Going around your elbow to reach your backside

Did you ever pause to consider that the Bible actually tells us: ‘there is no God?’ No really, it does. Psalm 14:1 says: ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ Ah yes, I played a trick: using only part of the verse and ignoring what the verse attempts to teach us about the relationship between a fool and God. My dad, ever one for colorful metaphor, would call this 'going around your elbow to reach your backside.' You might have to think about that for a second, but the point is you're making a task much more difficult. My initial trick isn't too far from what some believers do when they read the Bible. Some well-intentioned Christians focus on a part of the text at the expense of the whole to prove a point. 

I often listen to earnest believers talk about the Bible, noting that they compare a small snippet of the text to their system of theology to demonstrate how their theology accords with Scripture. Isn’t that a bit backwards? Shouldn’t we compare our theology to the Bible and then change our theology accordingly? I would like to humbly submit that we often speak about the Bible from the perspective of systematic theology and don’t allow the Bible to correct our theology. 

The essence of my complaint looks something like this:

Believer 1: The Bible says __x__ and so God must be like __y___.

Believer 2: No, the Bible says __x¹__ and so God must be like __z__.

Believer 1: You’re an idiot.  

Believer 2: At least I’m not a heretic. 

The ‘x’ represents a verse or sometimes part of a verse while ‘y’ represents the correlation in systematic theology. Maybe a Biblical example would also help flesh this out. 

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. (1Jo 5:1 ESV)

The phrase ‘born of God’ is used by some to prove that in the process of salvation, believers take no action for themselves. God produces faith in a person, who then believes. Others reject this opinion, saying that God’s grace allows anyone to believe the gospel message. I suppose for them, this particular passage is more a description of the person who has faith and less a prescription for the process of salvation. This contentious debate is between two systems of theology: Calvinism and Arminianism which has been ongoing since the 1500’s. 

The irony, in which I delight, is simply this: the teaching focus of the verse is that believers should love one another and it has become a point of tension between two systems of theology, arguably chock full of believers! While many times this debate occurs in a loving context, many other times it doesn’t.

Perhaps the church would be well served to spend more time in the whole of the Bible and less time using the parts to prove our theological points. For most systems of theology, God wins at the end of the game and I for one want to make sure I’m pulling my weight and not bickering on the sidelines. While you read the Bible, remember that the chapters and verses are only suggestions and not given by God. Be careful when you ‘prove’ a theological point to consider that the whole of the Bible helps us understand God and not just the snips that we happen to like. 

Hopefully you didn't try going around your elbow to reach your backside. 

Measuring theology

I’m very thankful for the opportunity to be in seminary. While I sometimes wish I had the advantage of youth, as some of my peers do, middle age brings important temperance to youth’s enthusiasm. As my friends and I discuss theological topics, one important fact continues to surface. When you are confronted with a decision about theology: it really depends on who you talk to. Just about every position claims Scriptural authority, interpretational superiority, historical precedent, logical consistency and resonance with real life.

Different theological perspectives rely on divergent interpretations of the same passages of Scripture. These interpretations and their consequences and logical implications become the bricks and mortar of systematic theologies. Many discussions, both lay and professional, take place in the realm of competing systems of theology and not at the level of biblical or exegetical theology. In order to arrive at a conclusion about the competing views of Calvinism and Arminianism, the discussion must move into exegetical and biblical theology.

Three key positions beg for validation from the biblical witness. The Calvinist position understands election as individual and arbitrary, predestination shows God’s meticulous control of all things, and His divine knowledge of the future determines what will or will not happen. As with any theology, problems arise from the consequences of these beliefs. Individual arbitrary election requires compatibilist free will; meticulous sovereignty assigns the cause of evil to God; foreknowledge as foreordination can lead to fatalism. The Calvinist position looks askance at the Arminian understanding of these doctrines and vice versa. For the Arminians, God elects based on foreseen faith, exercises more general sovereignty and knows the future without determining it. These positions attract criticism which posits a diminution of God’s sovereignty. Both perspectives strive to remain true to Scripture and history marshalling ranks of experts both historical and modern to debate, defend and explain the superiority of their position.

My personal perspective on this discussion requires a longer term project. This task starts by collating the competing passages of Scripture, understanding them in context, tracing historical development and discerning the competing interpretations before deciding which set of interpretations resonates best with the entire biblical witness. Perhaps I will be able to incorporate this into my degree program at some point, particularly since time is the graduate student’s most precious resource, even scarcer than money!

Over-awed by God

As John Calvin comments on Scripture and produces his Institutes, a sense of awe and distance pervades his writing. He clearly understands and communicates the ‘transcendence’ of God, who exists beyond our understanding. This pervasive focus on distance represents Calvin’s earnest desire to honor God and understand our proper place before Him. This emphasis minimizes how close God comes to us, His immanence. As Calvin comments on faith, he clearly expresses our weakness in light of God’s majesty.

"It is indeed true that the world considers it very strange when we say that no one can believe in Christ except the one to whom that is particularly given. But this is partly because people do not consider how high the heavenly wisdom is and how difficult it is to grasp, and they do not consider their own ignorance and weakness in grasping God’s mysteries; partly also it is because they pay no attention to the resoluteness of heart which is the principal part of faith."

Calvin recognizes how difficult it is for his contemporary audience to accept this idea. He explains that they do not understand how far above us God’s wisdom is and the intense stupidity that afflicts mankind. These two positions demonstrate underlying influences in his thought: his theological predecessors and contemporary opponents.

As Calvin engages the achievement-oriented Roman Catholic Church, he reacts strongly to any form of human works. In this reaction, he follows Augustine, who engaged the excessive reliance on human achievement taught by Pelagius. Both of these men focus on the transcendence of God at the expense of His immanence. They diminish human ability to the point that man has no participation in the process of salvation unless enabled by God to hear and respond by faith.

Thus opens the wormhole of Calvinistic determinism. As I gaze into the swirling vortex of ideas about the rule of God over creation and man’s ability or inability there are two things that I want to stop and consider: who are the theologians who have gone before me and engaged these same ideas? Writing about the tension between the manner of God’s sovereignty and the extent of human ability has destroyed forests of trees for paper and dried up rivers of ink. Who are these historical sources and what were the tensions they felt? Asking the historical question leads to the contemporary: Who are my opponents and why do I oppose them? Both Calvin and Augustine before him responded to opponents in their time and culture based on their understanding of Scripture and in opposition to ideas that assaulted the Christianity of the time.

I think the first sentence of Calvin quoted above pertains directly to contemporary outreach. We have a dual responsibility to explain God (as best we can) to the world around us and to encourage believers to reach out to those outside Christianity. Along the way, a self-conscious understanding of our forebears and opponents may help us maintain the tension between immanence and transcendence: the distance and closeness of God. While I respect both Calvin and Augustine’s high view of God, I don’t want to diminish how low He stoops to interact with humanity.