But seldom – if ever – have I noticed a Rose Publication pamphlet enter the foray of intra-Christian controversial subjects. So I came to a speeding halt today when I noticed a pamphlet on the top rack titled “Free Will vs. Predestination” and a picture of Calvin on one side (with the designation “Calvinism” under it) with a picture of Arminius on the other (and the designation of “Arminianism” under that one).

Normally I have found that Rose Publication offers fairly reliable historical overviews, but not so here. In fact, I’d suggest that how Rose presents the history of “Predestination” and “Free Will” is down right deceptive.

The middle of the pamphlet opens up to two comparisons of the history of each, “Predestination in History” and “Free Will in History”. This history is laid out like this:

Around 400 A.D. Augustine concluded that human nature was corrupt by the effects of sin. Pelagius responded to Augustine at about that same time but – the publication is sure to emphasize – the church “declared Pelagius’s teaching heretical”.

This is the presupposition the chart works out of. Trace Augustine’s line until you get to the great reformers. Trace Pelagius’ line until you get to Arminius. The implications are clear. The heresies of Pelagius live on through Arminius and all other Free Will advocates.

This delusive approach is reminiscent of the person who will try to prove that the KJV goes right back to Paul but that the NIV is corrupted by Alexandrian heretics. In other words, these are ridiculous distortions of history.

See, if the pamphlet really wanted to present an unbiased history of predestination (by which it means particular predestination which is one way to understand the biblical teaching, but not the only way) then why does it begin in 400 A.D.? The controversy between a view of particular predestination and free will can be found in the Church Fathers – all of whom held to free will. Some of them vigorously debated some leading Gnostic heretics who held to the view of particular predestination. But that doesn’t seem to be a part of the story Rose Publication is interested in telling.

I don’t intend to suggest that particular predestination is heresy, Gnosticism was condemned for other reasons. I’m simply pointing out that this pamphlet goes beyond bias and is actually Calvinistic propaganda.

1. Hebrews: Scot tells about the days when Grant Osborn was his teacher who handed him a paper on Eternal Security to work on and suggested he read I Howard Marshall’s book, Kept By The Power of God. It’s mildly ironic that only days before Scot wrote this article a friend of mine told me about the book for the first time. He said that when he first became a Christian attending a “once saved always saved” Baptist church, it was one of the first books he read that convinced him that Calvinism could not be true (of course this got him kicked out of Bible Study). The result from reading this book, for Scot as well as my friend, was nothing short of a theological conversion:

“When I came up for air in Hebrews I had been persuaded that I was wrong about Calvinism. Like C.S. Lewis getting on a bus and then getting off converted, but not knowing when or how, so with me: from the beginning of working through Grant’s notes to reading through Marshall and arguing with him until he wrestled me to the ground and pinned me, I had become convinced that I was no longer a Calvinist.”

The basic thesis that Scot presents is one in which, if the Arminian understanding of “losing salvation” is correct, the 5-points of Calvinism cannot be.

“If God’s saving, effectual grace can be resisted somehow, if believers can somehow choose to forfeit their salvation, then unconditional election and irresistible grace (and probably limited atonement) and surely perseverance (as preservation) of the saints are not right.”

2. Warning Passages: In his second article in the series he outlines the key passages in Hebrews, summarizing his first post: “If it can be established that genuine believers can fall away and lose their salvation then any sense of effectual grace or perseverance (as God’s preservation) are undone” and asks the pertinent question, what happens to Calvinism if those who lose their salvation are genuine believers? It is in this post that he lays out his method: 1) look at all five warning passages as a whole and 2) find four features in each warning passage (he says four because that’s how many he discovered after reading all of the warning passages as a whole). The four elements are:

1. Who are the audience?

2. What is the occasion for the warning passages or what is the sin?

3. What is the exhortation the author gives?

4. What are the consequences if the exhortation is ignored?

3. “Consequences”: Here Scot quickly examines the consequences laid out by the author of Hebrews, sourcing 3:11; 6:4-6; 10:26; 10:27; 10:28; 10:30-31; and 10:39 (see his article for further explanations). He concludes “the author of Hebrews warns a specific group of people about some sin and tells them that if they commit that sin they will find themselves outside the company of God.”

That’s pretty straight forward and everyone agrees, but it needed to be said as a part of the construct of the argument.

4. “Exhortations”: Interesting question Scot poses. If the book of Hebrews, and in particular the warning passages, are a call to perseverance, than do non-Christians really need that call? Scot sources some of the things he says that the author of Hebrews expected from his readers to do instead of falling away, including things like “let us fear” “let us strive hard” “let us hold fast”. Scot would ask us to reflect upon this question, in these passages, who are the “us”? Or rather, does the “us” imply Christians?

What does it mean to persevere, Scot asks, it means to continue to believe (or continue to be faithful). Since the author includes himself, it seems the exhortations are to genuine believers.

5. “The Sin”: In this article Scot provides a complete list of the sins the author fears his audience may commit. I won’t give a complete list, you can go and see it on his site. A sampling of it is “trample the Son of God”, “disobedience”, “hardening your hearts”, “disregard you salvation”, “deliberate sin”, “bitter root”, “treat with contempt the Spirit of Grace”, and so on.

He observes from this list 1) that the author chose to avoid a single term for this sin. 2) That the sin is a willful rejection of the Triune God. 3) That it is deliberate and 4) that it is moral.

Scot puts a term to this sin: apostasy, which can only be committed by Christians.

6. “The Audience”: Finally Scot turns directly to the question of the audience. Are the genuine Christians, or not? He makes the following points: 1) the author includes himself in the “we” (2:1-14; 3:14 et al). 2) Second the author calls the audience brothers, citing in particular 3:1: “holy brothers, we share in the heavenly calling”. 3) Third he calls his audience believers (4:3). 4) Sometimes the author refers to his audience as “you”, suggesting that he believes some of them will not make it (3:12; 5:11 et al). 5) The author says in 10:29, “How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?” 6) The author recalls their conversion experience (2:3-4; 10:22; 10:32-34) observing, “this all indicates a full Christian experience: conversion, gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, the work of the death of Christ, and a Christian community commitment.” 7) The author indicates that when someone reaches a certain level and turns back, no more sacrifice remains. That level includes “enlightened”, “taste”, “partake in the Spirit”, et cetera.

Scot concludes:

“The author of Hebrews saw his audience as believers but knew that some would fall away, or had fallen away, or might fall away. For those who did, there would be no final rest. The implication is that a believer can fall away.”

7. Why It Matters: Scot concludes the series like he started, sharing a tid-bit autobiography of how all of this affected him. You can read that if you want. What I am particularly interested in in this article is a question that one of the commenters asked and Scot answered. It’s a question that many people, especially struggling Calvinists, have asked me.

James (#10) asked,

“Scot, good post but all this leaves me with the same questions this topic always leaves me with. What is required to “fall away”? How does struggling with sin fit in? Will I “know” that I have fallen away or could it be a big surprise at the judgment?

Maybe these aren’t important questions…but they’re the ones everyone in my congregation would ask.”

Scot (#14) answers,

“Jason, great question but the question wants to know something so that things can be settled — in vs. out — and the entire issue in Hebrews is framed, not so folks can know if they are in or out (and safe), but so they will persevere. There’s an unsettledness about this for many, but assurance can be had in faith and in relationship with God and in observance of one’s life… but there’s always the need, in both Calvinism and Arminianism, to keep on keeping on.”

The character, Sheldon Cooper, is a quirky genius who epitomizes the word “phobia”. He’s freaked out by everything. In one episode he’s freaked out by a Blue Jay that takes up residence on the windowsill of his apartment. When the bird is accidentally let into the apartment through the window Sheldon is convinced by his friends that it is harmless. But just as Sheldon finally warms up to the bird and begins making plans for a long future together, it up and escapes through the open window. Flabbergasted that the Blue Jay would just leave him like that he shouts out the window in rage, “Get back here you stupid bird so I can love you!”

What makes the scene hilarious is that we all know quite instinctively that love cannot be forced, and the irony in Sheldon’s statement is lost to him. It reminds me of a Tiny Toons character I used to enjoy as a child named Elmyra. The same irony is explored there too when Elmyra “chases” and finally “catches” an animal and exclaims, “I’m going to love you and kiss you and hold you forever”.

All of this came to mind as I was plugging away at Thomas Jay Oords book, The Nature of Love: A Theology. In it Oord explores the history of a theology of love and one of the influential characters he looks at is Augustine. Augustine’s theology of love is distorted by his theology of God, a theology that has heavily influenced Western Christian thought. How can a theology of love really exist when ones theology of God is that He determines all things?

But well thought-out deterministic theologies have well articulated answers to that question. Sure no one can be “made” to love God because that is in itself an oxymoron. So what God does is give some people the desire to love him, thus they love him on their own accord, yet it is because God gave them the desire to do so. But this explanation, as well articulated as it can get, only seems to push back the inevitable. It amounts to giving a woman a “love potion” so that she will “fall in love” with you. She may then fall in love with you, but it is against her will and thus the “love” is disingenuous.

In order for a loving relationship to exist between God and humans, reciprocation must be genuine. I don’t think this is possible in a theological construct that sees God as all-determining.  The difference between God and Sheldon Cooper in this scenario is that God, who has the power to make the bird come back to him, gives it a love potion so that it will desire to love Him. Genuine loves and genuine relationships can’t exist in a theology of God that sees all things as determined.

I don’t pretend even for a moment that I am able to move the conversation along any (for who am I but a molecule in the ocean!). But I can at least move the conversation along in my own mind and sphere of influence. And though this issue has been debated by some of the greatest minds in church history, that fact doesn’t intimidate me since even great minds can get stuck in the muck of a certain crippling way of seeing things.

Using the Right Word the Wrong Way

I think that one of the fundamental impasses we face in the “Calvinist/Arminian” discussion revolves around the word “dead”. That word is critical to a Protestant (or, at least, Reformed) soteriology. Some use the phrase “Total Depravity” while others prefer “Original Sin” or “Imputed Transgression”. Paul the apostle preferred the phrase, “dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). As you should be able to see, all of the other phrases are interpretations of Paul’s word, dead. For the Calvinist/Arminian debate, Total Depravity is the big one, so it’s the one I’ll focus on in this article.

So here is the question that needs to be asked: when Paul uses the word “dead”, what does he mean?

At the base level I think everyone agrees that “dead” means that nobody can get to God on his or her own. This point is emphasized in our soteriology to ward off any hint of Pelagianism. It also happens to be a keynote in the standard gospel presentation. We are saved by the grace of God alone, not by works (Eph. 2:8-9). The proof in the pudding is the fact that we are dead, and dead people are well, dead. No breathing, no tasting, and most important of all, no decision-making. But the second part of that Ephesians stanza is the element of faith. The grace of God is appropriated through faith. And this is where the debate begins to heat up.

Let’s take the common analogy of the person drowning/drowned in the ocean. By the Arminian telling, the person is wholly unable to save him or herself. No amount of swimming, no amount of “work” can get him or her to safety. When the rescue helicopter arrives and a lifesaver is thrown down to the person with the words “Free Gift: The Grace Of God” written on it, the drowning individual has a choice, take hold of the lifesaver by faith, and live (since faith is how the grace of God is appropriated according to Eph. 2:8-9), or to not take hold of the lifesaver, and die.

By the Calvinist telling, the person in the ocean is not drowning, but has drowned. There is “no life in him; his lungs are filled with water; his heart has stopped; he is stone cold. His eyes are closed and his ears cannot hear. Fallen man is, in the words of the apostle Paul, ‘dead in trespasses and sin’” (here). So when the rescue helicopter arrives and throws out the lifesaver – the free saving grace of God – something else has to happen first. “Why?  Because dead men can’t do anything… man is dead. His will is dead. He is, in the words of the Lord Jesus, a servant or slave to sin” (John 8:34).

For the Calvinist, the person must first be made alive before they can exercise faith and take hold of the life preserver, which is the grace of God.

The Arminian will then turn to prevenient grace and claim that the Spirit of God enables all men to have faith, but men need to exercise that faith in order to appropriate God’s saving grace. For Calvinists this amounts to a denial of Total Depravity. Rather than everyone being dead in their transgressions and sins, they are all alive in their transgressions and sins, able, at the very least, to choose God. They are drowning, but not drowned (semi-Pelagianism). The Arminian – if he is smart – will then spin the argument around and ask the Calvinist how it is that a “dead” person can “taste of the heavenly gifts” (Hebrews 6:4)? How can a dead person taste anything since there is, as Jerry Johnson so elegantly put it (here), “no life in him; his lungs are filled with water; his heart has stopped; he is stone cold. His eyes are closed and his ears cannot hear.” The person is “stone cold”. He cannot see or hear; presumably he cannot taste either. Now of course both sides have their counter arguments, and those counter arguments have counter arguments of their own. But the point is this:

The whole debate hinges on a particular understanding of the word “dead” and that particular understanding is, in my opinion, dead wrong!

Two Ways of Speaking of “Death”

As illustrated in the discussion above, “death” is clearly conceived of as the spiritual equivalent of physical death. As the person who is six feet under is unable to see, hear, taste or make any choices, so the person who is spiritually dead is also unable to do those things spiritually. This is obviously the most common way we talk about death and so it’s a natural assumption that Paul had this very analogy in mind. But did he? We need to go back and ask ourselves what Saint Paul really said.

Look up “dead” in any dictionary and you’ll see right away a myriad of definitions. But most of those definitions convey really only one of two basic concepts. First many of the definitions convey the idea of inanimate as illustrated in the idioms “He came to a dead stop” or “that town is dead”. Lifeless. When the Bible speaks of death in the natural sense that is simply what it means. It never explores questions about a person’s postmortem ability to taste or hear or see or choose. Even if we say that those things are implied in the natural inanimateness of a dead man, they are still questions we bring to the text that the Bible is not concerned about.

The second concept conveyed by the idea of “death” is separation. When a loved one dies we don’t mourn because of the person’s new state of inanimateness. We don’t grieve because the person can no longer taste or hear or see or touch or think or choose. We grieve – usually – because we sense a loss. There is a separation in the relationship. We say they are “gone” or that they have “departed”. Even while their physical body is still present – like say at the funeral – we still know that they are “gone” and that there is a relational separation. It’s not enough that they are simply with us physically; we need them to be alive with us. Some people try to deal with this separation by clinging to physical items that help “connect” them to the deceased person. Others may take a more extreme measure and seek mediums and other avenues by which they can reconnect with the spirit of the deceased person. A common idiom used convey this idea of death is when, for example, a father might yell at his rebellious daughter, “that’s it, you’re dead to me!” and the daughter might yell back as she storms out of the house for the last time, “I hate you, you’re dead to me!” The language of “death” in this common example is clearly a separation and a broken relationship.

Death as a Biblical Motif of Separation

The biblical metanarrative is told through certain motifs that drive the main plotline forward. Those main motifs include catchwords like “land” and “exile”, “blessing” and “curse” and “life” and “death” among others. Usually the context will tip us off as to whether the word is being used as metanarrative motif or not. Typically if the passage is a covenantal text or if it involves recreation, salvation, restoration or any related topics, those are good signs that the word – in our discussion, death – is a metanarrative motif.

Both “death” in the inanimate or natural sense and in the sense of separation are streams the run side by side and intertwined in the Bible. When Adam rebelled against God’s rule he first died spiritually and then physically, though the physical death entered as a sort of decay that affected not only humans, but also all of creation (Romans 8:22). Thus for the redeemed, as we died first spiritually so we will come to life first spiritually. And as we died second physically, so will we be resurrected second physically (Romans 8:23-25, cf. 1 Cor. 15). So then, our spiritual “life” should be contrasted with our spiritual “death”, not our physical “death” – for that is contrasted with our resurrection. The question then becomes which category does the spiritual death fall into, inanimate or separation? The answer, I believe, it quite obvious: separation!

When Adam died spiritually, his death was one of separation from God to which physical death – inanimate death – would follow: Adam was exiled from God’s presence and into the “curse” – there, see that, your three dominant negative motifs! (I should add, because I don’t want to get off on another long and fascinating subject, that of course God is “omnipresent”, but there is a clear sense in the scriptures of some being removed from God’s presence in a relational way, which, in the Old Testament, was illustrated by actual events. This comes out clearest in Adam’s exile from the garden and Israel’s exile from the Promised Land.) In the great covenantal passage of Deuteronomy 27-30 Israel was warned that if they remained faithful to God they would prosper in the “land”, they would “live” and be “blessed” (the three positive motifs), but if they did not remain faithful to God – i.e. if they were found to be ‘in Adam’ – they would be exiled from the land, fall under a curse, and die (cf. Deut. 30:19).

I rehash this simply to point out the fact that the motif of spiritual death is not conceived of as an inability to choose, to see, to hear or to taste. I think most Calvinists along with Arminians all qualify “death” at some point to allow for human choices. Calvinists say, for example, that humans cannot choose at all because they are “stone cold” as the Calvinist Jerry Johnson put it. But then he is quick to qualify the deadness of the human by saying that he can make choices, just not good ones. By formulating the argument this way that Calvinist sees the Arminian as having really only two options: 1) admit you’re a semi-Pelagian or 2) become a Calvinist. But we shouldn’t be afraid to remind the Calvinist that Paul’s categories and Calvin’s categories are not always the same (don’t even get me going on justification!). We should be Bible Christians, and when the biblical writers use different categories than our favorite traditions we shouldn’t be afraid to call that tradition out and take steps towards a corrective measure!

When Paul says, for example, in Ephesians 2 that we were dead in our transgressions and sins, he is not speaking of death in the physical “inanimate” sense transposed on to a spiritual reality. Rather he is speaking specifically of a spiritual death, which is a separation from God as a result of our “transgressions and sins” in which we were servants of the “ruler of the kingdom of the air” rather than God’s Kingdom. Because we were separated from God on merit of being “in Adam”, all we had was our lustful desires, our sin nature, our hostility toward the divine since – really when it comes down to it – the original sin (perhaps all sins) was idolatry, the great worship of self (which is another one of those major metanarrative motifs we discussed). We were – yes! – incapable of coming to God on our own – use the phrase Totally Depraved if you wish. But that is precisely why the means of redemption was by God becoming man, coming down – as it were – to be the second Adam and reverse the affects of the fall (see Phil. 2:5-11 resulting in Eph. 2:5-6). We were dead not in the sense of being “inanimate” and having no ability to choose one way or another, rather we were dead in the sense of having a severed relationship with God and no desire for a relationship with him. It is only by God exposing himself to us, by drawing us by his Spirit and by offering us “life in Christ” (“it is by grace you have been saved”) that we are able to appropriate that grace through faith, which is how God “made us alive in Christ” (Eph. 2:8, 5).

Conclusion:

Given that the Bible speaks of salvation in terms of reconciliation having been united with Christ, being once friends with the world and now are aliens and strangers in it and having once been enemies to God, it’s mindboggling that we have taken for granted that “death” in Paul’s mind must mean “inanimateness” rather than “separation”!

We subtly and subconsciously interpret “dead” in Ephesians 2 to mean inanimateness rather than separation. We then ask questions about what kind of “will” the dead person might have, if any. We then make comments about them being “stone cold” and in some cases we jump to extreme conclusions that a person who is not a Christian cannot love. A mother who is not a Christian cannot love her child, a husband who is not a Christian cannot love his wife because a dead person can no more love than feel, taste or choose. All of this because we have assumed that when Paul says “dead” he means “spiritually inanimate”. And even if some of us in the Calvinist/Arminian tradition don’t take that extreme position, we still wrestle with the question of the human will in light of a person’s inanimateness prior to salvation.

The whole debate here – believed upon by many because it sounds so simple and true on the surface – can be avoided by placing Paul’s category of “dead” in it’s proper place.

When a person is said to be spiritually dead, it means that they are spiritually separated from God and unable – so long as they remain in their trespasses and sins – to reconcile that relationship (which is why God sent his son to do that and has given us the ministry of reconciliation according to 2 Corinthians 5). Thus – I believe according to Paul’s own category – spiritual death does not convey the idea that a person is unable to take hold of the life preserver (for that is to think of spiritual death according to the inanimate nature of physical death), but rather that a person is doomed below (and perhaps doesn’t know it and doesn’t want help – so our drowning man analogy falls short of conveying the current state of humanity, as all analogies fall short) unable to fly out of the ocean, but God comes from above and lowers the life preserve, Jesus Christ, at which point our doomed character who is dead to God may accept the command to be united and enter God’s Kingdom (obviously this is appropriated by faith), or reject God’s Kingdom and continue to wallow with the swine.

And by “accept” I don’t mean to imply that the person has made themselves alive. Remember that the other side of this coin is that whereas death conveyed separation life conveys reconciliation, a restoration of the broken relationship, which is something God does through Christ. That is, people are “made alive” by God (God brings them into right relationship with them) when they accept God’s grace by the appropriation of faith (as Ephesians 2:8-9 clear teaches).

[T]his problem of Arminian-Calvinist meeting of the minds (which never seems to happen on this subject) is that most Calvinists I talk to THINK the disagreement can be settled by mere exegesis.  Obviously it can’t.  It’s been going on between equally scholarly Christians for hundreds and hundreds of year (going way back before Arminius or Calvin!)  Obviously the disagreement has something to do with differing gestalts–”seeing as.”  That is when Calvinists read Scripture they see God and salvation AS such-and-such whereas when Arminians read Scripture they see God and salvation AS something else.  Not totally something else, but importantly something else.  In other words, the disagreement is perspectival which is why it cannot be settled by exegesis or even philosophy.  Both accounts of God and salvation (etc.) are reasonable ones.  It’s just that one, taken to its logical conclusion (it’s “good and necessary consequences”) lands in one place and the other one lands in a very different place.  And the further you push the good and necessary consequences the further apart the two perspectives get from each other. (Here)

Because there are valid interpretations of every passage employed by both sides, for me it comes down to which side one can stomach. For some people – I think – they are convinced that exegetically the scriptures fall on the side of Calvinism. Some people don’t have a problem with that, others do. Yet because for them it makes the best sense of the scriptures, they accept it even though they don’t like it. Still there are some, the most moderate of them, who will speak of the positive of what the scriptures teach about the elect and leave any other potential talk (the “good and necessary consequences”) as something we ought not think about.

But I have already thought about it. I can’t undo that. If there is a single reason why I cannot accept Calvinism it is here: the “good and necessary consequences” of Calvinism irreparably mars the character of God.

God cannot be trusted and my faith is in vain.

You know, these, they, them. The extreme and narrow-minded ones. As one non-academic co-worker of mine astutely and elegantly put it, “they’re so childish.”

What did she mean by that? I may have blogged about this before on this site because it is one of my HUGE pet peeves. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the pattern of hiding certain books in my bookstore in order to suppress alternative theological perspectives.

Before I came along our academic section was quite pathetic, hardly taking up a single shelf. Pastors and Christians who enjoy taking their faith deeper than the Karen Kingsbury’s and Wanda Brunstetter’s out there stayed away and told there friends to do so as well. “All they carry is fluff” I would hear.

I came along and all of that changed. We now have an entire section of academic books boasting a wide spectrum of theological voices. I’m quite influential in this store and could, if I so chose to, make sure that we did not carry any books by authors I don’t agree with. I could, for example, make sure to keep Piper off the shelf. I could guarantee that Justin Taylor, Josh Moody and Anne Graham Lotz never see the light of day here.

The reason I don’t do that is not because I want to see their voices dominate the theological atmosphere of this community (quite the contrary actually!), but rather because I believe the dialogue is important. I want their voices to be heard. But I also want other voices to be heard. This is why I have to proactively and consciously get in books from the other perspectives as well.

But here’s where my pet peeve comes in. Occasionally I’ll get a KJV Only advocate who will, as they say, blow in, blow up and blow out. Their rants can cause quite a disturbance. Other times I’ll get someone who will irrevocably condemn me to the pit of hell because I have a tattoo of a cross on my arm. But most often, and much more subtly, I get others who will sneak over to our academic section – people who obviously know what they are doing – and will intentionally hide every book by N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight, Greg Boyd, Roger Olson and other similar authors behind books written by D.A. Carson, Michael Horton, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, R.C. Sproul, Josh Moody and others of that theological camp.

I literally have to dig out books from this first group and place everything back the way it was – in alphabetical order. It’s not enough that N.T. Wright is at the bottom of the academic section (“W” being at the tail end of the alphabet), but he must be covered up as well, lest some unsuspecting soul do what I did four years ago: stumble upon his writings and never look back!

As someone who comes from an Arminian background, I eschew the perception that all Arminians are liberal theologians. I engage and oppose liberal theology and will spare no words with anyone who says that Arminianism amounts to Pelagianism or liberalism. Balderdash!

In the same fashion I would like to see Calvinists oppose this narrow-minded and extreme branch. I would like to see more Calvinist bloggers – Trevin Wax, C. Michael Patton and Tim Challies to name a few of the biggies – encourage their readers forcefully that Calvinism does not amount to fundamentalism and narrow-mindedness.

I would like Calvinists to say, ‘here’s what we believe, but let’s leave room for the spectrum and the conversation‘.

Less of ‘farewell Rob Bell‘ and more of ‘feel free to read the book, but then lets have the conversations‘.

Less ‘I’m talking to fellow Calvinists and assuming everything‘ and more of ‘I’m talking to non-Calvinists who don’t share my premise, so let’s start there‘.

Calvinists want to stand up for the traditional view of Hell, but they want to make it all about their Calvinism.

Calvinists want to stand up for the gospel, but they want to make the gospel all about Calvinism.

And they wonder why there is such a big divide! The more this perception is exasperated the less attractive Calvinism becomes.

Afterthought: many of the points in the rant above deserve qualifications. Like when I say that many Calvinists make the gospel all about Calvinism or the traditional view of Hell all about Calvinism I have specific books and authors in mind (as but two examples, James Montgomery Boice and Michael Wittmer respectively.) All I’m saying is that I would like to see more influencers in the Calvinist tradition encourage those they influence away from a narrow-mindedness that leads their cohorts into Christian bookstores where they try and make it difficult for any other theological voice to be heard. Such tactics come fearfully near cultish manipulation.

That said, I was doubly-honored when Ken agreed to answer a few questions that had arose in my mind while reading ‘Ten Myths’. I ask these questions as an Arminian and as such I explore certain lines of thought with Ken that I have not seen elsewhere on the internet.

The Interview

DEREK: You’ve commented on my blog and elsewhere that you have written this book with your own Presbyterian stream in mind (this comes out in the book as well). Yet many people have used your book as a buffer, or a weapon perhaps, against the “neo-reformed” movement. Why do you suppose people have done that?

KEN: I think that there are several reasons for this.  One is that whether inside the Presbyterian and Reformed churches  or in the neo-Reformed movement (which is often Baptist, Bible Church or Independent – like the Acts 29 movement or Harvest Bible Chapel) Calvinists have a tendency to stake out extreme positions which are designed to accentuate points of disagreement with other Christians.  This happens because evangelical recruits to a new cause (and that cause can be an evangelical re-affiliated to Catholicism or to Orthodoxy or to Calvinism or to Pentecostalism) generally try to accentuate how much better life is or how much better believing is under their new system.  Perhaps it is that we need to prove ourselves to our new peer group.  Inside Presbyterian and Reformed circles we have this problem: people who have switched from one branch of the Christian family to ours – and now they have to prove themselves.  Inside various Baptist groups, the problem seems to be not that people have switched and become Baptist, but that having been Baptist they have come to see Christian doctrine differently.  So, my first answer is: wherever people are becoming swashbuckling about their newfound Calvinism, this book offers some help.

Beyond this, I would say that we are also dealing with something that bumps up against questions of temperament and psychological profile. If you get a combination of Calvinism and an authoritarian personality type, you have a confluence of two influences in a person and it is a little difficult to tell what is doctrinal and what is psychological profile.  The true principle of God’s total sovereignty further emboldens some people who are already on the very bold side.   In fairness, I think that I can say that there are Pentecostals who show a similar ‘mix’ of temperament and doctrine. The same is probably true in all branches of the Christian family.   But here, we are talking about Calvinists. Why is it that meek Calvinists are hard to find?  I don’t mean that there aren’t any; I just see plenty of the other kind. So here too, we have an issue that is bigger than the boundaries of explicitly Presbyterian denominations.  All this to say that the issues I confront within Presbyterianism are wider and I am happy if readers see that my prescription medicine is capable of wider application.

DEREK: If some of the tendencies in your Presbyterian stream are common features found in the neo-reformed movement, why does it matter that people have used your book to champion their anti-neo-reformed polemic?

KEN: I don’t object to their doing so.  What I do object to is reviewers or bloggers who second-guess me and suppose that I wrote this book to take a hammer blow at Mark Driscoll or John Piper. That just isn’t true. It wasn’t my intention.  I have needed to communicate this to John Piper, for whom I have a strong admiration.  But it is also true that Piper and people of his perspective share in some of the extremisms that I find in my own constituency.

DEREK: In ‘Ten Myth’s you advocate an exchange of terms, preferring “Reformed” over “Calvinist”. Many Arminians such as Robert Picirilli have argued that Arminians are a part of the Reformed Tradition. If this is so, than using the term “Reformed” rather than Calvinist may suite to blur the line between Calvinists and Arminians. How do you think the term “Reformed” in exchange for “Calvinist” would affect the ongoing Arminian/Calvinist dialogue?

KEN: This is a really interesting question. But it has layers to it.

First, the term Reformed is better than Calvinist because it protects two valuable principles.  It is my understanding that the term Calvinist was first used by enemies of Protestantism who wanted to discredit the teaching coming out of Geneva by making it seem to be overly associated with one Reformer, Calvin.  It was a kind of epithet.  Over time, it has been turned into a badge of honor by people who are proud to wear it.  Reformed is a much better term because it emphasizes the collective approach of many non-Lutheran Reformers in south Germany, the Swiss Cantons, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Hungary.  ‘Reformed’ is the generic term that wraps all these non-Lutheran (and non-Anabaptist) Protestant movements together.  If you were in Zurich or Strasbourg or Heidelberg or Edinburgh in this period of time, you had prominent local Reformation leaders who were not just ‘little Calvins’ but actually Calvin’s peers, who regularly saw things differently from him.  So today, a person who insists that he/she is a Calvinist is unwittingly advertising that he/she is under the mis-impression that Calvin towered above all these others.  The ‘harvest’ or ‘legacy’ of this non-Lutheran/non-Anabaptist Protestantism is provided in the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If we want to know what the collective opinion of these Reformers was, we consult those statements (all of which are available online, as well as in print). It is not about ‘one man’. This view is historically unsound; my book shows that this is a piece of ‘lore’.  So there are two reasons to prefer ‘Reformed’ to ‘Calvinist’.

Now, to come to the viewpoint of Picirilli.  This view was advanced already by the biographer of Arminius, Carl Bangs who stood within the American Wesleyan/Holiness tradition.  I think that there is something to this idea, although it requires us to stretch our categories somewhat.  Let me approach this by saying that this view is rather like the view of a good number of Baptists who maintain, that although they are in disagreement with the Reformed theological tradition about infant baptism, they still identify with most of the Reformed tradition (especially the understanding of the application of salvation to individuals by God’s discriminating mercy).  If they can be reckoned part of the Reformed tradition, why cannot people in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition?   My answer is two-fold.  First, unlike the Baptists I refer to (who dissent about Baptism, but are in large agreement about soteriology) most persons like Bangs or Picirilli disagree about the soteriology.  What has to be resolved is the question of what Reformed doctrines are so important, so central that one cannot abandon them and still be part of the tradition.  I know Reformed scholars who would deny membership in the Reformed tradition to both such Baptists and such Wesleyan-Arminian-Holiness people.  All I can say is that I am still working on this question.

To people in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition who want to identify with the Reformed tradition, I would give this friendly caution.  Please understand that even if Arminius still belonged to the Reformed tradition, the developments among Arminius’ seventeenth century followers were even less acceptable to the Reformed tradition (these are the people whom Roger Olson calls “Arminians of the head”, as opposed to “of the heart”). These men were headed on a very liberal trajectory, such that Wesley in the next century had to reach behind them to Arminius himself.  My point is that the trajectory of the Arminian tradition would lead it steadily further from the Reformed trajectory.  This accelerated over time.  The Wesleyan doctrine of ‘perfect love’ added something not a part of the Reformed tradition. By the nineteenth century, the Wesleyan embrace of revivalism (as opposed to conventional revival) added something else. As the nineteenth century went on, there emerged by late century the idea of not only a second work of grace, but a third and a fourth. The emergence of Pentecostalism in 1906 propelled the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition further away from the Reformed tradition.

Please understand that I rehearse this not to mock the other tradition, but to point out that people like Bangs and Picirilli are asking only one of two important questions.  You cannot ask the question “wasn’t Arminius actually a part of the Reformed tradition, broadly conceived?”  without facing the other also. These traditions have diverged farther and farther apart over time.  My guess is that those who want to press the ‘Arminius as Reformed’ idea very far will encounter opposition from within the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition from those who sense (correctly) that this trajectory, once followed, will call into question a lot of features of the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition over the last 250 years which have taken on tremendous importance and are considered non-negotiable.

DEREK: Perhaps the most shocking myth in your book has to do with the acronym “T.U.L.I.P”, where you point out that it appears for the first time in print in 1913. In my experience T.U.L.I.P is the most common and identifiable feature to Calvinism, yet you suggest a distancing of it even though it is in one way or another rooted in the points of Dordt. Why?

KEN: This is a hard needle to thread. But what it comes down to is this.  Of course there were ‘points of Calvinism’ asserted at Dordt. There is no getting away from that.  But with this admitted, TULIP needs to be abandoned because 1) the points of Dordt were actually four, not five   2)The points of Dordt are not Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, etc. but  “Divine Election, Christ’s Death & Human Redemption, Human Corruption & Conversion, and Perseverance. Only in the last item is there any real overlap.  3) TULIP is made in America, early 20^th century and so friends of Reformed theology earlier had complete liberty in putting the thrust of Dordt into their own words.  I like that better. It avoids so much squabbling over unfortunate word choices associated with TULIP.

DEREK: What would be the benefit for Calvinism today if Calvinists hoisted up other Reformed leaders (Zwingly, Bullinger, Peter Martyr et al.) and other Reformed cities (Zurich, Strasbourg, Basel) to the same level of equal prominence as Calvin and Geneva?

KEN: It would keep followers of Calvin from using his books and treatises like ‘trump cards’ the way they do now. When people do this today, they are implicitly equating Calvin’s views with the non-Lutheran half of the Reformation. Calvin was not the ‘only player in town’.  But the fact remains that the Victorians made his writings easily available in translation for us, and 150 years later, his co-Reformers haven’t been allowed to catch up.  We can’t quickly change that, but we could adopt a humbler attitude and acknowledge that Calvin’s views are not the last word; we could acknowledge that his co-Reformers often took a low road when he took a high road.

DEREK: One of the greatest discoveries I’ve made while reading ‘Ten Myth’s’ came early on with the introduction of Peter Martyr, a figure who is just now being rediscovered and many scholars are even considering the possibility that he was as influential as John Calvin during the reformation era, if not more so. What could be the consequences for the future identity of Calvinism if that turned out to be true?

KEN: I am not an expert in this area. But two things come to mind.  First, Martyr expressed himself much more guardedly about predestination than did Calvin. He definitely believed in it in the sense of God’s discriminating mercy. But he refused ever to speak about a predestination to death or to condemnation because the Bible doesn’t talk that way.  He is a model of a more restrained handling of this subject.  Also, those who begin to look into it find that Martyr had a tremendous influence on the Anglican tradition. Both the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles of Religion show his influence.

DEREK: If you could add an “eleventh myth” what would it be?

KEN: I had originally intended to have a chapter called “Myth: the need for no progress in theology” which would have critically examined the common Calvinist attitude that all we need to get by are the great theological books of the 19^th century.  There is a terrible “stand-patism” among conservative Calvinists; they are too busy conserving.  But thoughtful Reformed theologians (I would have used the late Geoffrey Bromiley of Fuller as an example) were ready to point out whole aspects of theology that needed reconsideration by those who were conservative in theological tendency. There are some hopeful signs of new developments along those lines.  I am glad I didn’t write this chapter; it would have further extended an already-long project.

DEREK: You made the comment on my blog that “honey is more attractive than vinegar” and have endeavored to live up to that both in our dialogue and in your book. I admit, when I interact with Calvinists online and read many of their books, I mostly taste vinegar. What are some of the changes leading Calvinists need to make so that Calvinism can taste more like honey and less like vinegar?

KEN: This leads back to some original concerns I registered. Too many ‘vinegar’ Calvinists feel that they have something to prove. They want to be the ‘scourge’ of the broadly evangelical world in order to prove that they have really moved beyond it.  The ‘honeyed’ approach would be to try to show that the Reformed theological tradition offers a lot of resources which would help us all to be better evangelicals. That is certainly the way it has proved for me.  But I part company with people who insist that evangelicalism is the problem to be overcome.  No, unbelief is the problem!

DEREK: Ken thanks for the honey. These discussions have been encouraging.

Deuteronomy 29:29 reads:

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

The problem for me at this point is that Calvinists seem to “know” (gnosis) what those secret things are. If God’s revealed will – as Justin says – is to preach the gospel indiscriminately, why not let your orthodoxy match your orthopraxy?

In other words, why not preach what you practice? And, as Deuteronomy says, leave the secret things to God.

“The most important theologians of our day are John Calvin and Peter Martyr.” ~ Justus Jonas Scaliger, a contemporary of Calvin and Peter

I have read a few books on the reformation in my time, and not many of them ever made more than a passing reference to a character named Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), such that when Peter was mentioned in Kenneth Stewart’s book, Ten Myths About Calvinism, I hadn’t even recognized it.

So I was astounded when I read Stewart mention that Peter’s work, “Common Places”, rivaled that of John Calvin’s “Institutes”; that the “Peter Martyr Library” currently being translated into English – a project that began in 1994 – is up to nine volumes and counting (p.38); that John Calvin regarded Peter as one of the greatest expounders of the doctrine of the Eucharist in Protestantism (HT); and that a contemporary of Calvin, Justus Scaliger, wrote that Peter was equal with Calvin in sharing the honour of being the most important theologian of the Reformation era.

An article on the Reformation Theological Seminary website writes:

Students of the Reformation often assume that there is nothing left to discover. Since we know a great deal about Luther and Calvin and their supporting casts, it is thought there is no more sixteenth-century treasure to be found. Fortunately, that is not true, not even with regard to Luther and Calvin. In recent years, scholars have discovered a hitherto untapped treasure of the Reformation-Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562). It is not that scholars have suddenly discovered his existence; but rather, they have begun to appreciate his vital significance for understanding the Reformed branch of Protestantism. Although not well known today, there is a growing recognition that PMV was one of the most important theologians to give shape to Reformed theology and, in some instances, he was more influential than Calvin.

This is quite the exciting revelation that calls for a re-evaluation of the very use of the term “Calvinism” and what it has come to embody. Raising questions about the origin and earliest influence of Calvinism may very well have some lasting effects on how neo-Calvinists have been identifying themselves, and in fact it may also call us to re-consider the shape of the Arminian/Calvinism debates which perhaps are long overdue for re-framing.

However, to know any of these we need to know in what ways was Peter Martyrs theology “in some instances… more influential than Calvin”? This also raises questions as to why Calvin is heralded as he is while Peter remains relatively unheard of. Why Calvin and Geneva are given a place of such preeminence by modern Reformers while Peter and Zurich remain buried in the past.

I suspect that Peter will not remain buried for much longer. Critical Reformed scholars will be exploring his writings and his influence and it will be interesting to see how this co-influencer of Reformed theology of the past will influence the Calvinism of the not to distant future.

There is a particular guy I used to be connected to on facebook. He is a Calvinist, but not just any Calvinist. He is a particular brand of Calvinist of an exceptionally calloused caliber. He is mean in a way that makes other mean Calvinists (and mean Arminians) seem like lovable Mother Theresa’s. He justifies his mean-spiritedness by saying that he is zealous for the truth and in defense of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But for him, that means Calvinism.

He more or less called me the spawn of Satan because I reject the distinctive of his particular understanding of theology. And he is convinced that if you are not a Calvinist, you are not a Christian at all.

Needless to say, there was no value in keeping someone like on my facebook account.

My friend, however, did stay connected to him and they got into another debate. I watched from the sidelines as they went back and forth, and something “Curious” – I’m going to refer to this particular Calvinist by the pseudonym of “Curious” – something Curious said caught my attention.

“My dad is not a Christian! So are you smarter than he is?”

My friend believes that salvation is the free offer of God’s amazing grace to whomever will receive it by faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). This same terminology is used by Calvinists too, but to mean something different: faith itself is a functional gift given to those who are already saved.

While we cannot judge the motives of why someone so strenuously holds to a particular belief system, sometimes if you listen closely enough they will give you a clue that they themselves may not be aware of. Whether Curious has reflected on this or not, it seems that is exactly what he has done here, given us a window to peek into his motives.

His father is not a Christian.

For someone who passionately believes in Hell as a place of eternal torment and separation from God, and who believes that God is sovereign in a particular sort of way, how is he to understand that his father is on his way to eternal torment? How does he justify that in light of his understanding of God?

What’s really sad is that in understanding the nature of God the way he does, he has absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the Arminian doctrine of salvation that he so vehemently rejects. He has so convinced himself that Arminianism is Pelagianism and he believes that salvation according to an Arminian understanding is a matter of being “smart enough”.

So then, rather than accept the Arminian testimony that salvation is God’s free gift offered to all, yet must be received by faith, he would prefer to consign his dad to eternal torment based on God’s arbitrary selection. This, evidently, gives him a sense of satisfaction to know that at least his dad is just not that dumb.

But I would posit that his dad is not stupid at all. I don’t know him, but I would go so far to say that his dad is probably quite smart. But since salvation is not based on how smart a person is, I can’t help but feel an immense amount of pity for how Curious views this whole issue of his dad’s salvation.

Note: this discussion is based solely on this particular case and is not meant to reflect upon the wider and more nuanced discussion of Calvinism and Arminianism throughout the ages. I in no way intend Curious’ particular understanding, character or arguments to reflect Calvinism as a system, or those who hold to it.