Common Denominator

Excerpts so far from God with Ten Words:

• Mystery
• Love
• Power (excerpt 1)
• Power (excerpt 2)
• Knowledge (excerpt 1)
• Knowledge (excerpt 2)
• Presence (excerpt 1)
• Presence (excerpt 2)
• Immanuel (excerpt 1)
• Immanuel (excerpt 2)
• Good (excerpt 1)

__________________________

What we can say for certain is that God is good. We can say for certain that God is love. We do not know exactly why God allows such things to happen. But we believe that God has a reason and that the reasons are good. We just don’t see the big picture.

You’ll notice that I said God “allows” such things to happen. There is an important distinction here. There are some Christians who believe that God directs everything that happens in the world. They believe God selects who will be saved and that every single event that happens is according to God’s intricately detailed plan.

The problem with this approach is that it makes God directly responsible for evil. On this understanding, every last detail of every murder that has ever been committed was planned by God down to the last, intricate detail. On this understanding, every last detail of every rape that has ever happened was planned by God down to the last, intricate detail. On this understanding, Satan and demons are but puppets through whom God tortures the universe. God becomes the author of evil on an astounding level.

This is untenable and incoherent. If God is responsible for all evil on that level, then Christianity is a farce.

When we say that God allows evil, we are saying that God has chosen—on God’s own authority—to give the creation some freedom in decision-making. There are likely many things that God makes happen in the creation, things that God determines. But Christians from my tradition believe that God has given some freedom to the creation to make its own decisions.

Somehow I basically missed the Baylor Religion Survey of 2006. One of its findings is that concepts of God do tend to differ from region to region in the US, and that this variation does have an impact on other factors relating to life, including politics.

So some of the questions in this survey asked in relation to two features of God--his tendency to get angry and God's level of engagement with the world. This resulted in four basic types of God-view.

• High engagement, low anger results in a more or less "benevolent" picture of God.
• High engagement, high anger results in an "authoritarian" view of God.
• Low engagement, high anger yields a "critical" God.
• Low engagement, low anger would give a "distant" God.

By region, the basic breakdown of God concept was:

• Most Americans fit in the authoritarian category (31.4%).
• A second group (24.4%) see God as distant.
• Third were those who see God as benevolent (23%).
• Next are those who see him as critical (16%).
• Finally, 5.2% are atheist.

By region, it turns out in this way:

• 43% of those who live in the South believe in an authoritarian God.
• The Midwest had its highest number there too (32.5%) but had a more significant number who had a more benevolent conception (28.8%).
• The highest number for the West was the distant God (30.3).
• Finally, the East was more evenly distributed, with 25.8% in the distant category, 25.5% in the authoritarian category, 21.2 in the critical category, and 19.9 in the benevolent category. This is the group with the most having a view of God as critical.
• The East (7.5%) and West (7.9%) had the most atheists.
• African-Americans especially had an authoritarian conception of God (52.8%).

These views of God significantly affect the way people view social and political issues.

Moving beyond the study, I think theological traditions also tend toward various God concepts. The Wesleyan tradition should intrinsically lean toward the benevolence of God. You would expect the Calvinist tradition to be more authoritarian or critical in flavor. Liberal Protestantism might lean more toward the distant God, although possibly toward God's benevolence.

Politically, you might expect Wesleyan-Arminians to lean more toward libertarian and state's rights on non-moral issues and issues of disputed morality. But you might expect them to lean more toward the protectionist of others on issues where human harm is potentially involved. You might expect the Calvinist to be more in favor of forcing the Christian ideal on everyone, as well as to have a strong view of enforcing the law and punishing law-breakers.

Here is the final summary/evaluation of Grudem's 16th chapter on God's Providence. Thus far I have reviewed:

• God's Preservation of everything and
• God's Cooperation with everything
• Human Action in Calvinist perspective

Now the final review of the chapter:
____________________
G. Another Evangelical View: The Arminian Position 
Summary 
In this section, Grudem addresses Arminianism (named after Jacob Arminius, 1560-1609), the main alternative to Calvinism. [1] He describes it in this way: Arminians "maintain that in order to preserve the real human freedom and real human choices that are necessary for genuine human personhood, God cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices" (338). Rather, God's purposes for the world "are more general and could be accomplished through many different kinds of specific events." [2]

He gives four arguments that Arminians have used against the Calvinist view of providence:

1. Arminians charge that "the verses cited as examples of God's providential control are exceptions and do not describe the way that God ordinarily works in human activity" (339).
Here Grudem references a paragraph in a chapter by David Clines. [3] In this chapter, Clines argues that while the Bible indicates that God predetermines certain specific events, it does not teach that God determines every event. Additionally, the Bible doesn't say he was ordering events in Australia when he was ordering things in ancient Israel.

2. Arminians charge that "the Calvinist view wrongly makes God responsible for sin" (339).
Arminian's would say that the Calvinist view makes us merely puppets or robots who cannot do anything other than what God causes us to do. Clark Pinnock puts it this way: "it is simply blasphemous to maintain, as this theory does, that man's rebellion against God is in any sense the product of God's sovereign will or primary causation." [4]

3. Arminians charge that "choices caused by God cannot be real choices" (340).
Jack Cottrell writes that, in a Calvinist understanding, there really isn't a primary and secondary cause but God reduces to the primary cause. [5] Cottrell argues that when someone uses a lever to move a rock, "the lever is not a true second cause but is only an instrument of the real cause of the movement."

4. "The Arminian view encourages responsible Christian living, while the Calvinistic view encourages dangerous fatalism" (341).
The argument here by some Arminians is that regardless of Calvinist theology, Calvinists have to live like Arminians. If they were consistent, some might argue, they would live in a fatalistic way. They often live and act like they have choices, although their theology might lead them simply to sit back and watch "God's will" play itself out.

Evaluation
Notice right off the bat the biased way in which Grudem describes the Arminian position. The Arminian thinks that God "cannot" do something. According to Grudem, Arminians believe that "God cannot" cause voluntary choices. Quite the contrary. God could certainly cause us to make choices we experience as free choices. What the Arminian disputes is whether such choices would really be free. We are not debating what God can do. We're debating whether the Calvinist position even makes sense.

1. We will evaluate Grudem's responses below. At this point we ask whether he has accurately described the Arminian objections to the Calvinist understanding of Providence. With regard to biblical instances of God's determinism being exceptions, Grudem probably skews the position of some Arminians (e.g., me). I personally would say that some deterministic language in the Bible is cultural language or even conventional language. It is the way people in the ancient world talked about divine and human agency. It is part of the "that time" of the Bible rather than the "all time."

On the other hand, if Grudem is trying to say that an Arminian might believe that God determines some things but not all things, that would be an accurate assessment. Most Arminian thinkers would not say, however, that humans are completely free. Indeed, it is quite possible that the vast majority of things we do are predictable. Arminians simply believe that, on the core matter of salvation, God can empower us to make an undetermined choice. Beyond this point there would be a variety of positions among Arminians as to how free we are in any one instance.

2. Grudem's second description of the Arminian position is dead on. This is the key critique. Calvinism makes God responsible for sin. It makes us into puppets and seems to deeply contradict the most central and important affirmations about God's character in Scripture. In our view, Grudem sacrifices the most important characteristics of God in Scripture (his goodness and love) in order to harmonize a difficult and arguably incarnated detail of Scripture (his determinism). This has always been the greatest problem with the doctrine of inerrancy as it has played out in Calvinist circles--it skews the most central and important truths in order to harmonize them with difficult and unclear details.

3. Again, Grudem's wording is not the way I as an Arminian would put it. It is not that choices caused by God cannot be real choices. It is that they aren't real choices. They are not real choices by definition. We are not debating God's power here. We are debating a contradiction in definition--and one that is a matter of Grudem's piecing together of Scripture, not straightforward divine revelation. Grudem's position is that a decision can be both fully determined and yet not be fully determined at the same time (while using the words in exactly the same way). This is not a denial of God's power, as Grudem is trying to argue, but a fundamental incoherency to the Calvinist doctrine of providence.

4. Some Arminians would no doubt accuse Calvinists of promoting fatalism. I personally would not, although I would agree that fatalism is the most likely skew of the Calvinist's true position.

H. Response to the Arminian Position
1. Are these passages unusual?
Summary
Grudem's response to the charge that instances of God's determinism are exceptional or special cases is that "the examples are so numerous... that they seem to be designed to describe to us the ways in which God works all the time" (342). "Scripture is given to tell us the ways of God," and the Bible gives "clear teaching" on this in some places we should extrapolate to other places. Some of the teaching seems very general in nature (e.g., Eph. 1:11).

Evaluation
There is no denying that a good deal of Scripture uses deterministic language. Yet there is no denying also that a good deal of Scripture uses language that seems to imply that humans have real choices that God does not determine. I return to 1 Timothy 2:4. If God wants everyone to be saved and everyone is not saved, then God must not ultimately determine everyone who is saved. Grudem wants to think that he is the one who believes in Scripture and the Arminian just doesn't like what it says. But, in reality, the Bible has two sets of language that are just difficult to fit together.

Grudem's version of inerrancy is a harmonizing version. He harmonizes ideas in the text the way that others harmonize events. So if Mark says Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus while leaving Jericho (Mark 10:46) and Matthew says Jesus healed two blind men leaving Jericho (Matt. 20:29) and Luke says Jesus healed one blind man going into Jericho (Luke 18:35), the harmonizer's version of inerrancy insists that Jesus must have healed three blind men, one going into Jericho and two coming out, one of whose names was Bartimaeus. Notice how the final version of the story is different from all the actual versions of the story in the Bible. The idea of harmonizing has trumped all three of the actual biblical texts in the name of an idea about the Bible.

In the same way, Grudem and his version of Calvinist theology tries to shove together two different sets of biblical imagery to make them fit together. There are texts that sound deterministic and there are texts that sound like people make real choices. So Augustine and Calvin in their pre-modern glory harmonize them together to say that we experience our choices as free even though they are not. Like the blind harmonizer above, Grudem, Calvin, and Augustine have created a theology that is different from all the individual theologies in the Bible in order to preserve an idea they have about how Scripture must fit together.

2. Does Calvinism make God responsible for sin?
Summary
Grudem's basic answer here is that the Arminian cannot account for the many texts where God seems to determine evildoing. As for Grudem's secondary causes really being primary causes, Grudem once again simply says that Scripture doesn't reason this way. "Scripture repeatedly gives examples where God in a mysterious, hidden way somehow ordains that people do wrong, but continually places the blame for that wrong on the individual human who does wrong and never on God himself" (343). Meanwhile, Grudem claims that Arminians will not allow God to ordain even one sinful act.

Evaluation
3. Are determined choices real choices?
Summary
Grudem spends over three pages responding to this critique. He seems to hold that both the Arminian and Calvinist positions are a matter of assumption. Because of human intuition, he claims, the Arminian assumes that a person whom God causes to do something cannot be a real agent, a real person. The Calvinist, he would argue, follows Scripture and assumes the contrary.

In this section, he references Calvin's distinction between necessity and compulsion, a distinction which William James would aptly describe three hundred years later as "soft determinism." So God necessarily does good and the Devil necessarily does evil, but neither are compelled in terms of their wills. They are doing what they want to do. So human beings freely do what they want. They are not "compelled" even though God is ultimately causing them to want what they want. According to Grudem, we are not compelled to do what we do even though we do it necessarily.

So Grudem denies that this makes us a puppet or robot. He indicts the Arminian of being small minded, like a plant that would say God could not make a creature who could move around or an Arminian dog who would say God could not make a creature who could record barks down on paper. The problem with the Arminian, in Grudem's eyes, is a lack of faith in what God can do and probably a lack of submission to Scripture.

Evaluation
5. Additional Objections to Arminianism
a. How can the Arminian God know the future?
Summary
Grudem here presents the classical argument that if God knows the future, then the future must be determined and, therefore, we cannot be free. He addresses two different "Arminian" responses.  One is that of open theists like Clark Pinnock, who might say that there is nothing about the future to know now since it doesn't exist. In this view, God knows everything because the future is currently nothing to know. It does not exist. Grudem rightly suggests that such a view requires a radical revision of what God's omniscience would mean.

He describes the majority Arminian position second. This is the view that God's knowledge of the future does not imply that he has caused it to happen. Grudem objects that the future must then somehow be determined by something, if God knows it is going to happen. "If our future choices are known, then they are fixed. And if they are fixed, then they are not 'free' in the Arminian sense (undetermined or uncaused)" (348).

The third and final position Grudem treats under the heading of Arminianism is based on the idea of "middle knowledge." Middle knowledge is the idea that God knows all future possibilities and how each creature will respond under varying circumstances. William Lane Craig is one of the best known proponents of this position. Craig puts it this way, "By knowing what every possible free creature would do in any situation, God can by bringing that situation know what the creature will freely do... Thus he knows with certainty everything that happens in the world" (348). [5]

Grudem suggests that this position really does not lead to the kind of freedom Arminians want us to have. The circumstances and a person's disposition "guarantee that a certain choice will be made" (349).

Evaluation
It is hard to understand why anyone finds this argument persuasive apart from lack of understanding. The argument assumes that God is limited to go through time in the same way we do. In other words, it implicitly assumes that God is stuck within the creation. If God knows the future now, Grudem says, then the future is determined, and it must be determined by something.

And it is! The future is determined by what we decide in the future. The fact that God sees now what will be determined then does imply that it is determined, but it does not imply when it is determined or how it is determined. The future is determined in the future by us, and God knows it now because he is not only walking through history with us but sees history as a whole from a vantage point outside of time.

History is a movie that God has already seen with that part of him that is outside the creation and beyond time, the part of him that created the world out of nothing. What is unique to God is that he is also in the movie. Only God could have seen the whole movie after it is produced before taking part in the shooting of movie. Talk about having a higher view of God's power!

The other two "Arminian" positions can thus be rejected as unnecessary. Open theism is simply an attempt to reconcile free will with God's knowledge, but the only reason for it is either a lack of understanding of what we have just said or taking biblical anthropomorphism too literally. We can dispense with it as a position based on an inadequate understanding of time. Since there is no contradiction between God's foreknowledge and our free will, there is no need for open theism.

Meanwhile, the Molinist "middle knowledge" position of William Lane Craig is not truly Arminian to begin with. Craig and others like him recognize that the Grudem position is incoherent. If God determines our choices then we are not free, and it becomes difficult to say that we are responsible for our choices. So the Molinist position tries to find a way for us to be free and culpable yet for God to determine the future. In the end, however, God is still manipulating what we do in this scenario, so we must consider this position only a slightly more attractive version of the basic Calvinist position.

b. How can evil exist if the Arminian God doesn't want it?
Summary
Grudem depicts Arminians as holding that the entrance of evil into the world was not according to the will of God. In Grudem's depiction of Arminians, they believe that God "had to" allow evil to enter into the world "in order to allow genuine human choices" (349). He then suggests that if this is true, then God will have to allow the possibility of sinful choices in heaven too.

He then pushes further. "If real choices have to allow for the possibility of choosing evil, then (1) God's choices are not real, since he cannot chose evil, or (2) God's choices are real, and there is the genuine possibility that God might someday choose to do evil" (349). Grudem's answer is that God's choice is real by definition even if God cannot choose to do evil.

Evaluation
Grudem twists the Arminian position here, at least my position. For God to be sovereign, the entrance of evil into the world has to be a possibility that God created and allowed. It must have been his will generally. He intentionally created a world with the possibility of evil and made it a world where it was better for evil to be a possibility than for us to be moral robots of Grudem's sort.

Could God have created a world where we had genuine human choices and there was no evil. Far be it from me to say that he could not have. Far be it from me to say what God could have done in another universe--I have no point of reference to speak of such things. My position is only that, in this universe, God has created a world where it is better to freely chose the good rather than to be forced to choose the good.

I have written elsewhere that I believe God had the choice to create this universe as he did. Having created this universe, he has revealed himself to be good in it. He has freely chosen to do good in this world as he has defined it. He could do evil in this world but has committed not to do so. So God is free to do evil but will never do it--of his own free will. This is far superior to Grudem's position, which reduces to saying that God does all evil but we're not going to call it evil because God is the one doing it.

c. How can we know that the Arminian God will triumph over evil?
Summary
In this section, Grudem suggests that, if evil came into the world against God's will, how can we be sure that God will triumph in the end over evil? Grudem depicts Arminians as teaching that God "was unable to keep it out of his universe in the first place" (352). In Grudem's view, "the Arminian position seems logically to drive us to a deep-seated anxiety about the ultimate outcome of history" (352).

While he accepts that it is difficult to see evil as ordained by God as in the Reformed view, "there are far more serious difficulties with the Arminian view of evil as not ordained or even willed by God, and therefore not assuredly under the control of God" (352).

Evaluation
This is absurd. God has promised that good will triumph over evil. He of his own sovereignty created the possibility of evil. He in his authority has allowed evil to exist for the time being. He will in his sovereignty destroy evil as he has promised.

d. The bottom line for Grudem
Summary
Calvinists do not know the answers to these questions, Grudem says: 1) how can God ordain that we do evil willingly and yet not be blamed for evil and 2) how can God cause us to choose something willingly. But the Arminian, Grudem says, has unanswered questions about God's knowledge of the future, why he would allow evil when it is against his will, and whether he will triumph over evil in the end. In his view, the Arminian position diminishes the greatness of God and tends to exalt the greatness of man. In his view it "diminishes the wisdom and skill of God the Creator" (351)

Evaluation
I hope it is clear by now that the real problems lie with Grudem's approach. The Arminian has no questions about God's knowledge of the future. Grudem's argument here is what really would fit a Calvinist dog asking how God can know the future without determining it. Arminians have not a doubt about whether God will triumph over evil in the end.

The only mystery is indeed why God would allow evil to have so much power in the world if he is a good God. But the Calvinist has no answer to this question. The Calvinist tries to redefine evil so that God can do evil and still be good. So which makes more sense, to say that we do not fully understand why God allows Satan to do so much harm, or the Calvinist position--that God is in fact commanding Satan to do all the harm he does?!

You decide.

Here ends the chapter.

[1] Grudem helpfully corrects those who confuse someone from Armenia--an Armenian--from an Arminian who believes in some form of free will (338).

[2] Throughout this section, Grudem's main source for an Arminian position is Clark H. Pinnock, ed. The Grace of God, The Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989). Since Pinnock became an open theist, he represents only one form of Arminianism (an extreme one). Since then, other books have come out comparing the two. See especially Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006); Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell, Why I Am Not a Calvinist (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004); and Don Thorsen, Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice (Nashville: Abingdon, 2013).

[3] Cline's chapter, "Predestination in the Old Testament," is in the book mentioned in n. 2 above that was edited by Pinnock, Grace of God.

[4] Quoting Pinnock's chapter, "Responsible Freedom," in Grace of God, 10.

[5] "The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty," in Grace of God, 104-5.

[6] Citing Craig's chapter, "Middle Knowledge, a Calvinist-Arminian Rapprochement?" in The Grace of God, 150-51.

"God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone..." (James 1:13)

It's been about a month since I finally finished blogging on Wayne Grudem's chapter 12 on God's "mental" and "moral" attributes.  You can see all of my blogging on Grudem up to this point on this webpage and I've published my edited review of his material on God's word in both print and Kindle form.  I hope to do the same for his material on the other sections of the book and then the whole thing together.

So to continue this five year mission...
____________________
D. Attributes of Purpose
14 Will
Summary
Grudem discusses God's will in five pages, with three headings.  His first heading is "God's will in general." He runs through a number of Scriptures that speak of God's will as the "final authority or most ultimate reason for everything that happens" (211). He sees God's will as a continual activity. All the events in our lives are subject to God's will. It can also be God's will for us to suffer.

The second section makes distinctions between different kinds of will in God. The first is a distinction between God's "necessary" will and God's "free" will. For Grudem, "God's necessary will includes everything he must will according to his own nature" (213).  "God cannot choose to be different than he is or to cease to exist."

By contrast, for Grudem "God's free will includes all things that God decided to will but had no necessity to will according to his nature" (213).  God did not have to create the universe.  God did not have to redeem the universe. For Grudem, these were totally free decisions on God's part.

The other set of distinctions Grudem makes in this section are between God's "secret" will and God's "revealed" will. God's revealed will "is sometimes also called God's will of precept or will of command" (213). This is God's will "concerning what we should do or what God commands us to do."

By contrast, God's secret will refers to "his hidden decrees by which he governs the universe and determines everything that will happen" (213). We find these things out after they happen. They are not revealed ahead of time.

For Grudem, God's secret will includes the fact that God has chosen to hide the gospel from some people, the fact that God has only has mercy on those he chooses (Rom. 9:18). These are things we had best not pry into (215). "There is danger" in ascribing evil events to the will of God, even though to Grudem this is a biblical understanding. Despite how this understanding of God's secret will sounds, "we must never understand it to imply that we are freed from responsibility for evil, or that God is ever to be blamed for sin" (216).

Evaluation
1. Directive versus Permissive will
As a Calvinist, the big distinction in Grudem's sense of God's will is between God's secret and revealed will.  He implies that God's "secret will" is difficult to reconcile with his revealed will.

For Arminians such as myself, a better distinction is between God's directive will and God's permissive will.  Because Grudem ultimately believes that God's secret will determines everything that happens, he does not allow for any action to be willed apart from God's specific direction. That is to say, all will for Grudem is God's directive will.

However, as an Arminian, I believe that God has afforded his creation the freedom to disobey his will. When a human being does evil, it must be that God allows it because God is the ultimate authority over everything that happens in the world. But this is not God's directive will, as it is for Grudem. Grudem must warn his readers not to blame God for sin or free themselves from responsibility for sin. The Arminian does not need to worry because we believe such actions are not a matter of God's secret direction.

We will see something similar when we get to Grudem's discussion of God's providence (chap. 16). I do not believe that God directly causes all the suffering in the world. Rather, God has afforded both to humans a freedom of will that often leads to suffering. Similarly, God allows natural laws to play out in ways that can result in catastrophes. Why he does so is somewhat of a mystery for Arminians, just as God's secret will is for Calvinists.

But the Calvinist implicitly gives God full responsibility for such things, while the Arminian distances such events from God. The Arminian considers these things a matter of God's "permissive" will, things he allows for some greater reason. They remain part of God's direct intention for the Calvinist.

2. God's free will
It is deeply ironic that the Calvinist tradition, so bent on the sovereignty of God, is tremendously concerned to make it clear that there are certain things God is not free to do. This perhaps betrays that theologians like Grudem are really more concerned to maintain a certain sense of the order of the world than they truly are to ascribe true sovereignty to God. Nevertheless, the position that says God does not act at variance with his character is fully orthodox.

I would prefer to say, however, that God does not choose to act at variance with his revealed character. That is to say, we only know God as he has revealed himself in this universe.  We have no point of reference to say what God literally is like outside of it.  It is true that God does not act at variance with his revealed character as a God of love. But it seems best to me to say that God freely acts in this way, not that God himself is somehow a slave to some (inherited?) nature.

God is whom he has chosen to be in this universe. In this way God is free both in relation to what Grudem calls God's free will and in relation to what Grudem calls God's necessary will.

3. God's "secret knowledge"
I have already mentioned above that the Calvinist sense of God's "secret will" is based on a "deterministic" view of everything that happens in the world.  How is it that in revelation God considers us morally responsible for our choices yet in other Scriptures seems to claim responsibility for hardening some people's hearts? How can God not tempt people with evil (Jas. 1:13) and yet send an evil spirit into Saul (1 Sam. 16:14)?  How can God want everyone to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9) and yet most not be saved (Matt. 7:14)?

The Calvinist answer is God's "secret will" and his "hidden decrees," notions that Grudem will play out more fully in his chapter 16.  God portrays himself one way on the surface but another in hiding. Congress passes one law into legislation but the President makes secret notes of legal disagreement on the side and then secretly violates those laws. It is thus no surprise that Grudem wants to place verses like 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9, which say that God prefers everyone to be saved, into God's revealed will... so he can violate them in his secret will.

A more coherent approach is the Arminian distinction between God's directive and permissive will. God prefers all people to be saved but allows people to choose differently. There is still nuancing that needs to be done--the Bible has both language of predestination and free will. The interpreter's choice is which set should be taken more poetically and which set more literally.

The Arminian must also see God has having "secret knowledge" that leads him not to intervene.  He sees a bigger picture than we do.  But at least in this perspective, God's will remains constant in character.  He doesn't take away with his secret hand what he gives with his revealed hand. He simply acts on knowledge we cannot fully see or understand.

1. Natural State of humanity

• Both Calvinists and Arminians believe that humans are completely fallen (total depravity) and cannot do any good in their own power.
• There are some pop-Arminians who believe in complete free will (and are thus Pelagian), but this is not the official Arminian position. 

2. Who is chosen?

• Calvinists believe that God determines entirely who will be saved (unconditional election).  It's called "monergism," since God alone does all the work.
• Arminians believe that God empowers us all to be able to sign up for more grace if we will and that God includes us in his kingdom on the basis of our response to his call (conditional election). It's called "synergism" because, by God's grace, our wills work together with his will.  
• Wesleyan-Arminians call the grace that reaches out to us in our powerless state, "prevenient grace."

3. For whom did Christ die?

• In the most stereotypical version of Calvinism, Christ only died for those God has predestined to be saved (limited atonement).  There are "four point Calvinists" who would say Christ died for everyone, although obviously only those whom God has chosen will receive the benefit.
• Arminians believe that Christ died for everyone and that anyone can potentially be saved.

4. Can we reject God's grace?

• Calvinists believe that, if humans could say no to God, it would undermine his sovereignty or authority over the creation.  Therefore, they do not believe a person could reject God's grace (irresistible grace).  And it is only natural that, if God chooses who will be saved, that such people will be saved and make it to the end (perseverance of the saints).
• Baptist Arminians potentially fall into a gray area here.  Once a person is "in" the people of God, they do not believe a person can fail to be saved (eternal security).  Many Baptists would no doubt say that a person who went apostate after conversion was probably never truly saved in the first place (related to perseverance of the saints).  But you do sometimes hear the pop-Baptist position that, even if you tried to reject God's grace after salvation, you could not.
• Wesleyan-Arminians believe that God, in his sovereign will, has made it possible for a person to be "in" and yet later reject God's grace (cf. Heb. 10:26-29) and thus not make it.

Roger Olson is a Baptist at Baylor who has written a number of things, but the most significant for those in my circles is Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities.  He has been debating over another new book by Allen and Lemke called, Whosoever Wills, a book claiming to be a middle way between Arminianism and Calvinism.  Both books have the current forcefulness of 5 point Calvinism in their cross-hairs.

However, as you might expect, Olson is quite concerned that Lemke is mis-defining Arminianism in terms of those edges of Arminianism that do not represent all Arminians.  For example, most open theists are Arminian, but it would not be true to say that most Arminians are open theists.

I suppose at this point most of you get a little frustrated with all the labels and fighting over terms.  Believe it or not, I really don't care much for these labels on this level either.  They are just tools to discuss things, not ends in themselves.

• So I'm Wesleyan, but I don't think Wesley was right on everything.
• I'm Arminian, but all this really means to me is that I believe anyone could in theory be saved.
• I'm Evangelical because the denomination to which I belong signed up, but my tradition really doesn't get worked up about the things most in this post WW2 movement get worked up about (penal substitution, a particular kind of use of the Bible, whether God judges us according to the light we have, a particular kind of social activism).
• I'm Protestant, but through the Anglican-Methodist stream, which doesn't get as worked up as Luther did on a number of issues, can be considered somewhat of a mediating tradition with catholicism, and is often accused of not being solidly Protestant enough.
• I'm Pietist, but at least believe I can articulate a coherent and systematic theology.

Romans 8:13, addressed to Roman believers:

"If you are living according to flesh, you are about to die."

I guess this "works righteousness" aspect of Judaism that Luther and Calvin decried--and that Arminians are now criticized for--turns out be what Paul himself taught.  Oops.

So let's keep a list: Paul the Jew, Paul the Arminian, Paul the nominalist...

A colleague, as well as Scot McKnight's blog, pointed out Rachel Held Evans' blog post this week: "Letters to a Young Calvinist from a Young Arminian."  She is quite right that there are many fine five point Calvinists out there whose hearts are as my heart.  I am thankful that the strident and militant ones seem oh so irrelevant to my ministry and teaching.

Delighted to be your brother-in-Christ, irenic five pointers out there.  And don't be intimidated, oh ye Arminians who believe God truly would prefer for everyone to be saved.  The entire Calvinist system deconstructs on the fact that Paul himself did not consider his salvation secure (1 Cor. 9:27; Phil. 3:11).  But if it is possible for the justified not to make it, then those who are elect are not certain to persevere (Heb. 3:6, 14), then God's grace is not irresistible in his design (cf. Heb. 10:29), then election is not unconditional (cf. 2 Pet. 1:10). The whole system falls like a deck of cards. ;-)

So who cares about Piper, Driscoll, or Mohler?  They blow away with a puff of wind, leaving the rest of us to go on trying to save everyone.

This is going to be much rougher than yesterday.  Call it impressions and random thoughts.  I'm not an expert in dogmatics or church history, but here are some "angles" I wish might be workable in Wesleyan theological teaching, assuming they can bear the scrutiny of informed examination.  These are what I consider the best and most appropriate views but the likelihood of any one Wesleyan scholar holding to them all is of course not very likely.

1. I would like to see theology taught with a sense that "thought systems" are vehicles for Christians being in the world.  We believe they point to truths, but we don't mistake the language or precise thought structure for reality and truth itself.  It points to it, but the truth is transcendent.  Language is time conditioned.  So relationship with God and a transformed being/heart takes precedence over ideological system.

2. What we are advocating here is a kind of critical realist epistemology, one that accepts that absolute truth underlies reality as being what God "thinks," but which does not believe that human categories and thoughts correspond in any straightforward or one-on-one relationship to it.  It would not reject scientific or empiricist method or advocate the kind of "seclusionism" of much popular Christianity.  Scientific discoveries broadly conceived must be engaged and while they also are susceptible to the finitude and skewedness of human understanding, consensus is something we must take very, very seriously.  The thought systems that challenge us are not conspiracies, although it is always possible that they are driven by false presuppositions.  But our presuppositions are also subject to examination.

3. If relationship/transformation is the primary concern, then ethics is the secondary concern, relationship with neighbor (love in particular).  The ideological theological agenda is the third order of business for systematics.  Certainly societal social justice will be the main focus of Wesleyan ethics, with personal ethics secondary.

4. Christ would be the center of theology, meaning the lens through which God is viewed, the lens through which revelation is viewed, the lens through which humanity is viewed.  God is thus not viewed as the abstract set of attributes of the scholastics, rationally derived, but as the Father of our Lord.  Classic apologetics is thus seen as somewhat deficient because it tends to argue for a deist or non-trinitarian theistic God. Humanity is not primarily viewed as the hopelessly depraved but as the potentially and fully redeemed and restored, with Christ as that humanity to which earthly humanity can attain through the power of the Spirit. 

5. The dynamic interaction of the Spirit in the world is strongly affirmed, both in His prevenient work with humanity, His sustaining and benevoling work in the world, His ongoing revelation of God's will and contextualizing of the gospel and righteousness of God in the world toward salvation and the establishment of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

6. We would move back before Augustine on issues of depravity to a more Eastern view.  Humanity is thoroughly depraved (rather than totally depraved, necessarily) and we must give God's grace the credit for goodness, but who is to say the precise equation of human wickedness?  And God has left some common, natural goodness in the world.

7. History, whether pre-biblical, biblical, or Christian would be taught from the standpoint of progressive revelation, with points at which it reaches a kind of apparent terminus on various issues (e.g., monotheism, Christology, etc).

8. The Wesleyan-Methodist tradition would be viewed as a mediation between Catholic and Protestant, neither in complete agreement with the fountainheads of the Reformation nor the reformed Roman Catholic Church.  We would view it as "catholic" small c.  We are thus able to see the balance between common Christian tradition and reformation.  We recognize initial justification by Christ alone, by grace and faith alone.  However Scripture is never the sole source of Christian theology, nor does the fragmentation of Protestantism bode well at least for Luther's sense of perspicuity.  Wesley's so called "quadrilateral," appropriately adjusted in the light of other points here is more balanced (e.g., reason is not a separate source but is the unavoidable processor of all sources.  Tradition is the Spirit-led appropriator of Scripture).  Similarly, works are an element in final justification.

9. In American history, we would not see the Puritans or nineteenth century Princetonians as the torchbearers but more individuals like Roger Williams in Rhode Island, the nineteenth century Quakers and Salvationists, etc.  We would not see the Christian goal in governance as one of creating a set of laws as close to our particular understandings as possible but one in which humans do not harm each other or themselves, while being free to choose between good and evil when it does not harm others, a system that encourages the good while allowing for freedom of will, thus reflecting our Arminian roots. We would thus not push a legal agenda that is based solely on uniquely Christian convictions.

10. Methodist history, including Wesley, would be evaluated fairly.  Wesley is not seen as inerrant but is fully recognized as a child of the Enlightenment with its positives and negatives (a good deal of the Enlightenment was positive and we can thank it in part for so much of our present prosperity).  Wesley was still too Augustinian and Calvinist in some areas--categories that need to be transcended.  Wesley is thus seen more as our grandfather than our father.  The reformism and revivalism of the 1800s is our mother.

11. The social impulses of Wesleyan Methodism in the 1800s are embraced.  The legalistic holiness and fundamentalizing tendencies of some 20th century Wesleyanism are rejected as aberrant and ignoble, including the tendency of popular Wesleyanism of the late 20th century to be on the wrong side (from a Wesleyan standpoint) on many social issues (e.g., civil rights, resisiting empowerment of women and minorities, bias against the poor and immigrants).  The drive to protect the rights of the unborn and children in situations of abuse and trafficking is affirmed.  Twentieth century Liberalism and the social gospel are seen not as a reaction against anything but as what was left of genuine Christianity after belief in the supernatural was lost.  Its social values are thus affirmed as thoroughly Christian, even if fundamentally deficient.

12. The varied views of atonement are taken to give different pictures of the truth of this mystery.  Certainly no rigid sense of penal substitution is endorsed, as if God's justice requires the exact amount of payment for every drop of sin.  God's drive to mercy is given priority over his drive to justice, meaning that His holiness is not some automatic mindless issue of wrath on evil.  The freedom of God to forgive is emphasized over the necessity of God's nature to punish injustice, which is denied as a necessity of His nature.

These are just a few of my proposals for theological education in the Wesleyan tradition for the 21st cntury, submitted for discussion and critique.  What have I missed?

Your sense of human freedom usually has immense implications for other areas of your life. Say you believe God directly determines many if not most things that happen in your life.[1] Say you believe God also predetermines whether you will believe or not. This sense of determinism will often bleed over into other areas of your view of the world. You might emphasize the absolute authority and sovereignty of God, along with justice as the key dimension of God’s nature. On the other hand, a person who believes in free will tends to see love as the primary way God currently relates to the world, with an emphasis on helping us grow and come to make the right choices.

While none of us is completely consistent with our ideas, these views of God will tend to play themselves out in other areas of our lives, like how we raise our children or how we vote. [2] A person for whom God’s justice is so prominent may tend to respond to a child’s disobedience with an immediate and wrathful response, a focus on punishment of wrongdoing. The person for whom God’s mercy is more prominent may see disobedience as the child inflicting harm on him or herself, a moment when the child needs to learn something for his or her own good.

Similarly, the person who emphasizes God’s justice may see it as a duty to try to make the laws of the land mirror as much as possible divine law. Such a person will emphasize preaching against sin, since sin is an effrontery to God’s justice. The person who believes in free will, on the other hand, will not likely feel as much compulsion to force the rest of the world to follow God’s will. After all, they believe God created a world in which we can choose to disobey him. They would focus more on influencing others for good than in trying to force it.

[1] Many of those who believe in predestination, of course, do not believe that God pre-determines everything.  Many believe he only determines one’s ultimate salvation.  Popularly, however, many Christians believe that God orchestrates even little things in our lives to give them direction and purpose.

[2] Not to mention other areas of our belief system. For example, Calvinists tend to emphasize the idea of “penal substitution.” It is the sense that because God’s justice is so absolute, God must exact the precise amount of penalty for any sin. God cannot simply have mercy on someone. For Calvin, Christ not only took our punishment, including his descent into hell. For Calvin, Christ experienced the exact amount of punishment justice demanded of every individual God predestined for forgiveness.

Others see such a mathematical sense of God’s justice as absurd. God is God, and in the parables, Jesus presents a God who has the authority to forgive sins simply on his own authority. For example, Joel Green and Mark Baker point out in Rediscovering the Scandal of the Cross that the Parable of the Prodigal Son says nothing about the father having to arrange someone to pay for the debts of the younger son (***). The father has the authority simply to forgive the son, with no payment made at all.
______
What have I missed?

Thought I'd preserve some thoughts here in dialog with "Once a Wesleyan." We've had this discussion before, but I put my thoughts here so I can find them later:

1. OAW: There is no mystery whatsoever in the Arminian system as to why some people respond and some don’t. The reason that some respond and others don’t is that some are better/wiser or smarter. In the Arminian system the difference lies totally in the individual’s choice. (This is in contrast to the Biblical system where the difference lies totally in God’s choice.) Hence, in Arminianism, salvation is all to the individual’s glory for distinguishing themselves from those who were to stupid to choose correctly.

Ken: If God can create the world out of nothing, then He is certainly able to empower a person, by his prevenient grace, to reach the smallest point of volition ex nihilo, a point of the barest will either to remain depraved as they are or to signify ever so slightly a desire for more grace... leading to God's empowerment to signify a desire for more grace still. Would you suggest that God is not clever enough to figure out how to do this, to empower totally depraved humanity to begin to make a choice?

Surely not. Surely you would suggest only that God does not wish to empower humanity to begin to make such a choice because you believe it would contradict His sovereignty. But if He could in theory, then it is not in any way absurd to suggest that a person might, under God's power, be able to reach the barest point of volition ex nihilo. Why some respond and others don't is a mystery, but so is creatio ex nihilo.

2. OAW: Now add to this that God knew before-hand that this was going to be the distinguishing factor between two people. And w/that observation we now have the mystery as to how the Arminians could say “God is love.” How can a loving God, know in advance all the evil decisions that will occur and still determine to create a world where all those evil decisions will come to pass?

Ken: The question of why God created the world knowing the world would rebel is a hard one, but the alternative that God orchestrates evil is not a better one. Indeed, that alternative results in such a heightened problem of evil that the better alternative would be that there simply is no God. If God orchestrates evil then He is as much an evil god as a good one and the basic categories of Christendom become meaningless. Christ on the cross becomes a game God is playing with himself.

The best alternative that keeps the fundamentals of Christianity intact is the suggestion that a world in which humans can choose, now by God's power after the Fall, between good and evil is a better world than one in which they are forced (predestined) to do one or the other. But if humans can make such choices, some will choose evil and evil will result.

Actually, I can strategize a little for Calvinists reading Hebrews. What you have to do is take a "phenomenological" approach. You have to say that not all Hebrews thinks as being "in" are really in. They only appear to be "in" from the author of Hebrews' perspective.

But the language and argument of Hebrews reflects an unambiguously Arminian perspective on the part of the author, "perfectly" expressed in the perfect tense in Hebrews 3:14: "We have become and remain partakers of the Christ if indeed we hold fast the beginning of substance firm until the end."

There is no wiggle room here on what the author is thinking, although again, if I were a Calvinist I would suggest that he is expressing this truth in his own paradigm, not fully understanding how predestination works. But I am not a Calvinist, so I can take what he says at face value.

To partake is not to dabble, any more than Jesus only dabbles with flesh and blood in 2:14. It is to become or assume what you are talking about. Jesus fully became human. These individuals have fully become "Christians."

The perfect tense implies something that was completed in the past. They partook of the Christ and it was done, like someone who gets married, and you are married. It is the remaining married or the remaining partakers that is in question in the verse. The perfect tense implies not only that you were married, a completed act, but that you have remained married ever since. So this verse says that they became a partaker of the Christ and so remained ever since, if indeed they hold fast.

What this verse clearly states, as does the image of the wilderness generation it talks about, is that one's continuance as a partaker of the Christ is contingent on holding fast, on going all the way to Canaan. Those who disbelieved in process, they did not make it, did not persevere to the end.

The perfect tense here is thus "perfect Arminianism," as is the entirety of the book of Hebrews.

Mark Schnell asked a good question about a comment I made in the last post--one particularly pertinent to him since he is doing MDIV work at Gordon Conwell. He/you asks, "Are you saying that you don't want the legitimate cohesion that takes place between Wesleyanism and Calvinism to happen at the new seminary?"

What I want is for more to take place at the Wesleyan seminary than just those possible cohesions. Let me be more specific.

1. What I don't want to typify this seminary is the very restrictive and combative boundary patrol that I think sometimes typifies some Calvinist institutions and still often surfaces in ETS. The tone is one of who doesn't belong here rather than what points of commonality can I find with those outside my tradition.

2. So to word it positively, we want a generous spirit toward people of non-Wesleyan traditions who want to study with us, including Calvinists themselves. I would like to think that Baptists will feel very welcome at our seminary. We have two Anglicans who have just started our MA program. We have a significant number of African American students in our MA program who are everything from Pentecostal to Baptist to African Methodist Episcopal (MDIV).

By contrast, I have known Wesleyan students at conservative Calvinist institutions to be asked very seriously why in the world they had come there.

This generous spirit and freedom to explore the boundaries means that we welcome cohesion between Calvin and Wesley for those who feel led in this direction. The difference I am pushing is not "no Calvin allowed." It is "much more than some Calvinized Wesley" allowed. Conservative Calvinists themselves are very welcome if they'll play nice. In my thinking, the difference between the kind of Calvinized Wesleyan I am thinking of and a more ideal Wesleyan has more to do with narrowness of mind rather than specific positions themselves.

3. So not only men, but women fully included. If you don't believe women can be senior pastors, you are welcome to come through our program, if you play nice. We will treat you with respect and let you have your full voice. But don't bother applying to teach here.

4. not only the original meaning, but the Christian one. We will teach the tools of reading the Bible in context to be sure. But we will focus more on the Bible as God's word to His Church today, and we will do it fully conscious of the fact that we may at times be reading the Bible theologically as well as historically. And we will be very open to the voice of the Spirit through Scripture, whether it has anything to do with what the text meant originally or not.

5. heart and life before ideas. We will emphasize heart and life change and a godly life first and then ideas. We are interested in ideas. We'll try to determine what the right ideas are and we will start with the assumption that the common understandings of Christians everywhere are right. But we'd rather you be faithful in your life than know for sure what the right stance on the precise nature of the atonement is.

6. not afraid of postmodern critique... We will welcome those who think they have it all figured out ideologically if they'll play nice. We believe in absolute truth and absolute morals. But we are open to those who have concluded we know far less than we think and that there is a lot more gray than others are comfortable with. Those who focus on (head) propositions more than a relationship with God and a godly life are welcome, if they play nice.

7. inerrancy, yes, but not rigidly defined. Those who insist on the narrowest interpretation of the Chicago statement are welcome if they play nice. I have no doubt that the majority of students and professors will operate with that as a default. But as David McKenna insisted as president of Asbury in the 80s, we will not get into the divisiveness of the particulars of this issue like so many Calvinist institutions have. And we welcome those who have a more liberal understanding as well, as long as they play nice too.

8. a broad understanding of atonement. Those who insist on a very narrow sense of penal substitution are welcome, as long as they play nice. But we will not ostracize or excommunicate those who understand Christ's representation and satisfaction of justice in a more general way or who focus more on other aspects of atonement like the victory of Christ over evil powers, the reconciliation of an alienated world, or the expression of God's love.

Basically, by the Wesleyan spirit I mean an optimistic, welcoming, loving spirit that puts a primacy on a relationship with God and our neighbor as the first order of business and getting our ideas sorted out second. Ideas? Yes, for sure. But first things first!

And of course it goes without saying that our professors will take those positions all Wesleyans have in common: a belief in the possibility that anyone might be saved, the importance of a godly life after conversion essential for final salvation, the possibility that God can give consistent even exceptionless victory over conscious temptation, and so forth.

The bullets above relate to those aspects of theology on which there is not a single Wesleyan position. On these, I am arguing it is more Wesleyan to allow for a spectrum of possibilities, while a more Calvinized Wesleyan might insist you can only take one of the positions and be legitimately Christian, let alone Wesleyan.

Forgive me. This quote was too good to pass up:

"Only Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions."

:-)

Scot McKnight's second and more substantive post on what he's calling the "neo-Reformed" trend out there.

I want to reiterate that people of any intellectual position are welcome to post and help me think here. That means Reformed, atheist, Wesleyan, Catholic, Lutheran, skeptic, scholar. Even the "neo-Reformed" are welcome to post here (and they have :-). I have rarely deleted a comment, well or mean-spirited.

Here is the link. Interesting. Scot is more even-tempered online than I am, so this must be serious. You might expect this sort of comment from Arminian me (or, ironically, from Calvinist, Peter Enns). But when Scot is saying something like this...

"Let Epicurus answer ... I have no concern with that pigsty;

"This shows itself ... in the sacrilegious words of the filthy dog Lucretius..."

Sounds like the tone of some of the more strident descendants of Calvin who have engaged me on this blog. :-)

Some 13 days into the Institutes my impressions of Calvin are

1) He can quote verses (a lot of prooftexting), although as a child of his day, he does not yet fully appreciate how to read in context. The same was of course true of Wesley.

2) He's quite sure he's right. I won't say he's arrogant yet, but I may before it's done. Certainly he knows that everyone who disagrees with him is of Satan.

3) He is depressing. His view of humanity is so dark, so dismal, that it's hard to stomach sometimes. There seems to be almost nothing left of the image of God in humanity for him. I feel like someone who's been studying demonology and has to stop because it's so dark. This is not the tone of Paul (or Luther).

4) Although Calvin is only a single predestinarian, his sense of the total depravity of humanity and the complete determinism by God of any goodness in humanity seems to fit well with the kind of abusiveness he has toward those he believes are not elect. I believe there is a connection. So far he doesn't seem to treat the non-elect with grace or love but seems to me abusive toward them.

5) I have yet to read anything that makes me think Calvin is brilliant. I came into the Institutes believing he was a genius, even if I disagree with him on many things. I still expect I will conclude that way, but thus far I am underwhelmed.

... he says of "katabaptists" (groups against infant baptism=today's Baptists), "And when [Satan's attacks on the Reformation by the Roman Catholic Church and its surrogates] didn't work, he turned to stratagems: he aroused disagreements and dogmatic contentions through his catabaptists and other monstrous rascals in order to obscure and at last extinguish the truth."

Ha!

Piper has since clarified that he would not apply this comment to Arminian institutions (I misworded this statement when I first posted the comments--I doubt very seriously that Piper would consider Wesleyan or Arminian thought to be truly evangelical):

"how should we regard these errors [Wesleyanism and Arminianism] in relationship to the teaching office of the church and other institutions?..."

"Here’s my rule of thumb: the more responsible a person is to shape the thoughts of others about God, the less Arminianism should be tolerated. Therefore church members should not be excommunicated for this view but elders and pastors and seminary and college teachers should be expected to hold the more fully biblical view of grace."

Ha! He made this comment at Resurgence 2008, which is an arm of Mars Hill Church in Seattle where Mark Driscoll is the pastor (not to be confused with the Mars Hill where Rob Bell is). In other words, this group has nothing to do with my own circles. Resurgence is a group that aims to resource multiple generations. It is emerging rather than emergent, a new distinction that has emerged (Ha!) so that people can distinguish between the orthodox (e.g., Mark Driscoll) and the unorthodox (e.g., Doug Pagitt).

Wesleyans have nothing to fear from the emerging--an "emerging" Wesleyan on this definition is a "missional" Wesleyan who is simply one focused on the Christian mission in all its dimensions. I could mention several individuals who I fully believe will be future leaders and general superintendents of TWC who would fall into this category.

By one person's reckoning, Brian McLaren stands right on the cusp of the distinction between emerging and emergent. Frankly, if you are solid in your theology, then we don't need to fear engaging these people's ideas. You can learn something from everyone if you know where you stand, everyone from the most fundamentalist to the most liberal.

In any case, Wesleyans should be very cautious of using any of Resurgence's materials, as they should in general of material from John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Gary Shavey, etc... I believe Driscoll is a good man from whom we can no doubt learn much, but his theology is not our theology.