenticity of 2 Peter.
Let me begin by saying that I appreciate the good faith effort you’ve made to understand and acquaint yourself with the opposing position. You’re better read than most.
Another strong point of you treatment is that you generally avoid the popularizers (a la Sproul), and focus your fire on the heavy-weights.
It is also nice to see someone who knows the difference between the Reformed doctrine of perseverance and the antinomian doctrine of eternal security (p193ff.).
For future reference, I would point out that you’ve overlooked a number of major spokesmen for the Reformed position, viz., Baugh, Beale, Carson, Cunningham, Edwards, Frame, Hoekema, Owen, Schreiner, Turretin, Vos, Ware.
I’d add that you give pretty short shrift to some of those whom you do cite (e.g., Helm, Murray, Piper, Warfield).
In generally, the older generation tend to be better at polemical and systematic theology, while the younger generation are better at exegetical theology.
I’ll confine my comments to what I regard as the most relevant portions of your book. I’ll ignore some arguments, not because they’re unimportant, but because I’ve addressed these points in the course of reviewing Geisler and Walls.
1. In chapter 3 you try to square freedom and foreknowledge by indexing certainty to futurity or factuality. I fail to see how this comes any distance towards solving the problem.
If the human agent is free in the libertarian sense, then he is the fact-maker. There is no fact to be known in advance of the fact. The human agent makes it happen. And if the choice is truly indeterminate, then it cannot be known before its eventuation, for it could go either way.
You have made God’s knowledge contingent on the choice of the human agent. God’s knowledge is the effect of the human agent’s decision. The future is only certain when the future moves into the past.
Incidentally, you assuming the A-theory of time. To make good on you case you’d also need to rebut the B-theory of time (a la Helm, Mellor, Le Poindevin).
On p55, you resort to the old Boethean compromise, popularized by C. S. Lewis. But if God’s foreknowledge is contingent on the creature, then God is, indeed, limited by time. God’s knowledge of free choice is contingent on its futurition. If the event is indeterminate, then the event cannot be known until it eventuates. So God is now enmeshed in the traditional divisions of time. This is hindsight rather than foresight.
If you were to confine your monograph to exegesis, you could avoid the philosophical complexities, but since, in chapter 3, you do delve into metaphysics, then this cannot be avoided.
Moving on to chapter 4, you say that Eph 1:4 is neutral on the question of whether election is conditional or unconditional. To the contrary, the very notion of predestination and eternal election takes it out of the temporal sphere of human action or reaction, and places it squarely within the sphere of divine action alone.
In addition, there is no discrepancy, in Eph 1, between the plan, execution, and application of the atonement. It is a seamless garment.
On p70, you confound the notion of conditional salvation and conditional election. These are not at all the same thing. To say that faith is a condition of salvation does not mean that faith is a condition of election.
We also need to distinguish between an objective and a subjective condition. There is quite a difference between saying that election is contingent on faith, and saying that faith is contingent on election.
To say that only believers are chosen (71) is fatally ambitious. Are they chosen because they are believers, or are they believers because they are chosen? You palter with a double sense.
Election is timeless, salvation--temporal. Salvation has its conditions, but conditions that are a consequence of the decree. Moreover, the sovereign grace of God supplies and satisfies the necessary and sufficient conditions of salvation with respect to the elect.
Of course, you may disagree, but that is a coherent cause-effect model, whereas your alternative is a muddle.
On Rom 9-11, you try to treat unbelief as the ultimate explanation. However, you anticipate a couple of objections: (i) the twins (9:11), and (ii) divine hardening (9:18; 11:7).
As to (i), you say that this disproves the principle of election by works. True, but it does more than that. It also disproves the principle of election by faith. The unborn twins could no more exercise personal faith than they could do good works.
In addition, you are assuming that Paul’s faith/works antithesis will hold up under an Arminian theory of faith. But if the act of faith is a merely human act, the product of our freewill, then faith is just another manmade work. The faith/works antithesis is only tenable along as it is expressive of the more fundamental grace/works antithesis. Faith is a token of grace. When, however, faith is elevated to the status of an autonomous factor rather the reflexive effect of a divine dynamic, then faith is parallel to works rather than grace. Synergism returns with a vengeance.
As to (ii), the problem which this poses for conditional election is that hardening is a divine impediment to faith. God hardens Pharaoh so that he cannot repent. God hardens Israel so that she cannot repent (Isa 6).
All you say to this is that hardening is the absence of mercy rather than the presence of some positive impediment.
But, to begin with, that hardly does justice to the hardening of Pharaoh. According to the narrative, there were occasions when Pharaoh, if left to his own devices, would have relented under the pressure of the plagues, but God stiffened his resistance, in the furtherance of a long-range objective (Rom 9:17; Exod 9:16; 14:4,17-18).
Likewise, God hardened Israel to precipitate the Exile, in the furtherance of another long-range objective (6:9-13). Israel’s repentance would be premature at this point, serving to frustrate rather than facilitate God’s overarching goal.
And this carries over to Rom 9-11, with its doctrine of the remnant and in-grafting of the Gentiles. Sorry, but your shallow analysis misses the big picture.
Incidentally, I think that you are talking at cross purposes with Piper. Spiritual inability has reference to evangelical repentance. In this sense, “nothing more active is necessary.” The unregenerate may be left in their unregenerate state.
It does not follow, however, that the unregenerate are incapable of repenting of a course of action that, left unchecked, will result in a temporal chastisement or catastrophe.
At the same time, there is some degree of coordination between grace and the means of grace. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” If a people-group are cut-off from the mainstream of redemptive history (e.g., Mal 1:1-4; Isa 35:5,9ff.; Ezk 35:9; Obadiah 10,18; Jn 4:24; Eph 2:12), then that has the preemptive effect of severing any spiritual opportunities and advantages that they might otherwise enjoy.
The atonement is a double-edged sword. It is not merely a means of salvation, but also an instrument of condemnation by exposing the inexcusable character of unbelief and even aggravating the guilt of the unbeliever (Jn 9:39; 12:37-40; 15:22). The atonement is a polarizing event (Lk 12:51f. Jn 3:19-21; 6:60-71). Christ was destined for the downfall of many (Lk 2:34). The reprobate were set up for the fall (1 Pet 2:8), while Christ was set out to trip them up (2:6f.). God will display the folly of the proud through the stumbling block of Calvary (1 Cor 1:18-29; 2:6-8).
On Rom 8:28-30, it’s true that Pauline usage is not strictly parallel to dogmatic usage. In Reformed dogmatics, predestination is inclusive of election, whereas in Rom 8:29, “predestination” is instrumental to “election” (proginosko=to choose beforehand).
That, however, doesn’t invalidate the Reformed construction. It just means that we need to distinguish between words and concepts, and pair them up at their equitable level of abstraction.
In 8:28, proginosko is an idiomatic expression for prior choice. It carries a predestinarian force. For its part, proorizein carries a teleological force. They are chosen--chosen for what? To what end? To be conformed to the image of Christ.
So they didn’t choose themselves, and they didn’t choose God. God did the choosing. And God chose them, not for the sake of choosing, and left it at that, as if election were an end in itself, but in order to bless them with a particular destiny. Election is a precondition for something else. Election is instrumental to a certain destiny, and predestination is instrumental to election as a means of attaining that end. “In the second step he uses proorizein, which means ‘decide beforehand, predestine’ (BAGD, 709a), referring to God’s gratuitous election (to the status to be described in the next phrase,” J. Fitzmyer, Romans (Doubleday 1993), 525.
Moving on to 1 Pet 1:1-2, you ask, “Foreknowledge of what?” (78). But this is a prejudicial way of framing the question, for it presupposes the answer. If we render proginosko as “foreknowledge,” then that naturally invites the question, “Foreknowledge of what.” But such a rendering begs the question. On the next page you run through four different semantic options, but the way you’ve have chosen to cast the question on p78 tilts the playing field in advance of the game.
I think that proginosko bears the same elective sense here as it does in Rom 8:29 & 11:2. You reject this rendering on the grounds that it would be tautologous. But this objection is invalid on a couple of grounds:
i) Even if the construction were tautologous, that wouldn’t rule out the elective sense. The Bible is an emphatic book--given to a certain amount of redundancy to drive home the same point. In Eph 1-2, for example, Paul says the same thing in more than one way.
ii) It is not tautologous. For the compound form adds a conceptual element not present in the bare idea of choice, viz., “chosen according to the prior choice of God.” The two terms are not synonymous. Rather, proginosko advances the original thought. Christians are a chosen people. Not only so, but they were chosen beforehand. They own their favored status to divine initiative.
But another problem is the way in which you combine more than one sense: “prescience, with a hint of wise foreplanning” (79).
What justification do you offer for the idea that more than one sense is in play in the very same occurrence? Certain authors like James Joyce trade on polysemy, but this is rather artful and artificial. Except when a writer is deliberately indulging in a double entendre for ironic effect, I don’t see any linguistic grounds for asserting semantic simultaneity.
You seem to be falling into the semantic fallacy of treating words as though they had a primary meaning, which carries through all of their secondary and tertiary senses. Thus, the primary meaning is always operative, but one can layer on a secondary or tertiary sense.
That is not my conception of how a natural language works. A word may have more than one sense, but it doesn't’ have more than one sense in the same occurrence. Rather, it may have one meaning in one occurrence, and another in another, depending on which meaning is serviceable to the context at hand.
Again, when you talk about the “added notion of foresight,” you seem to be confounding the meaning of words with concepts. But a concept may be present where the word is not, or vice versa.
Let us not forget that 1:2 occurs in the same writing in which Peter presents a doctrine of double predestination. Election and reprobation stand side by side as correlative truths (2:6-9).
Moving on to Acts 2:23 & 4:28, you say that “If, in fact, those who crucified Jesus had to do so...then they were not free to do otherwise--could not do otherwise, and were therefore not responsible” (80).
There are two things wrong with this claim:
i) It assumes what it needs to prove. It appeals to a popular, common sense notion of justice. But it simply takes that for granted. No supporting argument is offered.
Now you, as an Arminian, can take this as a given if you like, but that is no way of persuading someone who is not already a card-carrying Arminian. Indeed, it is possible for someone to be theological indeterminist, but a philosophical determinist (e.g., John Locke). By ignoring all of the counterarguments, you beg the very question at issue.
ii) Your little gloss does not constitute an interpretation of Acts 2:23 or 4:28. What you’ve done is to superimpose on the text what you think to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility. Now even if you were right about that, the text itself has nothing at all to say about the necessary conditions of incumbency. Your claims do not arise from exegeting the text. You have read out of the text what you read into it. This is only convincing to the firmly convinced. But there is nothing in the text to generate your conclusion.
Moving on to Lk 7:30, you apparently cite this to show that grace is not irresistible. But you seem to be forgetting the position you’ve chosen to oppose.
The Pharisees rejected the prophetic preaching of John the Baptist. In this verse, “God’s will” is synonymous with John’s baptism of repentance. But Calvinism has never said that unregenerate men are unable to reject the preaching of the prophets, or Apostles, or missionaries, or what have you. Indeed, Calvinism affirms that unregenerate men naturally resist the Gospel unless they are graced with the gift of faith. This verse is entirely compatible with spiritual inability.
I’d add that even in the case of God’s preceptive will, even though it may be resisted, it may never be thwarted, for it serves to expose and aggravate the guilt of the unbeliever (Jer 7:16; 11:14; 18:11-12; Ezk 2:3-7; 20:25-27; Isa 6:1-13; 63:17; Jn 12; Rom 3:20; 5:20; 7:7,13; Heb 10:3). So at no level, whether decretive or preceptive, is the will of God ever frustrated by man’s intransigence.
Moving on to 2 Pet 3:9, the key issue here is not the force of the verb, but the object of the verb. It is odd that you quote Bauckham’s commentary on 2:18-22, but not on 3:9. As Bauckham explains, the language is stereotypical of OT usage with reference to the covenant community. Just as God was longsuffering towards stiff-necked Israel (for the sake of the remnant), so is he to backslidden believers under the New Covenant.
I’d add that your allusion to Ezk 33:11 commits the same anachronism. To universalize an oracle that was addressed to the covenant community flies in the face of the context. Israel was not the world. Indeed, Israel went wrong whenever she lost her distinct identity and become indistinguishable from the world at large.
Moving on to 1 Tim 2:4, You say that “ the meaning of the ‘all’ is crucial to the interpretation of the verse, and it cannot be separated from the entire context (vv1-7),” (82). You also say that this passage makes the same point as 2 Pet 3:9. Really?
We need to administer several correctives:
i) The “meaning” of pantos is not at issue. The universal quantifier has a uniform, abstract meaning. That is not the sticking point between Arminian and Calvinist.
ii) Rather, the issue turns on the referent. Not: what does the word connote?; but, whom does the word denote?
iii) Actually, the “entire context” is broader than 2:1-7. The entire context must take into account the identity of Paul’s opponents. To judge by 1:4,7 (cf. Tit 1:10,14; 3:9), Paul is dealing with the perennial Judaizers, or even hyper-Judaizers. At best, a Gentile had to become a Jew before he could become at Christian; at worse, he could never convert because the New Covenant was limited, like the Old Covenant, to the seed of Abraham.
This, of course, is untrue, but it appears to represent the viewpoint of Paul’s opponents. So Paul’s universalism is ethnic rather than soteric. Salvation is not limited to Jews.
iv) So the passage does not make the same point as 2 Pet 3:9. They are giving different answers to different questions. You have plucked out a few isolated verses without regard to the concrete situation which occasioned these letters. Their respective circumstances are entirely diverse.
Turning to chapter 5, you say that although “limited atonement follows logically from the doctrine of unconditional election,” yet “teaching about the extent of the atonement should be determined by Biblical exegesis rather than by the logic of one’s system” (90).
Well, that all depends. If doctrine A is well-attested in Scripture, and doctrine B is directly deducible from doctrine A, then doctrine A does not demand independent attestation. I would say that special redemption enjoys both direct and indirect lines of support.
Next, you claim that when Christ is said to die for a particular group, this does not imply that he died for that group alone.
True, but only true at a very abstract level of discourse. For not all of the designations of Scripture are that generic and neutral-gray. Some designations have come, in OT usage, to denote the covenant community, such as “the sheep” (Jn 10:11; Acts 20:28), the “seed of Abraham” (Heb 2:16), the people of God (Mt 1:21; Tit 2:14; Heb 2:17; 9:15), the Diaspora (Jn 11:52), the “children of God” (Heb 2:13-14), as well as those that are called (9:15) and consecrated (Jn 17:19; Heb 10:14). This usage stands in implicit contrast to the world at large.
We need to read the NT through Jewish eyes and ears. And in some cases the contrast is even more explicit: “having loved his own who were in the world” (Jn 13:1); having laid down his life for the sheep (10:11)--as over against the goats (Jn 10:26); having laid down his life for his friends (15:13; cf. Isa 41:8; 2 Chron 20:7)--as over against his enemies (15:19).
BTW, notice that Jn 10:26 affirms unconditional rather than conditional election. The unbelievers are not his sheep because they disbelieve; rather, they disbelieve because they are not his sheep.
You drive a wedge between redemption accomplished and applied by saying that “in fact the Bible speaks of Christians as having lived under the wrath of God and in a state of estrangement from him before their conversion; see Eph 2:3,13, for example,” 94.
But this is a very careless reading of Eph 2:3. The contrast there is not between “then” and “now,” but between being “in Adam” and being “in Christ.” As all the standard commentaries point out (Bruce, Hoehner, Lincoln, O’Brien), the modifier (“by nature”) has reference to original sin. Put another way, the contrast is not temporal, but federal.
You next object that if the atonement is, in and of itself, a satisfaction for the sin of the elect only, then that denies the sufficiency of the atonement, contrary to the view of Nicole and others.
This objection calls for a number of comments:
1. The sufficient/efficient distinction is not a Reformed distinctive. Both Reformed and Arminian theologians deploy this distinction, although in different ways.
This is, at most, a supporting argument. It is not essential to Reformed theology. It is, rather, a Scholastic refinement which predates Calvin and postdates Augustine.
2. The distinction is somewhat misleading. For in philosophical usage, a sufficient condition is a condition which, if satisfied, invariably yields a certain result.
When theologians talk about the sufficiency of the atonement, what they have in mind is closer to the notion of a necessary condition rather than a sufficient condition.
3. Having said all that, I really don’t see the difficulty. Let us go back to the OT template of our redemptive terminology. If an Israelite went into debt, he could become an indentured servant for seven years to make amends to his creditors. However, a wealthy relative could intervene to pay the price of his manumission.
Suppose that several clansmen became indentured servants. The kinsman-redeemer might have sufficient funds to redeem them all. Yet his wealth is only efficient to redeem those, and only those, whom he intends to redeem, and chooses to redeem by paying the asking price for any given servant. It may be all or some or none.
On 2 Cor 5:18-19, you say that “only tortured exegesis...will give ‘world” a meaning that is as narrow as the elect” (95).
To the contrary, Paul’s range of reference is self-limiting. According to the symmetry of the v14, the first quantifier coincides with the second: Christ died for all who died in Christ. So the scope of each quantifier is limited to the union between the Redeemer and the redeemed. As F.F. Bruce remarks, in his commentary on 1-2 Cor, "One has died as the representative of all his people, and therefore all of them are deemed to have died in the person of their representative." This interpretation is confirmed by the non-imputation of sin in v19, which hardly applies to humanity as a whole.
You are lifting vv18-19 out of context. They need to be considered in relation to the whole flow of the argument.
In reply to the double jeopardy argument, you say that this “depends on seeing Christ’s redemptive work as actually accomplishing its intended results, for those it was designed for, without faith on their part” (97).
But you reply is inadequate on several grounds:
i) There is a difference between saying that faith is a condition of salvation, and saying that faith is a free variable. A Calvinist would readily grant that faith is an element in the application of the atonement. But if justification is contingent on faith, faith is contingent on grace--irresistible grace. It is one thing to distinguish between redemption accomplished and applied, quite another to drive a wedge between the two.
ii) To treat unbelief as the deal-breaker does nothing to defuse the double-jeopardy argument. If their sins were atoned for, then for what are they punished?
iii) It would be miscarriage of justice to the Redeemer as well as the redeemed if he did not get what he paid for.
To the contention that Christ could not have died to saved the damned, you reply that “this, too, is mere human logic, and poor logic at that. One may as quickly respond that when he died there were many already in heaven; did he die for them?” (99).
But this replies fails in several respects:
i) When, in chapter 3, you try to harmonize freedom and foreknowledge, and when, in chapter four, you stipulate the conditions of moral responsibility, you yourself resort to mere human logic.
ii) Actually, the Calvinist is not resorting to mere human logic. Rather, he is drawing an inference on the basis of several lines of Biblical data: When people die, they either go to heaven or hell; some people died before Christ came; some of the damned died before Christ came; faith in Christ is a prerequisite of salvation.
iii) The case of those in heaven is not at all analogous. It was possible for an Israelite to exercise saving faith in Christ by believing in the types and prophecies of Christ.
Indeed, there’s no qualitative difference between the faith of a Christian and the faith of pre-Christian Messianic Jew. For, in this life, both of us know Christ by description rather than acquaintance.
But it was not possible for a pagan, who lived and died outside the faith of Israel, to come to a saving knowledge of God.
iv) You can only get around this by either alleging that general revelation is sufficient for saving faith, in which event no one need ever believe in Christ to be saved; or else resorting to postmortem evangelism--which is inconsistent with the classic Arminian theology you espouse.
Next, you say: “the Arminian view is that Christ died to provide salvation for all, a provision that is effective only when applied to those who believe” (100).
But, to reiterate the prior objection, how is it possible for those who died outside the pale of the gospel to believe? There would not even be a faith to foresee, for they would lack an object of faith. So how is this a “live option” (106)?
Unless the provision of revelation is coincident with the provision of redemption, your claim comes apart at the seams. If you take refuge in general revelation, then we have a hiatus between Christian redemption and non-Christian revelation. The revelation in question is not a revelation of redemption.
This is your dilemma. Your commitment to universal atonement tugs in one direction, while your faith-condition tugs in the opposing direction. Want to talk about tortured exegesis? Your Arminian theology is drawn-and-quartered!
If you stick to your faith-condition, then the provision is only opportune for a subset of humanity--those that have been evangelized.≤
Over the years I’ve made an effort to read all the leading critics of Calvinism, viz., Cottrell, Craig, Duty, Douty, Erickson, Forster/Marston, Grider, Gromacki, Hodges, Hughes, Kendall, Klein, Leightner, Marshall, McNight, Osborne, Pinnock, Ryrie, Sailer, Scaer, Shank, Strehle.
More recently, I’ve read Geisler (Chosen but Free) and Walls (Why I am not a Calvinist). And now I’ve just finished your book: Grace, Faith, Freewill (Randall House 2002).
I don’t read this material because I’m Arminian. In fact, I’m a Calvinist. But I like to keep up with the competition. Of the recent entries, yours is the best. You also get bonus points for affirming the authenticity of 2 Peter.
Let me begin by saying that I appreciate the good faith effort you’ve made to understand and acquaint yourself with the opposing position. You’re better read than most.
Another strong point of you treatment is that you generally avoid the popularizers (a la Sproul), and focus your fire on the heavy-weights.
It is also nice to see someone who knows the difference between the Reformed doctrine of perseverance and the antinomian doctrine of eternal security (p193ff.).
For future reference, I would point out that you’ve overlooked a number of major spokesmen for the Reformed position, viz., Baugh, Beale, Carson, Cunningham, Edwards, Frame, Hoekema, Owen, Schreiner, Turretin, Vos, Ware.
I’d add that you give pretty short shrift to some of those whom you do cite (e.g., Helm, Murray, Piper, Warfield).
In generally, the older generation tend to be better at polemical and systematic theology, while the younger generation are better at exegetical theology.
I’ll confine my comments to what I regard as the most relevant portions of your book. I’ll ignore some arguments, not because they’re unimportant, but because I’ve addressed these points in the course of reviewing Geisler and Walls.
1. In chapter 3 you try to square freedom and foreknowledge by indexing certainty to futurity or factuality. I fail to see how this comes any distance towards solving the problem.
If the human agent is free in the libertarian sense, then he is the fact-maker. There is no fact to be known in advance of the fact. The human agent makes it happen. And if the choice is truly indeterminate, then it cannot be known before its eventuation, for it could go either way.
You have made God’s knowledge contingent on the choice of the human agent. God’s knowledge is the effect of the human agent’s decision. The future is only certain when the future moves into the past.
Incidentally, you assuming the A-theory of time. To make good on you case you’d also need to rebut the B-theory of time (a la Helm, Mellor, Le Poindevin).
On p55, you resort to the old Boethean compromise, popularized by C. S. Lewis. But if God’s foreknowledge is contingent on the creature, then God is, indeed, limited by time. God’s knowledge of free choice is contingent on its futurition. If the event is indeterminate, then the event cannot be known until it eventuates. So God is now enmeshed in the traditional divisions of time. This is hindsight rather than foresight.
If you were to confine your monograph to exegesis, you could avoid the philosophical complexities, but since, in chapter 3, you do delve into metaphysics, then this cannot be avoided.
Moving on to chapter 4, you say that Eph 1:4 is neutral on the question of whether election is conditional or unconditional. To the contrary, the very notion of predestination and eternal election takes it out of the temporal sphere of human action or reaction, and places it squarely within the sphere of divine action alone.
In addition, there is no discrepancy, in Eph 1, between the plan, execution, and application of the atonement. It is a seamless garment.
On p70, you confound the notion of conditional salvation and conditional election. These are not at all the same thing. To say that faith is a condition of salvation does not mean that faith is a condition of election.
We also need to distinguish between an objective and a subjective condition. There is quite a difference between saying that election is contingent on faith, and saying that faith is contingent on election.
To say that only believers are chosen (71) is fatally ambitious. Are they chosen because they are believers, or are they believers because they are chosen? You palter with a double sense.
Election is timeless, salvation--temporal. Salvation has its conditions, but conditions that are a consequence of the decree. Moreover, the sovereign grace of God supplies and satisfies the necessary and sufficient conditions of salvation with respect to the elect.
Of course, you may disagree, but that is a coherent cause-effect model, whereas your alternative is a muddle.
On Rom 9-11, you try to treat unbelief as the ultimate explanation. However, you anticipate a couple of objections: (i) the twins (9:11), and (ii) divine hardening (9:18; 11:7).
As to (i), you say that this disproves the principle of election by works. True, but it does more than that. It also disproves the principle of election by faith. The unborn twins could no more exercise personal faith than they could do good works.
In addition, you are assuming that Paul’s faith/works antithesis will hold up under an Arminian theory of faith. But if the act of faith is a merely human act, the product of our freewill, then faith is just another manmade work. The faith/works antithesis is only tenable along as it is expressive of the more fundamental grace/works antithesis. Faith is a token of grace. When, however, faith is elevated to the status of an autonomous factor rather the reflexive effect of a divine dynamic, then faith is parallel to works rather than grace. Synergism returns with a vengeance.
As to (ii), the problem which this poses for conditional election is that hardening is a divine impediment to faith. God hardens Pharaoh so that he cannot repent. God hardens Israel so that she cannot repent (Isa 6).
All you say to this is that hardening is the absence of mercy rather than the presence of some positive impediment.
But, to begin with, that hardly does justice to the hardening of Pharaoh. According to the narrative, there were occasions when Pharaoh, if left to his own devices, would have relented under the pressure of the plagues, but God stiffened his resistance, in the furtherance of a long-range objective (Rom 9:17; Exod 9:16; 14:4,17-18).
Likewise, God hardened Israel to precipitate the Exile, in the furtherance of another long-range objective (6:9-13). Israel’s repentance would be premature at this point, serving to frustrate rather than facilitate God’s overarching goal.
And this carries over to Rom 9-11, with its doctrine of the remnant and in-grafting of the Gentiles. Sorry, but your shallow analysis misses the big picture.
Incidentally, I think that you are talking at cross purposes with Piper. Spiritual inability has reference to evangelical repentance. In this sense, “nothing more active is necessary.” The unregenerate may be left in their unregenerate state.
It does not follow, however, that the unregenerate are incapable of repenting of a course of action that, left unchecked, will result in a temporal chastisement or catastrophe.
At the same time, there is some degree of coordination between grace and the means of grace. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” If a people-group are cut-off from the mainstream of redemptive history (e.g., Mal 1:1-4; Isa 35:5,9ff.; Ezk 35:9; Obadiah 10,18; Jn 4:24; Eph 2:12), then that has the preemptive effect of severing any spiritual opportunities and advantages that they might otherwise enjoy.
The atonement is a double-edged sword. It is not merely a means of salvation, but also an instrument of condemnation by exposing the inexcusable character of unbelief and even aggravating the guilt of the unbeliever (Jn 9:39; 12:37-40; 15:22). The atonement is a polarizing event (Lk 12:51f. Jn 3:19-21; 6:60-71). Christ was destined for the downfall of many (Lk 2:34). The reprobate were set up for the fall (1 Pet 2:8), while Christ was set out to trip them up (2:6f.). God will display the folly of the proud through the stumbling block of Calvary (1 Cor 1:18-29; 2:6-8).
On Rom 8:28-30, it’s true that Pauline usage is not strictly parallel to dogmatic usage. In Reformed dogmatics, predestination is inclusive of election, whereas in Rom 8:29, “predestination” is instrumental to “election” (proginosko=to choose beforehand).
That, however, doesn’t invalidate the Reformed construction. It just means that we need to distinguish between words and concepts, and pair them up at their equitable level of abstraction.
In 8:28, proginosko is an idiomatic expression for prior choice. It carries a predestinarian force. For its part, proorizein carries a teleological force. They are chosen--chosen for what? To what end? To be conformed to the image of Christ.
So they didn’t choose themselves, and they didn’t choose God. God did the choosing. And God chose them, not for the sake of choosing, and left it at that, as if election were an end in itself, but in order to bless them with a particular destiny. Election is a precondition for something else. Election is instrumental to a certain destiny, and predestination is instrumental to election as a means of attaining that end. “In the second step he uses proorizein, which means ‘decide beforehand, predestine’ (BAGD, 709a), referring to God’s gratuitous election (to the status to be described in the next phrase,” J. Fitzmyer, Romans (Doubleday 1993), 525.
Moving on to 1 Pet 1:1-2, you ask, “Foreknowledge of what?” (78). But this is a prejudicial way of framing the question, for it presupposes the answer. If we render proginosko as “foreknowledge,” then that naturally invites the question, “Foreknowledge of what.” But such a rendering begs the question. On the next page you run through four different semantic options, but the way you’ve have chosen to cast the question on p78 tilts the playing field in advance of the game.
I think that proginosko bears the same elective sense here as it does in Rom 8:29 & 11:2. You reject this rendering on the grounds that it would be tautologous. But this objection is invalid on a couple of grounds:
i) Even if the construction were tautologous, that wouldn’t rule out the elective sense. The Bible is an emphatic book--given to a certain amount of redundancy to drive home the same point. In Eph 1-2, for example, Paul says the same thing in more than one way.
ii) It is not tautologous. For the compound form adds a conceptual element not present in the bare idea of choice, viz., “chosen according to the prior choice of God.” The two terms are not synonymous. Rather, proginosko advances the original thought. Christians are a chosen people. Not only so, but they were chosen beforehand. They own their favored status to divine initiative.
But another problem is the way in which you combine more than one sense: “prescience, with a hint of wise foreplanning” (79).
What justification do you offer for the idea that more than one sense is in play in the very same occurrence? Certain authors like James Joyce trade on polysemy, but this is rather artful and artificial. Except when a writer is deliberately indulging in a double entendre for ironic effect, I don’t see any linguistic grounds for asserting semantic simultaneity.
You seem to be falling into the semantic fallacy of treating words as though they had a primary meaning, which carries through all of their secondary and tertiary senses. Thus, the primary meaning is always operative, but one can layer on a secondary or tertiary sense.
That is not my conception of how a natural language works. A word may have more than one sense, but it doesn't’ have more than one sense in the same occurrence. Rather, it may have one meaning in one occurrence, and another in another, depending on which meaning is serviceable to the context at hand.
Again, when you talk about the “added notion of foresight,” you seem to be confounding the meaning of words with concepts. But a concept may be present where the word is not, or vice versa.
Let us not forget that 1:2 occurs in the same writing in which Peter presents a doctrine of double predestination. Election and reprobation stand side by side as correlative truths (2:6-9).
Moving on to Acts 2:23 & 4:28, you say that “If, in fact, those who crucified Jesus had to do so...then they were not free to do otherwise--could not do otherwise, and were therefore not responsible” (80).
There are two things wrong with this claim:
i) It assumes what it needs to prove. It appeals to a popular, common sense notion of justice. But it simply takes that for granted. No supporting argument is offered.
Now you, as an Arminian, can take this as a given if you like, but that is no way of persuading someone who is not already a card-carrying Arminian. Indeed, it is possible for someone to be theological indeterminist, but a philosophical determinist (e.g., John Locke). By ignoring all of the counterarguments, you beg the very question at issue.
ii) Your little gloss does not constitute an interpretation of Acts 2:23 or 4:28. What you’ve done is to superimpose on the text what you think to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility. Now even if you were right about that, the text itself has nothing at all to say about the necessary conditions of incumbency. Your claims do not arise from exegeting the text. You have read out of the text what you read into it. This is only convincing to the firmly convinced. But there is nothing in the text to generate your conclusion.
Moving on to Lk 7:30, you apparently cite this to show that grace is not irresistible. But you seem to be forgetting the position you’ve chosen to oppose.
The Pharisees rejected the prophetic preaching of John the Baptist. In this verse, “God’s will” is synonymous with John’s baptism of repentance. But Calvinism has never said that unregenerate men are unable to reject the preaching of the prophets, or Apostles, or missionaries, or what have you. Indeed, Calvinism affirms that unregenerate men naturally resist the Gospel unless they are graced with the gift of faith. This verse is entirely compatible with spiritual inability.
I’d add that even in the case of God’s preceptive will, even though it may be resisted, it may never be thwarted, for it serves to expose and aggravate the guilt of the unbeliever (Jer 7:16; 11:14; 18:11-12; Ezk 2:3-7; 20:25-27; Isa 6:1-13; 63:17; Jn 12; Rom 3:20; 5:20; 7:7,13; Heb 10:3). So at no level, whether decretive or preceptive, is the will of God ever frustrated by man’s intransigence.
Moving on to 2 Pet 3:9, the key issue here is not the force of the verb, but the object of the verb. It is odd that you quote Bauckham’s commentary on 2:18-22, but not on 3:9. As Bauckham explains, the language is stereotypical of OT usage with reference to the covenant community. Just as God was longsuffering towards stiff-necked Israel (for the sake of the remnant), so is he to backslidden believers under the New Covenant.
I’d add that your allusion to Ezk 33:11 commits the same anachronism. To universalize an oracle that was addressed to the covenant community flies in the face of the context. Israel was not the world. Indeed, Israel went wrong whenever she lost her distinct identity and become indistinguishable from the world at large.
Moving on to 1 Tim 2:4, You say that “ the meaning of the ‘all’ is crucial to the interpretation of the verse, and it cannot be separated from the entire context (vv1-7),” (82). You also say that this passage makes the same point as 2 Pet 3:9. Really?
We need to administer several correctives:
i) The “meaning” of pantos is not at issue. The universal quantifier has a uniform, abstract meaning. That is not the sticking point between Arminian and Calvinist.
ii) Rather, the issue turns on the referent. Not: what does the word connote?; but, whom does the word denote?
iii) Actually, the “entire context” is broader than 2:1-7. The entire context must take into account the identity of Paul’s opponents. To judge by 1:4,7 (cf. Tit 1:10,14; 3:9), Paul is dealing with the perennial Judaizers, or even hyper-Judaizers. At best, a Gentile had to become a Jew before he could become at Christian; at worse, he could never convert because the New Covenant was limited, like the Old Covenant, to the seed of Abraham.
This, of course, is untrue, but it appears to represent the viewpoint of Paul’s opponents. So Paul’s universalism is ethnic rather than soteric. Salvation is not limited to Jews.
iv) So the passage does not make the same point as 2 Pet 3:9. They are giving different answers to different questions. You have plucked out a few isolated verses without regard to the concrete situation which occasioned these letters. Their respective circumstances are entirely diverse.
Turning to chapter 5, you say that although “limited atonement follows logically from the doctrine of unconditional election,” yet “teaching about the extent of the atonement should be determined by Biblical exegesis rather than by the logic of one’s system” (90).
Well, that all depends. If doctrine A is well-attested in Scripture, and doctrine B is directly deducible from doctrine A, then doctrine A does not demand independent attestation. I would say that special redemption enjoys both direct and indirect lines of support.
Next, you claim that when Christ is said to die for a particular group, this does not imply that he died for that group alone.
True, but only true at a very abstract level of discourse. For not all of the designations of Scripture are that generic and neutral-gray. Some designations have come, in OT usage, to denote the covenant community, such as “the sheep” (Jn 10:11; Acts 20:28), the “seed of Abraham” (Heb 2:16), the people of God (Mt 1:21; Tit 2:14; Heb 2:17; 9:15), the Diaspora (Jn 11:52), the “children of God” (Heb 2:13-14), as well as those that are called (9:15) and consecrated (Jn 17:19; Heb 10:14). This usage stands in implicit contrast to the world at large.
We need to read the NT through Jewish eyes and ears. And in some cases the contrast is even more explicit: “having loved his own who were in the world” (Jn 13:1); having laid down his life for the sheep (10:11)--as over against the goats (Jn 10:26); having laid down his life for his friends (15:13; cf. Isa 41:8; 2 Chron 20:7)--as over against his enemies (15:19).
BTW, notice that Jn 10:26 affirms unconditional rather than conditional election. The unbelievers are not his sheep because they disbelieve; rather, they disbelieve because they are not his sheep.
You drive a wedge between redemption accomplished and applied by saying that “in fact the Bible speaks of Christians as having lived under the wrath of God and in a state of estrangement from him before their conversion; see Eph 2:3,13, for example,” 94.
But this is a very careless reading of Eph 2:3. The contrast there is not between “then” and “now,” but between being “in Adam” and being “in Christ.” As all the standard commentaries point out (Bruce, Hoehner, Lincoln, O’Brien), the modifier (“by nature”) has reference to original sin. Put another way, the contrast is not temporal, but federal.
You next object that if the atonement is, in and of itself, a satisfaction for the sin of the elect only, then that denies the sufficiency of the atonement, contrary to the view of Nicole and others.
This objection calls for a number of comments:
1. The sufficient/efficient distinction is not a Reformed distinctive. Both Reformed and Arminian theologians deploy this distinction, although in different ways.
This is, at most, a supporting argument. It is not essential to Reformed theology. It is, rather, a Scholastic refinement which predates Calvin and postdates Augustine.
2. The distinction is somewhat misleading. For in philosophical usage, a sufficient condition is a condition which, if satisfied, invariably yields a certain result.
When theologians talk about the sufficiency of the atonement, what they have in mind is closer to the notion of a necessary condition rather than a sufficient condition.
3. Having said all that, I really don’t see the difficulty. Let us go back to the OT template of our redemptive terminology. If an Israelite went into debt, he could become an indentured servant for seven years to make amends to his creditors. However, a wealthy relative could intervene to pay the price of his manumission.
Suppose that several clansmen became indentured servants. The kinsman-redeemer might have sufficient funds to redeem them all. Yet his wealth is only efficient to redeem those, and only those, whom he intends to redeem, and chooses to redeem by paying the asking price for any given servant. It may be all or some or none.
On 2 Cor 5:18-19, you say that “only tortured exegesis...will give ‘world” a meaning that is as narrow as the elect” (95).
To the contrary, Paul’s range of reference is self-limiting. According to the symmetry of the v14, the first quantifier coincides with the second: Christ died for all who died in Christ. So the scope of each quantifier is limited to the union between the Redeemer and the redeemed. As F.F. Bruce remarks, in his commentary on 1-2 Cor, "One has died as the representative of all his people, and therefore all of them are deemed to have died in the person of their representative." This interpretation is confirmed by the non-imputation of sin in v19, which hardly applies to humanity as a whole.
You are lifting vv18-19 out of context. They need to be considered in relation to the whole flow of the argument.
In reply to the double jeopardy argument, you say that this “depends on seeing Christ’s redemptive work as actually accomplishing its intended results, for those it was designed for, without faith on their part” (97).
But you reply is inadequate on several grounds:
i) There is a difference between saying that faith is a condition of salvation, and saying that faith is a free variable. A Calvinist would readily grant that faith is an element in the application of the atonement. But if justification is contingent on faith, faith is contingent on grace--irresistible grace. It is one thing to distinguish between redemption accomplished and applied, quite another to drive a wedge between the two.
ii) To treat unbelief as the deal-breaker does nothing to defuse the double-jeopardy argument. If their sins were atoned for, then for what are they punished?
iii) It would be miscarriage of justice to the Redeemer as well as the redeemed if he did not get what he paid for.
To the contention that Christ could not have died to saved the damned, you reply that “this, too, is mere human logic, and poor logic at that. One may as quickly respond that when he died there were many already in heaven; did he die for them?” (99).
But this replies fails in several respects:
i) When, in chapter 3, you try to harmonize freedom and foreknowledge, and when, in chapter four, you stipulate the conditions of moral responsibility, you yourself resort to mere human logic.
ii) Actually, the Calvinist is not resorting to mere human logic. Rather, he is drawing an inference on the basis of several lines of Biblical data: When people die, they either go to heaven or hell; some people died before Christ came; some of the damned died before Christ came; faith in Christ is a prerequisite of salvation.
iii) The case of those in heaven is not at all analogous. It was possible for an Israelite to exercise saving faith in Christ by believing in the types and prophecies of Christ.
Indeed, there’s no qualitative difference between the faith of a Christian and the faith of pre-Christian Messianic Jew. For, in this life, both of us know Christ by description rather than acquaintance.
But it was not possible for a pagan, who lived and died outside the faith of Israel, to come to a saving knowledge of God.
iv) You can only get around this by either alleging that general revelation is sufficient for saving faith, in which event no one need ever believe in Christ to be saved; or else resorting to postmortem evangelism--which is inconsistent with the classic Arminian theology you espouse.
Next, you say: “the Arminian view is that Christ died to provide salvation for all, a provision that is effective only when applied to those who believe” (100).
But, to reiterate the prior objection, how is it possible for those who died outside the pale of the gospel to believe? There would not even be a faith to foresee, for they would lack an object of faith. So how is this a “live option” (106)?
Unless the provision of revelation is coincident with the provision of redemption, your claim comes apart at the seams. If you take refuge in general revelation, then we have a hiatus between Christian redemption and non-Christian revelation. The revelation in question is not a revelation of redemption.
This is your dilemma. Your commitment to universal atonement tugs in one direction, while your faith-condition tugs in the opposing direction. Want to talk about tortured exegesis? Your Arminian theology is drawn-and-quartered!
If you stick to your faith-condition, then the provision is only opportune for a subset of humanity--those that have been evangelized.≤
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