Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Reformed Passion


Click on the image to see a bigger view of it.

Spirituality is serious beans folks. A handful of seriously serious beans.

Without going into a great deal of detail, and I know a good portion of my current audience already knows this story, but a powerful transition took place in my life over two years ago where I was faced with the fact that I knew a lot about God, but I never really knew God. This is easy to do when you have so much scripture thrown at you growing up that you think you already know all the good parts and no longer need to crack your Bible open.

In sense, you become inoculated to Christianity

After this transformation in my life I had an unfathomable desire to consume God's word. With this addiction came an unexpected, yet necessary and perfectly logical desire. I wanted to know why I believed what I did. I wanted to strip down every doctrine I had adhered to, every opinion I had argued for, and everything I thought Christianity was and seek purely after Biblical truth.

I wasn't prepared for how this decision was going to eat my entire Christian paradigm inside out. This happened in a few different areas, and it is probably better saved for possible blogs down the road. But this introduced me to some concepts that I was ignorant of beforehand. Ignorant either because I was completely unaware, or because I thought I understood what a particular concept was only to find I was oblivious.

It also introduced me to two words that were vaguely familiar, and yet I had no clue what they had meant at the time. Calvinism, and Arminianism.

When I found myself in a position where I craved to know what the Bible said about, well, anything, I found myself continually drawn to these fantastic resources made available by a group of people who are now being called (most recently by TIME magazine) as the "New-Calvinists." I found myself challenged more than I had at any other point in my life by sermons from John Piper, Matt Chandler, and the always controversial and Seattle's own, Mark Driscoll.

What struck me as strange was that they had a few (not many, but key) viewpoints that differed a great deal from my upbringing in the church. What was more difficult, was that they had very strong scriptural support for these views. I found myself digging deeper into the Bible, looking up Greek and Hebrew translations and cross-referencing the stitching out of my Bible trying to build the strongest foundation I could construct.

Throughout this period I slowly came to a conclusion that currently saddens me.

You see, I grew up in a Pentecostal Spirit Filled atmosphere. It has been my experience that these churches tend to be very strong when it comes to emphasizing the emotional aspect of the Christian walk. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing either. The times in a church service that I have felt the most intimate with God has been in Spirit Filled churches. There's an openness that invites you into worship and draws you into feeling God's presence. The problem is that where the many Spirit Filled churches excel in passion, they drop the ball when it comes to intellectual doctrinal teaching.

This is where the Reformed church has been stepping in for the rebound over the last few years. I've visited Mars Hill a couple times since moving to Seattle and as controversial and... different as Mark Driscoll is, I can assure you that I learned so much at his church. Even my wife became extremely interested in his church, feeling like she had gained a great deal during our visits there.

There's only two problems here.

One: These "New-Calvinists" / Reformed / Resurgence churches proclaim to be Spirit Filled churches. From what I can tell, this is part of what separates the New-Calvinist from the older brand. This doesn't really change the fact that there's still a "difference" between churches when I've visited. Now granted, I've only visited Mars Hill twice and that isn't exactly a definitive sample size, yet their worship services have never matched up to the intensity that I've seen at my very own chapel services at Northwest University.

Two: Predestination. I just cant do it. For a scriptural paradigm that is supposed to be so definitively biblical, and for a group of people that emphasise the obviousness of predestination, I simply cant get it to stick.

As many verses as I can find that talks about God predestining us for anything, all of them can still be interpreted in a way that allows complete free will, and yet none of them (that I've found thus far) can explain some of the specific events that take place in the Bible.

Gen 3:22 has God kicking Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden "lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” Many Calvinists explain that Adam and Eve "enjoyed free will" before the fall, and yet after the fall it appears that God is stating that he doesn't trust the free will of man to not eat from the tree of life. Where is the predestination?

Exodus 32:10-14 God is royally ticked at the Israelites and is about to smite the dickens out of them when not only does the Bible say that Moses reminds God of his covenant with Abraham, but that God changes his mind after listening to Moses. Predestination?

This doesn't count the fact that Abraham had what seems to be a relationship with God, interacts with God, and God takes Abraham's opinions into hand when making decisions.

Or in 1 Corinthians 9:27 that Paul says that he must discipline himself daily lest after preaching to others he himself should become a reprobate.

How can any of these things exist in a world with 100% complete no-compromise predestination founded from before the beginnings of creation?

As far as I can tell, it cant. Fee free to explain to me how if you can. There's a ton about Calvinism that I can dig to some degree, I wouldn't take it as far as Hyper-Calvinism, but there's some really smart people out there that are totally into Predestination, and I don't claim to be a genius but I'm not an idiot either, and I cant see how anyone can look past this.

If you have an opinion on the matter, please comment. I've been reading sermons, listening to sermons, reading scripture, reading defenses, trying everything I can to see how these things can be reconciled. I cant find it.

In slightly more lighthearted news, like I mentioned in my last blog, I ran for student senate at my university to rep the commuting students. Election day was last Monday, and the results haven't been announced yet, but I'm feeling pretty confident here because when I went to go cast my vote, I saw that I was the only one on the ballot for my constituency.

It was this that helped me feel not so bad when I voted for myself.

I was thinking about it on the way home, but what kind of victory is something when you had no one to race against? Therefore, in honor of our beloved President, I decided to name my pending victory after his first adventure into politics.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I expect an announcement for not my victory, but my Obamictory. Winning by virtue of having no one running against you. This is how the President first made it into state politics in the first place. With that kind of track record, who knows what I can accomplish next!

Seriously though, if you need to sign up for an account to comment on this blog, go do it. It takes two seconds and it wont hurt you a bit. Leave a comment on the topic of this blog. What is your opinion of Calvinism? New-Calvinism. Do you like Pie? I like Pie. What do you think of Predestination?

Was I predestined to have an Obamictory?

I think the answer to that is maaaaaybe!

10 comments:

  1. I enjoy your blogs! I was thinking the other day how much courage you have to challenge everything you've know to be true, to make true everything you've known.

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  2. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying that predestination and free will can't coexist?

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  3. I would have to agree with Jace. I don't believe that predestination and free will can coexist when talking about the same ideas. The idea that God is omnipotent and knows the future is often mislabeled as 'predestination' as God already knows the decisions that we are going to make. However, by definition predestination is defined as 'the state of being predestined,' or 'fate; desiny.' God simply knowing from eternity what decisions we will make in our lives does not mean that he is making these choices for us. Such would be the case with the true definition of pre-destination.

    The love that God has for his children is expressed as the ultimate pure love, since it stems from the Creator. An attribute that is attributed to true love is the act of allowing one to have the free will to make their own choices even though the choices may have foreseen negative consequences. This is expressed in the story of the Fall of Man. God places the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden, and commands Adam and Eve not to eat of it. However, God could have simply not placed the tree in the garden, or made it impossible to reach by Man. Even though God knew the consequences would be dire if Man disobeyed his command, God still allowed Man to make his own choice.

    Later on in John 3:16 Christ states 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent his Son not into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, for he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.' I believe the urgency in which Christ preaches his message would be wasted energy if those who were to believe were predestined to do so. Christ consistently URGES the people to believe in his gift to escape eternal damnation.

    Theres my rant :). I too have undergone a transformation EXTREMELY similar to Jace's, both in the causes and in my study of literary analyzation of original and subsequent translations of the scriptures. I don't pretend to know all the answers, nor claim that my ideas are even correct. But I cannot accept the fact that God has already chosen who will receive his Gift of Salvation, and that the rest are simply 'screwed.' That would infer God toying / playing games with Man. I do not believe in a creator that would do such a thing. It goes against every fiber of why I call this faith my own.

    Thoughts/comments/ideas much appreciated. Thank you all for listening.

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  4. To add to my previous comment- Congrats Jace on all that you have accomplished / continue to accomplish! It does me good to see that things are going well for you, and you are developing so much as a person and in your spiritual life.

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  5. I like Pie. Predestination is still one of those subjects I'm hammering out myself. I am inclined to agree with you on all of these places, however, I need to look at the Greek and Hebrew, because the Word is the Word, and I won't go against what the Bible says. I think that it may be a paradox, since God works in those ways a lot... I'm in class right now, or I'd write a bit more, but thought I'd up your comment count.

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  6. Hi Jace,
    I found the following response on Christianity.net. Someone had asked a similiar question about the Doctrine of Predestination and this is the response she got back.

    "Predestination is about God being in control of all that happens through history, including his choice of saving some people for himself, while allowing others to go their own way along the path of sin. It is a concept tightly linked to God’s ‘sovereignty’, which is a word used to describe the complete and intimate control God has over his creation.

    There are many examples in the bible describing God’s sovereignty, but particular examples related to predestination include Ephesians 1:4-6, 1:11-12 and Matthew 22:14. There are no sound biblical arguments against predestination.

    Where the trouble lies is that standing side-by-side with the truth of God’s sovereignty and predestination is the truth of God’s relational nature, human choice and individual responsibility. Examples in the bible include 2Timothy 2:4, Matthew 7:7-8, John 3:18, Romans 1:20 and Romans 2:6-8. This is what many people attribute as our “free choice”.

    Somehow in and amongst God’s sovereignty, we are not subject to determinism where we have no ability to make choices (we are not puppets); but somehow in and amongst our ability to make choices, God is not prevented from continuing in his plans for his creation. God may change his mind because of the repentance of people, but still remain completely sovereign.

    These two truths appear contradictory to us and we find it difficult, if not impossible, to harmonize them. It’s helpful to realize that while God’s revelation of his character (good, perfect, loving, merciful, just, etc.) is reasonably easy to understand, his ‘being’ is far more difficult to comprehend. That is knowing God is one thing but completely understanding him is far more difficult (that is impossible). We need to learn to be humble and acknowledge that God is greater than we like to imagine. There will be things about God that we don’t understand but this doesn’t mean we are asked to give up all capacity for reason.

    This type of difficulty can also be seen in science and psychology. Consider the question of whether we are the product of a bunch of chemical reactions, genetic predispositions and environmental influences, or whether we are free thinking agents who make choices about our lives. Our experience shows us that we are both, as contradictory as they seem. So it is with predestination and human choice and responsibility.

    There are two books, available in Christian book stores, you might find helpful and more thorough than is possible to be here. In chapter 11 of Don Carson’s book, ‘How Long, O Lord’, he discusses the combined truths of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility as ‘compatibilism’. He works through many Bible passages and draws out where the tensions lie and where it is reasonable to allow for mystery. In chapter 2 of J.I. Packer’s book, ‘Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God’, he likewise discusses these truths and how they seem to be in tension for us and yet how they can work together."

    Very interesting topic!

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  7. Are we talking about the concept of single or double predestination? That makes a huge difference in the basis of this discussion. I believe that a biblical case can be made for both free will and predestination, but it depends on what belief we are debating.

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  8. New-Calvinists subscribe to double-predestination.

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  9. This was a great read for me, as Calvanism (predestination in particular) is something I've been very interested in recently. At this point, I'm agreeing with you, Jace. I don't see solid evidence for predestination in Scripture. Unfortunately, I haven't studied it in depth, and I'm afraid that because I don't like the idea (really...hate the concept) I'm letting that influence my belief. Whenever I make that journey into predestination/Calvanism I'll have to give you a call and we can discuss in depth our findings. :)

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  10. Dude, I would totally dig that.

    I'm on a slightly different keel on the topic though. I really wish I could find solid whole-scriptural support for it because the concept of predestination makes some things a lot easier to reconcile for me.

    It leads itself well into other theological trains of thought, but as much as I really try to make it work for me in comparison to other verses, it just isnt happening for me at the moment.

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