Amazing Grace

When I was fifteen my dad bought me a copy of 'Amazing Grace - the John Newton story.'  I recently re-read it.  I find the life of Newton to be fascinating.  I would also recommend the biography by Jonathan Aiken.

I thought I would list a few quotes from Newton.

Newton used to say that the point in all preaching was 'to break a hard heart and to heal a broken heart.'

Newton was mildly a Calvinist but in that age of fierce theological disputation he tried to 'keep all shibboleths, and forms and terms of distinction out of sight, as we keep knives and razors out of the way of children, and if my hearers had not other means of information I think they would not know from me that there are such creatures as Arminians and Calvinists in the world.  But we talk a good deal about Christ.'

On his death bed, when Newton was barely able to speak, he whispered to his friend William Jay: 'My memory is nearly gone.  But I remember two things: That I am a great sinner.  And that Christ is a great Saviour.'

God's universal love

I am amazed that some people deny the truth that God demonstrates his love towards all people, elect and non-elect.  I have listed seven reasons why I believe God loves all people (even if he does not love all people in the same way and in the end does not save all people).

1.  'God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life' (John 3:16).  New Testament scholar Don Carson writes, 'I know that some try to take "world" here to refer to the elect.  But that really will not do.  All the evidence of the usage in John's Gospel is against the suggestion ... The same lesson is learned from many passages and themes in Scripture.  However, much God stands in judgement over the world, he also presents himself as the God who invites and commands all humans to repent' (Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God).

2.  'As surely as I live ... I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.  Turn! Turn! Turn from your evil ways!  Why will you die, O house of Israel?' (Ezekiel 33:11; see also 18:32).  The fact that this verse is addressed to the house of Israel does not diminish the argument because not all of the house of Israel were finally saved; in Ezekiel's day many died in judgement.

3.  'God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the on the righteous and the unrighteousness' (Matthew 5).  We could add to this Psalm 145:9 and Acts 14:17.  Our God is kind and grants to all certain joys in life.  These truths are the basis of Jesus' command to love our enemies.  During his earthly ministry Jesus would have fulfilled this command.  Has he stopped obeying the command to love his enemies now that he has ascended to the Father's side?

4.  Before the flood we read that God was grieved in heart (Genesis 6:6).  God was going to act with great judgement against human wickedness but this was no vindictive tyrant at work, this was a God whose heart was breaking.  Similarly we can see the sorrow God feels when he acts in righteous judgement over the sinful people of Moab (Isaiah 16:11 and similar in Jeremiah).

5.  Both Peter (2 Peter 3:9) and Paul (1 Timothy 2:4) tell us that God desires the salvation of all people.  I am not at all convinced by those who try to make 'all people' in these verses means something other than 'all people'.  I realise that these verses are difficult to reconcile with a God who is entirely sovereign in salvation (e.g. Romans 9 and Ephesians 1), but do we have to be able to understand everything about our mysterious God?  

6.  'Jesus looked at him and loved him' (Mark 10:21).  In the story of the rich young ruler we read that Jesus looked at this man and loved him.  Yet this man was not someone who was going to respond to Jesus' challenge.  As one writer points out, 'We see here that Jesus loved this man even though, by what we read in the Scriptures, the man never repents of his unbelief.  Jesus obviously loved this man, an open, non-repentant sinner.  He loved him.'

7.  In  a moving scene in Matthew 23, Jesus looks over Jerusalem and anticipates the judgement that will soon befall theme.  He quotes the prophet Isaiah, 'How I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, yet you were not willing.'

But then how do we deal with those texts that say that God hates the wicked.  For example, fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms we are told that God hates the sinner, his wrath is on the liar etc.  Do we have to chose between those text that expound God's love towards the sinful and those that speak of his anger, and even hatred, towards the same?  Carson explains:

'God's wrath is not am implacable, blind rage.  However, emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offences against his holiness.  But his love ... wells up amidst his perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved.  Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed towards the same individual or people at the same time.  God in his perfections must be wrathfully against his rebel image-bearers, for they have offended him; God in his perfections must be loving toward his rebel image-bearers, for he is that kind of God' (Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God).

Biblical perspectives in tension

The relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility is one that I have struggled to get my head around.  I imagine it is a theological tension that I will simply have to live with.  I have read some of Don Carson's Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: biblical perspectives in tension.  Here are a few snippets.

'Perhaps no area of doctrine has been more consistently debated throughout the twenty centuries of Christianity's life than that of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.'

'The pre-exilic prophets unite in presenting Yahweh as the one who finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked, who pleads with men to return to him and avoid the otherwise inevitable and horrible consequences of their own rebellion ... Even when all due allowance is made for anthropomorphisms, the necessary conclusion is that men are viewed as responsible creatures whose rebellion Yahweh is enduring with merciful forbearance, and punishing with reluctant wrath.'

'It is clear in both Mark and John that those condemned are in any case condemned justly condemned, i.e. they are rightly accountable for their unbelief ... they are not forced into an unbelief they do not themselves want.'

'Both in the Old Testament and in the forth Gospel, not to say elsewhere, God is sometimes presented as the one who seeks lost men out, loves a lost world, declares his yearning for their repentance, and the like.  This "will" of God is his disposition; it is not necessarily his decree.  But precisely how both operate in one sovereign God is extremely difficult to understand.'

Thought on election

While God does not choose those whom he is going to save on the basis of any foreseen merit on their part neither should it be thought that his choice in salvation is simply random.  He does not think, 'I'll assign everyone a number and then take those who are assigned a prime number.' That would be capricious. He chooses for reasons only known to himself, but nevertheless he has a reason for those whom he chooses. This can be seen in 1 Corinthians 1, where it is clear that the gracious logic of his electing grace runs counter to the graceless logic of the worlds esteem. Paul writes, But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him (1 Cor. 1:27-29). It was not even that the weak won his pity through their weakness, but his electing love will demonstrate, to all people, his goodness, wisdom and grace.

Things beyond understanding

I am fascinated by the way that the Bible speaks about both God's desire to save all people and yet also speaks about his sovereignty in salvation.  God offers the gospel to all, and yearns that people would respond, and yet there is talk of salvation being the result of election and predestination.  Iain Murray writes about some of these issues in a chapter in his book The Old Evangelicalism.  I thought I would write down some excerpts.

'Truths that look contradictory to us are not so in light of heaven' (Iain Murray).

'... it is not because men cannot enter, but because they will not, that they do not enter' (John Owen).

'The reality is that we are faced with truths that far outreach our understanding' (Iain Murray).

'Men evangelized cannot go to hell but over the bowels of God's great mercies.  They must wade to it through the blood of Christ' (Scots Calvinist, John Duncan).

'I was standing on the 10th December 1846, at the end of my father's house, and meditating on that precious word that has brought peace to countless weary ones: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life"  (John 3:16).  I saw that God loves me, for I was one of the world.  I saw proof of his love in the giving of his Son Jesus.  I saw that "whosoever" meant anybody and everybody, and therefore me, even me.  I saw the result of believing - that I would not perish, but have everlasting life.  I was enabled to take God at his word.  I saw no one, but Jesus only, all in all in redemption.  My burden fell from my back, and I was saved.  Yes, saved!' (John MacPherson).

Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport

Richard J. Mouw is president of Fuller Theological Seminary in the U.S.A..  He writes the book Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport.  The title of the book is based on a scene in the film Hardcore, where a pious Calvinist elder tries to explain, in Las Vegas Airport, the acronym TULIP to a young prostitute. 

Mouw comes across as a very sincere and gracious Calvinist.  There were a couple of places where my more conservative heart departed from him.  However, overall, I found this a helpful and enjoyable read.  Here are two excerpts that I would like to record.

The first is his reference to 'Heidelberg One': the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism:

Q: What is thy comfort in life and death?

A: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who, with his precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth to live unto him.

The second excerpt is a quote for Spurgeon:

We win hearts for Jesus by love, by sympathy with their sorrows, by anxiety lest they should perish, by pleading with God for them with all our hearts that they would not be left to die unsaved, by pleading with them for God, that, for their own sake, they would seek mercy and find grace.

Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism

I have really enjoyed reading Iain Murray's book Spurgeon v Hyper-Calvinism.  It is well written and not particularly heavy.  I resonated with it because I have wrestled with the issue of God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility etc... 

Calvinists are often accused of placing a theological system onto their reading of Scripture.  The common criticism of any scheme of systematic theology is that they try to make everything fit easily together.  However, this could not be said of the Calvinism that Spurgeon professed.  When it came to God's Sovereignty and Humankind's Responsibility, or God's electing love and his universal love, Spurgeon was happy to embrace mystery.  Below are some quotes of his taken from Murray's book.

'... man is wholly responsible for his own sin.  God is not its author.  Those who hear the gospel and reject the Saviour will not be able to plead that sovereignty prevented them from exercising the obedience of faith.  None will be able to claim that God excluded them.  No, it is on account of sin alone, including the sin of unbelief, that unrepentant sinners will finally be condemned and lost for ever.'

'If he be lost, damnation is all of man; but, if he be saved, still salvation is all of God.'

'None of us loves men as Christ loves them; and if the love of all the tender hearted in the world could run together, they would make but a drop compared with the ocean of the compassion of Jesus.'

'Beloved, there is nothing that so delights Jesus Christ as to save sinners ... You misjudge him if you think he wants to be argued with and persuaded to have mercy; he gives it as freely as the sun pours forth light.'

'He has an infinite benevolence [his desire to save all] which, nevertheless, is not in all points worked out by his infinite omnipotence [he does not save all]; and if anybody asked me why it is, I cannot tell.'

Calvinism and Arminianism

Having said that I would not post a blog for a couple of weeks I am blogging again today.  Having read an article on a theologian called Amyraut (17th century) I got thinking about Calvinism and Arminianism again.  Before you read the following can I point out that my understanding of Arminianism is shallow and my take on Calvinism represents only some within that camp.  I think that 'Calvinist' is not a great label to use because there is much divergence among those who might be labeled Calvinists, and Arminians tend to caricature their beliefs.  I also think that many people misunderstand Wesleyan Arminianism, leaving out the doctrine of prevenient  grace (which says that people can only respond to God through his enabling), and so end up with a form of Pelagianism (which gives an overly human role in the process of salvation).  The following are my thoughts.

Some Calvinists and Arminians can agree on the following:

God sent his Son for the World

God desires the salvation of all

God genuinely offers salvation to all people

Left to themselves all people refuse God's grace

Calvinists and Arminians disagree on the nature of converting grace

Calvinists see God's converting grace as irresistible.  God works in the heart to move a person to choose his salvation.  Calvinists see this grace as only being given to some.

Arminianists talk of prevenient grace.  God moves in the human heart to awaken a desire for him, but this can be resisted.  Arminians see this grace as working in all.

Arminians believe that God would not be as loving if salvation was only the result of his choice and he did not choose all people.  Arminians emphasise the freedom of a person to say 'yes' or 'no' to saving grace.

Calvinists believe that God acts in line with both love and justice.  He demonstrates these attributes by accepting the choice of many to refuse his genuine, heart-felt offer of mercy and in working in the hearts of others in order that they would freely choose his saving grace.  Some Calvinists (e.g. Hodge) believe that the number who will be saved far outnumbers those who will be lost.

The issue of universal or definite redemption is not necessarily determined on Calvinist and Arminian lines.  Definite redemption means that on the cross Jesus only took the punishment for those who would be saved.  Universal redemption says that on the cross Jesus took the punishment for all people's sin.  If we accept God's foreknowledge the Arminian could talk of particular redemption (for God would know who would respond and so whose sin to attribute to Christ).  Amyraut was a Calvinist who believed in universal redemption (and was followed by people like Richard Baxter).  However, most Calvinists speak in terms of definite atonement (often unhelpfully labeling it 'limited' atonement).

I have a post on 'Will all people be saved?' posted dated 06/05/2009.
I also have a post 'Do we chose or are we chosen?' dated on 20/11/2008.

Totally Misunderstood Depravity

John Stott writes, "[Total Depravity] ... I suspect is repudiated only by those who misunderstand it. It has never meant that human beings are as depraved as they could possibly be. Such a notion is manifestly absurd and untrue, and is contradicted by our everyday observation. ... No, the 'totality' of our corruption refers to its extent (depraving every part of our humanness), not to its degree (depraving every part of us absolutely). As Dr. J. I. Packer has put it succinctly, on the one hand 'no one is as bad as he or she might be', while on the other 'no action of ours is as good as it should be.'"

Wesley and the cross

I am currently reading a book entitled Arminian Theology, by Roger Olsen. In it he says that John Wesley held to the penal substitution theory of atonement. He writes 'Wesley never tired of describing the great sacrifice of Christ and called it a propitiation of God's wrath, bearing the curse of the law and freeing humans from condemnation by paying the price for sins. These images and metaphors abound in Wesley's sermons. Believers are justified freely by God. Wesley declared, because of the atonement:

His sins, all his sins, in thought, word, and deed, are covered, are blotted out, shall not be remembered or mentioned against him any more than if they had not been. God will not inflict on that sinner what he deserved to suffer because the Son of his love hath suffered for him. And from the time we are "accepted through the beloved," "reconciled to God through his blood," he loves and blesses and watches over us for good, even as if we had never sinned.' [from Wesley's sermon entitled 'Justification by faith']

Will all people be saved?

It would be nice to think that no one goes to hell (universalism). But despite the fact that many have argued that all will one day be saved this is clearly not what the Bible teaches. Numerous passage in the New Testament support the truth that those who reject Christ face the eternal consequences of their decision. For example Paul writes, He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of God and from the majesty of his power ... (2 Thess. 2:8-9). Roger Nicole asks, 'How can a universalist fairly deal with the many Scriptures that show that life's decisions have everlasting and irrevocable consequences in the life to come?'

Indeed it is the person who has revealed most stunningly the love of God, Jesus Christ, that spoke most frequently of the tragic reality for the lost. Jesus speaks in terms of a fiery furnace, a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, of darkness and of being away from the bliss enjoyed by God's people. The fact that Jesus may be using metaphorical language does not take away from the reality that these metaphors are pointing to something truly awful. While God's salvation will not be universal (all people will not be saved) his offer of salvation is universal (God commands all people everywhere to repent, Acts 17:30).

If our Christian lives are consumed simply with seeking the latest experience and being a part of the the Christian scene then we are acting as de-facto universalists who ignore that spiritual need of those that surround us. We have a commission to fulfil!

'If the plight of the unbelievers is what the Bible reveals it to be, it is not an act of love to hide their fate from them [as universalism does]. To do so further blinds them from the remedy God provided. If a person is struck with a deadly disease for which there is a known cure, it is neither wise nor loving to try and convince him that nothing is wrong' (Roger Nicole).

Are we chosen or do we choose?

I see the doctrine of election as one that requires a number of footnotes. By this I mean that there are things we need to keep in mind when we say that the salvation is the result of God’s sovereign choice. As a result I have listed the following four clarifications below.

Firstly, God desires all people to be saved. The Lord . . . is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). [God] who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4). Say to them, ‘As surely as I live,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live’ (Ezekiel 33:11). When we walk down the street we are looking at people that God genuinely wants to rescue.

Secondly, God offers salvation to people. J.I. Packer writes, ‘The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the genuiness of the gospel invitations, or the truth of the gospel promises. Whatever we may believe about election . . . the fact remains that God in the gospel really does offer Christ and promise justification and life to “whosoever will” . . . As God invites all men everywhere to repent, so God invites all men everywhere to come to Christ and find mercy.’ Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13).

Thirdly, people universally reject God and his invitation of salvation. This is because the sinful mind is hostile to God (Romans 8:7). Unless God does a transforming work in our hearts we will never turn to him for forgiveness. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44).

Fourthly, people are accountable for their rejection of God and his gospel. Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper puts it ‘we are lost, not because we could not be saved, but because we would not.’ Similarly J.I. Packer writes, ‘None are shut out from mercy save those who shut themselves out through impenitence and unbelief.’ They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved (2 Thess. 2:10). “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matthew 23:37).

It is with these four clarifications in mind that I state my belief that Romans 9 teaches that God chooses whom he will save. He graciously saves many people who have done nothing to deserve his favour. We are not told why he chooses some and not others—but it is certainly not to do with any merit on their part. Of course the hard part of this teaching is that he does not choose to save all people.

It appears that God will display his glory in showing undeserved mercy to some and deserved judgement to others. While this is an uncomfortable fact one day we will see that in doing this he does what is perfectly good. On that day we will know that the judge of all the earth has done what is right (see Gen. 18:25).

Commenting on Romans 9 John Stott writes, ‘If therefore anybody is lost the blame is theirs, but if anybody is saved, the credit is God’s. The antinomy contains a mystery which our present knowledge cannot solve; but it is consistent with Scripture, history and experience.’ Peter Lewis says the same thing, ‘If a man is saved it is because he has been elected in the love of God to his salvation and if a man is lost it is not because God has predestined him to be lost, but because he has rejected the offered love and salvation of God in Jesus Christ. God is the cause of faith; man is the cause of unbelief.’

Obviously my position on this issue is at odds with the traditional understanding of the Methodist church. With this in mind I wrote to the Secretary of Conference before being ordained in 2003. I met with him and the chairperson of the board of examiners. I hope that I was clear in outlining my position. They seemed happy that I could declare that I believed and preached the doctrines of our church.

Indeed an interesting development has taken place in the last number of years that has a bearing on what is acceptable belief within our denomination. We have signed a covenant with the Church of Ireland. The only issue that appears to remain a stumbling block between the two denominations is the role of bishops in the ordination of ministers. This then implies that an Anglican position on theological issues is acceptable to the Methodist Church in Ireland. The position I hold with regards to election is entirely in line with article 17 of the Anglican Church’s 39 articles.