A Problem for Arminians: Selective Disparities of Influence and Opportunity

Jesus castigated Chorazin and Bethsaida for refusing to believe when they were witness to the works that were of greater persuasive power than what Sodom and the other destroyed cities had benefited from.  Common sense alone tells us that different men get different amounts or degrees of such persuasion.  The man who never hears of God or the gospel certainly has not had the same divine persuasion as the man who lived under the preaching of the gospel his entire life, just as the man who dies one day after reaching an accountable understanding has not had the same level of persuasion as the man who lives under the preaching of the gospel for seventy years.

As an illustration, consider two identical twins who go to their first evangelical service together, hearing the gospel for the first time.  Both decide to put Jesus off until a later day, and depart together.  One twin dies that night, and the other returns to the revival tent the following day.  After hearing the preaching a second time, the man gives his heart to Christ.  Clearly, the second twin benefited from one more day of divine persuasion which the other did not get. 

A Problem for Calvinists: God’s Hatred of Unbelief

Calvinist, as much as you and I disagree, we should note here that we both do agree that God only brings the elect to saving faith.  But can we look at that for a moment? — Why would God only save those who believe?  If many Calvinists are correct that God does it all and man’s will plays no real part, then why would God not simply save whom He chooses without all the Biblical emphasis on faith as being THE pivotal thing on which salvation hinges?  Instead of the emphasis that only those who believe will be saved, we would expect only an emphasis on God’s election.  Instead of the frequent affirmations in Scripture to the effect that unless you believe in Christ you will die in your sins, we would expect only affirmations that God saves whom he will.  Faith and belief would be merely one of the characteristics listed as the fruit of the Spirit.  Are you willing to look at that objectively?

Please tell me whether nor not this fits with the God of the Bible…  The reason that God has made belief pivotal to salvation is because GOD HATES UNBELIEF. 

A New Perspective on Atonement

The term atonement is an Old Testament term, kaphar, which literally means to cover, as with pitch (or, tar).  It is a direct reference to the blood covering the Mercy Seat (and similar, such as the altar, and even the sprinkling of blood on the people).  It is a picture of covering the sin (or sinner) with the blood of the sacrificial substitute — the interposition of the penalized substitute between the sinner and God.  This interposition is God’s response to both the sinner’s faith and the sacrifice of the victim.  Unless the sinner has faith, there is no atonement.  Faith is just as integral to atonement as the sacrifice.  When a qualified victim is sacrificed in behalf of a believer, God is propitiated and justice is seen as satisfied.  Atonement is the satisfaction of justice by means of a substitutionary sacrifice.

There is not one case in the Old Testament where atonement was made for a sinner who did not have faith.  Atonement is not synonymous with sacrifice, but it is the satisfaction of justice through a substitutionary sacrifice.  However, God does not atone for the sin of a faithless sinner.  It was by faith that Abel offered a better sacrifice.  Only by faith does God choose to allow the penalized victim to be interposed between God and the sinner.  Christ’s death was not an ipso facto atonement.  It was a substitutionary sacrifice which can atone for the sins of anyone putting faith in that Savior and that sacrifice.

It is precisely because Christ’s sacrifice is not simultaneous with forgiveness that proves that atonement is not provided until one puts faith in Him.  Forgiveness is only withheld where God has not yet been propitiated.  Until a man is saved, he remains under the wrath of God.  Such wrath is inconsistent with atonement.  

Without Christ’s Humanity We would be Lost

Ultimately, we are only saved because we have the Spirit of Christ in us in a way that joins us to His identity.  But since we are human, we can only be joined to a human identity.  We are not Gods.  God became a man so that He could live out those human experiences that each of us need in order to be saved.  We each lack but desperately need the human experience of having lived life from cradle to grave in perfect righteousness.  Christ lived out that experience as a man.  We each also lack but desperately need the human experience of having suffered the full wrath of God against our sin, which is our due.  Praise God! — Christ lived out that experience as a man, and lived it out to the death.

When He is joined to us in the inner man through the indwelling Holy Spirit, it is the humanness of His experiences that enables the two (Christ and the believer) to become one new man in Christ. 

Union with Christ is Illuminated by Origin of the Soul

Few Christians today have ever considered the question of the origin of the soul, but it has not always been so obscure.  Thanks in part to Augustine, the issue has shaped the doctrine of the Western Church regarding man and original sin.  Augustine held that all men participated in Adam’s sin in the sense that the nature of all men was present in Adam and has been propagated from him.  Thus, Augustine saw all men as guilty of Adam’s sin and the penalty justly incurred.  Today’s most prevalent form of the doctrine of original sin explains the imputation of Adam’s sin merely by God’s designation of Adam as our representative.  Although this representationist form seems far removed from the Augustinian form, its development can be traced to the Augustinian idea of a union of nature in Adam.

The idea of a union of nature in Adam that can so involve mankind in Adam’s sin as to make all men culpable for their corporate participation is nothing short of a union of the spirit (or, soul).  The material nature does not sin.  The immaterial nature sins.  Mark 7:21-22, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.”  This common origin of the immaterial nature is called a union of spirit only because it presupposes that men are propagated as whole beings, including the spiritual as well as the physical.  Since the spirit of every man has been propagated from Adam, then the spirit of all men sinned in Adam when he sinned.

How then does the spiritual origin of all men in Adam illuminate the union of Christ and the believer? 

Do Islam and Christianity Have the Same God?

This question is likely to remain very controversial.  Dave Miller, at SBC Voices, gives an unexpected but excellent answer: “The question is irrelevant!”  Dave’s logic is sound:

The question reveals a false premise.  If Islam worships the right God, it must be a valid, saving faith, right?  No, the Scripture could hardly be more clear.  Worshiping the right God in the wrong way is just as damning as worshiping a false god.   The God of the Bible can only be approached in the way God demands – through Christ.

There are some points that I would like to add to this.

There is a false idea that seems to be ever more common these days.  It is the idea that the name of something is inseparable from its substance.  (This way of thinking bears on another Southern Baptist controversy of late, but we’ll forgo that in this article.)  Answering “yes” to the title question quickly brings objections regarding the etymology of the word, Allah, and how Allah was the ancient moon god.  This is offered as supposed proof that Allah is not the same as the God of the Bible.  However, the meaning of a word or a name is determined by its current use, and not by its ancient use.  The claim that Allah was the name of a moon god among many different gods in a polytheistic society does not take into account Mohammed’s use of the name in his endeavor to convert that society to monotheism.  When Mohammed portrayed Allah as the only true God, he fundamentally redefined the meaning of the name.  Allah as one-and-only God was quite different from Allah as moon-god-among-many-gods.  Further, when Mohammed portrayed Allah as the God of Abraham and the God of Moses, he was specifically defining Allah as the God of the Bible as perceived by Mohammed.

Names and words are just convenient handles that point us to persons, objects or ideas.  They are not indispensable.  I might forget Dave Miller’s name, but still point you to the right person by substituting his title or other clues.  The fact that most Christians pray to “God” rather than to “Yahweh” proves this.

Covenants are Not Morally Self-Contained

A covenant — in and of itself — is not a foundation for morality or the ground of justice.  Representationists tend to want to define morality by covenantal terms alone, and to use that as the ground of justice — as if the mere stipulation of something in the terms of a covenant was enough to establish it as a moral foundation.  However, covenants are only made within the larger framework of the moral standards of God, which are written on the hearts of every man.  The moral foundation of any covenant lies in this greater framework of the moral standards of God, and no covenant is its own moral foundation.  The covenant relates to justice in the same way that it relates to this framework.  It is never enough to claim that a particular act is right or wrong merely because it is specified in the terms of the covenant.  Rather, a particular act is right or wrong only as those covenantal stipulations are supported by the framework of God’s moral standards.  In the case of covenantal requirements relating to an otherwise amoral act, such as dietary restrictions, the immorality is founded only in the fact that it is immoral to break a covenant — to fail to keep what one has promised to keep.  If the covenant is with God, then disobedience is also involved.  But the immorality of failing to keep one’s covenant promise does not come from the covenant itself, but from the framework of God’s moral standards.

Covenants cannot contradict God’s framework of moral standards. 

Don’t Be Fooled: Day Means Day

The claim that the word “day” means only a measurement of time is not an accurate claim.  The Hebrew word used is yom, and it is used just as our English word, day, is used.  We use the word day as opposed to night, in the sense of “daytime;” we use the word day to mean a full 24-hour period, consisting of one period of daylight and one period of nighttime; and, we use the word day to indicate an age or era, such as, “in the day of the Roman Empire,” or, “back in my father’s day,” etc.  Even though we use the word day for all of these uses, we are never confused as to which meaning is intended — why is that?

Note this vital fact: anytime that a number is used with “day,” whether in English or in Hebrew, a literal day is meant.  Look outside of the disputed chapter of Genesis 1, and you will find that the Old Testament uses yom together with a number 359 times, and every single use is undeniably a literal day*.  This only makes sense — just look at the English: If I say, “back in my father’s day,” we all understand it to be figurative of an age; but if I say, “in my father’s third day,” you would immediately want to know, “Third day of what — third day of existence?”

There is no ambiguity in how these words are used or what their meaning is.  Rather, those who desperately want to find a way around the stark reality of what the first chapter of Genesis indicates have simply grasped at this straw and now feed it to those who don’t know better as if they can’t rely on the meaning of “day.”

Stand firmly on the Word!
Ken Hamrick

*Could God Really Have Created Everything in Six Days?, by Ken Ham, at AnswersInGenesis.org

When did the Wise Men Appear? A Christmas Chronology

The Wise Men are part of most nativity scenes, and many people assume that they arrived while Jesus was still in the manger, soon after his birth.  Many others, seeking a more accurate chronology, note that Herod killed baby boys who were two years old and under (according to the time that the wise men had told him), and conclude that they arrived two years after the birth of Jesus.  I suggest a different approach.  If we let the two gospel accounts, in Matthew and Luke, speak for themselves without any assumed contradictions, we can arrive at a precise, Biblical timeline of events.  This will require that we assume that the accounts in Matthew and Luke fit together, each supplying information that the other leaves out.  Let’s look at the Scripture.

Insurmountable Problems with the Angel-Human Hybrid Theory of the Nephilim

Ordinarily, I would avoid topics such as this, which are a kind of “tabloid theology” for those obsessed with such things.  But this particular issue has grown in such popularity and its speculative errors are propagated with such tenacious authority that a voice of reason is desperately needed.  The controversy centers around Gen. 6: 1-6 (ESV):

¹When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, ²the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. ³Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever,for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” ⁴The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

 The question is whether these “sons of God” were angels or men.  Authors such as Chuck Missler (among many others, both living and ancient) teach that angels took human wives, and their offspring were superhuman hybrids.  It gets worse.  The near cult-like followers of this theory now hold that these hybrids, called Nephilim, are responsible for all the UFO “activity” and sightings today.  The sad part is that such ideas are put forth as solidly Scriptural, which is not true in the least. It’s time for a reality check.

A Short Review of Forlines’ Book, Classical Arminianism

An Arminian friend recommended that I read the book, Classical Arminianism, by F. Leroy Forlines (Nashville: Randall, 2011).  Some parts of it I liked very much, and other parts I disagreed with.  I was especially disappointed that he did not substantively address in detail the “framework of possibilities” that he proposes is provided by the enabling of the Holy Spirit, or exactly how the agency of God interacts with the agency of man.  I kept expecting him to go into more detail — to explain how the rubber meets the road, so to speak — but he never did.  Calvinists have not hesitated to address the very mechanics of how a person makes a decision, even addressing such ideas as equipoise.  But Forlines left me wondering what he thinks about such things.  Because of his lack of a deeper explanation, his assertions of the existence of a “framework of possibilities” seems like more of a rhetorical device than an integral part of a well-reasoned system.

I’m only Calvinistic on election and a modified form of soft-determinism, so I would like to think that I can be more objective than the average Calvinist.  But I do share some of their presuppositions, as well as some of the Arminians’.  I hold that God determines the salvation of the elect by providing the extent of gracious (soft, noncoercive) persuasions that He knows is needed in order to bring a certain man to repentant faith (presupposing that no man is too difficult for God to sway in this way).  Forlines objected that such a view has the same drawback as hard determinism, since any method of persuasion that guarantees the outcome would not be treating men as persons (in other words, it would impinge on freedom of will).  I think that in using such language, “to guarantee” the outcome, he is using one idea to implicitly lean on another.  Specifically, he is using the idea of guaranteeing by force or power to lean on the idea of guaranteeing by foreknowledge and knowledge of the inner workings of the mind and heart of the man in question.  The former is grounds for a valid objection, but the latter is not.  In fact, by the latter means, every form and degree of influence, whether by God or the devil, comes with an automatic guarantee of outcome in God’s eyes, since He knows what the outcome of such influence will be in every case.  If God does not influence a sinner, then the outcome of that is guaranteed as well.

I was thrilled to read his realist views on the unions with Adam and with Christ, and the parallel between the two.

Are Modalists (“Oneness Pentecostals”) Christian?

James MacDonald has stirred up some controversy by inviting T. D. Jakes to the Elephant Room.  Jakes has a questionable association with the “Oneness” Pentecostal sect, and many are unsatisfied with his answers regarding how he sees the Trinity.  Oneness Pentecostals, also known as Apostolic Pentecostals, are modalists (or, modalistic monarchianists), who do not believe that God is three Persons in one substance.  Rather, they hold that God is three manifestations (or, modes) of one substance.  In other words, God manifests Himself as the Father to carry out His role as God the Father; He manifests Himself as Son to carry out His role as God the Son; and He manifests Himself as Holy Spirit to carry out His role as God the Holy Spirit.  They see three roles, or manifestations, rather than three Persons.  This is, of course, an error in understanding, and has been defined as outside of orthodoxy since the early days of the Church.  But can we rightly say that these misguided people are not Christian?

The Knowledge of Good and Evil

“Pssst! Eve! …Eve!“  A strange voice called to her from the direction of the forbidden tree.  They were not to even touch that tree, and now it was calling to her!?  (Living in paradise without fear for safety), she confidently approached the tree.  “Who is it?” she asked.

The high-pitched, raspy voice spoke again.  “It is I, the serpent.”

“Where are you?” she asked as she moved closer to the tree.

“Look up here on the bottom branch,” said the serpent.

“Oh — I see you now!” said Eve.  “You’re very beautiful — and you talk!  Why do you talk?  None of the other animals talk,” she inquired.

“I’m more intelligent than the other animals.  My wisdom exceeds even yours.”  The serpent resembled a snake, but with legs, and a bright, brilliantly-colored skin.  (Before sin entered the world, there was no need for dull or concealing colors on animals).  As he spoke of his wisdom, he picked a fruit from the branch and held it.

Where the Nails Meet the Wood

The Church long ago embraced the idea that what happens within substantial reality is not necessary to how God views a man.  As this idea gradually worked its way into Christian theology, God’s focus (as perceived) was quietly removed from the lives of men.  The importance of how a man lives in reality was replaced with the importance of how God chooses to see him.  By a simple prayer of faith, the way that God chooses to see the man could be changed from wrath to redemption, merely by the way that the man chooses to see God.  The all-consuming faith lived out by the saints of old is all but forgotten, washed away by a tide of imputational believers.  As the focus of God was seen to be on His putative view of us and our putative view of Him, a false separation developed between God and the reality of our lives.

A faith in a legal verdict in the court of heaven, far removed from our reality, is a faith with little power to change our reality.  It is no wonder that such a faith is fed to the sheep with the correlating idea that real righteousness is unattainable, and so we should be satisfied — as God is — with our imputed righteousness.  Progress in sanctification is taught as a worthy goal, but not one of which the pursuit or the preaching is very fervent.  The polar extremes of a failing human righteousness on one side and the perfect righteousness of God on the other are held out as the only alternatives, leaving many in a contented complacency.

Was it only sin’s penalty that Christ redeemed us from — or were we redeemed from sin’s power as well? 

Origin of the Soul — a Mundane Miracle?

Does God create the soul out of nothing, or are children propagated from their parents as whole beings?  Those who hold that God specially creates the soul cannot escape the contradiction of turning the miraculous into the mundane.  Any time that God creates something out of nothing, it requires the supernatural, miraculous power of God.  Such a divine creative act is above and beyond nature.  However, if it is held that the soul is created in this way, then this presents the problem of putting what is above and beyond nature into nature itself, incorporating the miraculous into the natural processes that are constantly in operation.

Louis Berkhof was a creationist, and a well-respected Reformed theologian.  In his Systematic Theology, he defines miracles:

THE NATURE OF MIRACLES.  A distinction is usually made between providentia ordinaria and providentia extraordinaria.  In the former God works through second causes in strict accordance with the laws of nature, though He may vary the results by different combinations.  But in the latter He works immediately or without the mediation of second causes in their ordinary operation.  Says McPherson: “A miracle is something done without recourse to the ordinary means of production, a result called forth directly by the first cause without the mediation, at least in the usual way, of second causes.”  The distinctive thing in the miraculous deed is that it results from the exercise of the supernatural power of God.  And this means, of course, that it is not brought about by secondary causes that operate according to the laws of nature.  If it were, it would not be supernatural (above nature), that is, it would not be a miracle…¹

Also, he goes into creationism:

CREATIONISM.  This view is to the effect that each individual soul is to be regarded as an immediate creation of God, owing its origin to a direct creative act, of which the time cannot be precisely determined…²

On the same page, he evaluates the following popular objection of traducianists to creationism:

…[Creationism] is not in harmony with God’s present relationship to the world and His manner of working in it, since it teaches a direct creative activity of God, and thus ignores the fact that God now works through secondary causes and ceased from His creative work.  This is not a very serious objection for those who do not have a deistic conception of the world.  It is a gratuitous assumption that God has ceased from all creative activity in the world.³

I would point out that this objection (as well as the others that he lists) comes from well-respected traducianist theologians who all disagree that they have a deistic conception of the world.  Such a characterization is in dispute.  Berkhof, not satisfied that his rebuttal of this objection is sufficient, gives some tacit acknowledgement of the validity of the objection, in his concluding thoughts:

…we are convinced that the creative activity of God in originating human souls must be conceived as being most closely connected with the natural process in the generation of new individuals…⁴

Yet, his attempt to mitigate the extraordinary nature of the providence involved in creating a new soul does not escape his own definition, shown above.  The difference between ordinary providence and a miracle is “In the former God works through second causes in strict accordance with the laws of nature, though He may vary the results by different combinations.  But in the latter He works immediately or without the mediation of second causes in their ordinary operation.”  He acknowledges that that which “is not brought about by secondary causes” is “the exercise of the supernatural power of God.“  He defines creationism as the view that the soul is “…an immediate creation of God” and “a direct creative act.”  When responding to the objection that creationism “teaches a direct creative activity of God, and thus ignores the fact that God now works through secondary causes,” Berkhof does not deny that creationism teaches a direct creative activity of God, nor does he deny that such a creative activity does not work through secondary causes.  Rather, he simply denies that God has ceased from such creative activity.