Repost from the great crash 0f 08
I have heard this since I was a very young Christian. It seemed somewhat reasonable as it was explained to me by pastors in sermons and by Christians as they explained the seriousness of sin. Their theology goes something like this:
All sin is so bad that even the smallest of sins deserves eternal punishment in hell. It does not matter if it is losing your temper at a lousy referee, not sharing your Icee, or speeding 36 in a 35, every sin deserves eternal torment in Hell. Why? Although it may seem unreasonable to us (as depraved as we are), it is fitting for a perfectly holy God who cannot be in the sight of sin, no matter how insignificant this sin might seem to us. In fact, there is no sin that is insignificant to God. Because He is infinitely holy, beyond our understanding, all sin is infinitely offensive to Him. Therefore, the punishment for all sin must be infinite.
I have to be very careful here since I am going against what has become the popular evangelical way to present the Gospel, but I don’t believe this is true. Not only do I not buy it, I think this, like the idea that all sins are equal in the sight of God, is damaging to the character of God, the significance of the cross, and I believe it trivializes sin. Let me explain.
First off, I don’t know of a passage in the Bible that would suggest such a radical view. It would seem that people make this conclusion this way:
Premise 1: Hell is eternal
Premise 2: All people that go there are there for eternity
Premise 3: Not all people have committed the same number or the same degree of sins
Conclusion: All sin, no matter how small, will send someone to hell for all eternity
The fallacy here is that this syllogism is a non-sequitur (the conclusion does not follow from the premises). Could it be that people are in Hell for all eternity based upon who they are rather than what they have done?
Think about this. Many of us believe that Christ’s atonement was penal substitution. This means that it was a legal trade. God counted the sufferings of Christ and that which transpired on the Cross as payment for our sins, each and every one. Therefore, we believe that Christ took the punishment that we deserved. But there is a problem. We are saying that we deserve eternal Hell for one single sin, no matter how small. I don’t know about you, but I have committed enough sins to give me more than my share of life sentences. I have committed sins of the”insignificant” variety (I speed everyday) and significant variety (no description necessary!). So, if Christ were only to take my penalty and if I deserve thousands upon thousands of eternities in hell, why didn’t Christ spend at least one eternity in Hell? Why is it that he was off the Cross in six hours, payment made in full? Combine my sentence with your sentence. Then combine ours with the cumulative sentences of all believers of all time. Yet Christ only suffers for a short time? How do we explain this?
You may say to me that I cannot imagine the intensity of suffering that Christ endured while he was on the cross. You may say that the mysterious transaction that took place was worse than eternity in Hell. I would give you the first, but I will have to motivate you to reconsider the second. Think about it. Do you really believe that the person who has been in hell for 27 billion years with 27 billion more times infinity would not look to the sufferings of Christ and say, “You know what? Christ’s six hours of suffering was bad. It is indeed legendary. But I would trade what I am going through any day for six hours, no matter how horrifying it would be.” You see, what makes hell so bad is not simply the intensity of suffering, but the duration. Christ did not suffer eternally, so there must be something more to this substitution idea and there must be something more to sin.
I believe that Christ did pay our penalty. I believe that hell is eternal. But I don’t believe that one sin sends people to hell for eternity. Sin is trivialized in our day. Sin is first something that we do, not something that we are. In other words, people think of God sitting on the throne becoming enraged (in a holy sort of way) each time that someone breaks the speed limit. It is only the cross of Christ that makes Him look past the eternally damning sin and forgive us. Don’t think that I am undermining the severity of sin, but I am trying to bring focus to the real problem that has infected humanity since the Garden.
The real problem is that we are at enmity with God. From the moment we are born, we inherit the traits of our father Adam. This infectious disease is called sin. This disease issues forth into a disposition toward God that causes us to begin life with our fist in the air, not recognizing His love for us or authority over us. It is rebellion. While this rebellion does act according to its nature, the problem is in the disposition, not so much the acts. When we sin, we are just acting according to the dictates of our corrupt nature. But the worst of it—the worst sin of all—is that we will never lower our fist to God. We are “by nature, children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and as a leopard cannot change his spots, so we cannot change our rebellious disposition toward our Creator (Jer. 13:23).
This disposition is that of a fierce enemy that cannot do anything but fight against its foe. Paul describes this:
Romans 8:7-8 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
We are of the “flesh,” therefore we commit deeds according to the flesh. Does this mean that the person in this state does no good at all? Well, it depends on what you mean by “good.” Can an enemy of God love his neighbor? Of course. Enemies of God can and do all sorts of acts that the Bible would consider virtuous. But from the standpoint of their relationship with God, they cannot do any good at all (Rom. 3:12). Giving a drink to someone who is thirsty with the left hand while having your right hand in a fist clinched toward heaven does not count as “good” before God. Why? Because we are in rebellion against Him. This is our problem.
This I propose is the only sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity.
It is important to understand that hell not is filled with people who are crying out for God’s mercy, constantly hoping for a second chance. People are in hell because they have the same disposition toward God that they had while they were walking the earth. They do not suddenly, upon entrance into Hell, change their nature and become sanctified. They still hate God. People are in hell for all eternity, not because they floated a stop sign, but because their fists are still clinched toward God. They are not calling on His mercy. They are not pleading for a second chance. They are in hell for all eternity because that is where they would rather be. It is their nature. As C.S. Lewis once said, “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.”
Christ, on the other hand, was the second Adam. He did not identify with the first either in disposition or choice. He gained the right to be called the second Adam who would represent His people (Rom. 5:12ff). He is not spending eternity in Hell because he was never infected with the sinful nature which caused him to be at enmity with God. His fist was never clinched toward the heavens.
Will one white-lie send someone to Hell for all eternity? No! To say otherwise trivializes sin and makes God an overly sensitive cosmic torture monger. Sin does send people to Hell. People will be punished for their sins accordingly. But the sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity is the sin of perpetual rebellion.
462 replies to ""One White Lie Will Send You to Hell For All Eternity" . . . and other stupid statments"
Cheryl and others:
First, I’m sorry if I’ve come off as arrogant in mentioning the explicit meaning of verses. I’m not assuming that the explicit meaning is available without careful study and interpretation, and I’m sorry I came across that way.
Second, I won’t ever look down on you simply because you don’t agree with me, whether or not I’ve made a good argument. I’ve said this before, but I’m impressed with Cheryl’s merciful heart and John’s willingness to study the other side, even when he’s highly suspicious of it. This will always be what I know about you two — never that you happened to disagree with me.
I hope I manage to leave anything near as good an impression on you as you’ve left on me.
-Wm
Thank you William.
I shouldn’t have said everything I did in my comment to you either– that last line, should have been left out altogether I believe.
Frankly, I had been having a rough day when I wrote that note. Two people had gotten quite irate with me in two separate conversations because they had been having a bad day already. And I had sort of had it. Guess I need to join the club over on the taking another look at sanctification thread too!
All I said is that I’m not required to change my opinion because you post a list of Bible references — that certainly doesn’t imply that YOU should change your opinion whenever you post a list of verses :-).
Even if I proved that none of your verses supported your opinion, I’d still bear the burden of actually proving there were verses that supported my opinions.
That’s just way too strong of a claim. Ignoring the billions of uninformed and untaught Christians, the vast majority who believe as you do believe in a modern Roman Catholic context, not a Protestant one, and that’s incompatible with most of the rest of your soteriology.
Argument by popularity is usually a weak argument, but it’s especially bad when the majority of your supporters actually disagree with you as well as me.
Still responding slowly — I’ve got a baby in one arm.
-Wm
How can you respond at all with a baby in one arm? You must be a better one armed typist than I am!
I love that verse — it’s a good reason to memorize all of Romans 6. There are two pertinent comments in there: first, we are to count ourselves dead to sin, which means we are to have the attitude of being dead (even if we don’t have the reality). The interesting thing is that this doesn’t say we’re dead to sin — it says to think about ourselves as though we were. And yet in Rom 6:2, less than 10 verses before, Paul implies that we are dead to sin. So why should he tell us to pretend when he’s previously told us that we are?
The answer is that Rom 6:2 is not an indicative statement saying that we are dead to sin; it’s a question setting the direction of the teaching. We are not yet dead to sin, but our baptism represents our death with Christ, and we will one day be resurrected to new life. So considering oneself as being dead to sin is directing one’s mind to the reality of our position and future with Christ, rather than our present, obvious besetting by sin.
This reading doesn’t support or oppose Calvinism (I don’t believe that it’s a real TULIP prooftext, nor the following part about slavery to sin), and I’m sure you could affirm this reading of Rom 6 if you desired. But neither does it deny the reading of “dead in sin” that Calvinists see in Eph 2, contrary to your claims.
-Wm
Cheryl, I admit it’s not easy. I didn’t type any of the BIG replies, and I certainly didn’t do any exegesis (that requires flipping among web pages to get to my Bible tools).
-Wm
With respect to the reference to the 1 billion plus Christians who do not follow the unique interpretations of TULIP Calvinism, neither Cherylu nor I were asserting that the truth of our statements were established by the larger numbers and so neither of us committed the fallacy of populism. In my case I referred to the numbers to indicate why it was clear that I was referring to a particular understanding of regeneration (Calvinist pre-faith regeneration) rather than to regeneration in general. In Cherylu’s case, she referred to the numbers to indicate that the Calvinist interpretation is not necessarily the most obvious one, nor one that it can simply be justified by claiming that it is the explicit literal or natural meaning. The fact that so many interpret it differently belies that claim. Indeed, in line with Calvin’s claim that the Spirit is crucial to understanding and interpreting Scripture, one would be justified in asserting that the activity of the Spirit has led the greater proportion of Christians into a true understanding of those verses and that it is the minority Calvinists who are resisting the Spirit’s leading. However, such a direct mystical appeal to essentially “the Spirit led me to this interpretation” is not susceptible to direct examination or comparison (how can one compare their experience to another’s? How can one be certain that one is being led by the Spirit into a particular interpretation?), and so it is not useful for settling interpretive disagreements.
Regards,
#John
William,
Going along with John’s last post regarding regeneration coming before faith, you made the statement, “the vast majority who believe as you do believe in a modern Roman Catholic context, not a Protestant one, and that’s incompatible with most of the rest of your soteriology.”
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I will have to contest that claim. I wll be 60 years old in Jan–am telling on myself here now!–and have been around Christian people, churches, and Christian teaching almost all of my life although when I was a child we were not able to attend church regularly. But I still had a lot of teaching during that time. At various times in life I have attended Lutheran churches, Assembly of God, Foursquare, Christian Missionary Alliance, two different nondenominaitional churches–one extremely conservative and the other hyper charismatic, attended a Lutheran Bible school for two years, and you know what? In all of that time I had never once heard that regeneration preceded faith!! The first time I ever heard or read that concept was about a year and a half ago and at that time I read it on another Calvinist blog.
So, I don’t at all believe that most protestants have the view that you do on this subject. If you have statistics or something to prove otherwise, I will accept your claim.
Cheryl, John: we’ve been going back and forth for a while, and I’ve really found it motivating in my Bible study to have this goal. I’d like to continue, but it would be nice to stop using “Parchment and Pen” for our own debate.
I therefore created a blog named “Exegetical Debate“, and I’d like to know whether you two would like to join me as coauthors. The rules would be simple: exegesis goes into posts, comments on the exegeses go into comments. One passage per post, always.
I’ve made one post, based on my brief Eph2 exegesis from the Doubt thread.
Please let me know what you think, or email me at wtanksleyjr at Google’s mail service. I’ll need your email address to add you as a contributor. I currently have the comments locked only to contributors; we can discuss that policy, and I’ll happily lighten up (I’m strict so we don’t get spam).
Doing this would make our debates a lot more relaxed, I think — there’ll be no need to rush to reply. Nor, by the way, will there be any obligation on any of you.
I hope this doesn’t look like a spam; my hope is that this will reduce comment clutter on this blog :-).
-Wm
William,
Thanks for the invite. Will have to get back to you with my answer. Not sure at the moment about doing that.
Your time in the Lutheran church, one of the most influential in the United States, should have included instruction in their doctrine of regeneration by grace alone. The other churches you mentioned, to the extent I know, do believe faith precedes regeneration; but the largest congregations in the United States, including the current largest (Southern Baptist) follow the doctrine of regeneration preceding faith.
In the United States, much of this is a relic of the First Great Awakenings, which were largely driven by Calvinism; more recently, the Second Great Awakening was something of a reaction to failures within the Calvinistic churches, and so was dominated by people like Finney, who held beliefs that make yours look Calvinistic (I’m strongly tempted to call him semi-Pelegian).
Of course, this is only in the US; outside of that, the situation is often grossly complicated by political churches. It’s hard to say what a specific British Anglican believes (although a British Methodist will make an argument clearly on your side), and although I could count most of the state churches in Europe on my side, I don’t know how many of them are actually peopled by Christians in any real sense (not because they have bad doctrine, but because the people go only because their society/state requires it).
In the final analysis, though, the argument of “more people believe” is a red herring. It only matters if nobody (or only heretics) has believed my doctrine — if I were innovating something. As it stands, the doctrine of regeneration is solidly supported in Church history, albeit not during the Middle Ages; it’s not my innovation.
In all of that time I had never once heard that regeneration preceded faith!!
Your statement that I quoted is one I’ve heard a lot, sadly. Most churches in fact fail entirely to teach their own doctrines; they allow people to teach who don’t even know what the doctrines are. It’s one thing to allow an Arminian to teach on Arminianism; it’s totally different to have a teacher whose doctrine is totally unknown and unchecked by the church, and who (it turns out) isn’t even teaching doctrine, but only assumptions. As I said, this statement should be a shame to your Lutheran congregations.
-Wm
Billy Graham was once asked by reporters, which of all the different denominations and Christian faith traditions has, in your opinion, the best grasp of the Christian faith? (paraphrased).
He answered, “The Lutherans. And they are probably the worst at conveying it to their people.”
In my years in the Lutheran church, even in Bible school which was a strictly Lutheran school, as far as I can remember at all, there was no mention of regeneration coming before faith. It was, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Acts 16:31. Regeneration or the new birth, justification, and initial sanctification were all seen as part of the salvation process and came when a person had faith.
I knew about Calvinism and teachings on election many years ago. However, as I said, it was only very recently that I ever ran across the concept of regeneration before faith. When I first read that I couldn’t see where in the world the idea came from because I saw no Scriptural basis for it at all.
Cheryl: on the meaning of “hate”: note that in both of these context the thing being noted about the person hating is a verb, an action. There is a a manner of behavior in which the actor is said to hate the object; God “hated” Esau by rejecting his inheritance, even though he was a true child of Abraham and Isaac, both of whom were given the promise. This doesn’t mean that God’s limbic system produces the chemicals correlated with the emotion of hate in humans (of course); it means that God acted against Esau by rejecting him.
The same is true of God’s love. It’s not an “aw shucks” feeling God has about everyone (or anyone). It’s not God considering others as more important than Himself. It’s a verb, and God’s love is displayed in actions.
Again, this means that if God’s love is displayed in His every action, it’s displayed in his rejecting (hating) Esau, and in the very action of throwing an unrepentant sinner into hellfire.
But the only way to understand this is to admit that God’s love doesn’t extend to every person in the same way. God does not love the unrepentant sinner by saving him; He loves him by demonstrating longsuffering, by continuing his existence, by setting limits on his depravity. No doubt there are other ways in which God shows love to the unrepentant sinner.
-Wm
Here is the best sermon (Lutheran) I have ever heard on the subject:
http://lightofthemaster.com/Sermons/Entries/2008/3/4__The_Holy_Spirit.html
It’s not too long and well worth the listen.
William,
That doesn’t change the problem of there being no way to comprehend any definition of love which some of us firmly believe is a characteristic that is at the very heart of God’s being, decreeing from all eternity that most of His creation is going to be unrepentant sinners that are going to hell. That is one of the major “rubs”–but only one of them–that I see in the the Calvinist understanding that is represented by TULIP.
William,
In thinking about it, I don’t think that I can probably be a contributor on a blog. Although the idea certainly has it’s merits for the reasons you want to do it. I think in my mind, it would put a lot more pressure on me. Here I can walk away from a conversation any time that I need to for whatever reason, whether that is time constraint or if I come to the conclusion that the topic or conversation at hand is just not something I should continue commenting on. I don’t think I would feel that same freedom on a blog where I was a contributor.
But I do want to thank you again for the offer. Maybe #John will be able to take you up on it. I would find it interesting to read the exchange between the two of you if he does!
steve martin,
I wanted to listen to the sermon you linked to. However, that link just took me to a page with another page for sermons listed. I scanned through a few of them and didn’t see the one you were referring to. Can you be more specific? Thanks!
cheryl,
Sorry it didn’t work.
Try this link:
http://theoldadam.wordpress.com/
and then go to the right side of the page and look for ‘A Lenten sermon ‘I believe that I Cannot Believe’
I hope that works.
Although I would hope otherwise, I think your gut feeling makes sense — going through the hassle of signing up as an editor does seem to create at least a *feeling* of obligation. I need this for the opposite reason — posting to comments thread means that you have to comment soon, since posting to an old comment thread means that nobody will see it.
I’m going to modify the blog so that anyone can sign up (anonymously) to post comments on it, so that you (or anyone else who’s not a goof-off spammer) can post comments if you *want*. I think your comments here have been valuable as you’ve provided feedback and moderation to some of my sillier ideas, so perhaps you can contribute in that way.
No rush, anyhow; if nobody steps up to provide “the other side” exegeses, then I don’t know whether I’ll bother doing anything more with this.
Anyhow, I like my idea (duh :-), and hope someone will see it the same way: a chance to post exegeses at a slower and more considered pace than can ever be achieved in a comment thread like this.
-Wm
One last try, then: Biblical AGAPE Love is an action. It’s not a feeling. The reason that God, who is AGAPE, can look “forward” in time and see people being damned to hell — and he can actively damn them to hell, and create them even though he knows with total certainty that’s their fate — is that He has other ways to AGAPEW love them.
This is not a Calvinistic doctrine (and I deliberately didn’t invoke anything about God’s eternal decree). This is fundamentally inherent in the idea that God is the all-knowing eternal creator and the judge. And it has exactly the same impact on the meaning of αγάπη love as the Calvinistic doctrine of God’s eternal decree does. The only way to escape this is to claim that God either did not create, or is not all knowing.
-Wm
You’re right that Scripture must be harmonized; this can be seen mainly in passages which make perfect sense by themselves, such as the resurrection narratives, which have a slightly different meaning when read together. There’s also a very important rule that no doctrine should ever be based on a single passage.
But in all the cases you list, the foolish interpretation is avoided not by comparison with unconnected passages, but rather by carefully studying the passage itself, in its own context. The passage itself is meaningful; you don’t have to look at a completely unrelated passage by a different author at a different time to make sense of it. You may have to think, but you don’t have to be knowledgeable of literature in a way that the original hearers or readers were not. (For example, the people who heard Jesus’ difficult saying didn’t know about 1 John 4:8.) All some of them had heard was what He was saying right then; and some of them followed Him.
If this is not true, then the New Testament would have been useless to the new Church until it was complete and canonized; but this is not true.
-Wm
William,
I will have to check out your blog if you are allowing commentor’s who are not official contributor’s. It will be interesting to see how it goes!
And maybe the reason we are having such a circular discussion regarding God’s decree of some to hell is that you are speaking more of His foreknowledge–knowing what kind of people they will be–at least it seems like that may be the case in your last comment. On the other hand, I have been speaking of what some Calvinists seem to be stating– that God makes that eternal decree quite arbitrarily–you will go to hell when you die–end of discussion. And then gives them the personality and character to see that it has to happen. Does that make any sense? I’m not certain I stated that very well.
I still believe that if someone read some of those verses today that I spoke of above as examples of needing to harmonize Scripture, they would come away with a very wrong idea about what was being said if they didn’t know what the rest of the Word taught about God’s way.
For example, the one about hating father and mother. If that was the only verse you had ever read in the Bible, what would you think God was teaching?
And anytime there are Scriptures that seem to contradict each other, they certainly need to be harmonized. That was what I was referring to particularly.
Re post 64 and others related to God loving/hating Esau
Love and hate in Hebrew are also used idiomatically to indicate “choose” or “reject” and in those roles do not have any of the meanings the English speakers associate with the words “love” and “hate”. Biblical Hebrew does not have a way of making comparables that is directly translatable to the English words and grammatical structure. Rather than saying “more than” or “less than” as we would in English, it may use extremes, e.g., using “first” and “last” rather than “first” and “second”. Thus loving one and hating the other does not mean that the “other” is “hated” but only that the first is loved more than the second. The notes to the NET Bible put it this way, ““and I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.” The context indicates this is technical covenant vocabulary in which “love” and “hate” are synonymous with “choose” and “reject” respectively (see Deut 7:8; Jer 31:3; Hos 3:1; 9:15; 11:1).”
The Billy Graham website also puts it into more plain language, “When they are used in juxtaposition, as they are in this passage, a vital point must not be overlooked: The Hebrew verb translated “love” means having a positive relationship in which the parties have the benefit of all the decisions, actions, attitudes, thoughts, responses and feelings that accompany such a relationship. The Hebrew word for “hate” indicates a nonrelationship (or a negative relationship) with none of the decisions, actions, attitudes, thoughts, responses and feelings that accompany a positive relationship.”
Paul in Romans is referring back to Malachi chapter 1. Malachi also has a peculiar structure, different from the other prophets, in which he states a claim from God, questioning of or objections to it, and deals with those objections. Understanding Malachi helps make it clear that Esau and Jacob are stand ins or representative heads of nations and that individual election is not in view in Romans.
Regards,
#John
#John,
Do you see the example of Pharoah in Romans 9 as representative of the nation of Egypt also? And can you tell me how you come to that conclusion, assuming that you do.
The whole context of the chapter does seem to be dealing with nations–Jews and Gentiles.
For that post I deliberately limited myself to topics on which I knew we all agreed — God’s omniscience through time (not the same as God’s foreknowledge, by the way), God’s righteousness, and God’s creative power. My point was to show that even assuming only common premises, you have to admit that God’s Love doesn’t play out in the same actions for every human. Therefore, 1 John 4:8 doesn’t prove anything about whether or not God can act by decreeing people’s salvation, because it only addresses God’s love, not God’s decrees. You’ll have to cite a passage that actually limits God’s decree — or get me to admit that there’s no support for claiming that God’s decree has to do with salvation (I admit I haven’t attempted to support that claim yet).
Right now, though, we’re looking at 1 John 4:8, and your claims that it supports your case just don’t play out. It just doesn’t address your case at all, unless you deny omniscience or creative power.
-Wm
I’m writing an exegesis on Romans 6 on this topic (to be posted on my blog). Your claims are simply unsupported by the text of Romans 9; your claims about Romans in general are correct, of course, but you completely fail to look at what Romans 9 actually says. It’s an example of not seeing the trees for the forest.
So if I may put Billy Graham’s plain language into even more plain language: God’s hate is not the same thing as God’s love. The two are exclusive; God’s hate excludes God’s love in that specific manner for that specific person. (It’s impossible, I think, to exclude God’s love in every way — but because God says he hated, we know that He excluded at least Esau from that positive relationship with Him.)
Thus, not everyone is shown God’s love in the same degree and/or manner. Some are excluded from some aspects of it.
This is obvious — some humans never hear the gospel, so how can they believe?
-Wm
Cheryl, I think I went to far. You’re right that some of the verses you listed (as well as others, of course) certainly need to be harmonized; but my point is that the harmonization won’t reveal the meaning, but will only warn you of an invalid exegesis. Further exegesis is the only way to determine the actual meaning.
-Wm
Sorry William,
In my mind, and obviously in John’s too, the passage does support our claim. Our claim is:
1. God states He is Love. It is a very attribute of His character. Part of His essence if you will.
2. Since He is Love in this manner, everything He does has to be done in love.
3. There is no way that one can logically or by any twist of the imagination see a way that the essence of Love could determine before all of creation that the largest share of His creation are going to go to hell for an eternity of the utmost horror because: a. He made that decision, b. He gave them only desires that would lead them there and make them deserve to go there, and c. He gave them absolutely no possibility of the above scenario being changed by anything they ever could do or think. It was set with finalty before the creation of the earth.
How in the world does that scheme of things fit with the very essence of love?
And yes. there is a great difference between God sending people to hell when He has loved them and given them the opportunity of redemption in Jesus and they have steadfastly refused the offer, and God sending people to hell without them ever being given that opportunity at all because either: a. He created them so that they would go there and gave them the character that would require them to go there, or b. He didn’t even die for them in the first place–he only died for the ones He chose for heaven as some explain the L in TULIP. (Limited Atonement)
William,
“Thus, not everyone is shown God’s love in the same degree and/or manner. Some are excluded from some aspects of it.”
Our point is that to show love for the speck of time that is a man’s life on this earth as compared to an unending eternity of absolute torture in the Lake of Fire with no opportunity to have that decree that was made before creation changed, a place Jesus said we are to avoid at all costs, really doesn’t seem like love at all does it? It starts sounding, in the long run, a whole lot more like cruelty of the utmost kind rather than the actions of a being who has defined His very essence as Love. And if Jesus says we are to avoid that place at all costs, something just doesn’t seem right about Him dooming the largest share of His creation to that place and not giving them a chance to avoid it, does it?
That is one of the biggest problems I see with Calvinism–God seems to totally contradict Himself in this theology.
One more point: you said, “the harmonization won’t reveal the meaning, but will only warn you of an invalid exegesis. Further exegesis is the only way to determine the actual meaning.”
That was our point exactly. Harmonization may show that there has been an improper exegesis here!
Again, your point as you’ve stated it isn’t even remotely supported by 1 John 4:8. There’s nothing there, and you haven’t shown any other passage that would modify the meaning at all.
My reading of 1 John 4:8 doesn’t violate harmonization in any way; if I have problems, they must be in other passages.
Your only other argument is purely philosophical, and very extreme; I’ve clearly shown that if your argument holds, it forces a contradiction in doctrines we all agree on. (Note that the Mormon who dropped in here pointed that out before I did, although he wanted to argue against me.)
-Wm
Re post 278
Tanksley misses the point entirely. The use of love and hate in both Romans and Malachi has nothing to do with hating at all. It is merely the Hebrew way of comparison. In Malachi, the people are suffering under foreign rule and wonder if God loves them. God says yes, I love you (“Jacob”) more than your brother nation Edom (“Esau”). Edom has lived in sin and I will therefore destroy them. God chose to love Jacob more than Esau before they were born. There is nothing in that about election for heaven or hell at all. It’s about choosing Jacob/Israel from all other nations and choosing to show more love and favour on them than all others. Malachi argues that this is still true even though the current circumstances don’t seem to indicate it.
1 John 4:8
The Biblical description and characterization of love is entirely inconsistent with the Calvinist description of God’s love, which is one reason why that verse is not only important, but also why it works out to entirely different conclusions / results in the TULIP Calvinist system versus all others. The other reason why the verse is important, along with John’s other descriptions of God is to indicate that love is an essential characteristic of God, rather than an accidental or contingent characteristic of God. Wrath is not an essential characteristic of God and did not exist prior to sin. Before creation there was only love among the persons of the triune God. Consequently, God has no need to display or show his wrath against anything and no need to create something on which to display his wrath. That whole concept is a reading into scripture of a logical part of the TULIP Calvinist system of theology. That is, as one works out the implications of TULIP one finds that humans were all created in sin which can only be explained in that system by postulating that they were created in sin in order to display God’s wrath.
Non-TULIP systems have entirely different explanations, ones more consistent with the revelation of God.
regards,
#John
William,
I think as far as the love verse goes, I give up! That doesn’t mean I have changed my mind in the slightest. It just means that we have tried to explain in every way possible what to us is the “explicit, literal meaning” of that verse and are getting nowhere in getting you to see what we are saying. So I think I’m done trying–at least at this point.
First of all, that last sentence is both important and true. The blessing that was passed to Jacob and that passed entirely over Esau wasn’t an election to heaven or hell, but an election to carry forward the covenant promises to Abraham. And as Paul said in Romans 3 and 9, what benefit is that? None whatsoever; it’s utterly irrelevant (note: sarcasm alert! Paul said the opposite).
The point you’re making EXACTLY matches the point I’m making, except that you’re minimizing the importance of the “hate” to Esau, who did not wind up with a lesser version of the covenant, but with no covenant whatsoever. Jacob’s descendants often rebelled against God, but He provided a remnant who would carry on His plan; Esau’s descendants rebelled and were wiped out utterly (compare Ishmael, who received no covenental blessing, but wasn’t “hated” to the extent that his line was wiped out).
But let’s ignore that minimization, and admit that Esau was loved less (surely something on which we completely agree). That’s my point: not all people and things are loved in the same way by God. Jacob was given the promises, Esau was given nothing; Pharaoh was raised up, but only to serve as a vessel of wrath; Ishmael was given a lesser promise than Isaac, and no share in the covenant.
You want to absolutize a single phrase entirely out of context, and use it to determine boundaries on God’s proper behavior in a way that the passage in question doesn’t mention in any way. When we love each other in accordance with 1 John 4, we are following God’s example of love, not as expressed toward the world or the Son or Esau, but as expressed toward us. Yes, God loves because God is Love; but this alone doesn’t tell us that God can’t do things that seem “mean” to us.
And that’s the fundamental argument you offer: it seems mean to you that God would plan salvation rather than allowing it to “just happen” according to the will of people. You don’t have any Biblical support for this; it’s just bedrock assumption for you, and you won’t even argue it at a philosophical level (and you cannot possibly argue it at a Biblical level!).
Nor will you admit that there’s a parallel to other accusations that God is acting “mean” in some human sense, as with the accusation that God’s being mean to sentence people to hell forever “for a white lie.” The fact that this is built on a misunderstanding of why hell…
(Sorry, I got cut.)
…Nor will you admit that there’s a parallel to other accusations that God is acting “mean” in some human sense, as with the accusation that God’s being mean to sentence people to hell forever “for a white lie.” The fact that this is built on a misunderstanding of why hell is everlasting doesn’t stop the accusation.
-Wm
Re Tanksley’s post 285
The point is that there is no emotional, antagonistic or destructive significance whatsoever to the “hate” towards Esau. It is purely a Hebrew language idiom of comparison. Comparison only. The significance in Malachi, which is echoed in Paul, is that God chose the nation of Israel. Malachi could have used “hate” with respect to any and all other nations, because Israel is favoured above all others. The destruction experienced by Edom does not result from the fact that Israel was chosen, but from its sin. Moreover, the election in both cases is soley corporate and national, not individual at all.
On 1 John4:8
Noting that John’s argument in 1 John 4:8 depends upon the proposition that God is love, where love is stated as being an essential characteristic of God, is not pulling it out of context. John’s argument depends on the truth of the proposition that God is love, that love is an essential characteristic of God. That principle must stand alone, on its own two feet, for the rest of John’s argument to work. So, if it is thus true that God is love, where love is to be understood as an essential characterist of God, then the truth of that proposition can underpin other arguments as well.
When John states that God is love, he is not stating that God is love in so far as He shows love to us, or only to the extent of brotherly love. John himself is making an absolute statement about the nature of God and is arguing from that absolute to the more limited aspect of the problem before him in that church (the actions of brothers to each other). John has witnessed the entire ministry of Jesus-his actions and teachings of and about love. John in that passage is not placing any restrictions on the parameters of the characteristic of love that he assigns to God and uses the anarthrous construction to do so.
There is nowhere in the Bible that indicates that destining someone to destruction is love. Rather, the Bible indicates that such things are terrible, and grievous. To call such an action love is not only contrary to the Biblical but perverse. Furthermore, it is a constant theme in God’s revelation that moral responsibility arises from individual choices to do sin where that individual could do otherwise (i.e., not sin). It would be morally evil for a person, an image of God, to be created whose destiny was only ever hell.
God does prophesy the destruction of the evil, so it is not contrary to His love character to do so. God is also holy, and nothing the falls short of the mark can exist with Him in the kingdom He gives to Christ. But the damnation does not flow to the evil ones from His love, rather the death of Christ flows from His love to the evil ones-while we were sinners and the enemies of God He in His love sent Christ to die for us, that is, all human enemies/sinners.
BTW, I signed up to follow your blog, and will be emailing you.
regards,
#John
Comparison between what? Jacob and Esau? No… Comparison between God’s treatment of one versus the other. And not different degrees of treatment, but different kinds of treatment. Jacob God befriended; Esau God abandoned.
Saying it’s comparison only is to miss the entire meaning, not only by missing what’s being compared, but also to miss the import of the comparison.
He could not have used “hate” in the same way for the Edomites as for the Ishmaelites, could he? The Ishmaelites God left with a part of Abram’s promise, even if they didn’t get to carry the covenant. The Edomites got nothing, and they got it taken from them even though they had every human right to it (unlike the Ishmaelites).
That’s true, but the Israelites were not sinless. The destruction of Edom could have been justly carried out on Israel, but because God chose them, God allowed a remnant to survive His judgments.
I’m writing up a study of Rom 9 in this regards. I think you’ve got a tough row to hoe here… Paul is very clear that he’s talking about election of individuals, and he uses his examples to prove over and ever again that being part of the chosen line doesn’t make you chosen (“not all of Israel are Israel”), and that God’s chosen are chosen out of the descendants of the line as well as out of the Gentiles. The whole point of Romans is that there’s no corporate body that has a right to be saved by God (i.e. is elect); nor is there any unelect corporate body. God elects only those whom He wills to save.
Thus, Romans is all about individual election.
So you say; yet God keeps doing it. Look at the Edomites. Compare the Hebrews, who deserved the same treatment, but got saved. Compare ourselves, who offer 3000 children to Moloch every day.
Thank you so much. I can, if you’d like, give you full editorial rights on the blog (I only need your email address), and we can reach a consensus on how to carry on a proper exegetical exploration. Or you can just comment.
-Wm
That’s not the question. The reason we know that the Father’s drawing is irresistible isn’t that there’s a specific irresistible word being used; the reason we know is because of the context, in which Christ explains over and over that without the Father’s action nobody comes to Christ, and each one given the Father’s action always comes to Christ, and will be raised on the last day.
In John 12:32, on the other hand, the context is that some God-fearing Gentiles sought to see Jesus; He preached briefly to them, God spoke to endorse Him, and then He hid himself from them. While He preached, He made the promise that after He was “lifted up” He would draw “all men”. Before Christ died His ministry was only to the Jews — a point He’d made several times before. After He’d died His work applied to all men, and He would draw all men (Jews and Greek) to Him.
The simple fact that two passages use the same word doesn’t mean the passages mean the exact same thing by it. Close context is more important than remote context, and in this case the close context of Christ hiding himself from the Gentiles helps make it clear that this particular action is a promise to the Gentiles that His ministry will later on expand to all men.
-Wm
Sorry, and you’re right, it was unclear. I think the worst word was “miracle”. The rest was pretty unclear too.
Libertarian Free Will says that our desires are set by our own choice; but in reality, we choose according to our desires, rather than desiring according to our choice (consider, for example, addictions and habits). Therefore, LFW implies that we somehow set our desires (and our choices) without prior cause. Calling that a miracle is an error (blush), but calling it “magical” isn’t a bad description. There’s no possible explanation for it; it just _happens_.
This is not part of TULIP or compatiblism; it’s fatalism. Compatiblism holds that God did not necessarily ordain our desires; He simply created them, just as He created our bodies and our circumstances. The reason we don’t change them isn’t that God blocks us from changing them; it’s that because they’re OUR desires, we don’t WANT to change them.
It’s just part of the definition of a desire. The only way we could want to change them is if we had a stronger, more core desire that ran the other way. And we don’t.
-Wm
Okay, our desires are formed by some combination of the following:
1. Supernatural injection into our infant soul.
2. Part of our heredity (genetics, traducianism, whatever).
3. Brought by our environment (parental habits, teaching, propaganda, etc.).
4. Personal training (habit-breaking, habit-forming, Bible study, etc.).
God can (and may) clearly control the first three. It’s absolutely certain that we don’t control them in any way. I think you’d agree that the fourth way is the only way we can set our own desires.
But setting our desires takes a good amount of work. How will we start to do that work without first wanting to do it? The desires we develop in ourselves through #4 are based on the desires we already had, which can only be ultimately traced back through the other 3 avenues.
And who controls those? Again, it’s not us.
-Wm
John is not an expert on Tanksley’s views. I believe that God wills the fall of every sparrow and the number of hairs on our heads, because Jesus clearly says that. I believe that God controls those things, because Jesus used that fact to comfort people and let them know that God controlled the future.
Unlike Calvin, I do not wildly extrapolate to decide that therefore, God pre-planned all those sparrow falls and hair numbers. I don’t want to contradict Calvin on this; he may be right, and his argument’s strong. But it’s not part of the Biblical testimony.
Care to explain? Oh, I guess you’d better write to all the confessional Reformed people in the world — the confessions all take this position as well. Many people agree with Calvin, but the confessions follow sola scriptura, as well they should.
You truly don’t see this as being mind-bendingly insulting and offensive? Wow, to add a little more you pretend that all other faith traditions have NO problem Bible verses at all. Meh, this is best ignored.
-Wm
Hmm, going on about Hebrew grammar from memory and without my grammars before leads to trouble. My initial use of the word “choose” was more accurate, and I should have been writing about “preferance” rather than “comparison”. Comparison has to do with superlatives, or relative value, etc. (e.g., bigger than) and Hebrew does have constructions to do that. Hebrew is, however, quite a bit more striking (to us, speakers of a different language) in the way it indicates preference. So to respond to Tanksley’s comment regarding Ishmael (his post 288), yes it would be correct to say that God loved Israel and hated Ishmael, meaning that God preferred Israel to Ishmael.
The Jewish concern in both Malachi’s time, and Paul’s was that God was abandoning them and His covenant with them. The circumstances in Malachi’s time weren’t great. And if what Paul said about Gentile salvation was true, it appeared to have negative implications for Jews. In both cases the audience is told that God chose / preferred Israel over others. The choice did not depend on sinlessness.
Edom was not destroyed because (i.e., for the reason that) it was not preferred by God, rather the reason for its destruction was it’s sin. Israel is spared that end (though it should be destroyed because it whored itself to other gods and broke the covenant), because it has been preferred by God.
To be extra clear the “hate” (the translated word for the Hebrew) has absolutely nothing to do with the reason that Edom is destroyed. It is not destroyed because God “hates” it. The idiom “hate” only indicates that it was not preferred in relation to the thing that was “loved”. Because Israel is preferred over Edom (and over all other nations, Edom was just an example, though particularly pertinent because of the twin birth) it is preserved and blessed. Edom suffers the fate that all who sin and rebel against God will eventually suffer.
Regarding individual election in Romans, do you have Schreiner’s articles from JETS? They are available on the web.
BTW, I disagree that libertarian free will is nonsensical; I would say that it is more sensible than the alternatives. It is not magical in the least and is eminently reasonable. But that would be for a series of posts in another thread. CMP actually has a thread started on the nature of the will, and such a discussion could be continued there if anyone is interested.
Finally, as I continue to reflect on CMP’s initial post (thanks to Cherylu and WmT for keeping me ruminating on this topic), I now find that I have more disagreements with it than ever. Indeed, I disagree with his fundamental conclusion that one white lie, or floating a stop sign, is not what sends one to hell. I conclude that it would and does.
regards,
#John
Okay; I see what you mean. But I think my response stands; the passage is about God’s actual actions toward Jacob and Esau.
I agree with you, and the fact that the Bible never said that probably is because God never had to “make a decision” between the two. Ishmael was born at the wrong time to be the true promise child, and God simply blessed him and his mother (probably because of their ill treatment). Jacob and Esau were a tougher choice; by all the rules of the time they were almost indistinguishable, except for birth order — and in that way God chose the “wrong” one. Thus, God clearly had to actively accept one and actively reject the other.
Not quite — Paul said that Israel was the way in which the promise was brought. They were (elsewhere) the original heirs, the natural branches of the vine onto which the Gentiles are the grafts.
This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.
Yet the hate DOES explain why they were destroyed. If Esau had been loved by God while Jacob had been hated, then likely the sons of Jacob wouldn’t live on Earth to this day, and certainly the sons of Esau would. Yes, they were justly condemned for their sins; but the sons of Israel were mercifully saved in spite of their sins in order for God’s purpose to be fulfilled.
Yes, it’s corporate; but it’s based on an individual choice made by God between those two individual twins. Malachi doesn’t parse this out, but Paul does.
-Wm
Sure! Where’s the link?
If a single lie sent you to hell before you believed, then why doesn’t the same lie continue to send you to hell now that you’ve repented of it? Surely the repentance doesn’t change the fact that you committed a lie. All that changes is your heart, not the lie.
(Wow, are we actually possibly back on topic??????!!!!)
-Wm
William,
Not quite back on track here yet!
You said, “This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.’
However some Calvinists like John Piper for instance, believe that God decress sin and evil and guilt and punishment and who will be that type of person so that his wrath may be shown.
See this article:
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?371
Here is a quote from this article: “Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who will believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and deservingly perish. Before they were born or had done anything good or evil, he loves Jacob and gives Esau over to wickedness and destruction (9:11-13). He is free and unconstrained from influences outside himself when he decrees who will receive mercy and who will not (9:15-18).
William,
Not quite back on topic yet! You said, “This is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination. God doesn’t send people to hell because of his decree; He sends them to hell because of their sins.”
But some Calvinists like John Piper believe that God actually decreed sin and evil, guilt and punishment. Here is an article where this is discussed:
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?371
Here is a quote from his article: “Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who will believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and deservingly perish. Before they were born or had done anything good or evil, he loves Jacob and gives Esau over to wickedness and destruction (9:11-13). He is free and unconstrained from influences outside himself when he decrees who will receive mercy and who will not (9:15-18).”
This is what I have been talking about and I believe John has too.
Sorry for the double posting of that last comment. I seem to be having a problem off and on today with the comments working correctly here.
Actually, it is not quite the same. I thought it was deleted so I rewrote the whole thing.
Why does God inflict this horrible suffering on me? (Okay, I’m kidding. I enjoy this.)
As far as I know all Calvinists believe that, unless you intended to say that Piper believes that all that is part of God’s decree before time began. I don’t see what that has to do with this conversation, though; it doesn’t contradict what I said.
My point remains: what John said about the descendants of Jacob and Esau is exactly how Calvinists explain predestination: God blesses some people, and doesn’t bless others; that’s God’s gracious choice.
-Wm
William,
It certainly seems to me from the article I linked that Piper meant God decreed all of this before time began. I read another article with a quote in it from Piper’s book, “Desiring God”, that says this: “God is more glorious for having conceived and created and governed a world like this with all its evil” (p. 351). That sounds to me like he is speaking of before time began. That quote is from this article: http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/08/21/john-pipers-false-god-1/
Did you read the article I linked above? If you did, do you think I understood it correctly?