Do We Believe in Grace or Not?

In the church we like to talk about and sing about grace. But do we really believe in grace?

• If we really believed in grace, we would quit acting as if everything depended upon our performance.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't hold people's past sins against them once they had repented.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't write people off as beyond redemption.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't be filled with pride that we are not like "them."
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't be too proud to admit our shortcomings and struggles.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't be putting our trust in money, fame and power.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't be such jerks when we're driving.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't be preaching sermons that are designed to get people to "try harder."
  
• If we really believed in grace, we wouldn't be so consumed with anxiety and fear.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we would be looking for the ways that God is already working among us instead of begging him to bless our grand strategies.
  
• If we really believed in grace, other people would be able to tell by the way we live.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we would be living lives of love, joy and peace.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we would value people more than our theological system.
  
• If we really believed in grace, we would be grateful for the abundant goodness that God showers upon us.
  

I think I believe in grace. I want to believe in grace. I need to believe in grace.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

That’s Not a Real Disaster

There has been a lot of nonsense written about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I've intended to address this issue, but someone has already done a better job than I would have done.

Calvinist view of bridge collapse distorts God's character, by Roger Olsen (HT, BHT)

"What if God is in charge but not in control?"

"The God of Calvinism scares me; I'm not sure how to distinguish him from the devil."

It seems odd to me that a theology

1. that calls evil good,
   
2. that is based on a naïve, 17th century view of the human will,
   
3. that teaches determinism but calls people to accept responsibility for their "choices," and
   
4. that requires words like "world," "all," and "freedom" to be redefined to mean essentially the opposite of their generally accepted meaning
   

has been able to position itself as the intellectually robust theology.

I'm afraid that we all too easily use our theology to manufacture our own "God" who fits rather nicely in our little box and worship him instead of the true God who, in spite of what he has told us about himself, still eludes our complete understanding and remains somewhat of a mystery.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Calvin & Hobbes

Using a word game that seems to be more at home in the Sunday comics, some philosophers and theologians argue that determinism is not inconsistent with free will.

They say that a person is free as long as he can choose to do what he wills.

(For more background, read this.)

This seems to make sense. But the problem is that the words don't mean what they seem to mean.

R. J. Rummel Professor Emeritus of Political Science from University of Hawaii explains:

What does it mean to say that we are free? One answer, proposed by Hobbes and Tolstoy and favored by the contemporary empiricist, is that we are free insofar as we may do as we wish without hindrance or constraint. If thus free the question about the will's freedom is meaningless, for freedom then refers to whether a person can do what he chooses, not to the choosing itself; it refers to the freedom of the action, not to the choice of act. A person's will could be enslaved by the passions, chained to Freudian complexes, bound to the body's needs, limited by heredity, and necessitated by environmental causes, and yet by this meaning of freedom, he could be totally free to do that which is determined.

Translation: Free will defined in this way is meaningless. In this definition, free will only means that I am "free" to do what I am compelled to do by my completely-determined will. This is a category mistake. It confuses the freedom to act with the freedom to choose. In this view, a brainwashed person is free.

Rummel continues:

Freedom thus defined may resolve simply and satisfactorily the determinism-free will controversy for some, but at the cost of ignoring its essence, for freedom as simply measuring a lack of constraint or opposition is not freedom as usually intuited by those posing the question. It violates common sense to call free a person who is determined in his course like an object thrown through the air and following its trajectory without opposition.

Translation: While this definition may allow people to win philosophical or theological arguments, in practical terms it is bankrupt. This "freedom" is not freedom. This is doubletalk worthy of Orwell's label of Newspeak. Inevitability is really choice. White is really black. Manipulation is really freedom.

Rummel again:

For Kant, freedom is an independence of the will of motivations, character, and external causes. It is more than just the power to choose. Freedom is the power to fulfill our moral oughts (ought implies can), to will as reason directs, to be a first cause of events.

At the heart of this doublespeak is a reductionist view of the human will.

Calvin and Hobbes reduce the will to nothing more than a calculator, one that can perform only one operation: determining which of two numbers is greater.

In other words, this view of the will makes a human being no different from an animal in acting on desires. An animal "chooses" to act in response to its strongest desire. Yet humans seem to have the capacity to choose between desires on the basis of values.

This view of the will also does not allow for second-order desires: desires to have or not have a desire. As humans, we can want a piece of cake, but we can also want not to want the cake. We can choose to act on our second-order desire instead of being a slave to our first-order desire.

A robust view of free will does not require that people always can choose to act in a different way. It only requires that in some cases a person could have chosen a different course of action.

The compatibilist would argue that a person's choices are determined by his or her character. The answer is that, while character influences actions, actions also shape character. And at least some of our choices are free in a libertarian sense. If all a person's choices are determined, then in what sense is he or she a person?

If no choices are free in the libertarian sense, then most the Bible collapses into nonsense.

In Genesis 4:6–7, Yahweh says to Cain,

"Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

Is this just a piece of theater, or does Cain have a real choice?

Joshua's call to choose (Joshua 24) is pointless pilling on, if the people really are "not able to serve the Lord."

Paul explains to the Christians in Corinth (1 Corinthians 9:16–18):

When I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in preaching it.

He is saying that

• He has no choice whether to preach the gospel.
  
• He is compelled by God to do so.
  
• The only free act he can choose is to preach the gospel "free of charge," not to insist upon his rights to receive compensation from those to whom he preaches.
  

The compatibilist would turn this argument into gibberish.

If I were all powerful, I wouldn't make everyone believe in libertarian free will. But I would make people stop using the word choice to mean something that is entirely determined.

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

Why I Hate Mardi Gras (repost)

(This is a repost of something I wrote last year.)

You would expect a pastor to say that he doesn’t like Mardi Gras.

But you might be surprised why I don’t like it.

Is it because of the excessive drinking? Not really. There are many other situations when people drink too much and hurt themselves and others because they are intoxicated. I’m not in favor of excessive drinking. But that’s not the reason I hate Mardi Gras.

Is it because of the nudity? Nope. There’s just as much nudity at Spring Break. (And I have to admit that it does appeal to my hormones.) Sure, women flashing their breasts in public is not a healthy expression of sexuality. God has a much better, and more fulfilling, way to express and satisfy sexual desires. But the nudity is not the reason I hate Mardi Gras.

Is it because of the debauchery? This is nothing unique to Mardi Gras. People engage in all sorts of self-destructive behavior every weekend. They have been duped into abusing God’s gift of sex for a few moments of titillation, when God wants us to enjoy a lifetime of intimacy and fulfillment (with a fair amount of pleasure in the bargain). No, sexual decadence is not why I hate Mardi Gras.

I hate Mardi Gras because it reinforces several lies of the Evil One.

• The lie that “holiness” is about deprivation.
• The lie that “holiness” is dull and boring.
• The lie that we have to give in to temptation so that we can resist temptation in the future.
• The lie that forgiveness is cheap.

That’s why I hate Mardi Gras. It’s not just “a little harmless fun.” It’s propaganda by the Enemy to keep people from finding the life that God wants them to enjoy.

It is one more way that the Enemy distracts people from being serious followers of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Objections 8–10

Here’s the first in the series in my response to the pamphlet by Chaz Bufe called 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity.

(The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific. For over a millennium Christianity arrested the development of science and scientific thinking. In Christendom, from the time of Augustine until the Renaissance, systematic investigation of the natural world was restricted to theological investigation—the interpretation of biblical passages, the gleaning of clues from the lives of the saints, etc.; there was no direct observation and interpretation of natural processes, because that was considered a useless pursuit, as all knowledge resided in scripture. The results of this are well known: scientific knowledge advanced hardly an inch in the over 1000 years from the rise of orthodox Christianity in the fourth century to the 1500s, and the populace was mired in the deepest squalor and ignorance, living in dire fear of the supernatural—believing in paranormal explanations for the most ordinary natural events…. When scientific investigation into the natural world resumed in the Renaissance—after a 1000-year-plus hiatus—organized Christianity did everything it could to stamp it out…. More lately, the Catholic Church and the more liberal Protestant congregations have realized that fighting against science is a losing battle, and they’ve taken to claiming that there is no contradiction between science and religion. This is disingenuous at best. As long as Christian sects continue to claim as fact—without offering a shred of evidence beyond the anecdotal—that physically impossible events occurred (or are still occurring), the conflict between science and religion will remain. That many churchmen and many scientists seem content to let this conflict lie doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist…. No matter how much fundamentalists might protest to the contrary, there is a world of difference between “faith” in scientific theories (produced using the scientific method, and subject to near-continual testing and scrutiny) and faith in the entirely unsupported myths recorded 3000 years ago by slave-holding goat herders.

While I will concede that many Christians are anti-intellectual, I would argue that Christianity (along with Judaism) formed the foundation for rise of science. The resistance to new discoveries during the Middle Ages was not a direct result of the teachings of Christianity. It was a result of the human drive to acquire and protect power. One could argue that the conversion of Constantine was not a postive development for the Church.

Dallas Willard has an interesting take on the conflict between science and religion. His position is that they will always find themselves in conflict. This is not because they cannot be reconciled, but because human nature causes science to relegate religion to the group of things that have nothing to do with what is real.

Mr. Bufe assumes that the correct definition of miracles is "physically impossible events." This "definition" contains several assumptions that could be labeled either arrogant or naive (or both).

• Reality is entirely described by what can be observed by the senses.
• If science cannot "operate" on something, it is not real.
• If the current level of scientific understanding cannot explain how an event could happen, it cannot happen.
• Science requires belief in materialism.

I wonder if Mr. Bufe is familiar with the unpredictable world of quantum physics. A world where

• things can suddenly appear out of nothing
• light can be a wave and a particle at the same time
• two subatomic can be connected in a mysterious manner known as quantum entanglement

It appears that faith is in the heart of the observer. It seems odd that scientists can produce scholarly articles about the entire universe being generated from a quantum vacuum, about the spontaneous generation of life from this gratuitous matter, and about multiplying universes that never interact and cannot be detected, and yet the idea that the universe could have been created by an eternally existing being is considered an "entirely unsupported myth" and dismissed out of hand as manifestly silly.

9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex. For centuries, Christianity has had an exceptionally unhealthy fixation on sex, to the exclusion of almost everything else (except power, money, and the infliction of cruelty). This stems from the numerous "thou shalt nots" relating to sex in the Bible. That the Ten Commandments contain a commandment forbidding the coveting of one’s neighbor’s wife, but do not even mention slavery, torture, or cruelty—which were abundantly common in the time the Commandments were written— speaks volumes about their writer’s preoccupation with sex (and women as property). Today, judging from the pronouncements of many Christian leaders, one would think that "morality" consists solely of what one does in one’s bedroom.

From my perspective, it is not the Bible or Christianity that has an unhealthy preoccupation with sex. In the biblical view sex is a significant aspect of human life to be enjoyed in a proper manner and protected from abuse and misuse. It is the modern view that seems to consider sex all important.

I will admit that the Church has its share of prudes. But the libertarian view has clearly been shown to be bankrupt. If something is valued, its use is generally restricted.

10. Christianity produces sexual misery. In addition to the misery produced by authoritarian Christian intrusions into the sex lives of non-Christians, Christianity produces great misery among its own adherents through its insistence that sex (except the very narrow variety it sanctions) is evil, against God’s law…. Given that human beings are by nature highly sexual beings, and that their urges very often do not fit into the only officially sanctioned Christian form of sexuality (monogamous, heterosexual marriage), it’s inevitable that those who attempt to follow Christian “morality” in this area are often miserable, as their strongest urges run smack dab into the wall of religious belief.

Who is the miserable person? Is it the one who enjoys the intimacy that can only flourish in a long-term exclusive relationship? Or is it the one who sleeps with a different person every night never finding intimacy?

Is happiness achieved by surrendering to every bodily urge? Is the potty-trained child somehow dimenished by his or her parents unable to enjoy true freedom?

I realize that these answers are incomplete. What would you add? What do you take issue with?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Real Choice?

Did you choose to start reading this post?

You may have gotten here as a result of a search you did at Google. You may have clicked a link at someone else’s blog. You may have this site listed in your favorites. No matter how you came here, did you feel that you had a choice whether to read this entry?

This may seem like a foolish question.

But there are several different people who would argue that you were predetermined to read this article. Some of them are materialists who believe that the human mind is just an illusion, that our actions are completely determined by our genes and our environment. Some of them are philosophers who say that determinism is philosophically necessary. Some of them are theologians who say that libertarian freedom is an affront to God’s sovereignty.

What is necessary for someone to have a real choice?

We generally don’t consider a choice made under coercion as a real choice. But maybe a better way of thinking about this situation is to consider it a real choice made between limited options. A person who is threatened with death if he doesn’t renounce his faith in Christ still has a choice. He can choose apostasy or death.

No one has unlimited choices. I am limited by the laws of physics. I am limited by my previous choices. I am limited by the particular time and place to which I was born. I am even limited by the choices my parents (and their parents) made.

Would you consider a choice made under some kind of influence a real choice?

Our legal system considers certain choices made while suffering from “mental defect” as free from responsibility. In other words, it considers them not real choices. While we might think that some defendants use this strategy to avoid punishment for willful crimes, we would agree that some people are not morally responsible for their actions because of limited faculties of reason.

What about a choice made after some kind of brainwashing or programming?

When an individual is conditioned to follow the will of another person, we no longer consider that person to have a choice. We call these people victims of mind control. They may not be threatened with any coercive force. But they have been trained to behave according to the wishes of another person. Yet they would feel that they are making free choices.

Back to our question: Do you have real choices?

“Scientific determinism” would say, “No.” It is primarily based on Newtonian physics. The idea here is that everything has one or more causes and is strictly determined by those prior events. But the development of quantum mechanics has introduced probability into the deep structure of the world. This aspect of the issue is beyond the scope of this blog (and my brain).

It would appear that the philosophical determinists and the theological determinists are two completely different groups. The theologians start with the Bible after all. The truth is, however, that this is strictly a philosophical issue. (At this point I can hear some of my Reformed friends shouting through my DSL connection.)

What do I mean that this is strictly a philosophical issue?

First, the arguments of the philosophers and the theologians are essentially the same. While the theologians may have a different starting point, they follow the same basic line of reasoning as the philosophers who hold to determinism. Second, the theologians’ interpretation of the Scripture is shaped by their prior philosophical assumptions. They claim to be taking the Bible in its “plain meaning,” but those who start with different assumptions see an entirely different “plain meaning.”

In order to avoid the charge of attacking a straw man, I want to list some quotations from two highly respected proponents of theological determinism:

Understanding the Will, by Douglas Wilson

No man is capable of making a choice contrary to the strongest desire of his heart.

If the choice were not his strongest desire, he would not
have chosen it.

It is nonsense to talk of a free will, as though there were this autonomous thing inside of us, capable of acting in any direction, regardless of the motives of the heart. . . . Choices made apart from the desires of the heart? They would be an exhibition, not of freedom, but of insanity.

And what is a free man? He is someone who is free from
external compulsion and is consequently at liberty to do what his heart desires. . . . Under the superintendence of God, all men, Christian and non-Christian, have the freedom to turn left or right, to choose chocolate or vanilla, or to move to this city or that one — depending entirely upon what they want to do. The foreordination of God does not violate this; it is the cause of this.

It is impossible for a true choice to be autonomous in the sense of being independent of our heart desires. If there were a choice for which no reason at all could be given, we could no longer call it a choice.

The Bible teaches that God superintends the choices made by men. He may do so immediately through providential intervention or mediately through the use of secondary agents.

Man, as creature, is free to do as he pleases. He has this freedom only because God grants and sustains it —and perfectly controls it.

Answers to Objections to the Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner.

If we admit free will in the sense that the absolute determination of events is placed in the hands of man, we might as well spell it with a capital F and a capital W; for then man has become like God, — a first cause, an original spring of action, — and we have as many semi-Gods as we have free wills. Unless the sovereignty of God be given up, we cannot allow this independence to man. It is very noticeable — and in a sense it is reassuring to observe the fact — that the materialistic and metaphysical philosophers deny as completely as do Calvinists this thing that is called free will. They reason that every effect must have a sufficient cause; and for every action of the will they seek to find a motive which for the moment at least is strong enough to control.1

Since man is a rational agent there must always be a sufficient cause for his acting in a particular way. For the will to decide in favor of the weaker motive and against the stronger, or without motives at all, is to have an effect with out a sufficient cause.2

God so governs the inward feelings, external environment, habits, desires, motives, etc., of men that they freely do what He purposes.3

Predestination holds that events come to pass because an infinitely wise, powerful, and holy God has so appointed them. Fatalism holds that all events come to pass through the working of a blind, unintelligent, impersonal, non-moral force which cannot be distinguished from physical necessity, and which carries us helplessly within its grasp as a mighty river carries a piece of wood.4

According to the doctrine of Predestination the freedom and responsibility of man are fully preserved. In the midst of certainty God has ordained human liberty. But Fatalism allows no power of choice, no self-determination. It makes the acts of man to be as utterly beyond his control as are the laws of nature.5

No man can be a consistent fatalist. For to be consistent be would have to reason something like this: “If I am to die today, it will do me no good to eat, for I shall die anyway. Nor do I need to eat if I am to live many years yet, for I shall live anyway. Therefore I will not eat.” Needless to say, if God has foreordained that a man shall live, He has also foreordained that he shall be kept from the suicidal folly of refusing to eat.6

Hence, only a person who has not examined this doctrine of Predestination, or one who is maliciously inclined, will rashly charge that it is Fatalism. There is no excuse for anyone making this mistake who knows what Predestination is and what Fatalism is.7

Instead of our doctrine of Predestination being the same with the heathen doctrine of Fatalism, it is its absolute opposite and only alternative.8

Let me make some quick observations.

Predestination teaches that God “governs the inward feelings, external environment, habits, desires, motives, etc., of men that they freely do what He purposes.” How is this any different than our victim of brainwashing? Inserting the word “freely” does not make these actions free. If God determines the conditions that determine the actions then he is determining the actions.

Boettner says that Predestination is nothing at all like Fatalism. He says it is “its absolute opposite and only alternative.” The only difference between the two is that in one case things are determined by a person and in the other case things are determined by an impersonal force. In the end, the results are the same. It matters little to the question of freedom whether the “agent” of determinism is God, an impersonal force, or a super-intelligent alien race.

Individuals are free to do what they want to do but they are not free to change what they want. God changes what some people want in order manipulate their actions to fit into his plans. Freedom to be controlled by something that you have no control over does not sound like freedom to me.

This theology reduces the will to a mathematical formula. The will is not an agent according to this thinking. It is the slave of the single greatest desire of the heart. This robs the term will of any real meaning. It also strikes me as an extremely naïve understanding of desires and aversions as processed by a human being. This concept, by the way, comes from Thomas Hobbes who said, “Liberty and Necessity are consistent; as in … the actions which men voluntarily do: which, because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty, and yet, because every act of man’s will, and every desire, and inclination proceed from some cause, and that from another cause, in a continual chain (whose first link is in the hand of God the first of all causes) they proceed from necessity” (Leviathan).

Boettner finds it “reassuring” that the “materialistic and metaphysical philosophers” hold a position very similar to his. I would suggest that this is not a good thing. It indicates that his position is determined more by his assumptions than by some direct statement of Scripture.

Doug Wilson is guilty of bifurcation in this statement: “It is impossible for a true choice to be autonomous in the sense of being independent of our heart desires. If there were a choice for which no reason at all could be given, we could no longer call it a choice.” We must choose between

Our choices are completely determined by our single strongest desire.
Or we have absolutely no reason for making our choices.

Maybe we like several flavors of ice cream and decide to choose rocky road today. Does that require that we like rocky road the best? Does it even require that we like rocky road the best today?

To think of choice in this way is to rob the term of all its meaning. There is no choosing to be done. All is determined by our strongest desire.

Wilson says that man is “free to do as he pleases” and that God “perfectly controls” what he wants. In other words, an individual is free to do what he wants to do, which is what God wants him to want to do. No matter how many steps you put in the middle, God dictates this person’s actions. How can this be called freedom and language still have any meaning?

Boettner objects to free will because it makes humans into “a first cause, an original spring of action.” Is this not what it means to make a choice? Is this not an essential part of being human, that we have an influence on the future? In Boettner’s system, a human being is a cipher, entirely determined and programmed by a sovereign God.

We’re back to a false choice. Boettner says we must accept that humans are completely programmed to act and to will by God. Otherwise we are left only with the option that humans become God. There are many alternatives he is ignoring. Why cannot humans be initiators of “causal chains” without overriding God’s ultimate power? Is God’s sovereignty limited so that he can be in control only if he orchestrates ever minor detail?

Boettner says, “No man can be a consistent fatalist.” Yet the very argument he uses against Fatalism is equally effective against Predestination.

It seems to me that the God of Wilson and Boettner has an awful lot in common with the “God” of Deism. He lives outside the chain of determinism and sets everything in motion to achieve the ends he has in mind.

I began this post with several “desires.”

• I wanted to focus on the bankruptcy of the word “choice” as used by certain theologians.
• I wanted to keep the argument focused on the philosophical issues.
• I wanted to cut through some of the obfustication that surrounds this issue.
• I wanted to avoid an acrimonious tone.
• I wanted to create enough controversy that it would stimulate helpful discussion on this issue.
• I wanted to provide some new insight into an old dispute.
• I wanted to keep the post to a reasonable length.
• I wanted to make a new post because it has been too long since my last one.

I fear that these competing desires have kept me from realizing any except the last one.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

God, Time & Freedom

Let’s shift gears into something more philosophical.

I’ve been discussing some of these issues over at a friend’s site. I’m also in the middle of a philosophy class that I’m teaching for IWU’s College of Adult and Professional Studies. So it is no surprise that I’ve been thinking about God’s relationship to time and about human freedom to make real choices.

The traditional view holds that God is outside time. This is so widely accepted that to question it appears to be flirting with heresy. Yet I feel that there is something wrong with this view as it is commonly held.

I also have the sense that the Open Theists are on to something important. But this position has some problems of its own and is labeled heretical by many Christians.

It seems to make sense that time began at creation as Augustine suggests. In the same way that God is “outside” creation, he would also be “outside” time. Of course, if the biblical account is true, then God must be able to “enter” both creation and time. Otherwise he would be reduced to the “god” of Aristotle.

It is difficult for us to imagine any existence outside time. It is not unlike the difficulty a deep-sea fish might have imagining life on “dry land.” And we must be cautious when we speculate about “how things work” outside time. But let’s see if we can make some sense out of this.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument the standard position that God is outside time and that he knows the future exhaustively.

In the standard view, God sees all of time “at once.” He sees the “past,” the “present” and the “future” in what we would call “now.” If God knows the future in every detail, then the future must be “fixed.” In other words, we cannot do anything contrary to what God already knows we will do in the future. Consequently, we are not free to make real choices.

However, we seem to have the sense that our choices are free and that they are real. Some would argue that this is only an illusion. Others say that “libertarian freewill” is an affront to the sovereignty of God. Some resort to a philosophical sleight of hand that essentially has God manipulating our wills leaving us “free” to do “what we will.”

But these explanations are not very helpful. Some are worse than the problem they try to solve. I maintain that they seem satisfying to their adherents only because they’ve repeated them so many times and gotten “comfortable” with them.

I think I may have a new angle from which to address this issue. At least it’s new to me. I haven’t seen it anywhere. However, if it is true, I am probably not the first one to think of it. If I’m the first one to formulate it, it’s probably not true.

I believe the problem is created when we collapse our view of the future and God’s view of the future.

For God, the future already exists. It is “fixed” much in the same way that the past is fixed for us. From God’s perspective the future cannot change.

However, for us the future does not yet exist and is “flexible.”

As long as we look at the future only from God’s perspective, we don’t run into any difficulties. And as long as we look at it only from our perspective, everything is fine. The problem arises when we combine these two perspectives. Then we run into paradoxes and contradictions.

We are left with, “If God knows the future exhaustively, how can we make free choices?”

The Open Theists say that God does not know the future exhaustively. They say that this is a statement about the nature of the future not about the nature of God. They say that the reason that God does not know the future is because it doesn’t exist until we make our choices in the present. Their critics argue that this reduces God to less than all-powerful and all-knowing. But if the future doesn’t exist, then God is not diminished by not knowing it.

But I don’t want to get sidetracked into a discussion about Open Theism. I just want to borrow the idea that the future doesn’t exist until it becomes the present.

We assume this as we go about our lives. We are confronted with a decision and make a choice. It could be a relatively insignificant choice about where to eat dinner. Or it could be a bigger choice about where to live or work. We agonize over many of these choices as if the future will be (partially) determined by what we decide.

The problem comes in when we insert the data about God knowing the future.

In programming language, this is a “data mismatch.”

If you told a computer to divide 25 by a ham sandwich, you would get an error. These are two different kinds of information. You can perform math on a number. You perform other operations on a ham sandwich. But they don’t belong together in the same operation.

Our view of the future and God’s view of the future do not belong together. Our view is from within time. God’s view is outside time. The future is still open to us because it does not yet exist.

Another way to get at this is by using the framework of relativity. Einstein has shown that there is no absolute “now” or “public time.” By combining our “now” and God’s “now” we are treating them as if they are the same. This is what creates the paradox.

These are just some ideas. Let me know what you think. It seems to make sense to me. But you may see a fatal flaw in the logic. Or you may raise some questions that I haven’t considered.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Struggle with Sin

Continuing with my series of misunderstood Bible passage, it’s time to deal with Romans 7.

The common view is that Paul is describing his personal struggle with sin. However, there are two opinions about whether this is a normal state of the Christian life (“I knew that deep down inside, Romans 7:14–25 is describing me.”) or a state than is replaced by what is described in chapter 8 (“This moment, therefore, we may be emptied of sin, filled with holiness, and become truly happy.”).

I don’t want to get caught up in this particular battle right now.

I do want to suggest to you that both of these camps have misunderstood what Paul is saying in Romans 7.

Notice what he says before chapter 7:

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (6:6–7).

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace (6:14).

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (6:18).

So we can see that Paul clearly considers the life of a believer to be a life that is free from slavery to sin.

So what does Paul mean by this lament in Romans 7:14–24?

The key to understanding this complex and confusing chapter in found in reading Romans 5:20, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” along with Romans 6:6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

Paul’s argument in Romans is that God gave the Law in order to “call out” sin. But this Law did not have the ability to eliminate sin. In fact, it had the effect of increasing sin. Rather than freeing humans from sin, the Law made their slavery to sin even more obvious.

But this was not a mistake on God’s part. Things must often get very much worse before they can be “fixed.” Ignoring a problem seems less disruptive than facing up to it. But facing the full brunt of a terrible situation often makes the solution more obvious and easier to accept.

Here’s how N. T. Wright explains this passage in a Bible Review article:

In Romans 7:1-8:11 Paul declares that the renewed people are given the Spirit to do “what the law could not” (Romans 8:3). He argues (through the device of the “I,” speaking of himself as the embodiment of Jewish history) that when the Law was originally given Israel recapitulated the sin of Adam (Romans 7:7-12, looking back to Romans 5:20), that in her continuing life under the Torah Israel finds herself simultaneously desiring the good and unable to avoid the buildup of sin, and that Israel, despite her great vocation, remains “in Adam” (Romans 7:1-6, 13-25). God, however, has dealt with sin and given new life, to those who share the resurrection of Christ through the Spirit (Romans 8:1-11).

Scot McKnight expands on this:

Israel struggled with the Torah to do it, and couldn’t get the job done. (Or, for others: everyone failed to do the Torah.) God sent Christ. Paul is thinking of death: those who are in Christ are those who have died with Christ and his death becomes their death. The condemnation that death is has been dealt with when Christ died on the cross.

Here are a few scattered statements from Wright’s article, “Romans and the Theology of Paul”:

The way through the complex little argument of 7:1-4 is found by reading 5:20 in the light of 6:6 and 6:14f.: Torah binds “you” to Adam; Adam, the “old you,” dies in baptism; “you” are therefore free to belong to another—namely, Christ—without Torah having anything to say about the matter.

The chapter is a defense of Torah against any suggestion that it is identical with “sin” (7:7-12) or that by itself it was the ultimate cause of death (7:13-20).

[T]he Israel that lives under Torah continues to carry
about the mark of sin and death that results from being the child of Adam.

Torah, Paul said in 5:20, came in in order that sin might abound. That is, the divine purpose in the giving of Torah was in order to draw Adam’s trespass to its full height precisely in Israel.

God’s covenant purpose, it seems, is to draw the sin of all the world on to Israel, in order that it may be passed on to the Messiah and there dealt with once and for all.

So we see that Romans 7 is not describing a personal experience of Paul’s. (If you need further evidence, check out Philippians 3:6.) It is rather a description of the predicament of Israel under the Law.

To say that Romans 8 is only talking about the legal standing of a believer in Christ is to emasculate Paul’s argument. On the other hand, to say that “life in the Spirit” is only for some Christians is to completely miss the point of verse 9.

But when we pay close attention to the narrative flow of Paul’s letter, we see that he is making a very specific argument based upon the history of Israel. Even Romans, Paul’s most theological letter, has a story line. We get ourselves into difficulty when we read the Bible as a theology textbook or as a collection of facts and propositions.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”