Horrendous doctrine (2)
Look we all know God can't do wrong and that in light of Jesus Christ he is worthy of nothing but our ceaseless devotion and praise as we delight in him! In pieces like this, it isn't God we're opposing but what we construe to be man-made images of him.
In the book of Job it wasn't God Job was screaming at—he raged against the God the wise teachers were preaching and in the end God vindicated him and rebuked the wise men. If it were humorous we could smile at the teachers who dish out outrageous doctrine about God and when you protest they say something like, "It isn't me you're arguing with—it's God!" They use words about God like "sovereignty" and "fathomless wisdom" and "matchless glory" and "love inexpressible" and "pure grace" as if they alone saw God in this light. They insist that God alone should have all the praise as if they were ignorant of the fact that millions who reject their outrageous doctrines insist on that as well. Build up the adjectives to the third heaven about the wonder of God, his holy love and boundless generosity and the rank and file among us will say a heartfelt and soul-deep Amen to every bit of it and then they'll add their own.
The hot protest against the worst face of Calvinism is not a protest against the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; it's against what people are saying about him. There were those in Jeremiah's day who said God had cast off his people and God said the rising sun and the stars in heaven branded that claim a lie (Jeremiah 33:19-26). There are those in these and past days who say that God has no love for the vast majority of the human family and Jesus said the rising sun and the falling rain branded that teaching as a sectarian, nationalist and religious lie (Matthew 5:43-48).
Hard-line Calvinist, John Piper, thinks because he makes God the centre of everything that the rest is self-explanatory. But the God he puts at the centre of everything is the God he defines as the God whose essence is his absolute freedom to do whatever he chooses (he gets this, he says, from Exodus 33:19). This certainly makes philosophical sense and is supported by the biblical witness but Piper takes that truth and carries it to conclusions that are plainly at odds with the biblical witness. (Job's three friends did the same thing with truths they called on.) Manifestly a God that is limited by absolutely nothing outside himself is capable of doing exactly what he wants and that means he can show mercy on whoever he shows mercy on but that truth doesn't explain what he meant in Exodus 33 or Romans 9:15 with their specific contexts.
A God whose essence is as Piper defines him could create humans, ordain their Fall (as Piper insists he did) and damn everyone one of them—those that die in infancy included—without batting an eyelid. That is what Piper insists he did with the bulk of humanity (though he does some special pleading concerning dying infants because they don't get to hear the will of God). You would think that Piper would be delighted at that, for after all, what God does is to glorify himself by making himself the treasure of a minority of sinners and all his works—without exception, reprobation included—are geared for that purpose. So God's aim in his eternal ordination to reprobation of the vast majority of humans since the creation is to give Piper and other chosen ones grounds to rejoice in Him as their only treasure.
In light of how Piper defines the essence of God, when God chooses to do whatever he chooses to do that's the end of the matter—it's the complete explanation of the matter. After that, talk about God being inscrutable makes no sense and talk about the "decisive" or "ultimate" cause of reprobation being in God's inscrutable will is something of a cop-out. Piper will say the "decisive" or "ultimate" cause of reprobation is in God; but that hints at the suggestion or possibilityof the existence of a "relative" or "intermediate" cause outside God—whereas in Piper's theology there is only one cause, not more than one, a single, solitary, lone, uncontested cause—God wanted to do it and he did it.That, says Piper, is the essence of Godship; that's what being "God" means and for God to act as God he must (says Piper) do all he does unconditionally, unmoved by anyone or any consideration outside himself. As surely as God cannot lie he cannot act having been moved by anything outside himself (which is one of the bases on which Piper justifies unconditional election and reprobation).
If God eternally purposed ceaseless conscious torture for billions of humans it had to be unconditional, it had to be independent of any evil they might end up doing. To put the matter plainly, hard line Calvinists like John Piper tell us that God didn't purpose everlasting conscious torture for the bulk of humanity because he foresaw the evil that we would do.
"Ah, but we ended up doing evil so we deserve punishment; so how dare we complain about God's eternal decision that wasn't based on what we deserve." So speak the Calvinistic hardliners from Calvin to the present.
Look, you must grasp what happens here. The doctrine (as consistently expressed—well, almost consistently—by people of Piper's persuasion) says our eternal reprobation is not based on what we deserve—that is, the decision was not made on the basis of the evil God foresaw in us. It had nothing to do with what we "deserve"—God consigns billions to everlasting and ceaseless torture not because they "deserved" it but for no other reason than that he wanted to do it!
But that doctrine is so morally revolting that even hard-line Calvinists scramble around for some way to make it look right. Calvin confessed that such a decree by God was "horrible" and he asked the question, "Why did God from the first predestine some to death, when as yet they were not in existence, they could not have merited sentence of death?" (Institutes of the Christian Religion: 3.23.3) And how does he answer the question? In essence he says, "Who's asking?" Then he reminds us how sinful we all are and what nerve we have to question God, he talks a bit about human sin, realizes he's moving away from his decrees doctrine and goes back to saying, "We must always return to the mere pleasure of the divine will, the cause of which is hidden in himself." (3.23.4) In short, Calvin had no idea why God would be pleased to consign billions of as-yet non-existent humans to eternal conscious torture (not mere death) but he insisted that something in God pleased him to do it. I could easily theorize why a Zeus or one of those other mythical thugs would do it but that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus would do it? Perish the very thought!
Piper by speaking of the "decisive" and "ultimate" cause of reprobation as being in God leaves the door open as if there might be other contributing causes in Man, though he cannot and doesn't believe that. Still the seed is planted by "decisive" and "ultimate". In 1903 American Presbyterians added a DECLARATORY STATEMENT to The Westminster Confession, relating particularly to this entire reprobation decree issue: "The Presbyterian church…does authoritatively declare as follows: that men are fully responsible for their treatment of God's gracious offer; that his decree hinders no man from accepting that offer; and that no man is condemned except on the ground of his sin." ([As quoted in P.K Jewett's Election and Predestination, page 75.]
Aside from the fact that they insist that God foreordained humanity's Fall so that no one (at least since Adam) chooses to do evil because humans are born "totally opposed to all good and entirely inclined to all evil" and they're born that way because God decided before the world began that they should be born that way. God eternally purposed it and in time he arranged all that happens so that it happens the way he wants it to happen and people are born incapable of choosing good. That is consistent Calvinism and then they tell us, "We deserve to be punished for our evil." We are as we are because God arranged it that way and when we act as God ordained that we should act he punishes us for doing what he predestined us to do. This, the hardliners tell us, even though they also tell us it cannot be something in us that makes God act in judgment. When you press them on this they say things like, "You can't make me choose between those two on the basis of 'alien logic'." Or they say, "It's inscrutable." Or they say, "Sinful humans have their nerve to question God."
It isn't God we question; it's the doctrines of sinful fellow-humans that we question!
Why argue about this since we all end up sinning and deserve condemnation? Infants that die don't sin and yet Augustine and Calvin had them writhing in hell.
Many creeds waltz around the fact that in Calvinism babies are said to be born hating God and morally polluted but not all evade that conclusion—some offer no hope for infants who die. Calvin didn't and wouldn't.
Why argue about all this? Let me ask this: Which comes first, God's predestinating decree that we would sin or our being sinful? We're told that when God predestinates sinners to be saved there's nothing they can do to thwart his decree—it's his will and he'll get it, however complex the procedure. When he predestinates an as-yet uncreated human family to be sinners there's nothing they can do to thwart his decree—it's his will and he'll get what he wants.
So, do we have a sin-stricken, sin-loving human family? We do! It's what God wanted. Which came first—our love of sin or God's irresistible decree that we would be born loving sin?
We didn't become sinners and sin-lovers in our teens or older—this doctrine teaches us that we were born to sin and love sin in accordance with God's irresistible will. He irresistibly foreordains it before we existed and when it turns out as he has irresistibly willed it he condemns us for being like that. Even in infancy we're condemned for it and need to be forgiven of it! [Some hardliners say that infants are saved but it's without faith, without a new birth by the Spirit. What else are you going to tell broken-hearted parents?]
Does it make any difference which comes first—God's decree or our human nature/behaviour? How could it not make a difference?
Consistent Calvinists will have nothing to do with what is called the infralapsarian view. That view says that when God was formulating his decrees of election (assigning these to life) and reprobation (assigning these to eternal conscious torture) he was thinking of the human family as it became after the Fall and in light of their sinfulness.Piper and Calvin before him will have nothing to do with that. No, consistent Calvinists hold the supralapsarian view which says that God made his decrees conceptually before his decree that the human family would fall in sin. His decrees were a done deal regardless of the human family!
God irresistibly ordained that the human family sin.
God irresistibly ordained that the majority of the human family should not want nor should it be offered life with him.
God punishes those whose evil life he irresistibly ordained.
And yet the evil of the humans is not what moved God to decree their reprobation or judgment.
This is what's being taught about God and I think somebody should protest against it (and thankfully vast numbers do!).
This hardline Calvinism generates all kind of bad fruit. In light of hardline Calvinism silly things like "open theism" begin to look good to sensitive people.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
