Learning to Breathe

Letter to Richard Dawkins

2010-01-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

Hi Richard,
I just wanted to encourage you to debate Dr. William Lane Craig. I believe I read somewhere that you were asked to debate Craig but you declined because you had never heard of him, and debating just anyone could be a waste of time. I understand this, but I would like to point out that Dr. Craig is extremely well-known among the Christian community, probably being one of the leading advocates of Christianity today. I think a debate between the two of you would be very interesting and informative, and I and many others would enjoy seeing it. Please do consider.
Thanks,
-Cameron Versluis

Which God is More Sovereign?

2009-12-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

OK, so I've been doing a bit of thinking about sovereignty in open theism, Calvinism, and Arminianism. Basically, I have realized these things, which are worth posting.

Calvinists and open theists both agree that God cannot foreknow that which He does not predestine. Calvinists choose to say that God predestines everything and thus foreknows everything, but open theists say that the future is open, so God does not foreknow everything that is going to happen with certainty (because it's not settled; it's not there to foreknow).

Basically, this means that the Calvinist and open theist view of God does not differ in ability. Both the Calvinist view of God described and the open theist view of God view God's abilities the same way, though they view what God actually does differently.

So, I think it is a lost cause for Calvinists to claim that their view of God ascribes to Him more ability. Maybe He is more sovereign, in the sense of being ultra-manipulative, but I don't see this as necessarily a thing that makes Him more impressive or anything.

Only Arminians disagree about God's abilities. They think that God can contingently foreknow things without actually causing them. However, to affirm this they generally have to affirm that God is completely outside of time and without sequence, or else get caught in a hopeless paradox (i.e. if God foreknows something, can He change it? If so, wouldn't that falsify His foreknowledge?). So; they essentially end up with a sequence-less God, which is quite strange - He is something like frozen in an eternal "now" and cannot have real relationships.

How about God's knowledge? Both Arminianism and Calvinism hold that God knows everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and will ever happen. Open theism holds to the same view, except it says that what will happen is not set in stone. As Greg Boyd says, we can hardly say we're slandering God's knowledge if we say He does not know that there is a monkey next to me, when in fact, there is no monkey next to me. Open theists essentially hold that there is no future out there except for what is certain and what God has preordained - much of it is contingencies, possibilities. God knows everything perfectly, just like He knows me perfectly. He does not, however, know perfectly that there is a monkey next to me. This is not ignorance; it's just that there is no monkey next to me. Similarly, God may not know what will happen in the future, because it's not out there yet.

In the end, I don't think any of these views end up presenting a more sovereign God with greater abilities or more knowledge. Essentially, these are views that differ in what God does, and how the universe works. It's not a fight over accepting a more or less sovereign, more knowledgeable God. It's about the workings of the universe, what is true and what is false.

Christmas Misconceptions

2009-12-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

OK, so I would just like to list a few fun Christmas misconceptions. Basically everyone believes that these are true of the birth of Christ, but they're not.

The wise men did not arrive the same day as the shepherds. In fact, they arrived around a year later, when Jesus was most likely living in a house, not a stable. Most nativity scenes feature the wise men and the shepherds both at the stable, but that's not how it happened. It took the wise men a long time to travel from where they were located. The way nativity scenes do it is nice, but the gospel's account is much more historically probable and sober. As a result, when I set up nativity scenes, I place the wise men a long way away from the stable. One year I put a pile of toys in between them and the stable so I could justify them taking a year to make the journey.
The stable, by the way, could also have been a cave cut out of rock, not an actual building.
The angels did not sing to the shepherds! I'm entirely serious - go check it out for yourself. There is zero evidence to back up the idea that the angels sang. On the other hand, Jesus did sing, with all of His disciples (Matthew 26:30)!
No one actually knows the date of Jesus' birth. Some scholars think that April would be far more likely than December!
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph's skin would not be nearly as pale as most nativity scenes have it (near white in many cases). They were of Middle Eastern origin, which would mean they would have darker, olive-colored skin. Joseph, by the way, was a carpenter, which means that none of them would be wearing the gaudy ornamental robes that are usually depicted in nativity scenes. Oh, and being a carpenter, Joseph would have some serious muscles - as would Jesus after helping His father for years.

Anyway, biblically accurate nativity scenes don't sell! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Nutty Gospel Alternative

2009-12-24T18:53:00.001-08:00

OK, so doing some research I came across this interesting article.

Frankly, it is absolutely nuts. First, they consistently use the phrases “modern scholars”, “most scholars”, etc. to give the impression that most people who have studied the issue take this position. But in reality they are quoting fringe scholars who are completely outnumbered—yet somehow get most of the media hits.

The article also tells us that Jesus set up His (apparent) death to be in accordance with Old Testament prophesies. Here's the question though—why on earth? Why go get crucified for the sake of a prophesy? It makes zero sense. Subjecting yourself to that kind of torment willingly is absolutely nuts. Sure, there are crazy people out there, but that's just too much. How could Jesus assure that He wouldn't actually die, and be yet another (there are several others) failed dead wannabe Messiah?

Additionally, why on earth would poser-Messiah-Jesus choose a cross to die on? It was the absolute worst death conceivable. Victims were crucified naked (not with loincloths like in the pictures) and due to the nails in their hands and feet, completely lost control of all of their bodily functions, throwing up and going to the bathroom on reflex. In fact, crucifixion was considered so extremely sick that it was considered inappropriate to even mention it in polite company—comparable to giving “the finger” at a modern-day dinner party. Trypho and many others mocked Christians to no end because they worshiped a man who had died on the cross! And, to be perfectly frank, Christians could rarely defend themselves. Tertullian replied to Trypho by simply changing the subject, basically saying, “oh yeah, well, you pagan guys worship pieces of wood!”

The writers of the article also have no clue that some fulfillment of Old Testament scripture can be illustrative; i.e. that instead of fulfilling a predictive prophesy, a scriptural principle is said to be “fulfilled” in the sense that it was underscored or illustrated. Psalm 69:21 is one example, as are most of the other scriptures they listed. If they cared to clue themselves in on what an illustrative prophesy was, their entire article would fall apart. Genuine predictive prophesies from the Old Testament (e.g. Isaiah 7:14ff) would be ridiculously difficult to fulfill.

The article also talks about “hidden Essene physicians” strategically placed in the tomb who would help Jesus to recover. Frankly, this is such a bizarre theory it is ridiculous. It is extremely difficult to hide someone in a newly cut tomb—there are not multiple chambers, just one. If the article writers want to suggest this idea, I suppose they had also better maintain that Joseph of Arimathea was completely alone when he went to bury Jesus, or else he brought only people he trusted. Never mind the guard apologetic of Matthew 27, which I am sure our article writers would reject, even though it only makes sense within the context of a presupposed polemic. Not to mention it is quite questionable how the Essene physicians would survive in a sealed, newly cut rock tomb without external air for three days. And how might they get out? Check out a first-century tomb. There's really nowhere to get a push-off in the right angle to push the stone. The stone, by the way, would probably be 1.5 to 2 tons, and in the first century, square (notwithstanding the “rolled away” English translations of various verses).

Jesus, by the way, would not be getting married after being crucified. After getting nails put through His feet and hands, it is most probable that He would end up a cripple instead.

I would like to offer a lengthy reply to one piece in particular.

"Furthermore, in the Greek version of the Gospels, when Joseph of Arimetha asks for Jesus' body, he used the word soma -- a word applied only to a living body. Pilate, assenting to the request, employs the word ptoma -- which means "corpse". (Perhaps the Greeks knew something we didn't.) Interestingly, there is also the possibility that Pilate was bribed. This would account for the crucifiction taking place at the Garden of Gethsemane (private land), and for the body being taken down so quickly. In short the evidence is overwhelming that the Cruci- fixion was instead a Cruci- fiction.

First off, Joseph of Arimathea does not actually give a direct address or anything resembling a quote (they didn't have quotations in Greek) to Pilate, thus, Joseph of Arimathea never used the word soma in the gospels. In fact, he never talks at all. Now, let's kick in some sarcasm.

Oh really? The Greek soma means “living body?” I was unaware of that.

Luke 17:37 καὶ ἀποκριθέντες λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· ποῦ, κύριε; ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· ὅπου τὸ σῶμα, ἐκεῖ καὶ οἱ ἀετοὶ ἐπισυναχθήσονται.
They, answering, asked him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body [soma] is, there will the vultures also be gathered together.”

I understand this verse better now that I know Jesus really means that vultures will gather where there are living bodies. Maybe I've been wrong about vultures all this time.

Romans 8:10 εἰ δὲ Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν, τὸ μὲν σῶμα νεκρὸν διὰ ἁμαρτίαν τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζωὴ διὰ δικαιοσύνην.
If Christ is in you, the body [soma] is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

And I see now how Paul is talking about metaphorical living bodies that are dead, thank you very much.

1 Corinthians 15:44 σπείρεται σῶμα ψυχικόν, ἐγείρεται σῶμα πνευματικόν. εἰ ἔστιν σῶμα ψυχικόν, ἔστιν καὶ πνευματικόν.
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body [soma]. There is a natural body and there is also a spiritual body.

It makes much more sense now that I know that Paul is talking about living bodies being resurrected.

James 2:26 ὥσπερ [γὰρ] τὸ σῶμα χωρὶς πνεύματος νεκρόν ἐστιν, οὕτως καὶ ἡ πίστις χωρὶς ἔργων νεκρά ἐστιν.
For as the body [soma] apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.

Wow, I never noticed before that James was talking about living bodies being dead!

John 19:31 Οἱ οὖν Ἰουδαῖοι, ἐπεὶ παρασκευὴ ἦν, ἵνα μὴ μείνῃ ἐπὶ τοῦ σταυροῦ τὰ σώματα ἐν τῷ σαββάτῳ, ἦν γὰρ μεγάλη ἡ ἡμέρα ἐκείνου τοῦ σαββάτου, ἠρώτησαν τὸν Πιλᾶτον ἵνα κατεαγῶσιν αὐτῶν τὰ σκέλη καὶ ἀρθῶσιν.
Therefore the Jews, because it was the Preparation Day, so that the bodies [somata] wouldn't remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a special one), asked of Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

My my! I can't believe it! All three of the bodies on the crosses were actually living! Jesus wasn't the only one to survive the crucifixion! There are many other examples, but I think this is enough to say that the claim that soma means “living body”, and thus Jesus actually survived the cross according to the Bible, is completely and utterly false.

Now, as a final blow, I will simply quote the article. “His [Jesus'] wife, Mary Magdalen, may well have fled the country, and in fact landed in Southern France. With her, she would have carried the Holy Grail -- or "Blood Royal".”

I think that says enough.

Thoughts on Monergism

2009-12-20T18:38:00.000-08:00

My Calvinist friends (hi Ryan!) should be relieved to know that I found a new hobby: resurrection apologetics! Not only is it cooler, it is more unifying to the body of Christ.

However, I hope you will forgive me if I offer some thoughts on monergism... (i.e. Calvinism by its technical term) You'll have to, so let's get cracking.

OK, so I was reading Arminian Perspectives, the blog of Ben Henshaw. I came across this quote:

"Calvinists often argue that God’s love has failed if Christ’s atonement was made for all and yet not all are saved. I find it strange that Calvinists, who are so quick to criticize Arminians for holding to a man centered religion, argue that unless man responds to God’s love in saving faith, then His love for them has somehow failed. How is it that they feel comfortable equating the success or failure of God’s love with man’s response to that love? Is the nature or validity of God’s love dependant on man’s response? Doesn’t that seem a little man centered?"

I thought that was a cool quote. It got me thinking: it's true, Calvinists do claim to be more God-centered and almost invariably end up painting Arminians as man-centered worshipers of free will in some way or another. But think about this:

In synergism, you look at a person and say, God has given them grace, grace enough for them to be saved. Then you ask, how have they responded to it? In monergism, you look at a person and ask, have they responded to God? Then, and only then, you conclude that God gave them saving grace.

Synergism: God wants this man and is drawing him toward Himself. What will he do with it?
Monergism: What did the man do with it? All right, then God wanted him and irresistibly drew him.

It is interesting how the theology that claims to be more God-centered actually puts God second in the equation. The only thing is, monergists would stipulate that man's response to God is invariably His grace, therefore the grace and the response are synonymous. But it still seems like a weird way to think of things, because in monergism, everything is essentially an extension of God's sovereign (read: exhaustively manipulative and controlling) will.

Another thought I had on monergism lately is the whole "only grace" thing. Essentially, salvation is broken down into two components: God's grace and man's response. Monergism claims that these two are synonomous, whereas synergism sees them as two different parts which are mutually exclusive, though the latter cannot work without the former and the former will not work without the latter.

Basically, monergists argue that their system is the only one that is truly "only by grace", because every part of salvation is performed by God. But here is the problem: in synergist's haste to deny this and clear their doctrines from the charge, they miss the real problem with monergism.

As I write the next paragraph after this one, remember very clearly that there is a distinction between an offered gift and one's acceptance of a gift. A quick deviation: If a rich man offers me a $60,000 car, can we really say that I earned the car just because I said, "wow, sure, thanks!" and accepted it? Can we say that the car I got was not a hundred percent of the rich man's grace? Frankly, I think the reason that monergists are so quick to shortchange man's responsibility in salvation is because they cannot understand how great a price Christ paid and how great a gift we have been offered.

Now, on to my real point. If the reason a person accepts the gospel is 100% because of a special grace he has been given, then, doesn't it logically follow that the reason a person doesn't accept the gospel is 100% because of a lack of that special grace? Essentially, monergism steals human responsibility. And it gets worse when many monergists resort to compatibilism: when you confront them about this, they say, "of course! Man is completely responsible! And God is completely sovereign! It's all a divine mystery!" Daniel Gracely compared it to a rocking horse: Calvinist riders push forward with all their might toward God's sovereignty, but when you point out that they are really left with a strange God, they fall backward on man's responsibility. And so, they maintain an illusion of movement, even though they're really going back and forth. Frankly, I have no problem with mystery, but embracing blatant contradictions is sick.

Here's another thought on monergism... who is more sovereign, a king ruling a nation, or a kid in a sandbox? Everyone is quick to affirm that the king is more sovereign. But monergists, with their lines of argumentation, often end up suggesting the latter (though they have no idea). They suggest that God is more sovereign if He is more controlling. The kid in the sandbox has more control over his toys than the king does over his subjects. So why is the king more powerful, even though he has less control? Some may say it has to do with the size of the kingdom. OK. Just blow up the kid and the sandbox until it and the kingdom are the same size. The king is still more sovereign. Why? He has less control, but he is more sovereign? He is more sovereign because of the fact that he is ruling over creatures with wills - wills that can choose.

In fact, that is the real distinction between a man and a maniquin. The man can choose, the maniquin can't. What other distinctions are there? That the man is alive and the maniquin isn't? All right, then what is the distinction between a live man and a dead man? One has a soul, the other doesn't? But what does having a soul entail? It means being alive, which means being able to think, and reason, and choose option A over option B, to make a genuine choice for yourself. If your choices are all chosen for you (no matter how compatibilistically), why are you called a will, a soul, an individual?

That's where monergism has always gone nutty. Remorse, regret and repentence only make sense under synergism. "I'm so sorry, I feel so bad for doing x." As opposed to? In monergism, it should be, "I'm so sorry, I feel so bad for doing x, even though I could not possibly have done otherwise". Frankly, I don't know what regret is under monergism. (And using Romans 9:16 to defend this doctrine is sort of odd, since it is the only scripture that could possibly refer to people getting blamed for what they were predestined to do, yet that reading is flawed.) What do you regret, that you did what you had to do? That you did what you were predestined to do? Really, it comes down to regretting that God did not give you more grace, regretting what Adam and Eve did, not regretting what you did. Monergism, in my opinion, is a staunch rehashing of the blame game.

Greg Boyd and the Gap Theory

2009-12-18T06:01:00.000-08:00

So, I found out today, a bit to my disappointment, that my favorite theologian, Greg Boyd has gone in for the gap theory. In an article written for the book Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science, Boyd undertakes to show how evolution can be thought of as cosmic warfare.

I have not yet finished Boyd's article, but I think the premise is rather good. If the gap theory is true and before the creation of man there were millions of years of evolution, viewing that evolution in terms of cosmic warfare would be the single best way to view it.

But I just have some problems with the gap theory. It doesn't seem to fit a normal reading of the Bible. I agree with gap theorists that the Hebrew yom does not necessarily mean a day of twenty-four hours (take a look at all the word uses). But the phrase "there was evening and there was morning, one day" (as it should literally be translated) seems to suggest an actual period of twenty-four hours.

This is not nearly my biggest problem with the gap theory. One of my biggest problems is that the gap theory is usually formulated to accommodate evolution into the Bible. I have no problem with evolution in general. I agree that species adapt and change, even from species to species. I do note, however, that there are genetic limitations on how much a certain kind (that is the biblical term) of animal can change. Evolutionists know this, which is why they usually posit mutation as the means by which animals evolve. Mutation, though, does not add genetic information. There's simply no way to add genetic information to the genome, as opposed to changing or destroying it. (Watch Richard Dawkins try to answer this question.)

But that is a tangent. The main problem is that the literal reading of the Genesis account is destroyed by the gap theory. In Genesis 3:20, Adam names his wife Eve, because "she would become the mother of all the living". In the gap theory, she would not indeed become the mother of the entire human race.

Now, here is the kicker. We note in Gen 1:14-19 that the lights in the sky are only created on day four. Some evolutionists scoff at this, but it's up to them to show that the sun's and star's light was needed before day four. Was it needed for the plants on day three? Not really. If you read Genesis 2:4-7 it is quite obvious that while God planted the seeds on the third day, they didn't sprout up until after the sixth day. (Even if full-grown plants had been created on day three, they would not have needed light for at least another day.) Sure, on day one God created light (as in, the concept), but did not create actual lights until day four. Wavelenths still function in the dark. But this poses a problem for gap theorists. Evolution typically supposes that the sun evolved long before plant and animal life.

There is also a problem in that, as I noted, per Gen 2:4-7 it does not appear that plants God created actually sprouted until after the sixth day. If the yom represent long periods of time, such as millions of years - that's one long sprout.

Overall, I just don't think the gap theory fits well with the book of Genesis. I've never been impressed by the "evidence" for evolution, and from my limited reading I am quite happy with a literal six twenty-four hour day reading of Genesis.

I still like Boyd, and while I recommend his books and will not drop him off the list as my favorite theologian, I rather disagree with him on this issue. I don't think it's a salvation issue at all, though, and though he certainly seems to be wrong here, in general I love the work he is doing for the kingdom.

Various Skeptic Articles Refuted, etc.

2009-12-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

OK, so in between writing up the transcript for my interview with Barrie Schwortz (which was awesome!) I am working on a paper concerning the resurrection of Jesus. Specifically, I want to use it as a sort of tract for skeptics, and a general handout paper that can be of use.

It's actually evolving into two essays, one concerning the historical evidence for Christ's resurrection, and one concerning medical testimonies to people who have had near-death experiences, or actually been resurrected from the dead.

Yes, I am completely serious.

There are, in fact, many well-documented cases of what many extremely skeptical scientists, including atheists, admit are not just near-death but post-death experiences. Until my article arrives, see Gary Habermas' videos. There are nine parts, all worth watching.

Anyway, in my research I have encountered many naturalistic pieces arguing against the resurrection. While they hit high on search engine lists, they are often of shoddy quality and are easily refuted, usually by the entertaining J.P. Holding. His counter-articles, on the other hand, rarely overtake the skeptical articles he refutes in terms of search engine placement. As such, I would like to post a list of skeptical articles and their refutations (usually by Holding).

Review of Lee Stobel The Case for Christ by Jeff Lowder (skeptical)
Lowder on the Case for Christ, Refuted by J.P. Holding (rebuttal to above)

The Case Against The Case for Christ by Scott Bidstrup (skeptical)
Scott Bidstrup vs. The Case for Christ by J.P. Holding (rebuttal)

Why I Don't Buy The Resurrection Story by Richard Carrier (skeptical)
Richard Carriers' Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story - A Refutation by J.P. Holding

The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, book by Richard Carrier (skeptical)
The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave Refuted by J.P. Holding (rebuttal)

The Historicity of the Empty Tomb Evaluated by Peter Kirby (skeptical, similar to book chapter refuted below)
Jesus Beyond the Grave Refuted: Peter Kirby's Chapter (rebuttal)

Just a few things... fun stuff, and I'm really starting to like Holding. He also refuted (soundly) Carrier's article, Did No One Trust Women? (Forum discussion here.) Unfortunately, that rebuttal is no longer online, since Holding is hoping to publish such material in book form in his upcoming Defending the Resurrection. However, Holding was kind enough to send me the old page.

Anyway, some cool stuff. Maybe more later.

Shroud of Turin Interview

2009-12-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

All right, so tomorrow I'm hoping to talk to Barrie Schwortz from the Shroud of Turin website. Barrie has worked on official investigations of the Shroud with many prestigious groups, including members of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has been investigating the Shroud since 1978.

Barrie (he insists I call him by his first name) is Jewish, so when he was asked to work on the Shroud he felt a little uneasy about being part of a "Christian" project. But a friend of his encouraged him to go for it and do the best he could do. So he did, and though he is still Jewish, he now believes that the weight of the evidence points to the Shroud being the genuine burial cloth of Christ.

Barrie was kind enough to agree to an interview, so I hope to talk to him tomorrow at three. I have a lot of questions to ask about the authenticity of the Shroud, so I am looking forward to it.

Here are the questions I am planning on asking thus far.

What is the Shroud supposed to be?

When was the Shroud of Turin discovered? Why is it called the Shroud of Turin, and where has it been over its lifetime?

How did you get involved in the Shroud research?

When did you work on the Shroud? Who was involved in the investigation?

How do you think the image was imprinted onto the Shroud?

Why do you think the Shroud is authentic? I mean, it sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones film! Couldn't it just be a medieval hoax or a modern gimmick? Couldn't the man on the Shroud be someone other than Jesus?

Do you know anything about Luigi Garlaschelli, the Italian scientist who reportedly recreated the Shroud of Turin to show that it is a fake? He apparently wrapped one of his students in cloth, covered the cloth with pigment, baked it in an oven, and then washed it. He basically used materials that would be available during medieval times, so he has decided that it was a gimmick created by middle age artisans. In medieval times especially, fake “Christian” relics were very common.

What about radiocarbon dating done on the cloth? It reveals that the cloth is from the 13th or 14th century, not from the time of Christ, right?

In your estimate, do you think the Shroud lends evidence to Christianity? Has your view of Christianity changed since your investigation on the Shroud?

If you have any questions of your own you would like to ask Barrie Schwortz about the Shroud, let me know. I'm trying to get a good feel for the facts surrounding the Shroud with my questions.

Home Churches

2009-11-27T16:58:00.000-08:00

So, I've been having this idea going through my head lately and I don't want to shake it. Many of my friends probably know that I want to go into pastoral ministries, i.e. pastoring a church.

Here's the thing that's been hitting me... when the church was first established, the believers met in houses. See Acts 8:3, Romans 16:5, 1 Corinthians 16:19, Philemon 1:2, Colossians 4:15, etc...

There is no mention in the New Testament of believers raising buildings for their churches. Instead, they met in churches held in believer's homes.

So I guess it's now something of a dream of mine... to restore this practice. I know Xenos Christian Fellowship does it. I've really benefited from their ministry.

I just think this makes more sense for a lot of reasons.

It's personal. People get into the ministry when it's so down-to-earth and in-your-face. It's way easier to build strong relationships with other believers when you're meeting in homes instead of in huge, impersonal church buildings.
It allows for rapid church growth. It's tough to build the church of Christ when you keep having to build buildings.
It's great for times of persecution. You get privacy and can easily go underground if necessary.
It's informal. Instead of being en garde to make sure you look good and are acting proper in your social context, you can have simple fellowship with other believers. Instead of being conscious of the social otherliness of church, this way church comes into your own personal life.
It's inexpensive. It allows believers to concentrate their funding on expanding the church of Christ and reaching out financially to more people instead of paying to heat a huge building and reupholster the pews.
It encourages sacrifice. When the church is right in a house, believers will have to provide to keep it going. They will offer their talents and time (and be taken up on the offer) more readily.

Does God Learn?

2009-11-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

I hear a lot of open theists say that God "learns" about what is going on in the universe. In other words, God learns what human beings are doing, He learned about evil when mankind created it, etc.

Although I do think open theism is quite biblical and preserves God's sovereignty quite well, I don't feel comfortable saying that God learns.

You see, learning implies a struggle to gain information. When I learn, I have to study hard and make an effort to retain the information. For God, the process is completely devoid of effort, because He is omnipotent.

When a new fact comes into existence, then, God knows it instantly. Typically with the Platonic model of God, it is believed that when a being changes, it can only change for better or for worse. Since God is perfect, He can never change for the better or for the worse, so He can't change at all. Therefore, God's knowledge can never change at all. I disagree that changes are always from better to worse. In the Bible, God's character is revealed as unchanging, (i.e. I am the Lord, I do not change) but not in a Platonic sense. In fact, in the incarnation, God became man, that is, He changed.

It has to be this way, then. Here's the thing. If God has sequence (which the Incarnation assumes) then He is in 2009 right now with us (although He doesn't experience time in a measurable way). I am alive right now. Therefore, the statement "Cameron Versluis is alive" has a truth value of "true". If I were to die, the statement "Cameron Versluis is alive" would suddenly have a truth value of "false". Therefore, for a creature to have perfect knowledge over a course of time, the content of their knowledge would have to change.

If, however, God were completely immutably outside of time, as Plato affirmed (and as I myself have affirmed in the past) then the statement "Cameron Versluis is alive" would have a truth value of "true" yet "false"!

So, it does make most sense for God to have sequence, even if He doesn't have a measurable sequence. 2 Peter 3:8 makes this clear. God is going to bring judgment on the earth, but He has not yet. Therefore, He is in the "before" the judgment. Yet, you can't say it will be "x years" for God until the judgment, because His sequence is not measurable.

Now, back to what I was talking about. If I were to die, the truth value for "Cameron Versluis is alive" will suddenly negate. If you were to have the idea that I was alive, it would be a mistaken idea. But, if the truth value suddenly changes, then an omniscient being would recognize that it had changed and instantly the content of its knowledge would change.

God, then, does not "discover new facts" or "learn" as if He had to make some sort of careful effort to do it the right way. This is why I have been uncomfortable with open theists using these terms. Instead, God's simply knows. As David said, God knows when he sits and knows when he stands.

Anyway, some thoughts on open theism and God's knowledge...

Faith and Works

2009-11-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

So, I just had a few thoughts on faith and works.

Way back when, Martin Luther opposed the Catholic's translation of a phrase of Jesus we now translate "repent". At the time, Catholics translated it "do penance". Martin Luther, on the other hand, called for a new translation, ushering in his new concept of justification by faith alone.

Out of these two, I would side with Luther. But I agree with N.T. Wright, I think Luther took it too far. The word μετανοέω (metanoeó, repent) means to change one's mind and purpose, according to Strong's. As I recently heard a pastor explain it, when you're headed down the wrong way on a one-way street and cars are coming at you in all three lanes, repenting means turning the car around.

Repentence calls for a lifestyle change: living a radically different life, one like Jesus lived. Yet, we often view the "repent" command as a synonym for "believe" or just "feel bad".

I think we've taken it to the point where we've gotten a drive-thru Jesus. Just have a little faith and you're cool. You're going to heaven, be happy.

But I think Jesus called for a lot more than that. He wanted our works to glorify Him. I don't mean to challenge Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone. I agree with that. But here's the thing. As I see it, it's exactly like loving someone. If you tell someone you love them but never do anything to show it, how genuine is your love? You build up love by the things you do for another person. You're not a good friend because you do good stuff for a person, you're a good friend because you love them. At the same time, your love is built up by the things you do for them.

Similarly, we build up our love and our trust for God when we do what He says. As I see it, maybe works shouldn't be thought of as a byproduct of faith and trust, but as simultaneous with faith and trust. Read Hebrews 11. By faith, Abraham uprooted his house and moved. He didn't just sit there with his faith switch on. His faith was lived out in a real, tangible response to God.

Another thing I might like to note is the definition of "works". What exactly constitutes a work? I think the reason people get so up-in-arms about the concept of works is because they associate it with legalism, i.e. the Pharisees trying to be justified by the works of the Law. But what I'm talking about here is real acts of faith before God. Like, daring to help someone who's hurting. Bringing good news to the poor. Answering the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Here's how John Fletcher saw it. Faith and works are like two oars on a boat. You have to push on both of them simultaneously. If you let slack with the left oar, you turn in circles. If you let slack with the right oar, you turn in circles. It doesn't matter how hard you work the left oar if you're not also working the right one.

Thus, I don't see the tension between salvation by works and salvation by faith alone. Sure, faith is what justifies us, but faith without works is dead. Is a dead faith a saving faith? I think not.

Adding works to salvation seems heretical today. We've got antinomian eternal security advocates running around all over the place. It's like, just say the Sinner's Prayer and you're clean. Now do whatever you want. But works was a huge part of what Jesus talked about. Actually, I think Jesus might be labeled a Pelagian heretic if He were to show up today. Live out your faith. As James says, faith without works is dead. Let's ditch the drive-thru model of Jesus and return to the real one.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Implanted Desires and Subtle Denotation-Changing

2009-11-12T11:20:00.000-08:00

So I've been reading Calvinism: A Closer Look by Daniel Gracely (older edition titled Hoodwinked and Happy?). Gracely writes a great deal about how Calvinists subtly flip and flop the meanings of words without intending to or realizing that they are doing it. Basically what goes on is Calvinists will change the denotation (dictionary meaning) of a word when they use it in their sentences, but the connotation (how it sounds) remains the same, so the sentence still sounds like it makes sense. Gracely is one of the smartest authors I have read in a long time. You can read the entire book online at xcalvinist.com.

I would just like to quote a portion of Chapter 13, which talks about the Calvinist idea that God will take away our old desires and implant His desires. While I agree that this is a biblical principle, I do not view us as suddenly being implanted with God's desires in a totally passive way. I view this more as a process (called sanctification usually), where we gradually learn to conform our desires to God's desires. It's not like suddenly God sucks out our old desires and sticks new ones in there in a crude heart-surgery operation.

And in case any Calvinists are going to quote Ezekiel 36:26-27, see Ben Henshaw's article, "Is the New Heart of Ezekiel 36:26-27 a Reference to Regeneration Preceding Faith?"

To understand the implications of this Calvinistic view, consider that I am in a chair writing this page. All of the molecules that make up my being (according to Sproul elsewhere in his book) are in sovereign control by God. According to Sproul and Boettner (who follow Edwards) any faith that I have has been a result of God putting a new desire in me apart from my willingness. Indeed, had God not implanted a new desire in me, I would have remained as I was. But the question arises-If Calvinism says that God has placed His desire in Dan against Dan’s desire, then Dan’s desires have been negated in order to receive the construct of God. That is, without God’s forceful and coercive removal of Dan’s own desires, Dan would simply remain as he is. How then, for example, can Sproul or Edwards say that this new desire is Dan’s desire? For if I now say the sentence, “God has changed my desire” there is an illusion of meaning because there is no more ‘my.’ God has overthrown the ‘my.’ He has negated the ‘my’ and replaced the vacuum with His desire. The only way, then, that ‘Dan’ could say that “God has changed my desire” is if we reduce the ‘my’ to particle physics. Thus, in place of Dan’s essence is now a bio-organic automaton that, in effect, calls up a program that God has put within him to give the illusion that when the automaton speaks saying, “I am Dan, and my desire has been changed,” Dan and his desire are still present, when in fact they are not. In reality ‘Dan’ must only be a bio-computer which God has made out of material creation. So the mass of collective molecules in process that sits in a chair, which we call ‘Dan,’ has been the object of God’s construct. ‘Dan,’ for that matter (as previously noted), could be a laundry basket for all the distinction that Calvinism requires. The ‘my’ enacts no final thinking or willing as a separate entity distinct from God. Thus ‘man’ is a non-predicated being, and the uniqueness that distinguishes him from a laundry basket is lost. For God could just as well sustain the being of a laundry basket, a plant, or an automaton in His presence, and cause it to echo back His constructs as willless computers with no consciousness. Either way it is God’s continuation of an object’s being in His presence-and that is all. We see then that under Calvinism the result is a total annihilation of the person, because to say that “God chooses another person’s choice” is the same type of irrationality that would say that “somebody else is me.”

More on Statues, Calvin, and Probability of Being Correct

2009-11-11T03:38:00.000-08:00

After reading my last post, Sam had more to say.

Though I too would commend the removal of Mary's statues in the church, I think John Calvin was against it because it was someone else's property that was being destroyed. If the whole church had become protestant and removed the figurines, then he would have been for it but he was not for destruction others property.

//"being wrong makes him more suspect to being incorrect in other areas."//
May be true, though I highly doubt that there are too many people in history with whom you agree entirely. I suppose you are going to start listing all the people in which you have found no fault as of yet and that is fine. I would enjoy browsing the list.

No; other than Jesus I don't really know of anyone with whom I would agree with entirely. On some point or another I disagree with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Calvin, Wesley, Augustine, Constantine, Pelagius, Arminius, and pretty much anyone else you could name. However, I think that Pelagius, for instance, was much further in the wrong than Arminius.

In the same way I think Calvin was very wrong on this issue, and many others. His quote of the ideal church being "four bare walls and a sermon" is exactly in character from what I've read of Calvin and fits snugly with a lot of the other things I've heard that he has said.

I do suggest reading about Calvin's rule of Geneva here and here. Calvin was a stringent dictator who despised any sort of merriment and enforced harsh rules. Everyone was examined by his pious police to see whether they were conducting themselves the right way, and questioned if they missed one of Calvin's sermons. A female hairdresser was imprisoned for two days for giving a bad haircut. Calvin got the police to side with him doctrinally and banished anyone who dared question his Institutes. When one man questioned part of Calvin's sermon, Calvin made him march all around the city and beg forgiveness at every street corner. Additionally, at risk of sounding cliche with this oft-repeated sentiment, Calvin was complicit in the murder of Michael Servetus, and executions were common in Geneva.

All in all, although Calvin did have some good exegesis here and there, I think he was quite questionable. Boyd's quote from Calvin reinforced this idea, and I simply think that Calvin's almost paranormal display of wrong-ness certainly renders any of his ideas suspect.

Calvin, Sam, and Boyd on Stained Glass

2009-11-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

So I posted a link to a video clip from one of Greg Boyd's sermons on Facebook not too long ago. The video was called "Imagination, John Calvin, and Stained Glass". In the clip Boyd talks about how the Protestant Reformation had as one bad side effect the discouragement of Christian art.

I think it is truth; the Reformation did create a general suspision of art. I've noticed that Protestants tend to be very jittery about pictures, movies, or arts used in religion. Any depictions of Jesus often come with a lot of disclaimers and people are very shaky about things.

However, shortly after I posted the link, Sam messaged me. I think he had some excellent things to say, so I will post his message.

Greg Boyd needs a little help with his history. The reason why the reformers where against the statues and windows was because of who was on them. Go to a church today that still uses these methods and see who it is that is being shown in the windows and statues. While it may be true that John Calvin was totally against these things, the reason for his being totally against it was probably because of its former abuse, as Boyd said. So Calvin may be wrong in this regard, so what? As for the iconoclasts who did the breaking of all the statues in the churches, John Calvin was against this sort of violence. There are Calvinists who still use stain glass windows of Bible characters and statues and the like. One of them is R.C. Sproul, who you know of very well.

I would like to make a few points.

In Boyd's favor:

Boyd doesn't talk about Reformers in general; he talks about the "culprits" who threw suspicion onto the arts, one of them being John Calvin.
Calvin's being wrong in this area was the point Boyd was making here. He wasn't critiquing anything else Calvin had to say, although Boyd did make it clear that he wasn't a Calvin fan. I would also like to note that Calvin's being clearly in the wrong on this issue makes him more suspect to be incorrect on other issues.
The Platonic otherness theory was also clearly a "culprit" here, and I agree with Boyd that as a result of Plato's (and Socrates and Parmenides) musings, we have had our picture of God skewed and corrupted.

In Sam's favor:

It's true that the Catholic and Orthodox churches fell into a lot of idolatry and twisted practices involving their statues and pictures. As a result I can see how being suspicious of such images would be beneficial.
When you think about it, the statue-smashing rather corresponds to the Old Testament idol smashing. I'm not sure if smashing stuff is quite as acceptable under the new covenant as it was under the old, but it's still a radical way to deal with sin, and I like it.
I'm guessing you mean that Virgin Mary is shown on windows from such churches today. And I agree she is a very, very dangerous figure idolatry-wise. In fact, I would guess that during the end times she's going to be one of the main rigs Satan uses, and she has been a favorite of his for a long time.

So in the end, I agree with Sam that at least some Reformers (maybe most) had good motives for destroying the statues and stained glass windows, and I commend those Reformers for doing so. I agree with Boyd that a total suspision of arts is wrong and that the Platonic model of God's otherliness makes God into a big shiny nonpersonal floating gem. So I still think Boyd's sermon is excellent, but best taken with a grain of salt, i.e. a dose of Sam.

Why I'm Leaning Open Theist

2009-11-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

All right, I am very seriously considering open theism at this point. A lot of people will think I'm a heretic (what's new?), but I would just like to make a few points as to why I am leaning toward this position.

The Bible portrays God as having sequence, i.e. a before and after. As Greg Boyd points out, open theism is the only view that is directly compatible with the incarnation. As Boyd wrote in his letter to me, the Word became flesh, which presupposes that there was a before He became flesh, and an after He became flesh. In short, a sequence. Also, we shouldn't think that a being that has sequence is limited, whereas a being frozen in an eternal now is not. A being capable of true relationship has sequence. That's just how it works.
The Bible portrays God as being flexible. He reacts and adapts to the things human beings do. For instance, after saying He would do so He decided not to send fire down on Ninevah after all, on the basis that the people repented. (Jonah 1:2; 3:2, 4–10; 4:2) He states that He will take away people's shares in the holy city if they take away from the book of Revelation (Revelation 22:18). It doesn't make much sense that He would (or could) take away the share He had given them if a) He foreknew that they would take words from Revelation or b) He was timeless (in the sense of not having sequence).
Prayer really does change things. The Bible portrays prayer as something that can spur God to action. For instance, God shows the prophet Amos in a vision the destruction He will bring on Israel. Amos prays, begging God to relent from sending the calamity - and God does. If the exhaustive foreknowledge view is correct, God knew Amos would pray to Him, and had already basically decided that He would not bring destruction on Israel, even though He revealed to Amos that that was His plan. (Amos 7:1-6)
The Bible does portray God as regretting previous decisions He made. If He foreknew from all time that man would become so horribly sinful just before the Flood, it wouldn't make sense that He would make the decision to create man and then regret it later (even though if He's timeless, there isn't a later). See Genesis 6:5-6. God also states that He regrets making Saul king (1 Samuel 15:10). How could God say, "I have been eternally certain that Saul's actions would be exactly this way" and then turn and say "I regret making Saul king"? Boyd has pointed out that it is possible to regret making a good decision. For instance, if you hire a new employee and he did the best work of anyone, but several months later he totally botched his job, stole company files, etc., you would regret hiring him because of the free actions he committed, even though at the time you made the wisest possible decision.
Some consider the above verses to be anthromorphisms. They're embarrassed because they've decided the Platonic view of God (as an unchanging, timeless sort of big gem in the sky) is the right one, and these passages present God as a relational being with real emotions, a being who is flexible and adaptible (though I should note, biblically God's character never changes, even if His plans do). The real problem is, anthromorphisms always point to a reality. For instance, when the Bible says that God has a strong arm (Psalm 89:10), it points to the reality that God is strong (even though He is Spirit and doesn't have arms). But when it says that God regretted making humans, or that God changed His mind or plans - what on earth is the reality that points to?
Open theism doesn't really have a problem being compatible with prophecy. There are different types of prophesies. Some are deterministic prophesies. God determines that this is what's going to happen, and He does it. Others are conditional prophesies, i.e. if you do this then I will respond with this. Many are illustrative prophecies. When Jews said that part of the scripture was being fulfilled, for instance, they didn't necessarily mean that something that had been predicted was now coming to pass. A lot of the "prophesies" about Jesus' life were fulfilled in the sense that they qualified and reflected principles from the scriptures. For more information, see this link.

So these are the basic reasons I am now leaning heavily open theist. For more information, I recommend you see the Q & A section on Greg Boyd's website. It's a position worth looking into, and one that is biblical, I think.

Held Up By Molecules - R.C. Sproul's Diety

2009-11-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

R.C. Sproul says,

"If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled. Perhaps that one maverick molecule will lay waste all the grand and glorious plans that God has made and promised to us... Maybe that one molecule will be the thing that prevents Christ from returning."

Besides the fact that Sproul is obviously ignorant of quantum mechanics (as Boyd points out, of course), the implications of this quote are staggering. Sproul likes to think that his view of God, the Calvinist view, gives God the most power. But think about it.

Sproul's God gets held up by molecules.

Think about it. How pathetic is this view of a God? He's one who has to keep stringent control on every single molecule at every single time - because if one does get loose, oh boy, that could be the end of Him! He might not be able to carry out His plan!

Then again, if you think carefully, Sproul's ideas work on a sort of tautology. Assuming that God's plan is 100% perfect down to the movement of the molecules in the air, it makes sense that His plan would be thwarted if a molecule moved out of accord with his plan.

Maybe He doesn't even need to control that molecule in particular. Is He not sovereign enough to work His plans around that obnoxious molecule - or an obnoxious person - or even an obnoxious nation? Last time I checked, He does that. Except, of course, that Sproul and Pink and White and Spurgeon and the whole checklist of Reformed writers would say that that obnoxiousness was also part of God's sovereign plan. Somehow or other.

So, in the end, Sproul essentially chooses to sacrifice God's omnipotence for His meticulous control. Not only that, but I would argue that God's love is sacrificed in such a view. What is love if it is just for molecules you move around with a wave of your hand? That's all people are in Sproul's exhaustive determinist view.

Shocker! 1 Corinthians 15:22 is About Resurrection!

2009-11-05T03:16:00.001-08:00

"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."

I've heard 1 Corinthians 15:22 used to talk about original sin and how in Adam all have spiritually died, but now I'm viewing it in a different light. I'm not much of a stickler for original sin anymore - it seems like a pretty depraved concept. Pardon the pun.

What I've been thinking is that man inherited the knowledge of good and evil and physical death from Adam, and that's it... not a depraved nature. The Greek sarx (translated flesh in the KJV, sinful nature in the NIV) is what I'm thinking is the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the knowledge that sin is pleasurable but wrong, just stuff like that.

Anyway, on 1 Corinthians 15:22 - here is the verse in context. Remember, a text without a context becomes a pretext for a prooftext for doctrines such as original sin and total depravity.

1 Corinthians 15:20-26
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a Man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to Him. Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

I have to say, this passage is awesome. But look at how verse 22 fits into the context. "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a Man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." It's talking about the resurrection of the dead! We know everyone does die by fault of Adam (otherwise babies wouldn't - but animals die so inheriting physical death from Adam does not necessarily ential depravity), and everyone is going to be raised from the dead by virtue of Christ.

If you go back even further in the context it's still talking about the resurrection. This reading satisfies several doubts I've had about the verse. First, I've been finding the idea of original sin and total depravity weirder and weirder (read Ezekiel 18). Secondly, this reading avoids the unfortunate universalist complications. And third, it sits well with my desire to avoid limiting the range of pas (the word all) unless indicated.

So all in all, I have a better understanding of 1 Corinthians 15:22 now. I recommend reading all of 1 Corinthians 15. It's really good!

Thoughts on Ahmed's Introduction - Habermas vs. Ahmed

2009-11-01T15:59:00.000-08:00

So after posting about Gary Habermas and the evidence for Jesus' bodily resurrection, I set out to watch more of Habermas' debates. The one I found was between Dr. Habermas and Dr. Arif Ahmed. Dr. Ahmed is an atheist and apparently quite a deep thinker.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

I believe Dr. Ahmed won this debate, simply because an atheist posted the video. Typically debates are posted by individuals supporting the side that won. Thus far, I have only seen the first 20 minutes, during which Dr. Ahmed gives his introduction.

He makes a fairly strong case against the resurrection - or so it seems. Much like a toddler can win an argument with its much more logical and rational mother simply by having a more domineering attitude, I think here Dr. Ahmed does such a good job because his personality is just so electric, warm and commanding.

I have given Dr. Ahmed's points a great deal of thought and I think I have discovered some logical flaws in what he has been saying. I have not seen Dr. Habermas' response to these points yet, but here goes mine.

Dr. Ahmed points out that Christian scholars scoff at the mass-hallucination theory because it is simply too improbable. But he says that once we bring things into the realm of the supernatural, why should we prefer a resurrection to a mass hallucination?

I would like to pick apart his logic using an example of his from earlier in his presentation. He supposed that he had 30 thermometers and a bucket of water and gave several different examples of combinations of error. I would like to build off of this.

Suppose that we have 30 thermometers that we have shipped in from different parts of the country and different manufacturers. We stick all 30 of these thermometers into a boiling bucket of water, putting one in here and there every couple of weeks, yet the thermometers all read zero degrees celsius. We have analyzed every possibility and (somehow) conclusively proven that there is no possibility that this is happening from naturalistic causes. We conclusively prove (again, somehow) that supernatural forces are affecting our experiment.

Essentially, Dr. Ahmed assumes that it is equally reasonable for these 30 thermometers (shipped in from all over the place and tested one at a time over a period of weeks) to all be malfunctioning at once as a result of supernatural tampering, as it is for the single bucket of water to be malfunctioning as a result of supernatural tampering. The fact is, there were many witnesses who testified to the truth of the resurrection very shortly after it happened. They were from various places and they were very different (Thomas was a doubter, while others were not), yet Dr. Ahmed would like us to believe that it is equally probable for supernatural forces to be acting on all of them over a period of many weeks in various different places, than for a supernatural force to be acting in one place, on one man, during one period of time. This is just like assuming all 30 thermometers were corrupt as opposed to the bucket of water being corrupt.

Additionally, though he says that theoretically the hallucination theory should not be considered less preferable to the resurrection theory, the hallucination theory doesn't properly get rid of the body. The Jews of the time admitted that the body had vanished from the tomb, although they said that the disciples had stolen the body. Unless they (and everyone else visiting the tomb) were having hallucinations, too (how many thermometers do we have now?), it would make no sense for the Jews to admit the body's disappearance. The age-old principle applies: what your enemies admit is usually true.

The other idea he offered (although he was just throwing it out there) is that Satan removed the body and placed in a new duplicate. He rationalized that if we're going to accept a supernatural theory, we might as well just throw in any theory. At this point, how believable is Dr. Ahmed? The question is, why would God allow Satan to create such a massive shockwave of deception involving His own Son? Sure, God puts up with Satan's activities, but how realistic is this? I will ask the question why Jesus went willingly, as the Gospels portray Him going, to the cross, if it was really just a ploy of Satan. Sure, Satan has gained control of certain people here and there, but I defy you to find me one biblical example where Satan led someone willingly, in such a sane manner, to the slaughter, while simultaneously convinced that His death would bring salvation for many people.

When Satan's minions took hold of the man living in the tombs, there was a "legion" of demons inside of him. Going by the Roman legion, this was probably about 7000. Yet, the demons only made the man cut himself on the rocks. I don't believe they could take his life, otherwise they might have. When Judas Iscariot died, he was certainly under Satan's influence, and Satan was described at one point as having entered him, directly before he betrayed Jesus. But when Satan led him to hang himself (assuming that Satan was still with him at that point and that Judas' will was not going along with the idea in any way, rather generous assumptions) Judas went in the most insane, haphazardly manner possible, showing clear signs of a demented, tormented mind - nowhere near the calm, focused way Jesus went toward His death.

I must ask - why are these theories equal to the resurrection theory? If we're going to go with a supernatural theory (which I think we should) the resurrection theory is frankly the most sober one out there. If we're going supernatural, let's just go for a nice tame little resurrection. It's better than other wild ideas, like mass hallucinations and Satanic body-swapping. And if you're not accepting the supernatural you've really got to come up with some ridiculous mass conspiracy theory far more complicated than any heist ever pulled off in history.

Another error Dr. Ahmed makes is an a priori assumption that I see among all atheists. Dr. Ahmed first states that we have no documented cases of people rising from the dead except the case in question, that of Jesus of Nazareth. How wrong he is. Usually filed as "near death experiences", there are all sorts of claims of people dying and coming back to life. For instance, the Near Death Experience Research Foundation claims over 1800 such accounts. But, of course, being a secular scholar Dr. Ahmed would never have heard of these cases.

But the meat of Dr. Ahmed's a priori assumption comes when he makes a few statements that are reducible to a tautology. He points out that before it was discovered how the pyramids were built, some assumed that the supernatural was involved. Then, we figured out the naturalistic explanation for how the pyramids were built, and the supernatural aspect was out. Maybe, he reasons, Jesus' resurrection was a case like this, and we just need to humbly wait for the solution.

This is where the crème de la crème of his poor assumptions comes into play. He assumes that once we have figured out how something works, we will have discovered its naturalistic (i.e. materialistic and non-supernatural) explanation. But his other assumption is of course that once we have found a naturalistic explanation for something, we have figured it out. Thus, he makes "figuring it out" and "finding a naturalistic explanation" synonymns. A tautology indeed.

He starts with the assumption that everything has a naturalistic (read: materialistic and non-supernatural) cause, and therefore, even if we don't know the explanation for something right away, we should assume that there is a perfectly natural cause.

He assumes, therefore, that all demon possessions (which are quite well documented, actually) really do have a naturalistic cause, we just haven't "figured it out" yet. And once we "figure it out", we will have found the naturalistic cause.

Do you think that ancient Greek philosopher looking at the sand on the beach (I can't remember his name) really didn't figure out the concept of atomic structure? He had no way to test it whatsoever! But his theory turned out to be correct. Why, then, does Dr. Ahmed assume that those who attribute demon possession to real demons have somehow less valid of a theory than the Greek's? Because his theory involved a naturalistic (read: non-paranormal and much more comforting to scientists in lab coats) explanation.

It's kind of hard to explain what I want to say here. But basically Dr. Ahmed is assuming that we haven't "figured something out" until we have found a naturalistic explanation for it. Until we have a cushy materialistic non-supernatural explanation, it's just a mystery we can dismiss.

Also, I suggest that the line between the supernatural and the naturalistic is much finer than we usually expect. If you've ever watched someone die... it's very natural, yet very supernatural. Something leaves.

Oh, and if you think science is 100% reliable and all we have to go on... think again. Watch William Lane Craig in this video. I'm not sure if he actually humiliates Dr. Atkins as the title says, but it's still hilarious and intriguing.

These are just a few thoughts. If I have more while watching the rest of the debate, I'll try to post them.

In the end, Dr. Ahmed, although claiming to be an objective, non-committed atheist, really starts out with the same assumptions every other atheist does. He did an excellent job presenting his ideas in such a way that they take center stage and look good. But in the end I think he made it a scientific/philosophical debate where he basically says, "look, people don't rise from the dead", instead of saying, "so, what best fits the historical facts?" In which case, you get the resurrection.

Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?

2009-10-31T07:52:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of "biblical archaeology" going around these days. Thanks to Ron Wyatt, there are a whole lot of bogus Old Testament "discoveries" being advocated - for instance, the Ark of Noah, the Ark of the Covenant, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. The guys over at creation.com provide a good criticism of these "finds", check out the aforementioned links. While we do have Jericho (exactly as the Bible describes it) and plenty of other archaeology to support the Old Testament, Wyatt hasn't exactly made the stellar Old Testament finds he'd like you to think.

Interestingly, possibly the best historically verified item in all of Judeo-Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's odd that the most seemingly impossible incident - yet the crux of the entire Christian movement - is also Christianity's best documented occurrence. I would like to post a few links on the subject.

Move over Wyatt, here comes Gary Habermas.

Habermas Debates Tim Callahan
Part 1
Part 2

Here you can watch Habermas destroy skeptic Tim Callahan in a debate on the subject of the resurrection. Tim Callahan wrote a book (The Secret Origins of the Bible) about the supposed pagan origins of Christianity, particularly the resurrection of Christ, but Habermas destroyed him and his book on live TV.

There was also a debate between Antony Flew and Habermas. Habermas cleaned Flew's clock, but unfortunately I cannot find the video on YouTube again. Instead, read this article by Greg Boyd over at Christus Victor Ministries.

Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

Boyd eats John Dominic Crossan (how does that guy keep his job?) for a light snack and moves on to the evidence for Christ's resurrection.

All in all, good stuff. I also recommend The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. I might condense all these points into my own article or video, but until then, this is cool.

2009-10-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Greg Boyd emailed me back! I had written him a letter earlier explaining my logical objection to open theism. To my surprise, his reply contained a lot of well-construed logic. It's obvious that he has thought these things out for a great deal of time. Quotes from my letter are in italic.

__________________________

Hi Cameron,

I 'm delighted your looking into Open Theism with an open mind (excuse the pun). I want to encourage you to check out the Q and A and Essay section of my website which addresses many of the questions you ask. Given my limited time, I can only touch on your questions here.

But I have a couple problems with it. First off, I can't quite accept the idea of a God bounded by time. Quantum mechanics has shown that there are certain areas of the universe that are not affected by time. I have a difficult time believing that God could be limited by time and sequence, something that parts of His creation are not even limited by.

--> I would question your interpretation of Quantum mechanics. Many if not most Quantum theorists argue that the collapse of the wave packet requires the postulation of irreversible sequence. A great book on this (that touches on other aspects of science and time) is called The Arrow of Time... though I can't off hand recall the author. Also, why think that a being who has a before and after is LIMITED, while a being frozen in an eternal NOW is not? I suggest the frozen model of perfection comes from Plato (and before him, Parmenides) not the Bible. It works with mathematical truths (as in Plato) but not for a personal being (as in the Bible)

Secondly, if God has always existed, and is bounded by time, then an infinite number of seconds must have existed for Him. This seems pretty odd to me. An "infinite number" is really an oxymoron, since a number implies a limited quantity.

--> As Kant showed, the odd thing about time/sequence is that we can neither conceive of it beginning or NOT beginning. Both are equally inconceivable, so the matter must be decided on grounds other than conceivability.

The only problem is, if He is ever at a state when He's outside of time, then He is in all times at once, right? If He were totally outside of time not limited to sequence (as He probably was before the creation of the universe) then all times would be the present. If all times are the present, and the creatures He created are doing things on earth bounded by time, then He would see all the points in time as they happened.

--> yes... and from all eternity.... yet, every verb applied to God in the bible presupposes a "before" and "after"... . The Word BECAME flesh... this suggests first God wasn't incarnate, then he BECAME incarnate.

Then, say, He decides to enter time like open theists (I think) generally claim He did. So, when He creates the universe, He enters time and thus limits Himself. Open theists, if I am correct, say that at that point He also took on the mental characteristics of a time-bounded creature: i.e. not knowing what choices free will creatures would make.

--> note the verbs in these sentences... yet ruled out by the content fo these sentences. eg. WHEN he creates.... He EnTERS... etc.. So was there a "before he creates" and a "before he enters"?
--> also, if the facts of all I shall (certainly) do predate my existence -- for they are, per hypothesis, eternally known to God -- then having God "forget" them doesn't make me free, for the FACTS still precede my choosing them. In 1740 B.C. , for example, all the facts of what I SHALL do existed. I can't alter them. whether God knew these facts in 1740 BC makes no difference. IF they are CERTAIN in 1740 BC, I can no more change the facts of what I WILL do than I can change any fact about 1740 BC. So, it seems to me, I'm utterly fated to do what I shall do. It's much easier to think, and much more biblical to think (in my opinion) that my future is partly open, even to God, for sequence is REAL, even for God, so the future is partly open, even for God.

Hope this helps, Gotta run, keep thinking and loving,

Greg -

__________________________

I'm very pleased he took time out of his schedule (which is no doubt crazily busy) to respond to my letter. And I think the logic he presents is quite watertight, especially the stuff about time relativity and Plato's version of a "perfect" God (which, as Boyd points out, amounts to more of a perfect little timeless unfeeling cold gem than a real, dynamic, living, supreme Being with true thoughts and true emotions).

The only problem I have is seeing why I should accept his system of open theism versus the simple foreknowledge view I have always taken. Many of his points are quite good, but what it would take for me to change my view seems to be a little more than what I have read from him so far (which is admittedly limited) I think I will read Boyd's book, God of the Possible (after, of course, I finish all of these other good books I have undertaken to read).

Explanation of Open Theism

2009-10-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

A few friends and I had a discussion on open theism today. I wrote in my Facebook status that I was considering open theism again. So Lydia asked me today what open theism was. Pretty soon we had Amy, Joe, Mr. Hoffman, and a whole number of other people in the discussion.

I explained what open theism is but I feel like I didn't do a very good job. So here are the reasons open theism works, and why I don't consider it heretical or consider it to take away God's sovereignty.

Note that I define sovereignty like most people define sovereignty: being in control. Being in control, however, is worlds different from being controlling. When you are babysitting little kids, you are in control, but you are not controlling every move those little kids make. Those who by "sovereignty" mean "exhaustive determinism" really are just redefining the term so that any God who is not exhaustively deterministic is not soverign.

But first of all, I should explain what open theists believe. Open theists essentially hold that possibilities are real. In other words, God knows everything perfectly, and that includes possibilities. As in, at this point in time, a man is making a decision. God knows the man perfectly, and God knows the outcome of the decision perfectly, but knows that there is truly a possibility the man might do either one or the other.

In essence, that means the universe is like a giant Choose Your Own Adventure book. God knows all the possible choices any person could make at any point in time, and He is prepared to respond to every human decision with a counter-move that He sees fit.

"Being infinitely intelligent, God does not have to divide up his intelligence to cover various possibilities the way we do. He can anticipate from all eternity each and every one of any number of possibilities as though it was the only possibility – indeed, as though it absolutely had to occur! All the worry that the God of open theism can only hope for the best and thus can’t be trusted amounts to nothing more than an anthropomorphic denial of God’s infinite intelligence. Not only this, but unlike us, God controls the parameters of all possibilities and perfectly knows all the variables that affect all these possibilities."
-Greg Boyd

Basically, the idea is that God is like a master chess player. He perfectly knows every single move his opponent could possibly make, even though the actual sequence of moves the opponent does make is open to possibility.

As Greg Boyd explains it, if an angel were to come running up to the open theist's God and say, "hey! Guess what, God! I found a blueprint of every single move every single human being is ever going to make over the course of all history!"

God would reply, "why on earth would I need that?! I already know every possible move any human being could ever make! And I have a perfect plan of retaliation for any move they do make!"

God is the infinitely wise chess master. On top of this, God created the rules that govern the chess game we are playing. He may therefore announce a checkmate ages before we are capable of ever imagining how such a prediction could be ensured. Because we with our limited ability to anticipate possibilities cannot see how he makes such a prediction, we might be inclined to suspect that he must somehow foreknow or must have predetermined our future moves in order to make it come to pass. Indeed, we may even suspect that those who believe God doesn’t foreknow or didn’t predetermine our future moves can’t really believe he made this prediction inerrantly! If believing the infinitely wise chess master makes predictions inerrantly is a requirement for belonging to our chess club, we may even lobby to have them removed! But, I submit, all such suspicions are rooted in an anthropomorphic conception of deity. We who have finite intelligence would need to foreknow or predetermine everything about a game of chess to ensure a checkmate this far in advance, but an infinitely intelligent chess player would not.
-Greg Boyd

This is how Boyd and other open theists believe that God can predict the future. He can see everything that is going on and make all that information add up to what is going to happen. A really good economist with an infinitely small fraction of God's intelligence can predict stock market crashes, etc. How much more could God, with completely infinite knowledge of every intricate detail of everything that is going on, predict the future based on what is happening in the present?

And why on earth does Boyd support the open theist view instead of the simple foreknowledge (Arminian) or exhaustive determinist (Calvinist) view? He thinks it is more biblical.

Now, the sheer fact that openness theologians believe that “God changes his mind” can hardly count against their affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture, for Scripture explicitly teaches this very thing! God inerrantly states he’s intending to do one thing and then, in response to changing circumstances, decides to follow a different course of action. There are 39 times where this is explicitly stated in Scripture, and several hundred times where, on my reckoning, it is implied. So explicit and prominent is this scriptural motif that one might have thought that charges of denying inerrancy would have been raised against Roger Nicole and others who deny this!
-Greg Boyd

In this quote I don't quite think Boyd makes something clear: open theists do not necessarily believe that God changes. They do, however, believe that He changes His plans, or changes His mind, about what He is going to do. But it is not Him who changed - it is people who changed, thus, He changed His plan to reflect that change.

The fact of the matter is that nobody takes everything in the Bible literally and no one takes everything in the Bible to be metaphorical (anthropomorphic or otherwise). We all have to determine what genre a passage fits into – and thus, whether it’s intended to be more literal, or more anthropomorphic. The only claim of Open Theists is that there’s no good exegetical or philosophical reason to take passages that speak about God changing his mind as anthropomorphic. The only reason traditionalists interpret them this way is because admitting God changes his mind conflicts with the traditional view that God exhaustively knows the future from all eternity as a domain of settled facts. If you grant that God really changes his mind, you must acknowledge that the future is partly open.

I would go further and argue that interpreting these passages as anthropomorphic renders their meaning unclear. If God doesn’t actually change his mind, then what do the passages that explicitly declare that he does change his mind mean? Saying they’re anthropomorphic doesn’t help us, for anthropomorphic expressions, if they’re true, must still communicate something accurate about God. Saying God has “a strong arm,” for example, communicates that God is strong – even though he doesn’t literally have arms. But what does it mean to say “God changes his mind” if in fact God doesn’t change his mind? This is simply inaccurate.
-Greg Boyd

So that is why I am considering open theism, and why I do not consider it a heretical system or one that shortchanges God's sovereignty. I doubt we'll ever be able to entirely figure out how God works, but I think we can certainly try to aim for a theology that is closer to what God has revealed in scripture. The only question is, who's theology is closest?

By the way, I still have some reservations against open theism, which I explain in my letter to Greg Boyd. But I don't entirely discount the open theist system.

Calvinism and Church History

2009-10-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

I know April, though she holds Arminian convictions of her own, is going to kill me for posting another post about Calvinism. She's just sick of hearing about it, and I can hardly blame her... but I did manage to go five posts without mentioning it! So here we go again.

Makenna sent me a message earlier. In it she mentioned how she had a DVD I should watch - Amazing Grace, on the history and theology of Calvinism. I've been writing an article on the subject of Calvinism's lack of historicity, so I sent her back a few points.

...I don't really think Calvinism is supported by church history, and I'll just give you a few quick reasons why. I'm currently writing an article about this but these are the major points:
Augustine of Hippo actually formulated the doctrines of Calvinism, not Calvin. John Calvin merely popularized Augustine's theological system, which is why it is now named after Calvin.

Augustine was born in 354 A.D. He formulated and taught "Calvinism" (exhaustive determinism, unconditional election) several hundred years after Jesus and the apostles walked the earth. For comparison, Paul wrote Romans in about 56 A.D., almost 300 years before Augustine was even born.

Augustine was a former Gnostic Manichæan. Just to give you a taste of what they taught, Gnosticism held to two gods, a good god and a bad god. In the Gnostic view the bad god created the entire universe.
Gnostic Manichæanism held to exhaustive determinism, like Calvinism does today.
When he first converted to Christianity, Augustine adopted the mainstream Christian view of libertarian free will and synergism (the generic title of Arminianism, Arminius was not around until the late 1500s), writing a book titled On Free Choice of the Will, in which he opposed the deterministic ideology he once supported.
During his later years, Augustine fiercely debated Pelagius, a heretic who claimed that man can achieve moral perfection of his own free will. As Augustine fought Pelagius, he slipped further and further back into his old exhaustively deterministic worldview, yet kept much of his new Christianity. As a result he mixed the doctrines of Manichæan determinism and Christianity, to get Augustinianism, what we now call Calvinism.
Augustine could not even read Hebrew or Greek, so his exegesis was limited to his Latin manuscripts, and often flawed.
I recommend reading the following articles:
http://evangelicalarminians.org/files/Church_History_and_Calvinism.pdf
http://www.gospeltruth.net/aug/sinsofaug.htm

From the first article, a good quote:

"It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century. The earlier church fathers placed chief emphasis on good works such as faith, repentance, almsgiving, prayers, submission to baptism, etc. They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel...They taught a kind of synergism in which there was
co-operation between grace and free will...[Calvinistic Predestination] was first clearly seen by Augustine,..he went far beyond the earlier theologians [and] taught and unconditional election. (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 365, emphasis added)"

"Although the Calvinist author above intended to say that Augustine discovered a lost teaching of the apostles, his words serve to confirm that (1) unconditional election first emerged in the church about 400 years later than the apostles (2) that unconditional election can be traced to a single influential individual (Augustine), and that (3) unconditional election went “far beyond” the teachings of all those who went before. His
words should also prompt one to ask, “How did free will become the universal teaching of the church for the first 400 years, in the first place?” Indeed, what would it take for “free will” to overcome the alleged lost teaching of unconditional election so that free will became the universal teaching of the church for 400 years? And where is the evidence that something like that even happened?"

I must apologize for the length of this email! It's just odd that you mentioned church history and Calvinism because I had been writing an article (and consequently doing a lot of research) on the subject. Hopefully you will understand my position.

History, God's Attack on Satan

2009-10-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the Christus Victor model of the atonement and a thought hit me. Actually, it was a series of thoughts.

Maybe God set up all of human history as a strategic counter-attack against Satan.

Here's what I'm thinking. You know how in the Old Testament, God was pretty violent and pretty Jew-partial? I mean, every hundred years or so He would kill someone who provoked Him. And He reserved most of His liberties for the Jews, His chosen people.

Of course, it's OK for God to be justly violent and unconditionally partial (believe me, check out the pagan gods and you'll be pretty glad you serve Yahweh), but I wonder if He had a strategy to it?

The Pharisees got so caught up in their Jew-partial, punish-the-sinner mindset that God rightly did have (to a degree, but not so much as the Pharisees believed) that they could not see that Jesus really was the Messiah. They expected Him to do the same sorts of things God did in the OT. Kill blasphemers, lead a violent expedition against enemies of Israel - that sort of thing. Actually, most of Israel thought this, as indicated by Luke 9:54.

But I wonder what Satan thought? Maybe he got tricked, just like the Pharisees? Maybe he saw so much of God's OT wrath that he didn't understand God's love when it was manifested in Jesus Christ?

It's like Jesus was undercover. The Father set up all kinds of expectations for what the Son would be like, so that the Son could slip in almost unnoticed.

In other words, the Incarnation is God undercover. Like the Father acted in certain ways and thus other beings (demonic especially) thought that He always acted in those ways, so that Satan never really suspected that Jesus could be God, or even the Messiah.

I doubt Satan would have helped put Christ to death if he had any idea about what would result. I wonder if perhaps that was the point - to keep things just obscure enough so that people who allowed themselves to be enlightened by God could find the truth, yet Satan wouldn't get it?

1 Corinthians 1:27 seems perhaps to have hit this point. Paul's sermon in Acts 17:24-27 seems to say something like this as well.

Just some thoughts. They certainly help to explain the whole disconnect between the OT God of wrath and the NT God of love, although you can really find both Gods in both Testaments if you look a little. I will be reading God at War by Greg Boyd (which I have), then Satan and His Kingdom by Dennis McCallum (which I've ordered), then hopefully God's Strategy in Human History by Forster and Marston (which I plan to order). Maybe these books will help

Live. Learn. Experience. By April.

2009-10-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I have posted something written by anyone other than myself on my blog. However, it is completely warranted. This is an essay written by my good friend April.

I almost wonder if she wrote this essay for me and about me. I am the person of the first few lines... a kid studying to be a pastor, so wrapped up in theology, doctrine, and who's right and who's wrong that I forget what pastors do. They help people. They teach people. They get out and they live for God. They Live Out Loud - ironically, that's the title of April's blog.

I've always been the doctrinal guy, but she's always seen the value of living the faith instead. I've always been the one who's wrapped up in first-century manuscripts, she's always been the one wrapped up in twenty-first century relationships.

So I guess I need to take to heart a lot of the values of April. I don't need to forfeit my doctrinal study. But at the end of the day, I need to realize what's most important. Jesus did. He could quote the scriptures forward and backward, sure, but He knew that that those scriptures were meant to be lived out.

Here is April's essay. April, if you're reading this, I just want to say thanks for reminding me of things I all too easily forget.

__________________________________

Live. Learn. Experience.

Let’s say I wanted to learn all I possibly could about Christianity. I could watch documentaries, learn theory and doctrine, and of course study the Bible. I could be considered a very religious person because I know so much about God. But as many Christians know, truly knowing God is different than knowing about God. You have to experience God’s love and Christ’s forgiveness to really know what it means. Just as one cannot fully understand what it means to lose a friend, until he has lost-- what it means to face a fear, until he has faced it-- or what it means to love, until he has loved. It is said by many about life “live and learn.”

It is also said, “Learn from your mistakes.” Unfortunately, some things have to be learned the hard way, because after discovering what not to do, you usually learn how to do it the right way too. Like the baby who cannot walk yet, all she knows is what she sees from watching others. But no matter how much the baby studies other people’s walking, she will always fall down the first time. It may take many tries before she can get anywhere on her two feet. But if she doesn’t give up, she will soon learn to walk. Because we are humans, we will fall sometimes, but we were created to learn from our mistakes, and to learn from experience, good or bad.

In Francis Bacon’s “Of Studies” he says, “[studies] perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.” In modern English you could say something like this, “People have natural abilities, and they are perfected by experience, like plants that need pruning. Much can be learned from studies, but true knowledge comes through experience.”

Another way to learn is to take what you already know and strive towards improvement. In my years of playing flute I’ve found that practice makes (almost) perfect; however, just sitting in the band room wasn’t what improved my skills, no. I think what most helped me was going to Solo and Ensemble contest, which meant my abilities would be seriously tested. It’s never easy stepping up to a new level and having to make your work as best as it possibly can be. Performing in this contest meant I would play in front of a judge and a small audience, and I could also listen to others do the same. Experience. It’s what can polish natural ability, and inspire you to keep pushing forward.

Because we are humans we learn something new every day; because we live our life, we grow from experience. Today, we need to open up our minds to new information, a new perspective, and new experiences. For every experience there is the chance of not only knowing more than before, but being more than before. Whether it be mistakes or successes, experience and the memory of those experiences make us who we are today.

How to Salvage Your Broken Faith

2009-10-02T18:53:00.001-07:00

We've all been there. You know the points in your walk with God where you're just left dry spiritually, drowning in the depths of mediocrity. All the passion, all the power in your faith has been sucked out of you. A part of you wants it all back so bad, but another part doesn't even care.

I have been in spiritual ruts like that multiple times in my life. In fact, I'm just coming out of one. I'd just like to share a few thoughts of mine on the subject.

I hit such a dry spot about a year ago. I didn't understand what was happening to me. I had been so filled with the spirit of God, so in love with Jesus, so in touch with spirituality. But then it seemed to just leave. I wasn't on the straight and narrow path anymore. I felt lost in the woods. After a long time of depression, I started searching.

Naturally, as a 21st century kid, the first place I searched was online. I looked up how to restore your relationship with God, how to return to a faith you feel has fallen apart.

I found two different articles I liked a lot. But they said the exact opposite thing!

The first article said that to get back to a relationship with God that you've lost, you need to start at the beginning again. You need to go back to the way you were when you were first converted: humble, and lost, and broken. You need to realize anew that you can't make it on your own, you need to submit to Christ afresh. The beginning is the place where you walked by humble, childlike faith. And back to the beginning you must go.

The other was a sermon by Charles Spurgeon. You've probably noticed that I don't agree with a lot of Spurgeon's theology, but I think he was a great man of God, one who truly walked by faith and had a great deal of valuable insight. Spurgeon said that to get back to a relationship with God that you lost, you must pick it up where you left off. If you forsook reading scripture and so your faith crumbled, then back to the scriptures you must go to find God again. If you forsook your prayer life and so your faith crumbled, then back down on your knees you must go to find God again.

These two articles said the exact opposite thing, yet I think they are both right. When we are at a spiritual low, we must use Spurgeon's method in practice. We must pick up the spiritual discipline we forsook in order to move on again. But to come back to God with our heart, we must go back to the beginning. We must go back to that humble state we were in before we were "great Christians", to let the good news break us again, humble us again, forgive us again.

I was reading Simply Jesus and You by Joseph Stowell a while ago. It is an excellent book full of passion and insight. Joseph Stowell quoted Micah 6, and it just broke me.

Micah 6:6
With what shall I come before Yahweh
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?

Do you feel the frustration in the text? The guy writing is just saying, "all right, what is going to be good enough for me to connect with God? What do I have to do to get it all back?"

Just like I am.

Micah 6:7
Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He goes on... what is going to be good enough? Can I give God thousands of my possessions for His forgiveness? Should I give Him my firstborn kid?

Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does Yahweh require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

And there's the answer. Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. We can think we have it all figured out, we can put everything into neat little formulas, but in the end, we just have to drop it all and walk humbly with God.

My Letter To Greg Boyd

2009-10-01T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is my letter to Greg Boyd. I have been seriously considering his open theism position, but I have a few logical qualms with it. Hopefully, he will respond with some good insight.

_________________________

Hey Rev. Boyd,
I have been looking into the possibility of open theism. Right now I'm sort of at a crossroads because I have always accepted the infinite foreknowledge view of God. I'm thinking that the openness position is fairly solid scripturally (rarely do its opponents use scripture to argue their points) and accounts better for the ridiculous complexity of everything.
But I have a couple problems with it. First off, I can't quite accept the idea of a God bounded by time. Quantum mechanics has shown that there are certain areas of the universe that are not affected by time. I have a difficult time believing that God could be limited by time and sequence, something that parts of His creation are not even limited by.
Secondly, if God has always existed, and is bounded by time, then an infinite number of seconds must have existed for Him. This seems pretty odd to me. An "infinite number" is really an oxymoron, since a number implies a limited quantity.
All in all I'm thinking God has to be outside of time and not limited by time. But to work sequentially, He has to limit Himself to time in some way. Otherwise He would never be able to talk to Moses on Mount Sinai, due to the fact that Moses is a time-bounded creature.
The only problem is, if He is ever at a state when He's outside of time, then He is in all times at once, right? If He were totally outside of time not limited to sequence (as He probably was before the creation of the universe) then all times would be the present. If all times are the present, and the creatures He created are doing things on earth bounded by time, then He would see all the points in time as they happened.
For instance, He would see the time when I started writing this letter and the time I finished, and all the times in between. My action, to write this letter, was free, but God could still see each instant of time in which I did in fact write the letter. So He sees all of the results of my free will decision, whether or not He sees the free will decision itself.
Then, say, He decides to enter time like open theists (I think) generally claim He did. So, when He creates the universe, He enters time and thus limits Himself. Open theists, if I am correct, say that at that point He also took on the mental characteristics of a time-bounded creature: i.e. not knowing what choices free will creatures would make.
So, essentially, He would have to forget all the stuff He already knew. And my point is, if He is outside of time at any point, that means that He can foreknow the free will decision of any creature judging by the results, without affecting the creature's free will.
Hopefully you see what I'm getting at. If you see any flaws in my logic, let me know. I'm very interested in your position and it has gotten me to think in a lot of ways I have not before. But I'm just trying to reason this out and it's not adding up right.
Thanks, and keep up the good work.
In Christ,
-Cameron Versluis

Reasons to Witness

2009-09-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

I presented this message at our first Do Hard Things meeting. This is the text of my speech on why we should evangelize. (Please, realize that failure to read the whole thing can result in some inaccurate conclusions about what I'm saying.)

I put a lot of passion (not to mention a pretty late night) into writing this one, and it represents why I believe that Christians should personally evangelize, even to strangers. This is something I really feel strongly about, so please, let it move you and take the message to heart.

_______________________________________

I have to say that I disagree with Makenna on the idea of personal evangelism. And I have a few reasons for this I think are quite valid.

First off, I think it is invasive to people's privacy. Personal evangelism is what has given Christians their reputation of being proselytizing freaks that hound people to love Jesus. We don't need to walk around telling people to repent of their sins. People have certain boundaries that you just don't cross.

Speaking of boundaries, you should notice that in our culture and every culture, we have unspoken but specific rules concerning appropriate conduct. There are different levels of intimacy in relationships. Say, I might call up my good friend Nick and spill all the deep, personal stuff that has been happening to me lately, but it would be totally inappropriate for me to do that to a total stranger! Jesus Christ is the deepest thing in a Christian's life. We need to build relationships with people before we can start talking about Jesus Christ. They won't listen otherwise!

If you must personally witness, which I don't recommend, then just please listen to a few brief guidelines. If you don't feel ready to witness to someone, then don't. You could get flat-out rejected. If you think it will make you or them uncomfortable, then don't. People who are really led by God to do the evangelizing can do the evangelizing. If we mess up and feed people the wrong answers, then they're gonna get the wrong answers! Someone was feeding Charles Darwin all the wrong answers about God. That's why he went down like that. When you're in doubt about sharing your faith, just don't. You could mess up. Right?

Right?

Right?

No. Not right. Do you guys realize what I've been doing here? I have been spewing the lies of Satan. These are lies that Satan has told me over and over and over. And I've bought into them. But now it is time for us to stop buying into the lies of Satan. It is time for us to start getting into the truth of Jesus Christ.

What I have just done is actually verbalized these lies. I've said them out loud. Usually they just prowl quietly around in my heart and mind. But I've now brought them out in the open so we can take a few cracks at them. Let's do that.

The first lie I told you guys today is that we should not tell strangers about our faith in Jesus Christ because it invades people's privacy, because it is proselytizing and because it crosses too many boundaries. Let me tell you something—Yeshua Ha'Mashiach, Jesus, the Messiah does not just cross boundaries, He shatters them. When Jesus was on earth He was never worried about staying within cute cultural rules. He trampled all over tradition. What did He say? In Luke 12, He said, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."” Jesus is not interested in us staying timidly enslaved within cultural bounds. Jesus is not interested in us staying within our comfort zones. Satan is.

Do we have to build up relationships with people before we witness to them? I don't think so. Why not? Wouldn't that be a good, sensible way to do it? You get to know someone for a while, take them to dinner, and tell them about Jesus. Good plan, right? Nope. Why doesn't it work? It doesn't work because the conversation never happens. You get three months into the relationship and you still haven't done it. You get six months into the relationship and you still haven't done it.

The truth is, there will never be a totally appropriate time to tell someone about Christ. The Bible says Satan is the prince, the god, of this world. He deceives unbelievers. He is not going to just hand them over so they can ask questions and get their little preaching session. You have to go to them. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” That's Ephesians 6:12. We are to wrestle against the powers of the dark world. We don't sit around and be cute Christian kittens avoiding conflict, avoiding offending people, avoiding speaking truth when it't tough. We're supposed to be out there fighting the good fight and keeping the faith.

Do we need to form a good relationship with people to witness to them? No. Can we witnes to total strangers? Yes. Most will say that it is much easier to talk to strangers about Jesus than it is to talk to people you know. I like what Mark Cahill says, something to the effect of, “why would you knowingly move people from a category that makes them easy to witness to, to a category that makes them hard to witness to?”

Should we wait until we have formed a relationship to witness to people? What is a relationship, anyway? It is a circle of knowledge. It's a flow of information. The other person knows things about you, you know things about them. A relationship is all information. My question is, is Jesus Christ so unimportant to me that He should be one of the last things people know about me? Should they know my name before they know the name of Yeshua, the Messiah? Should people know that I like parkour and pizza before they know that I love the Lord my God? No. I want Jesus Christ to be the first thing people know about me.

Say you do wait six months before telling people about Jesus. People can die in six months. People can die in three months. People can die in three days. They can be gone before you ever get a chance to talk with them. And you could seriously regret it.

And here is the clincher. Jesus commanded us to witness. Luke 10:2, “He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” The world will try to tell you that people are not interested in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is a lie from the lips of Satan. When I go out witnessing the majority of people are hungry for the truth. They want to hear what Jesus has to say. If I run into people who are antagonistic to the Gospel, they are in the minority.

Romans 10:13-15 says, "for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!""

How can people be saved without God's servants giving them the truth? People are dying every single day. The longer we put off communicating truth to them the more danger they are in of facing the wrath of our great God. And God does not enjoy giving them just punishment for their sins.

Ezekiel 18:23 says, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”

2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

God wants everyone to be saved, and so should we. Jesus commanded us to witness, and so we should. Let's look at Matthew 28:19-20.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

What did Yeshua, our wonderful Savior, go through for us? He suffered intensely. He was scourged by the Romans. Many died from that punishment. The whips for the scourging had metal balls and sharp pieces of stone in them, and they tore bodies open to the point where the spine and intestines were exposed.

And that wasn't enough. Jesus suffered even more. He was crucified. The cross is almost always glamorized today, but it was bloody, brutal, and cruel to the point of being inhuman. Huge spikes were driven through the hands of the crucified criminals. These spikes would crush the median nerve, which is the same nerve that runs down to your elbow and is what you typically refer to as your funny bone. You know the pain that you feel when you hit your funny bone? Now imagine that same pain for hours upon hours. Imagine that nerve not just getting hit but crushed. This was such an awful, unspeakable pain that they had to invent a new word for it: excruciating.

Jesus suffered a death by asphyxiation, that is, suffocation. When on the cross you can breathe in easily but you can't breath back out without a struggle. The posture causes you to have to push up on the nails driven through your feet in order to get a breath out. There is only so much you can take before you suffocate and die. Suffocation is possibly the most horrible death out there. Being deprived of the oxygen you have thrived on for years and years is unspeakably awful. I know friends who have had awful nightmares about dying of suffocation underwater.

And yet, Jesus did it all for us. That is what He went through on that cross. That is the price He had to pay for our sin, for your sin, and for my sin.

We should be unspeakably grateful. And yet. After all that He did for us, we cannot even step outside of our comfort zones enough to obey His commandments. We refuse to do the smallest things for Him even though He gave everything for us.

But I'm not just here to point out how awful we are and to stand here moaning over our problems. We are here to actually do something about this problem. We are going to start overcoming. We are going to start serving our Messiah, our Lord and Savior, Yeshua, Jesus of Nazareth. We are going to start loving Him because He first loved us. And we're going to start today.

We're going to step outside of our comfort zones and share the good news—that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world on the cross. That Jesus Christ provides hope and salvation available for anyone. That Jesus Christ is alive and wants to have a personal relationship with individual human beings.

Today, we are going to care enough about the souls of human beings, and we are going to care enough about the atoning sacrifice of our spotless Lamb, Yeshua, to go sharing the gospel, to go spreading our faith, to go make disciples of all nations. Amen.

Theology "Debate" - Help With College?

2009-09-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,
I was just hoping some of you that I will see on Monday could help me out with an assignment for my Moody Bible Institute class. I'm taking The Church and its Doctrines and I have to do the following:

"Find two people you know who have either different political views, different theological views, or some major difference in opinion. Discuss with them their opinion considering some matter of theology."

So, if you feel strongly about any of the following topics, leave a comment:
Calvinism/Arminianism (does God pick and choose who will be saved?)
Determinism/Free Will (has God predetermined everything that happens?)
Infant Baptism/Adult Baptism (which is biblical?)
Original Sin (are we all guilty of eating the forbidden fruit?)
Eternal Security (can a Christian lose his/her salvation?)
Eternal Conscious Torment/Annihilation (are the wicked consciously tormented forever in hell, or annihilated?)
Exhaustive Foreknowledge (does God exhaustively know the entire future?)
Pre/Mid/Post-tribulation Rapture (will the church be raptured before, during, or after tribulation?)
More Scripture to Come (will God add more to the scripture we already have?)
Soul Sleep/Intermediate State (are the dead asleep until the resurrection, or are their souls alive in some form?)

If you would want to help, that would be great! I will hopefully be doing this during lunch.
Thanks guys!

Three Men And Three Questions

2009-09-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

This is kind of odd, but I came up with this quote.

The fool asks, "why is God so inhuman?"

The thinker asks, "why is man so godless?"

The wise man asks, "why am I so godless?" and does something about it.

Calvinism Undermines the Cross

2009-08-18T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that most false doctrines have a tendency to undermine the necessity of Christ's death on the cross.

Calvinism is no exception. How does it undermine the cross? Simple.

If, as the Calvinists say He did, God made the decision to override human free will in order to save His chosen, then why did Jesus still have to die on the cross?

Couldn't God, if He were going the route of overriding free will, just make His preselected, elected individuals never commit a single sin all their lives and thus be righteous? Why make His Son suffer all the torments?

The fact is, if Calvinism is true, individuals are really saved by unconditional election, not by Christ's atoning death. Unconditional election could have followed whatever pattern God wanted it to. Whatever an individual must do to meet God's standards and be saved, God could have simply overridden human will and made some of His creatures meet the standard.

I have known of Calvinists who have given testimony of how they were saved, saying that finally, after hearing the gospel again and again, unconditional election was the doctrine that humbled them enough to repent.

We are saved by Christ's substitutionary, atoning death on the cross. Nothing should overshadow that. Nothing should make it unnecessary. Nowhere in the Bible do we read of people being saved when they heard the doctrine of unconditional election. It is always about Christ's death.

Genesis 30, Jacob's Sheep Breeding, and Epigenetics

2009-08-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

NO. WAY.

Sorry. I don't normally begin articles that way. But that's how I'm feeling right now. My brain absolutely blew after finding this out.

I've been having a lot of struggles with Genesis 30. I read several articles about how pre-scientific Jacob's breeding methods were. I'll just let you read the whole story.

Genesis 30:25-43
After Rachel gave birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, "Send me on my way so I can go back to my own homeland. Give me my wives and children, for whom I have served you, and I will be on my way. You know how much work I've done for you."
But Laban said to him, "If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you." He added, "Name your wages, and I will pay them."
Jacob said to him, "You know how I have worked for you and how your livestock has fared under my care. The little you had before I came has increased greatly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I have been. But now, when may I do something for my own household?"
"What shall I give you?" he asked.
"Don't give me anything," Jacob replied. "But if you will do this one thing for me, I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them: Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages. And my honesty will testify for me in the future, whenever you check on the wages you have paid me. Any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-colored, will be considered stolen."
"Agreed," said Laban. "Let it be as you have said." That same day he removed all the male goats that were streaked or spotted, and all the speckled or spotted female goats (all that had white on them) and all the dark-colored lambs, and he placed them in the care of his sons. Then he put a three-day journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob continued to tend the rest of Laban's flocks.
Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. Jacob set apart the young of the flock by themselves, but made the rest face the streaked and dark-colored animals that belonged to Laban. Thus he made separate flocks for himself and did not put them with Laban's animals. Whenever the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals so they would mate near the branches, but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob. In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and donkeys.

Frankly, I almost entirely lost my faith over this. Seriously, I thought, what is this even saying? That the sight of the striped branches caused the sheep to have striped kids? I mean seriously. No way.

So I went searching. And found nothing. All the articles by Bible-believing Christians were, to be honest, pretty pathetic. They ducked and skirted around the issue in any manner they could.

I got lost. I mean really. I felt like I had no one to trust anymore. I couldn't trust God, I couldn't trust the Bible. I didn't know where to turn or where to go or what to do. My life had been so real. I had been sharing God with others. I had been psyched about Him. I had been breathing Him in, experiencing God in huge ways.

And then it hit me. Doubt shot through the core of my being and left me numb. I didn't know. I remember taking a bike ride with my family and just being totally zoned out. I didn't want to be with them. I didn't want to be with anyone. I just wanted to be left alone until I could sort myself out, assemble the broken pieces I had thought of as truth.

My brother had accidentally broken a window a while ago. The gaping hole was always there in the living room, staring at me. It was like a wide, ghoulish mouth. I remember thinking that a demon must have come through that hole in the window and gotten into me somehow.

I knew myself, though. I guessed I would come back around. I knew I would be back to normal by the time that the window was fixed.

I did get back to normal. And right on time. When the hole was patched, I was patched. It was an interesting sort of metaphor for the gaping hole in my heart. My faith came back and God began to fill me in that same sort of way again.

Finally, I had sort of come to terms with things and realized that I couldn't go on with half-doubts. I needed to identify the doubt and either recognize it as the voice of truth - and make scary modifications to my beliefs - or recognize it as a plaguing doubt.

I did the latter. Simply too much of my life has revolved around God and Scripture in such real ways that it is ridiculous to think that it could all be fake. There is too much reality to it all. It exhumes the essence of reality.

Genesis 30 had to be right, somehow. My understanding of it was fallible and left plenty of room for a lot of misinterpretation.

The conclusion I came to was that I was simply having trouble understanding a God Who could break the laws of genetics He created. The fact is, during the course of Jacob's life, God was bent on blessing him. Who was I to say that God couldn't have used any means - even the funky superstitious stick thing Jacob did - to bless him?

So I sort-of officially dropped my worry about Genesis 30. The fact is, that answer should be good enough for any Christian. God can make it work.

I asked GotQuestions.org about it. This is what they said:

Thank you for your question concerning Jacob and the flock of Laban. Your desire to dig into the details of Scripture is commendable. The New American Standard Version can help on an important detail. In verses 38-39, we read, "He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the gutters, even in the watering troughs, where the flocks came to drink; and they mated when they came to drink. So the flocks mated by the rods, and the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted." Some might call this selective breeding, or genetic engineering. Apparently Jacob had the knowledge that the natural chemicals under the bark of the plants he used could cause mutations in coloration of the animals. He put the branches in the drinking water of the animals. It was not their seeing the branches, but their drinking the water that caused the mutation. The animals that mated shortly after they drank the water were effected. Notice also that he did this only when the healthy and strong animals came to drink. The result was that Jacob’s animals flourished and he became a wealthy man. Many lessons can be learned from the life of Jacob in Genesis Chapter 30. Out of mundane and even puzzling events the foundation of the nation of Israel was laid through the sovereign plan of God. Our Lord, who is very much involved in His creation stepped into time in the person of God the Son, and brought into reality the plan of redemption for all that believe in Him.

Fudged, I thought. That sort of answer to the problem is totally fishy. There's no way that the mother sheep drinking the water with branches could possibly affect the colors of their children. Not a chance. No way.

I just contented myself with the it-was-a-miracle answer. Which, I might remind you, is not a bad answer, because in Genesis 31 Jacob does attribute his success with the sheep to God's providence, not his fancy breeding.

But nevertheless, tonight I searched again for answers on the subject, not really expecting to find anything.

But I did. Something came up.

This is so radical I cannot begin to describe the effect it has had on me. It is so amazing. God is so good. I have been in total shock tonight.

Read this article. Read it. Seriously.

http://www.geneimprint.com/site/press/12861015-1154826620

"In people, a forebear's diet can influence obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. In mice, diet can influence body weight, blood pressure and even fur color. Because examples of this inheritance are only starting to emerge, scientists still don't know the full extent to which diet influences health. But they may be starting to figure out how."

Read this article, too. Yeah, read it.

http://www.biotech-info.net/moms_diet.html

"The reason some animals were yellow and some were brown lay deep in their fetal past, biologists at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., reported this month: Some of the mothers consumed supplements high in very simple molecular compounds that zip around the genome turning off genes. One silenced gene was for yellow fur; when it is turned off, the mouse's fur color defaults to brown. For the mice, it wasn't just that "you are what you eat," but that you are what your mother ate, too."

"There is no doubt that, in the case of the brown or yellow mice, the "you are what your mom ate" phenomenon reflects just such epigenetic influences."

No. Way. So, as we get into the science of epigenetics, we may just find out that Genesis was right after all.

My doubt is gone, I've been set free.

My Thoughts on Original Sin - An Amendment to "Common Logic"

2009-08-12T04:15:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I went over how I think Calvinists end up blaming the sin nature (they call it original sin) for man's sin, not the sin itself. But I do need to clarify.

Romans 5:18-19
Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

I can't argue with that. Clearly, mankind's righteousness is shot because of what Adam did. However, I am still wary of the "original sin" versus "actual sin" concept. Take a look at this.

Ezekiel 18:1-4
The word of the LORD came to me: "What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel:
" 'The fathers eat sour grapes,
and the children's teeth are set on edge'?
"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son—both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die."

Notice that part: "the soul who sins is the one who will die". Ezekiel 18 goes on to say that if there were hypothetically a man who were perfect in every way, he would surely not die. It then speaks of the son of that man, supposing that son turned from his father's righteousness into wicked ways. This man, according to Ezekiel 18, would die. Then it moves on to the son of that wicked man. If the son was also hypothetically a righteous man, then he would not die. If there were still an "original sin" resting on this man from the sin of his father, that would not be true. The fact is, God clearly will not damn us for the sin of our forefathers. Yes, the iniquity of the fathers will be visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation, like Exodus 20 says. It happens in the form of AIDS to entire populations after adultery is committed. But no one will die for sin he did not commit.

Many Reformers point to Romans 5:12-13 to say that every man committed Adam's sin with him.

Romans 5:12-13
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.

Frankly, I don't see how this says that every man committed Adam's sin. It does not say that every one of us was there committing Adam's sin with him. If we were, the hypothetical man in Ezekiel 18 who keeps all of the commandments would still be damned, because Adam sinned for him.

I view it more this way: Adam committed a sin, and all men were made sinners, because now we have to fight against sin and can't win. It's an uphill climb that none of us can possibly do for ourselves.

We are damned for Adam's sin in the sense that because he sinned, we now have the disease of sin and cannot possibly get out of life righteous. Adam's sin causes us to commit our own.

But the point I am making is that we did not, as some believe, commit Adam's sin with him. When Jesus judges the sinners of the world, I don't believe He will add to their list of offenses: "eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

All I would really like is a change of terms. Sin nature is a common term, and I think it is far more accurate than "original sin".

The truth is, original sin was originally a Catholic doctrine, and they taught that the way to get rid of original sin is baptism. In other words, you must be baptized to be saved.

The thief in the cross was not baptized. A Catholic might say a man like that still had original sin.

Also, we know that Jesus' blood covers ALL of our sin, not just actual sin. If baptism covers over any of our sin, then Christ's blood did not cover it. Christ's life was not just given to forgive us, it was given to us to heal the entire disease of sin.

In the Bible, a lot of focus is given to wrong choices and a bit less focus is given to sin nature. In Calvinism, a lot of focus is given to sin nature, and very little/none to wrong choices.

I rather like this article.
http://www.learnthebible.org/sin-nature.html

This is a rather nice article with a dash of humor. The writer is Reformed and makes a good case for sin nature, even though he does call it "original sin".
http://www.tulip.org/trf/wsc018.htm

Common Logic vs. Calvinism

2009-08-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

I can't help but write another post on why I do not believe Calvinism to be a true doctrine.

First off, let's ask a few questions and answer them as a Calvinist would.

Why are some people going to be damned?
Calvinists say that they are damned because of disobedience to God.

Why did these people disobey God?
Calvinists say that they disobey God because that is their evil nature, and they are wicked, depraved, sinful creatures.

Where did these people get this nature?
Calvinists say people got their sinful nature from Adam and Eve. When they sinned, the human race fell under a curse, and that race received the sinful nature.

Can a person ever obey God by himself?
No; humans are wicked, depraved creatures, and they cannot do any good of themselves. The sin nature in them is too great.

Notice where the logic is going here. People are sinning not because they themselves are opposed to God. They are sinning because Adam and Eve were opposed to God, and thus made the human race unable to do any good.

In the Calvinist's Herculean effort to make sure man receives every drop of blame and is seen as an absolute sinner, the Calvinists trip over their own logic and end up blaming the sin nature for sin, not the sinner himself!

The fact is, if people do not have the ability to do good, then they only have the ability to do evil. That is not rocket science. Therefore, no one in his right mind can blame a person for doing evil he simply cannot help but do.

My Arminian way of looking at things would be considered heretical, because I believe that a wretched, depraved human being can do good. But really it is I who puts the heavy blame on mankind, for I let the blame rest on individual men, not the sin of Adam and Eve.

Please, do check out my amendment to this post. I don't want this one to leave you with unbalanced ideas about sin.

What Happens After Death?

2009-08-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

THIS POST IS A DRAFT. IT IS STILL IN PROGRESS!

Where do people go when they die? The question is not nearly as simple as you might think. Most Christians seem to have a belief that people immediately go on to either Heaven or Hell after they die. And yet those same Christians hold to the idea of Judgment Day, which is where God will judge everyone at the end of the age and send some to heaven and others to Hell.

The fact is, the modern Christian either often has not thought about such things, or prefers that such confusion remain in quiet resignation. But what does the Bible say about these matters?

The truth is, the Bible lists a third place in addition to Heaven (although in the Bible it is usually called the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven) and Hell. This place is referred to in the Old Testament (Hebrew) as Sheol, and in the New Testament (Greek) as Hades. In this article I will refer to it as Sheol, because I wish to distinguish it from Hell, and Hell and Hades sound rather similar. In our modern Bibles, "Hades" is often translated "Hell", and "Sheol" is often translated "the grave".

Who goes to Sheol? The simple answer is, everyone.

Take a look at these verses.

Psalm 89:48
What man can live and not see death,
or save himself from the power of the grave [Sheol]?

Psalm 6:5
No one remembers You when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave [Sheol]?

Genesis 37:35
All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. "No," he said, "in mourning will I go down to the grave [Sheol] to my son." So his father wept for him.

Psalm 30:3
O LORD, you brought me up from the grave [Sheol];
you spared me from going down into the pit.

Hopefully you now see that everyone does go to Sheol. Is Sheol a real, tangible place? I will soon answer this question as best I can, but first I have to explain several concepts.

Christianity's main doctrinal teachings have acquired a number of Greek ideas. Many of those who think they are preaching God's pure, unadultered Word today are actually spouting ideas of the ancient Greeks - the same guys who had gods such as Thor with his amazing hammer, came up with the idea of ghosts, and performed the Olympics naked.

This is not to say that the Greeks did not have some good ideas. I hugely admire many of their advances in medicines and mathematics. But some of their false ideas did, nonetheless, creep into Christianity.

One such idea (and you will be familiar with this line of thinking) is that while bodies are mortal, souls are immortal, and go on living after the body dies. In other words, once the body is dead, the soul begins to experience a new kind of life freed from the body. This is not entirely true.

Ephesians 9:5b
For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;

The dead know nothing? It certainly does not sound like the soul goes on living and experiencing things after the body dies. How do we reconcile this with what we know about Heaven and Hell?

The answer is that the souls in Sheol are in a completely unconscious state. They know nothing. They can sense or experience nothing, because they are not united with their bodies.

Let's look at 1 Samuel, which tells us about Saul's experience with the dead Samuel and the witch of Endor. I recommend reading all of 1 Samuel 28, but here is just enough to make my point.

1 Samuel 28:4-20
The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa. When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the LORD, but the LORD did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her."
"There is one in Endor," they said.

So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. "Consult a spirit for me," he said, "and bring up for me the one I name."
But the woman said to him, "Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?"
Saul swore to her by the LORD, "As surely as the LORD lives, you will not be punished for this."
Then the woman asked, "Whom shall I bring up for you?"
"Bring up Samuel," he said.
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!"
The king said to her, "Don't be afraid. What do you see?"
The woman said, "I see a spirit coming up out of the ground."
"What does he look like?" he asked.
"An old man wearing a robe is coming up," she said.
Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground.
Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?"
"I am in great distress," Saul said. "The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has turned away from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do."
Samuel said, "Why do you consult me, now that the LORD has turned away from you and become your enemy? The LORD has done what he predicted through me. The LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors—to David. Because you did not obey the LORD or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the LORD has done this to you today. The LORD will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The LORD will also hand over the army of Israel to the Philistines."
Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel's words. His strength was gone, for he had eaten nothing all that day and night.

All right, this is freaky stuff. Personally I would really like to have a nice clean watertight theology that is not hard to accept. I would like a cute, tame theology that will sit on my desk and purr. But somehow I don't think God works this way. Personally, I can't read any meaning into this except that this woman actually called up Samuel from the dead.

Some have proposed that the "Samuel" the witch of Endor saw was actually a demon in masquerade. I suppose this could be true, but if it were, then the demon would likely have lied to Saul, but everything Samuel told Saul here was true. God had turned away from Saul and David was going to be the new king. So I do think that Samuel was literally pulled up from the dead.

How did this happen? The woman was a witch, so she must have been using satanic means. However, whether it was by Satan's power that Samuel was called up, God only allowed him to do it so that all things will work together for the good of those who love God, as the Scripture says. And Samuel did seem to give Saul a good, true message.

Now, let us get to the point I am making.

Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?"

This verse tells us two very simple things. Samuel was brought up, not down, so he must not have actually been in Heaven at the time, but in Sheol. Secondly, we are told that Samuel was disturbed when Saul brought him up. That sort of word makes me think of how I feel in the morning when I am awoken from sleep. And yes, we find Scriptural phrases to the effect of the dead being in slumber.

Daniel 12:2
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

1 Corinthians 15:51
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—

Luke 8:52
Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. "Stop wailing," Jesus said. "She is not dead but asleep."

Apparently, those who are in Sheol are in a sleep-like state where they know nothing.

Back to the Greek ideas. If the idea that the soul goes on living and experiencing after death is true, then why do we need a resurrection from the dead? The fact is, everyone will be resurrected.

Acts 24:15
and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.

Acts 4:2
They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

Matthew 22:30
At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

Yes, everyone will be resurrected. There was actually sort of a mini-resurrection during Jesus' death.

Matthew 27:51-53
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

As you can see in this verse, even Jesus was resurrected. And He too went to Sheol/Hades when He died.

Acts 2:31
Seeing what was ahead, he [David] spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not abandoned to the grave [Hades], nor did His body see decay.

Look at the different translations and the Greek wording.
http://scripturetext.com/acts/2-31.htm

Basically, the idea is that Jesus' body was not left in Hades. He was resurrected!

What will our resurrected bodies be like? Probably different but very similar. See Matthew 22:30 above. We know that after Jesus' resurrection, He could still be recognized as Jesus.

Luke 26:16
but they were kept from recognizing Him.

Apparently, special intervention was needed just so that He would not be recognized. We know that His body was horribly brutalized during the crucifixion. To be hailed as a victorious conqueror of death means that He would have had to have a victorious body.

1 Corinthians 15:42-52
When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

The question is, whose souls will be raised glorious and imperishable? It seems unlikely to me that those who will not inherit eternal life will. Look at this: "So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit."

To whom has the Son given life? To those whom He is pleased to give it (John 5:21), that is, the believers. So although the wicked will be raised to dead with those Christ has made righteous, they have not been given life by the Son, I don't think they will not have the same imperishable, glorious bodies that the believers will. Although it is possible that they will be resurrected with them.

Now, how exactly will everyone be resurrected? What about people who were burned up, or people who blew up, or fell down cliffs and had their bodies smashed to pieces, or lost arms and legs or even their heads?

Well, the fact is that their bodies will be different. I doubt they will be resurrected in pieces. God will, somehow, put them back together. For thousands of years, people took this entirely on faith, saying that of course God can do it. Well, now in our modern age, we may just have discovered the means He will use. Every single human who is or was or will be has a genetic code made up of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. That DNA is the blueprint for what kind of body you have, down to the tiniest detail.

The fact is, every single cell in your body contains the DNA necessarily to replicate your body completely. God does not need every single piece to put your body back together. He just needs one tiny cell. Or even nothing at all. God created the DNA code; copying it is not a problem for the Creator. Just to drive the point home, here's a verse.

Matthew 3:9
And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

Not sure if Jesus meant this literally or figuratively, but the point I'm making is that raising a dead body burnt to a crisp or blown to bits is no problem for God.

Also, remember the First Law of Thermodynamics: matter cannot be created or destroyed.

People are made of matter. Matter can be moved from place to place and changed in form, such as would happen if someone were blown up or burned. But all that matter is still in existence, and I'm sure God can easily put it back together. God set up the earthly rules; He can break them if He wants to.

An interesting note is made by Paul in the 1 Corinthians verses I gave above. He compares our resurrected bodies and our natural bodies to plants and seeds. Genetically, a wheat plant is a wheat seed, though structurally they are different. You plant a seed in the earth for a long time (sound like Sheol?) and it eventually comes back out in a different form, yet the farmer knows well that the thing he planted is the same thing now growing in his garden.

What happens after the resurrection? That is when Heaven and Hell come in. The fact is, currently Hell does not exist. It is a place that will come into existence but has not yet. See these verses in Revelation.

Revelation 20:11-15
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. ¹³The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

So the dead in Hades/Sheol will be released, and then the ones who are not written into the book of life will be thrown into the lake of fire. In the next chapter, Revelation 21, we read more.

Revelation 21:1-4
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Notice anything? First off, we've got a new earth. There is no longer a sea on the earth. And the new Jerusalem, the Holy City, was coming down out of heaven from God. God will now dwell with men.

The Hebrew word translated "heaven" is samayim, and it is actually more of a plural word. We sometimes see modern Bibles using the word "heavens", which is actually rather accurate to the Hebrew. The Greek word is sometimes used in the plural, but not always.

There are three different uses of the word "heaven(s)" in the Bible. The first use refers to the layer of air below the atmosphere. The second use refers to the starry skies above the atmosphere. And the third refers to the actual place of God's domain, what people conventionally think of when they picture Heaven.

If you don't believe me, see these verses.

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 6:17
I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.

Genesis 27:39
His father Isaac answered him, "Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away from the dew of heaven above.

Genesis 28:17
He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Deuteronomy 4:39
Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

Deuteronomy 10:14
To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.

2 Samuel 22:8
"The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens shook; they trembled because he was angry.

1 Kings 8:27
But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

1 Kings 8:30
Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

John 3:13
No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.

What? No one has ever gone into heaven? Actually, I do think that this verse means what it says. From the verses I quoted in Revelation it seems more likely that God will come and dwell with us on the new earth. We will not actually go to Heaven in the conventional sense, in the sense that we will go into the third heaven, God's current dominion, but God's kingdom will come on earth. We typically think of the kingdom of heaven as the place where man makes his dwelling with God. But if you look at Revelation 21 again, you will realize that it says God will make His dwelling with man.

Like I said earlier, the term typically used for what most people think of as "Heaven" in the New Testament is "the kingdom of God". Matthew was the only NT writer to use the alternative term, "the kingdom of Heaven". The kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God are apparently differentiated from the typical use of the word "heaven".

What does Jesus mean when He says that no one has gone up to heaven except God

Some Objections

Many will disagree with what I say here and have seemingly valid reasons for doing so. For instance, one might point out what Jesus said to the thief on the cross:

Luke 23:43
Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise."

Jesus clearly said to that thief that both of them would be going to Paradise (Heaven) straightaway after they died, right?

Many say that of course that's not what Jesus meant. They instead claim that Sheol/Hades has two different divisions. One is Paradise and the other the abode of the lost. Right?

Actually, no. Let's review an extremely clear verse we went over earlier.

Ephesians 9:5b
For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;

Dr. E.W. Bullinger explains in The Companion Bible: "None of our modern marks of punctuation are found [in Bible texts] until the ninth century... The punctuation of all modern editions of the Greek text, and of all versions made from it, rests entirely on human authority, and has no weight whatsoever in determining or even influencing the interpretation of a single passage"

The fact is, the phrase "I tell you the truth today" was a Hebrew idiom that signified solemn honesty in what one was saying. The comma is placed entirely wrong! The placement of that one comma changes the entire English meaning. Let's read it again taking into consideration the proper punctuation.

Luke 23:43
Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth today, you will be with Me in paradise."

As you can see, Jesus does promise the thief on the cross that he will be in Paradise with Jesus, but not right away. To make it even more clear, we might change the order of the words in the Hebrew expression. "Today I tell you the truth, you will be with Me in paradise."

The Problem of Foreknowledge - My Views & Defenses

2009-08-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

All right, I came across a guy called HELLBOY on an apologetics forum, and he had some basic questions that a lot of atheists rightly have. So I think I'll just do a little exercise and answer his questions on foreknowledge. His main question is: "What are the limits of God's foreknowledge?" He writes:

It is my estimated opinion that the answer to this question identifies the nature and moral character of the GOD of the Bible.

If GOD has perfect foreknowledge, then the problem of evil incriminates GOD.

If GOD has limited foreknowledge, then it makes GOD a gambler, which also has unflattering moral implications.

I have never gotten a sound answer to this problem from Christians - and was hoping to find clear thinking on the matter here.

Excellent question and one the theologians have blown several brain gaskets over. I am going to present my view of the solution to this problem, which I think actually works rather nicely.

First off, the question, "does God have limited foreknowledge?" Lately I have been hearing a lot about Open Theism and their idea that God has limited foreknowledge. You might think that from my rejection of determinism (fatalism) and Calvinism that I would happily subscribe to Open Theism, but I do not. I think there are a few fundamental problems with such a view.

One, the Bible simply does not seem to line up with this view. Yes, I know God certainly says that He is testing people to find things out here and there. However, I view this as more of a literary expression for the benefit of the people. Take a look at Jeremiah 1:4-5.

The word of the LORD came to me, saying,

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

All right, so God knew Jeremiah before he was born and appointed Jeremiah to a specific task. Now please understand me here, I do not think that this appointing at all messed with Jeremiah's free will. But these verses do show that God is aware of what we are like before we are even born.

Psalm 139:4
Before a word is on my tongue
You know it completely, O LORD.

And God apparently knows everything everyone is going to say. An Open Theist might say that was just for David because God had such close communion with him, but that seems inconsistent to me. That's like saying that all of the major themes of God's relation to man in the Psalms are just for David and not for everyone.

Psalm 139:16
All the days ordained for me
were written in Your book
before one of them came to be.

Now, please understand me again. Just because David's days were ordained and "written in God's book", that does not mean that God did not allow David to have a "backyard of choices", as an old family friend wisely put it. However, this verse definitely indicates that God knew an awful lot about David and what would be going on in David's life long before it happened.

Then we have prophesy. For one, Jesus foretells Peter's denying of Him, down to rather specific details. Secondly, there are amazing fulfilled prophecies concerning such things as the fall of Tyre, the end times, etc.

The Open Theists always assume that God's foreknowledge is limited, but they also always assume free will. These two philosophies actually seem to be contradictory, not complimentary, to me. Assuming God has a limited foreknowledge and humans have free will, who is to say that the end times will be just as God has planned them to be? It has been thousands of years since the prophesy was made. The amount of human decisions in that time period are simply ridiculous. A single man makes millions upon millions of decisions every single day. Multiply that over two thousand years and hundreds of billions of people, and a limited-foreknowledge God would be lucky to guess that the world would end at all, let alone come up with specific details about how it will happen.

Certainly, God could make those prophecies come true. But think about how much free will that would overrun. It was prophesied that Judas would betray Jesus, but does that mean that Judas' betrayal of Jesus was forced by God? If so, then Judas cannot be blamed for what he did. And yet, Scripture does blame him. I think it is painfully obvious that if someone is blamed for what they did, they had the ability to choose otherwise. If they did not, then God was to blame for the betrayal. Which is clearly not true.

The only other option here is that God has unlimited foreknowledge - that His foreknowledge knows all and surpasses all. But personally, using scripturally-informed thinking I acquired from a chapter in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, I am going to call it, "extralogos", a term I invented meaning "outside knowledge".

Let's dig into that. The Bible is extremely clear about what kind of God we are serving. Right from the first verse, we are told amazing, important things about God.

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Watch this sentence carefully. The insight in it is amazing. In the beginning (time comes into existence) God created the heavens (space comes into existence) and the earth (matter comes into existence).

It is the grand trinity of necessities for functioning physics: time, space, and matter. In that order, mind you.

What does this tell us about God? Well, the main thing is that it tells us is that the world as we know it had a beginning. This strongly implies that God existed "before" the beginning (or rather outside the beginning). Also, this verse is helpful to understanding my concept of extralogos.

2 Peter 3:8
With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

So, how does that work? Einstein came very close to discovering something similar on earth. His theory of relativity states that time is not absolute. In other words, time in certain places in the universe moves faster or slower than in other places.

God, being eternal and infinite, is absolutely not limited by time. Of course, He can do things in sequence. But that does not mean He is stuck in sequence Himself.

I highly suggest reading this chapter in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

http://foreknowledge.info/2008/07/cs-lewis-on-god-and-time.html

By this line of thinking, God is actually in 1970 right now just as much as He is in 2009, or 2012, if there will be one. He is just as much in 100 B.C. and 100 A.D. as He is in 1992 on the day of my birth.

This allows many concepts to have much more clarity. First of all, it destroys the problem of how people can make choices foreknown by God. God is there before they made the choice, and He is there after they made the choice. Certainly, the choice was still theirs to make, and they could have made their choice either way, but no matter what they did, God was still well aware that it happened. He did not force them to make the correct choice, He was merely present before, during, and after the choice was made.

While we are still stuck in time, stuck in part of our sequential existence, wondering what choice to make, God is already far ahead of us in the future time where we did already make the choice, and the outcome has also come to pass.

I am of the view, however, that God can work in sequence, which means He can sort of constrain Himself to our time. It is not as if He is outside of our time and cannot get in; rather, He sort of chooses not to be "in" all of the "time", so to speak. His choosing to be "in" allows for real-time interaction between God and man, for instance, when God was testing Abraham, perhaps God sort of constrained Himself to time, and so tested Abraham in sequence like any of us might.

A sort of side note must be made here. I do think that God "tests" everyone, that is, presents us with a set of options and allows us to make an informed decision.

The fact is, whether He knows our choices before we make them or not, we are still responsible for making the right decisions. Assume for a moment that a) the universe is running as usual but b) God did not exist for several thousand years and c) suddenly began to exist, and d) had perfect extralogos as I have defined here. Of course, this is only a hypothetical scenario. But if for thousands of years people had been making choices all by themselves, they would still be receiving punishment or reward for their actions, though only on earth. Then, suddenly, God appears. He transcends time and thus knows every move the humans will make before they make it. After their deaths He will punish or reward them based on their choices. Did the system go from just to unjust? No. If anything it went from unjust to just, because on earth, when you do something wrong, it will not necessarily be punished. Likewise, when you do something right, you will not necessarily be rewarded.

Please do note that if God did not exist at all times, of course, it would be ridiculous to assume that He had extralogos or perfect foreknowledge. But for the sake of example, imagine the above scenarios. As a popular website, gotquestions.org, states, asking when God was created is like asking, "what does blue smell like?" Blue is not a thing that has a smell. God is not a being Who has a beginning.

Now, on to more. Another user on the forum, kognishun20, writes:

William Lane Craig has a view on God's Foreknowledge. He expresses that God has middle knowledge.

God knows all possible outcomes. God knows all possibilities that exist. Therefore God knows the best outcome. God chooses the best possible outcome. Therefore creating a world involving free will he knows the best outcome. God then is not cornered by evil in the world.

He choose the best world that was possible involving free will. William Lane Craig has a couple articles on his website.

Now, we've already explored how if God were outside of time (as the Bible and logic indicate), He would absolutely know what was going to happen before it does, since He is no more in the "before" than in the "after". "Middle knowledge" assumes that God is trapped sequentially in time like we are. He is not.

HELLBOY writes further:

This brings a specific question to my mind: Is Opening The Door For Someone To Cause Great Evil, Immoral?

For example:

Suppose you had to write a fiction story about a man who was a psychic (even though you probably do not believe in psychics, your story would include one as it’s main character).

This man had a vision that one of his guards was going to betray him (the psychic was a very rich man who had guards). The psychic saw in the future and knew that the guard was not only going to try to take over the psychic’s house, but that the guard would fail and end up being turned into a snake who would later be cast into a fire. In fact, the psychic knew all this about the guard before he ever hired him.

In the mean-time however, the psychic, KNOWING ALL THIS, kept the guard on for hire and saw him daily, smiling and acting as if nothing were the matter.

Now, is the fact that the psychic (who is a completely fictional character) does not tell the guard the horrors that will befall him any measure of immorality?

ALTERNATE SCENARIO

The psychic had a vision of the guard BEFORE he ever hired the guard. In the dream, if he hired the guard, all of this evil would come upon the guard at the guards own doing, HOWEVER, if the psychic does not hire the guard, then the guard would not succumb to the evil, many lives would be spared and general happiness would abound.

If the psychic hires the guard, knowing that his hiring the guard would absolutely lead to the guard choosing to ruin himself and further, cause many of the other guards to join him in a kind of mutiny, and further bring all manner of death and destruction to the psychic’s family and friends, as well as the guards he deceived… AND during the period of the guards’ employment (before the rebellion and destruction) – the psychic does not mention a word of any of this…

Is this an immoral act on the part of the psychic? How about hiring the guard even though the psychic knows that this action will bring about so much evil, instead of not hiring him, which would guarantee the continuing peace and happiness of the psychic’s household and neighborhood.

(Of course, many religious types believe that psychics are of the Devil, and would be reticent to use their imagination, remember, however, even C.S. Lewis had witches etc. - but for the sake of fiction, I would be interested to know the Christian’s assessment of the morality of the psychic in this tale.)

In Craig's explanation, psychic ability would be replaced with a knowledge of probabilities. How is created life not diminished in value (perhaps immorally) with the knowledge that most of your creation would end up either:
1. Ending up in eternal torment.
2. Being wholly annihilated.
3. Choosing to be annihilated.
?

All right, first off, the psychic here is trapped in sequential time. If that psychic makes a choice, that choice will affect other events, etc. While we, and the psychic, take the universe in sequence, God takes and took and will take it all at once, if you understand what I mean. It's not like God has to make choices in a sequence of time that will set off a chain reaction of other events. Rather, He makes all of His moves at once.

The unique thing about God is that I think He can be both a casual observer and an active participant in what goes on in the world. He's not obliged to step in and save the day all the time. However, He does when He sees fit to do so, which is part of His master plan. It is futile for me to try to describe the details of this plan, because I am merely a device inside of His plan myself.

I would also like to note that certain things that are sinful for us as human beings are not sinful for God. For instance, it would be sinful for me to brag about how awesome I was, but for God that is OK. So maybe for us to allow evil to run its course is wrong, although for God it is not. For instance, if a man whips out a gun and runs into a bank to rob it, it is our duty as human beings to tackle the guy and take him down. But is it God's?

It reminds me of a story about a group of Indians, Sioux, I think. The Sioux were very careful about training their children to survive in the wilderness. The Sioux fathers would allow a range of bad things to befall their children in order to teach them. For instance, a little boy might move toward a fire. He may have some vague knowledge that it will hurt him or none at all, but on he will go toward that fire. Meanwhile, the father will stand by, knowing his child will learn about what fire is like and why to avoid it. The child will stick a finger in and immediately pull it back out, crying. And the child will have been trained not to touch fires.

But if a child were about to fall in the fire, the father would certainly rescue him. However, the father would let the little boy have a taste of fire and the other dangers of the world, so that the boy would be able to live well later on.

Now think about this. It seems all right to me for the Sioux father to allow his child to stick a finger in the fire to learn a lesson. The wilderness is a harsh place and the child needs to learn about it. But now imagine this: it is not a father watching the child by the fire but another child, a slightly bigger one. This bigger child is watching the little child, and there are no adults around.

If the little child moves toward the fire, of course it is the bigger child's duty to go and stop the child before he sticks so much as a finger in the fire. You see, the father was completely in control of how close the little child got to the fire. But the bigger child, no matter how responsible he may be at his age, cannot guarantee that he can save the little child if the little child gets too close.

Plus, it is simply not the right of the bigger child to discipline the little child. That is the right of the father, which is why the bigger child should simply stop the little child in his tracks.

Secondly, I take the annihilationist view of Hell. I may write another article on why I consider the annihilationist view to be more biblically supported than the eternal Hell view, but for now, let me just say that I think everyone knows that the eternal Hell view is simply immoral. It is unspeakably, unimaginably cruel to punish a conscious person for all eternity. Here is a good article on the subject.

http://www.zianet.com/maxey/reflx74.htm

I read a good comic that helped me to understand the classic question, "if God is real and good, why does He allow ___?" The comic went like this: one character asked the other, "if God is so good, why doesn't He stop all the school shootings?" The other character replied, "oh, didn't you know? God isn't allowed in the schools anymore!"

When we happily push Him away, I do think that out of courtesy He backs off. And if God is good, that means we pushed goodness away, and it backed off. It is no wonder that we get ourselves into such messes.

And another thing - what is God supposed to do? He has the following choices:
a) Don't punish people who do wrong and tell them He won't
b) Threaten to punish those who do wrong and don't carry out the threat
c) Threaten to punish those who do wrong and carry out the threat

He could do a, but then people would not be motivated to make good choices. He could do b, but then He would be lying. The Bible states that God cannot lie. By definition, God is good. If God were to lie, it would cause Him to be evil, which would make Him cease to be God, right? OK, b is definitely not an option.

All that is left is c, which is in fact what God did and does. Try these three methods on a two-year-old and you will find that God's choice was really the most sensible one. It may seem all well and good to criticize God's method of doing something, until you have a look at His other options.

Now let us suppose something else. Suppose you had a robot, and you built that robot to perform a certain task. You gave that robot the ability to make choices and a conscience to tell it what choices to make, plus instructions on how to perform the task. The robot did not perform the task, and it was the fault of the robot.

Would it be unjust to just scrap that robot and build another? By your logic, to be fair and kind and good to the robot, you must allow it to be alive and keep its batteries fresh for all of eternity. You have to keep it running and nourished forever, even if all it does is botch tasks and suck resources.

Even if the robot had not done anything wrong, is the creator really obliged to allow it to keep living? Not really, if I'm understanding things correctly. If the creator of the robot decides to just cut off its power source, that's OK. That's no problem. The robot will instantly cease to exist, cease to understand and cease to comprehend. Except for a few things the robot changed here and there, it will be like it never existed.

Now, of course, I can see some atheists screaming foul play. Why can't we abort babies, then?!? they ask, they lose consciousness instantly and it's like they never existed! Well, the simple fact is, mothers and abortion doctors are not the Creator of the baby. Imagine a little boy sneaks into the lab of our robot creator and smashes the robot to pieces with a rock. That was OK, right? No; it was not, because the boy did not have rights to take the robot's "life"; while the creator of the robot did.

So it is perfectly all right for God to simply destroy His creatures. And He has warned us that He will if we do not perform in the way He wants us to. We have the option to make the choice, though He knows what choice we are going to make. Actually, it's not so much of a "though" situation as an "and" situation. I will post the previous sentence again with a conjunction modification. We have the option to make the choice, and He knows what choice we are going to make. It is not an impossible conundrum. It is merely not something observable on earth, which is why we have such a problem imagining it.

And if the creatures do not perform correctly when given the chance, the instructions, the time, etc., then they can be punished accordingly. If God did not punish people for their sin, in fact, He would not be a just God. A judge who lets rapists and murderers off the hook is a judge who should be shot.

But now think about this: imagine a judge who actually takes the punishment for rapists and murderers upon himself. The rapists and murderers should, and many would be, amazingly grateful to that judge. Because the sacrifice the judge made was so deep, so real, so moving, those grateful to the judge will try again at life. They will try to live within the law out of gratitude to the judge. They will not do so perfectly, but the point is, they will certainly try, whereas before the judge took their place they broke the law on purpose with extreme disregard.

That is the kind of God I serve. That is the kind of God Who took the place for the billions who have given themselves out of gratitude to Him. This is the kind of God Who loved us, so that we will love Him.

Hopefully this will have answered these questions. Frankly, I cannot pretend to fully comprehend these things. If we could understand everything about the nature of God, we would very well be able to assume He does not exist, because He would not be much greater than our brainpower. But this does not stop me from trying the best I can to understand His ways.

Lessons From The Backflip

2009-08-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

My brothers and I are really into parkour, free running, and tricking. If you don't know what those are, they are basically "mobile arts" that involve running, jumping, flipping, spinning, and just generally maneuvering over obstacles.

So we went to a cottage this summer. The surf was up and we were totally enjoying ourselves. But naturally, we had to get in some good parkour. So we set up a picnic table at the beach and did flips off of it. We wanted to learn the backflip, especially. All of us could backflip on a trampoline, but we just froze when it came to regular ground.

But up we went, intent on learning it.

In order to learn to backflip over regular turf, a technique called "spotting" is used. The "flipper" takes position, and the "spotter" gets set to catch him in case he messes up. Typically the spotter will place his dominant hand on the flipper's back for support, and use his other hand to flip the person's legs around.

I was able to spot my brother Collin... and what do you know, he learned quickly.

But, unfortunately, I was the biggest guy. That meant I was pretty much without a spotter.

I could not get up the guts to do it.

And Collin just kept getting on the picnic table and flipping off - over and over.

Eventually, I got my dad to spot me. It was one of the hardest things ever to just throw myself over backward. My dad completed some of the rotation for me, but I mostly made it.

But my dad wasn't available all the time.

So I had to do it myself at some point. Much quicker than I would have preferred.

So there I stood on the edge of the picnic table. My stomach was in a knot, my hands were cold and clammy, and I was sweating like crazy.

It took me forever, just standing there deciding whether to do it or not. I felt sick. Absolutely sick.

But finally, I just gave it all up. I half-closed my eyes, leaped high into the air, jerked my head back, and tucked into a little ball.

I made it.

It was not a perfect flip by any means. But it worked.

I did it again and again. Collin and I performed hundreds upon hundreds of backflips that week. My dad called us "rotisserie chickens", because we were turning over and over and getting rather evenly baked by the sun.

And every time we did it, a little bit of that sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs went away. Until it was entirely gone.

And the more we did it and the more that sick feeling left, the more we were able to properly focus on our form and try different ways of doing it.

Now we can both do it off of pretty much anything, and not just onto sand - we can do it on hard ground.

It's a pretty interesting story, and it tells the truth about a lot of life. Including witnessing - sharing your faith in Jesus Christ.

The first time it it is killer scary, something way out there and totally beyond anything you've ever done before.

But once you make that first step and enter the new world, it becomes totally natural.

Verses About Salvation

2009-08-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Makenna and I put together a list of verses for our group to memorize. They are all related to the issue of salvation so that we can use them in evangelism.

Man is depraved and sinful. Romans 3:10-12
The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23
Man can be saved by the gift of God. Romans 6:23
Jesus was crucified to bear our punishment. 1 Peter 2:24
Jesus is the only way to salvation. Acts 4:12
If you believe on Jesus, you will be saved. John 3:16
Our faith is made complete by our deeds. James 2:22
The cost of following Jesus is great. Galatians 2:20
Followers of Jesus go for the approval of God, not man. Galatians 1:10
Plenty of people are in need of the Gospel, but there are few to give it to them. Luke 10:2
We should proclaim the good news to others. Matthew 28:19-20

So, this is our list. Any thoughts?

An Amendment to my Long Letter

2009-07-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was writing Sam again about the subject of Calvinism, and he wanted me to clarify a point I had made. Sam said the following: "Also, Cam, you have referred to the chosen in Him passage with "I think it can mean God ordained every single specific believer, or just the group of believers, not necessarily a set group." You have said something along this line several times. This is way too vague to even be an argument. Please expound. Yes, I am actually asking you to make your already long letter longer." So, I gave my argument some more thought and realized he was right. This argument I had been using was rather vague. So here is my thought process on the subject.

Makenna, I am sending you this also to clarify some of the stuff in my extremely long letter. I forwarded Sam the letter too, since we've also been debating the subject for a while. Sam's email is below, like he says, he wanted me to make my extremely long letter even longer, and clarify this statement I made:

"I think it can mean God ordained every single specific believer, or just the group of believers, not necessarily a set group."

I think I rather disagree with myself now. It clearly means both at once. It's actually a really complicated sort of thing I've been thinking about. But here is my basic thought process. I first asked myself:

Before the beginning, did God say:

"I choose you... and you... and you... all to inherit eternal life."

Or did He say:

"I choose this group, the believing ones, to inherit eternal life."

Of course, for a while I considered the first view to be Calvinist and the second to be non-Calvinist. However, I don't think so anymore. Now I take the view that neither are necessarily Calvinist. >From 1 Peter 1:1-2 I found that God has ordained believers according to His foreknowledge (that means conditionally). The question I ask is at the beginning of time, did God say:

"I choose you because you will believe, and you because you will believe, and you because you will believe, to inherit eternal life."

Or did He say,

"I choose all the believing ones to inherit eternal life."

But like I alluded to in the letter, these two really arrive at the same destination, because with the first, all the believing ones end up chosen, and with the second, all the individual believers end up chosen. With God's foreknowledge, even if He did choose the group as a whole to inherit eternal life, He would be well aware of the attributes of the group and what members were in that group.

So that's my thought process on the subject.

Analysis of "Calvinist" Verses - A Letter to Makenna

2009-07-07T19:59:00.001-07:00

Makenna and I have been having something of a friendly debate on Calvinism. This is my latest email to her. It is very long and complicated, because I did a great deal of research for it. It took me several days and months of research to put together.

Hey Makenna,

Glad you sent a long response, actually... it's a deep topic! In this email I will be picking apart what you've said, but please note I'm trying to do it as nicely as possible, I don't want to sound offensive in any way. I will use the term "Calvinist" a lot, almost as a derogatory term, but I know your beliefs differ from traditional Calvinism, so I am not in any way pointing fingers at you! I just disagree with Calvinist philosophy.

On the predestination/evangelism thing, I did very much disagree with the article there. I really have to apologize for that, because it was a low blow by the article writer and I thought that maybe I should have warned you about that. Please know that I was not aiming that part of the article at you! Actually I have personally seen some great evangelism efforts by the predestination camp, including you, the first teen I've ever run into to have a genuine interest in evangelism! And I agree about the false converts thanks to the sinner's prayer. I myself was one for a long time.

The colleague the man talks about believes in fatalism, the belief that mankind is fated to do whatever is planned for them (which could definitely lead to that kind of attitude), and the "sixes go to Hell sevens go to Heaven" thing referred to double predestination. I know you don't believe in either, and again, those parts of the article had nothing to do with your beliefs.

The part that really excited me about the article was the part about Pharaoh and why his heart is hardened. See, the thing the article says is that the Egyptians believed that the hardening of the heart brings salvation. So Pharaoh intentionally hardened his heart against the Israelite's distress and especially against their God. (I believe he does it eight total times in Exodus before God does it.) He thought that it would bring salvation for himself, but it actually brought him to ruin.

You know how every plague was a direct attack on an Egyptian god? The plague of darkness, for instance, was against the Egyptian sun god (Ra, I think), etc. Well, the hardening-of-the-heart thing seems to be a direct attack on the Egyptian means of salvation. So it may not necessarily be "salvation procedure as normal". And if it is normal for God to harden hearts in the salvation process, then that's double predestination. Besides, if you read Exodus, you'll notice that Pharaoh got plenty of chances before God hardened him!

I think most of the verses you mentioned are misunderstandings or mistranslations. Keep in mind that there are a number of ways verses can be translated, and the biases of the translators come into play. Look at all the different translations of Ephesians 1:5.
http://bible.cc/ephesians/1-5.htm
John Calvin formulated the doctrines of Calvinism upon verses from a Latin version of the Bible. Latin is a root language that was the basis for English, meaning the Latin and English versions of the Bible will have many similarities. When a lot of Greek words are translated to Latin, they take on their literal meaning, not their Grecian meaning. We use a lot of words in English that have a literal meaning that is different from what they mean in certain contexts. That is why for complicated theological issues it is good to look at the Greek.

As for Romans 9, I did some study on it and I don't actually think it's about salvation at all. Take a look at these videos. It's a rather long series, but definitely a hundred percent worth watching. The guy does take God's name in vain a couple times, which was totally wrong, but the material he presents is excellent. This is absolutely a must-watch and crucial for understanding Romans 9.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1VPDhgIw24
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWTniSfNrKY
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ9FQv2Xv3g
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRCTL_GPXuU
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9po3rHxzlU
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaktlTz6Qfg

I do have a question, I would just like to know how you believe predestination and free will work together? I mean, I understand that we're never going to be able to comprehend some of the things of God, but I do know well that that's not an excuse to deem something impossible to understand and stop trying. I think that human beings can understand the concept of election and the concept of free will, and can understand that they're contradictory. God is not a god of disorder or of confusion, and He does not deny or contradict Himself (2 Timothy 2:13).

As on the total depravity point, do you believe that man is totally depraved in the sense that he cannot do perfect good all his life, or that he will not? In the sense that his evil overrules all the good he does, or in the sense that he cannot do anything good, period?

Good catch on Ephesians 1:5, I thought something was off but I just assumed the guy was using a different translation. However, I think the key here lies in context and maybe in the phrase "in Him". Who is Him? My first thought was that it would be Jesus, but I looked at the context and it probably means God the Father. "He chose us in Him." What does "chose us in Him" mean? I think it can mean God ordained every single specific believer, or just the group of believers, not necessarily a set group.

Now, how can one be "in God"? If someone's sin is not cleansed, then they are not "in God", right? They can't be! So "us in Him" must mean believers, Christians, Christ-imitators.

Context tells me it probably takes the second meaning. Notice verses 13-14. "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of His glory."

"You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation."

So, the specific believers Paul refers to actually became included in the group of believers when they heard the word of truth. Context defines the meaning of this passage to be the second meaning.

See, like in the document you sent me said, the Calvinists read Ephesians 1:4 like this:

He chose us...
in Him...
before the creation of the world...

They end up with "in Him" sort of tacked on there, not doing or meaning anything really. Also, they forget that believers were not just chosen, they were chosen for something particular. How I read it:

He chose...
us in Him... (believers)
before the creation of the world...
to be holy and blameless in His sight...

I think it makes more sense (without having the "in Him" dangling all by itself). And it doesn't refer to unconditional election at all!
And, of course, the meaning of "us" in Ephesians 1:4 will be carried to Ephesians 1:5.

John 15:16: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name."

Some say Jesus was referring to his disciples here, but only eleven of them. Judas left the room two chapters ago. Judas was not appointed to bear fruit, he had a different purpose, I say that the Father foreknew. By the way, Judas' betrayal of Jesus is a total theological headache we could also explore.

However, based on the context I think that maybe Jesus was referring to all true believers. But even in this case it does not support Calvinism. Look at the context of John 15. The whole thing talks about how we are supposed to remain in Christ and then He will remain in us. It also says that the Father cuts off every branch in Christ that does not bear fruit. This is directly against "once saved always saved" (Calvinists call it "perseverance of the saints") and thus refutes the idea of election. For election to be true, Christians cannot fall away, otherwise God's "purpose in election" would not stand, to quote a Calvinist misinterpretation of Romans 9.

I would say that of course it is true that Christ chose us and we did not choose Him! Christ chose, of His own will, not man's, to come and save us, and He calls us and appoints us. God, in His sovereignty, however, allows us to say yes or no to the calling, and so either become or refuse to become the chosen believers. I would say this is the same case as Ephesians 1:4: God chose those who believe for specific purposes and tasks.

Also see 1 Peter 1:1-2.

¹Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, ²who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

(Oh, if you're using an older version of the NASB to look this verse up, see this link: http://www.christianmonthlystandard.com/index.php/1-peter-11-2-and-the-nasb/)

At the very least this verse does away with unconditional election! We're chosen according to God's foreknowledge. That does not mean unconditional election, it very clearly means conditional election! If you haven't already, have a look at "Chosen Does Not Mean Calvin" on my blog. It goes over one of Jesus' parables and how He chooses people.
http://cameronversluis.blogspot.com/2009/06/again-on-calvinist-debate.html

1 Peter 1:1-2 uses the same sort of language Ephesians 1 does. These verses can mean one of two things:

1. God elects specific people for the graces and duties of believers based on His foreknowledge of their accepting Christ's gift. (The Arminian view.)
2. God elects the group of believers for the graces and duties of believers based on His foreknowledge of their accepting Christ's gift. (More of the view I take.)

But both essentially arrive at the same destination. The believers are the elect, and they are chosen conditionally. This is my view. Now, notice that God is outside of time, but He is still able to work chronologically. I suppose in a way He is in 1995 and 100 B.C. right now just as much as He is in 2009 - because He's not limited to chronological order. When He does something, it does not have to be limited to a particular time frame, right? So if He chooses someone in 1995, He chose them just as much in 100 B.C. as He did in 1995. I think it probably means something like that.

Now, moving on to the next verse...

Acts 13:48: "When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed."

Our modern use of these word "appointed" assumes that an outside force did the appointing. However, the Greek word, τεταγμένοι (tetagmenoi), in context, can also mean that they appointed themselves to eternal life. Again, the biases of the translators are present.

When Paul uses a word from the same Greek root, τεταγμέναι (tetagmenai, a different form of tetagmenoi), elsewhere, he adds stuff to clarify who has done the appointing.
Romans 13:1: ...the authorities that exist are appointed by God. (tetagmenai + by God)
Why does Luke add "who were appointed for eternal life"? So he'll be clear that all the Gentiles did not believe!
If you look at the uses of ὅσοι (osoi), the word for "all" in Acts 13:48, you'll notice that it's usually coupled with something else to clarify that all does not actually mean everyone.
http://concordance.biblos.com/osoi.htm

Next verse.

Matthew 13:10-15: "And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?" Jesus answered them, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. "For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. "Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

First, this does not allude to Calvinism. There are people living in the 10/40 window who have not been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven because they've never heard the Gospel.

Notice Jesus' allusion here to another parable of His, the parable of the servants who were given talents according to their ability. (Matthew 25:14-30.) In this parable, the servants were given the money at the beginning and could use their free will to do something with it. Some of them decided to gain more money for their master with the money they were given, but one of them simply hid his money and did nothing with it. So his master took the little that he had. To the ones who had gained more money, the master gave more.

There's a similarity to what's happening in Matthew 13:10-15. The way I see it, everyone has been given a small knowledge of God, and they can grow that knowledge, or they can just bury it and do nothing with it. To those who do the former, they will be given more. That's what happened to the disciples, for instance. To those who do the latter, even the knowledge they have is taken from them. That's what happened to the people prophesied about by Isaiah. At least, that's what Jesus seems to be saying.

Isaiah 6 is the passage that Jesus refers to, and it is one of the most confusing passages in the entire Bible to me. Why God would have Isaiah tell a people to be confused and not understand, I don't know. But I do know the Septuagint text (the first Greek translation of the Hebrew) was translated like this instead:

'You will be ever hearing, but never understanding; / you will be ever seeing, but never perceiving.' / 10 This people's heart has become calloused; / they hardly hear with their ears, / and they have closed their eyes

I wonder if that might be the correct translation. The Septaugint translators were Jews who of course were familiar with the Hebrew words and what they meant in certain contexts. In Hebrew, what we translate just "hear" (shama') could well mean "you will hear". I think I need to find a Hebrew expert on that one.

If you have any insight on Isaiah 6, please do let me know.

On whom Christ died for, Dr. Paul Rieter has analyzed the scriptures and concluded that Christ died:

1. For all (1 Tim. 2:6; Isa. 53:6).
2. For every man (Heb. 2:9).
3. For the world (John 3:16).
4. For the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).
5. For the ungodly (Rom. 5:6).
6. For false teachers (2 Peter 2:1).
7. For many (Matt. 20:28).
8. For Israel (John 11:50–51).
9. For the Church (Eph. 5:25).
10. For "me" (Gal. 2:20).

I checked the contexts on all of these and I think they're pretty much correct. Romans 5:6 I think he took out of context. Not sure about 2 Peter 2:1 either. The rest remain to deal with, though. It sure seems like Christ died for the sins of a lot more people than the Calvinists say He did.

Mark 13:20: "If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom He has chosen, He has shortened them."

"Elect" here is the Greek word "eklektos", and it doesn't necessarily mean "chosen". I don't know as much about this as this guy, Jacques More, who has put together an excellent short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20Z5fM5LrLs

The literal meaning of "eklektos" is "chosen". However, it can take on other meanings. Check out the video!

One warning on the video, though. At the end he writes, "so you think you're chosen?". Please don't take offense, I can definitely see where you're coming from with the whole election thing, and I am not about to lob a comment like that at you!

Luke 24:44-45: "He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures."

My question here is this: who closed their minds? Did God close their minds? Did they close their minds? Or did Satan close their minds? And did He open their minds supernaturally, or did He explain things to them, or both? This verse could have a variety of meanings.

Jude 1:1: "Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ."

I agree that people are called, and they can accept or reject that call. Of course, God the Father loves the believers, and in a special way too, because we are sinless to Him through Christ. And yes, Christ will keep us. We remain in Him and He remains in us, as I quoted from John earlier. Now, check out Acts 7:51.

"You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!

If people can reject the Holy Spirit, then that's not irresistible grace as the Calvinists define it. The Reformers knew that the Holy Spirit could be resisted as this verse says, so they differentiate between "inward" and "outward" calls. The "inward" calls appeal to salvation in irresistible grace and are always accepted, the "outward" calls appeal to salvation and leave man to choose to accept or reject them, and they are always rejected. So the Reformers say. However, the inward/outward call business is a rather large concept, and it is found nowhere in the Bible. You know how sometimes when you lie you have to cover it up with another lie? I'm not saying that the Reformers/Calvinists meant to be liars or anything (I know many of them genuinely believe in the Calvinist doctrines!), but this seems to me like one of those cases. The Reformers went after the irresistible grace doctrine, and to keep that doctrine, they had to make up the inward/outward call thing.

One more thing, it's not just God and man in this universe. There is also Satan, demons and angels, which are usually forgotten by the Calvinist/Reformed doctrine. Look at this parable from Jesus. I absolutely love Jesus' parables, because they just totally help clarify stuff about salvation.

Matthew 13: ¹That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. ²Such large crowds gathered around Him that He got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. ³Then He told them many things in parables, saying: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. ⁷Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. ⁸Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. ⁹He who has ears, let him hear."

Then the disciples ask why Jesus speaks in parables, and He says it is because they fulfill the prophesy in Isaiah 6 that the people's understandings are darkened. So He uses parables to get through to them. Then He explains His parable further:

¹⁸"Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: ¹⁹When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. ²⁰The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. ²¹But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. ²²The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. ²³But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."

Notice that when anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one (Satan) comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. So if someone does not understand the gospel, it is because Satan is messing up his heart, snatching away the truth.

The second type of person, the seed that fell on rocky places, heard the word and received it with joy. This pretty much means that he is saved! But he had no root, so he lasts only a short time, and falls away. I'm not sure what the root represents here, maybe a strong foundation in Christ? A rock? But it seems to me that if someone hears the message of the kingdom of heaven and receives it with joy, they come into Christ, but then they fall away. I might be misunderstanding this here, but it seems to me that this speaks against once-saved-always-saved - you can accept salvation and then reject it again. And if once-saved-always-saved is not true, then election is not either.

Also, here's another question: how were people saved in the Old Testament? The Holy Spirit had not yet come, so if the Calvinists are correct, since the Holy Spirit was not there to work with irresistible grace, then Old Testament people could not inherit eternal life. However, we know that this is not true. Abraham is recorded by the Bible as being in Heaven!

In Galatians 3, we're told that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Essentially he was saved the same way we are. It is up to the Calvinist to show that not only can there be predestination in the New Testament (the Greek all too easily translates that way) but that there can be predestination in the Old Testament. And the Old Testament is very Jewish. The Jews were definitely a free will kind of people! People forget that Christianity is actually an extension of Judaism. In the early church Christianity was viewed as a sect of Judaism, as opposed to a separate religion. The Old Testament does not just get thrown out because we have the New Testament now! I'll quote Mark Cahill: "Don't be what I call a New Testament Christian. If Deuteronomy was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for us too."

The stuff we have in the New Testament must line up with the Old Testament. Obviously some OT stuff has been nullified and is outdated and such, but not all of it. They still must be united, and you can't do that so much with the doctrine of Calvinism, it doesn't fit the OT (which, by the way, was originally Hebrew, not Greek, and translates with a different effect).

There's also real-life evidence against election. This is dynamite stuff:
http://www.biblehelp.org/child.htm

John 12:39-40: "For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:

When dealing with complicated passages, it's Greek, Greek, Greek! The Greek word translated "could" is δύναμαι (dunamai), coupled with a negative, οὐ (ou). Dunamai means "Of uncertain affinity; to be able or possible -- be able, can (do, + -not), could, may, might, be possible, be of power." So dunamai ou is literally translated "could not". But I believe the Greek has a figurative meaning, too. There are several uses of the word dunamai in different forms in the Bible. Take a look at them.
http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/1410.htm

Most notable for my point is this page:
http://concordance.biblos.com/dunamai.htm

Notice these two:

Luke 11:7 κἀκεῖνος ἔσωθεν ἀποκριθεὶς εἴπῃ, μή μοι κόπους πάρεχε ἤδη ἡ θύρα κέκλεισται καὶ τὰ παιδία μου μετ' ἐμοῦ εἰς τὴν κοίτην εἰσίν· οὐ δύναμαι ἀναστὰς δοῦναί σοι.
and he from within will answer and say, 'Don't bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give it to you'?
Verb: First Person Present Middle Indicative Singular

Luke 14:20 καὶ ἕτερος εἶπεν· γυναῖκα ἔγημα καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐ δύναμαι ἐλθεῖν.

"Another said, 'I have married a wife, and therefore I can't come.'

Verb: First Person Present Middle Indicative Singular

The two people here are very clearly saying "I won't", not "I can't"! We do the same thing in English. We say, "I can't take this anymore!" but we really mean, "I won't take this anymore!" So as I can see, ou dunamai could really mean either can't or won't depending on the situation.

Also, even if this does mean "couldn't", then maybe this is the same sort of situation as Pharaoh's. Look at Romans 1.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

OK, the people here went through three phases. They didn't glorify God, so God gave them over to sexual impurity. They allowed themselves to be deceived, so God gave them over to shameful lusts (homosexuality). They didn't think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so He gave them over to a depraved mind.

Does this mean that He gave them sexual impurity, shameful lust, or depraved minds? Did He force these things upon them because of their sin? I think not. All God has to do to "give them over" to sin is just to let go, let them slip further out of His grasp. (More on this later.) And I think that's something like what happened to Pharaoh. Pharaoh kept hardening his heart until God finally gave him over to a hardened heart entirely. And Pharaoh's heart was hard.

There's a parallel here between the hard-hearted Pharaoh in Exodus, the wicked in Romans 1, and the unbelievers of John 12. They just kept refusing to believe, refusing to turn from wickedness, refusing to soften their hearts, until finally God just let go and thus gave them over. Perhaps that's why the people of John 12:39 couldn't believe.

If God is drawing us toward Him as it says in John 6:44, and Satan is also trying to deceive us, and we have an evil, sinful heart and nature, if God stops drawing us toward Him, then all that is left is Satan's deceit and the heart's wickedness. Yikes. No wonder we can be given over to sexual perversion or hard hearts or unbelief.

Oh, one more thing, if the heart is so wicked and depraved by itself that it can do no good (total depravity), only evil, and man cannot come to Christ on his own, then why does Satan tempt us? And why does Satan tempt us if he knows that the elect will be saved?

And Paul says that Gentiles by nature do things required by the Law, proving that the Law is written on their hearts (Romans 2:14). So man does have some remnant of God's Law on their hearts (I'm assuming from before the Fall), not just sinful nature. And per this verse, they can do things from the Law.

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteous acts are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." Isaiah 64:6

Not positive, but I think in context the "we" here refers to those without God. Actually, it probably does, because those truly with God (through Christ) are righteous! Now, notice one thing here. "All our righteous acts are as filthy rags." This seems to teach that people can do righteous acts, even without God. However, righteous acts that are spoiled by other unrighteousness are stained like filthy rags.

Definitely note what I'm saying here... I believe that everyone has sinned, everyone has fallen short of the glory of God, everyone is totally depraved in the sense that he cannot possibly do enough good to make up for the evil he has done, and that men are fallen, wretched creatures. But I do think that they have retained the ability to do good, not just the ability to do evil. Actually, if they have not, then they can't be blamed for sin! If man cannot do good, and can only do evil, then he is not to blame for his sin, and it makes no sense for God to punish him for it, right? Scripture is extremely clear that man is to blame for sin... I don't even need to quote on that!

Also, if God forces people to Christ against their will with unconditional election, and it has nothing to do with man, and God desires for everyone to be saved, why is everyone not saved? If God desires for everyone to be saved and God is absolutely the only instrument necessary for salvation, it does not depend on man's will at all... then why is everyone not saved?

Next verse:

John 5:21: "For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it."

This does not support unconditional election. The question is: to whom is the Son pleased to give life? The answer is found in another of Jesus' parables. Like I said, if you have not read my article, "Chosen Does Not Mean Calvin", please do.
http://cameronversluis.blogspot.com/2009/06/again-on-calvinist-debate.html

I think I also know one of the other scriptures you will cite. John 6:37, perhaps? It is one I have personally struggled with for a long time, but again, the Greek has been analyzed and it does not support unconditional election!
http://www.fwponline.cc/v23n1/johnsixPt1_witzki.html

Now, think of Jesus' parable about the prodigal son, in Luke 15:11-32. Who is the prodigal son? We sinners are. The prodigal son left his father, squandered his inheritance, and got himself in a whole bunch of trouble. Finally, he realized he needed to go back to the kindness of his father. So he swallowed his pride, came to his senses, and started heading back. But he had a long way to go before the father got to him first and showered him with mercy! The father allowed his son to rebel and squander his inheritance. But once his son realized that he was better off with his father, he went back. And the fatted calf was killed in celebration (I'm assuming that refers to Jesus).

A few final points. First off, note that Calvinism is a theological system created by John Calvin. I have seen no extrabiblical evidence (or even biblical evidence) that anything close to Calvinism existed up until Calvin did. Calvin was a philosopher with ideas. A lot of people use Calvin's ideas as their starting point and then read the Bible. So they view everything in it in a Calvinist sense. If you go looking for anything in the Bible, you will usually find it.

Hermeneutics (the study of Bible interpretation) teaches to always use exegesis, not eisegesis. Exegesis means taking meaning directly from the text, and eisegesis means inserting meaning into the text. Most Calvinists take their Calvinist philosophy with them when they read the Bible, which is the wrong way of going about things.

Another huge point is that the Greek is often different from the English. And the translators are often biased, and that's OK. Everyone is going to have a bias, and that's a good thing. If we had no bias and no worldview we would be hopelessly lost and unable to understand anything. However, we should be aware that there are incorrect biases and one correct bias. The question is, what is that correct bias? The more knowledge we gain, the closer we get to that correct bias, that correct worldview.

The point is, the Bible was written in Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic, it was written in a different time period to people of a different understanding. They had the advantage then of understanding the Bible with their own knowledge on their own terms in their own language. Now, we have the advantage of the internet and a world of information that can tell us about how these people lived and spoke and understood things, which helps us to dig deeper into what the Bible really means.

I can see where the Calvinists are coming from if they are basing their ideas off of their English/Latin understanding and language. But that's not the right way to go about it. I hope my analysis of the Scripture on its own terms will help you to think about these things. Calvin, in my opinion, was quite a bit off base to what the Bible teaches.

I have also noticed that Calvinists tend to think that anything short of unconditional election is not almighty. Like one Calvinist said, "God just 'knew it was going to happen'? That sounds so... un-almighty of Him." Well, if everything about salvation must sound almighty, then I guess the manger and the cross are out.

Calvinists often use the argument, "if salvation depends on man's belief, it is not of God! It gives man the glory for his own choice and allows man to boast." Not so much. I agree that focusing too much on man's part of salvation is very deadly, but believers rarely make this mistake, whether they believe in Calvinism or not. Can you honestly imagine anyone earnestly, wholeheartedly, tearfully praying to God for forgiveness through Christ, and then walking off thinking, "oh yeah, I'm so awesome, I just came off clean to God"? No way. If someone is serious about being saved through Christ, then they will realize that it's not about them, it's about Christ. Yes, man's acceptance or rejection of Christ is the hinge of his salvation. But if he does accept Christ, he can only agree with Luke 17:10.

"So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"

What I mean here is that those who believe are doing the right thing, but they can't get credit for it, because that's what they're supposed to do. Plus, they only believe because they miserably failed to keep the Law (or even try to!) in the first place, so they needed a second chance!

Calvinists forget that non-Calvinist believers are well aware that Christ is our salvation and our hope. Yes, we believe, but we give all of the glory to God, because without Christ's atoning death on the cross, we would not even have the opportunity to believe! Plus, whether we cultivated and grew our faith or not, it was God who gave us the ability to have faith in the first place! He gave us our lives, our wills, and the hope of our salvation! Yes, it was all by Him!

One of my biggest reasons for disagreeing with Calvinism is that it basically states that even after Christ's atoning death on the cross, mankind is still too evil and wicked to come to God. While claiming the non-Calvinists are adding works to salvation, the Calvinists add their own unconditional election to salvation. All over the Bible it says that grace + faith = salvation. Nowhere in the Bible does it say grace + unconditional election = salvation.

And I certainly hope I haven't overwhelmed you now! Please do carefully read over all of this material and give it some thought and prayer. I believe I dealt with all nine "Calvinist" verses you gave me (they're all in bold), but if you do have more, then please let me know.

Your brother in Christ,
-Cameron

Later on, after I wrote this article, I added an amendment at the request of Sam. Please do read, "An Amendment to my Long Letter".

Response to Comments from Camden

2009-07-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

I had some great comments on my blog I would like to respond to. They're from a guy named Camden who has a couple blogs of his own. I'll have to be checking those out.

However, I think that saying 'Satan did this' and 'Satan did that' distracts us from who ALLOWS Satan to do the things he does. It's God. You seem to point out that things like cars and planes distract us in our 'high-speed' world from Christ, but I agrue that Jesus has given us equal oppritunity to use these things to pursue him. Missionary travel, having a weekly Bible study at a person's house, or just meeting with another believer to encourage them is entirly more possible now with these modern inventives.

I absolutely agree! I wrote that previous post in a spurt of literary imagination late one night, and I meant it to be purely literary. It has the marks of an overdose of writerly creativity all over it.

Plus, I think we think a lot about God in the modern times and maybe not enough about Satan. We should be aware that there is demonic and satanic activity out there, and it is dangerous! That was basically the worldview of my post.

I do think I was wrong (not just creative) in the way I insinuated that those things (cars, etc.) are evil, not that they can be used for the wrong reasons. I agree that technology can be extremely useful. I personally have learned a great deal researching Greek root words on the internet, and my use of vehicles allows me to connect with other believers I could not have the chance of meeting without them.

I had a lot of fun writing the post and let things slide too much. Thanks for the corrections, I appreciate it!

Another point that you seem to be making (in which I would disagree) is this sense of arrogence in the Church. Yes, I know that many 'churches' have fallen in their beliefs, and in fact, more churches than ever before are accepting things like evolution, or their 'happy compromise.'

Yeah, that's definitely true. I should not have portrayed that sense of arrogance at all. I do get frustrated with how the church operates, though. It's a lot different from the biblical model, and I just wish it worked more. But I guess tearing them down is not exactly a good idea.

I guess I really have to apologize for the way I presented some of the stuff in that post. I think I had good points about what was wrong, but should not have been so immature about presenting it. Thanks a lot for setting me straight.

I noticed in some of your previous posts, you strongly refuted Calvinism. Why do you feel the need to do so?

Well, I have been in a Calvinist church for the last two years, and I ended up absorbing way too much TULIP. I quit believing that man's faith has anything to do with the salvation process. I quit believing in any aspect of free will. I believed that giving man any part in the salvation process was poisonous and Arminian (a synonym for heretical, I believed).

I realized my error when I read the Bible. I would come to verses that talked about free will and the faith of man and go, "this is wrong... this is poison... this is Arminian..." Then it hit me that I was thinking those thoughts about the Word of God. Wrong thoughts to be thinking while reading Scripture.

So I began to search for truth, and after a month of spending pretty much all of my free time on the internet looking up different scriptural arguments for and against Calvinism, I decided it wasn't true.

I don't want to go back to the point where I was rejecting parts of the Bible because of my beliefs, and I don't want anyone else to be there either. I just don't believe in full, authentic Calvinism, and I want to shine some light on the issue. It is also my current debate-related interest. I used to primarily do the creation/evolution thing, now I do the election/free will thing. Who knows what I will get into next. I just rather like debate.

Two last (short!) things. First, I was wondering what church group you claim to belong to, and second, reguarding your claim against Calvinism. I realize that there are many things wrong with people saying "Don't be a missionary, because God has already chosen people to hear his Word," but honestly, I don't think Calvinism is that much of a problem.

I claim to belong to the Body of Christ, the church Paul and Peter belong to. By this I really just mean that I don't want to affiliate myself with a particular denomination; I'm just a believer in Christ. This is for a few reasons:

1. I think the separation of believers over the less important issues (Calvinism, for example) makes them less viable to correction. If they're in a church where everyone believes the same thing (and some of it happens to be wrong), then no one person will ever sharpen another in truth. If I differ in beliefs with someone else, I'd really just like to sit down and talk with them, not form a separate church over it.

2. The lack of unity leaves the unbelievers confused over what is the true doctrine. Is it Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian? Most of the people of those denominations will tell you that the important thing is that they all agree on Christ! And if we would stop being Reformers, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, I think we could show nonbelievers that more clearly.

However, I can see where you're going on the Calvinist thing. I admit that it would be tough for me to stick to a church where extreme Calvinism is openly taught. However, I have to ask myself the question: would I rather Calvinists evangelize and spread Christ and Calvinism, or would I rather they be quiet and spread no Christ and no Calvinism? It is tough to answer the question this way, but I have to say I prefer the first. And I will (and am going to) evangelize side-by-side with my Calvinist (although not extreme Calvinist) friends.

Whatever denominations we box ourselves into, we're still just the Body of Christ. I guess I can't say that I think denominations are necessarily evil, but if the Church were functioning ideally, they would not exist. They didn't exist in the very early church, and I wish they wouldn't exist any more.

I believe that all Calvin meant when he spoke of Predestination is that God looks into the future, sees the people who will choose him, and those are the people he chooses.

Actually, Calvin believed in "unconditional election", meaning that people are chosen based on "God's will", not on their own merit or anything they do (including accepting Christ).

You might want to check out the Five Points of Calvinism, the acronymn TULIP.

You'll notice how extreme this school of thought really is, although many people subscribe to it (or at least claim to).

The school of thought you referred to there is called "Arminianism", a concept created by Jacobus Arminius. My theology is rather close to Arminian, however, I don't really go for election at all. Most of the verses that seem to point to Calvinism are really Greek mistranslations and misunderstandings, or entirely taken out of context.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the comments, Camden, I appreciate it! Good to hear from you. May God bless you.

Romans 9 - Speaking of Salvation?

2009-07-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

If there has ever been a Bible passage that has driven me crazy, it's Romans 9. I have never been able to figure out what it means. There are three categories of people who like Romans 9. Some say it speaks of double predestination (God predestines some to Heaven and others to Hell), some say it speaks of some people God chose to snatch from the flames (the others went to Hell of their own accord), and some others are strangely silent, because they just don't agree with the doctrine of unconditional election and are very disturbed by Romans 9.

Of course, I have fallen into the third category.

I would say, though, that if we understand Romans 9 to be talking about salvation, then we should believe in double predestination.

But I found this very interesting video series online. It's a lecture by Dennis McCallum on what Romans 9 actually means, in its historical and lingual context. I was very surprised to find out, and it makes perfect sense!

I can't say I could do much better at presenting it than Mr. McCallum on this, so I'll just post his videos. Please notice that he does take God's name in vain a few times, which really disappointed me. But I think everyone should still take a look at this video series. It is extremely insightful, and if you ever plan on understanding Romans 9, has information vital to understanding it.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1VPDhgIw24
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWTniSfNrKY
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ9FQv2Xv3g
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRCTL_GPXuU
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9po3rHxzlU
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaktlTz6Qfg

Satan's Designs for the Modern Times

2009-06-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

This is something more or less interesting I composed. I think that Satan has a very real hand in how everything goes on in the world, and we don't even realize it. Please note that this writing has a high degree of sarcasm to it. Also, please note that I am not in any way insinuating that Satan invented the school system, rest homes, cars, the entertainment industry, etc. This is for merely literary purposes, and is designed to make you think. Events may not also be in correct chronological, topical, or spatial order.

Satan had a hand in the design of the modern way of life. Early on, he carefully conceptualized and designed things to work specifically to his needs.

One of the first things he did was to shut up all the kids in a sort of institution where he could more effectively indoctrinate them. Of course, he couldn't start feeding their little spongy brains evil right off the bat. He had to bide his time and make sure to make schools look like a good thing for education. For a while, he left them to pray and learn about the Bible, but slowly he weaned the school systems off of God and on to things more suitable to his purposes.

He realized, of course, that it would be very foolish to keep old people, who are wise and experienced, in situations where they could share their wisdom. So, he conceptualized a second institution to keep the wisdom of the older people away from the impressionable youth. This institution would also serve the purpose of making old people look and feel worthless, a very important goal.

Then, he decided he had to do something about the way people traveled. Sure, walking was all right, but far too many travelers had truthful, honest, meaningful conversations and relationships along the way. So he made a gradual change once again - first horses, then buggies, then cars. The car was a fine invention. Human beings all traveling the same direction would now be in little glass and metal cases and unable to converse and develop relationships while on the road. And, of course, rising gas prices would help to keep cars small so that there would be fewer people to interact with each other in each vehicle.

Of course, something must also be done about the infernal way that the Church strengthened one another and helped each other out. This was the most gradual process by far, and it involved taking the church and boxing it in. Satan figured out that he could get people to meet only one day of the week for a very short time. With such a small amount of time to work with, the Church would be powerless!

But naturally, far too damaging things could be done when the body of believers were all gathered together, no matter how short a time they were given. So instead of the believers all strengthening one another in their faith and working together, why not just have them watch a little show at the front of the church? Satan had this worked out gradually, like everything else he did. First preaching, then singing, then rock bands and videos. Church groups had to go for entertainment instead of faith!

And it could not stop there, Satan realized! He needed more ground still. Why not divide up the entire church gradually?

The churches could form denominations based on their beliefs! Then, they would be divided against one another! And better yet, those searching for truth would be unable to decide which denomination possessed it, and they would be confused! No body of Christ, only Lutherans, Methodists, Reformers, Baptists!

Now, Satan knew that somehow he needed the wise older people and the impressionable younger people divided. And the young adults are, of course, in the most danger of sinning when none of the aforementioned people groups are around. So he created classes and study groups for all of the different age groups!

All right, that would do! He categorized everyone by age and kept them all away from one another. It worked perfectly! The church was all divided!

Now, what to do next? The next thing to do, of course, would be to get rid of that infernal institution of marriage. Marriage was simply too difficult and frustrating. Human beings could not be permitted to have relationships and committments. They should not have the "family ties" that keep them together and away from the pleasures Satan could bring them! They should not be able to strengthen one another! They should not be able to love one another!

So, Satan began his attack slowly as always, with great planning, always taking just a little more ground. First, he threw away that old idea of men and women playing certain roles in marriage and replaced it with equality! Now, the idea that men and women play the same role in marriage would do nicely, because it would lead to endless frustrations.

A few quick lies about "soul mates" and how when you find the "right person" everything will be peachy and perfect would do the trick to prepare for the next step.

Divorce! Yes, of course, Satan used the dissatisfaction he had created to bring about thousands of divorces. More and more couples broke off and tried again!

Now, a new move: getting women into the workplace! Husbands and wives very rarely get jobs in the same corporation, so that means that men can be around attractive females they are not married to all day long!

Satan realized he had hit the nail on the head. He gradually coaxed on more and more affairs, until eventually divorce was not even necessary. Now, he could get men and women to live together without being married!

Wonderful! But what next, he wondered? Wait! Why not attack marriage from the ground up? Yes, certainly, that is what he would do! He could challenge the very basis of marriage: one man plus one woman!

Not only would that cease reproduction, keeping thousands of those stupid little human beings off the planet, it would help to increase frustration and immorality!

There were already a whole slew of broken families, thanks to divorces and affairs. That left many, many broken children, wonderfully unable to live their lives properly. Why not use the craving the boys have for a father's love they never experienced as a springboard to get them to try to lust after other men? And the same for girls!

Satan could even convince people that homosexuality was a genetic trait! He could have gay festivals and celebrate the diversity! A celebration of broken, hurting people is exactly what Satan loves!

Yes, Satan loved the way the country was turning out! After all, he hates humans. They are stupid little creatures who always seem to be getting him in trouble with God. But gradually, of course, very gradually, he can take over their system - without them detecting a thing!

"Chosen" Does Not Mean Calvin

2009-06-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

Again, on the Calvinist debate. I read this in a document sent to me by a friend.

In 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, Paul references election four times, and
then ties the doctrine of election to humility, “so that no human
being might boast” (v.29).

Let's look at 1 Corinthians 1:26-29.

1 Corinthians 1:26-29
²⁶Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹so that no one may boast before Him.

Hang on a sec, do you see where Paul references election four times? I don't! I do see the word "chose" in there three times and "called" in there once. Is that referring to election? I don't suppose so!

Can you be called whether or not election is true? Yes, you can.

Does it say here that God chose people, specifically for salvation? No; it says He chose "things". Foolish things to shame the wise.

It seems like every time a Calvinist sees the word "chose" or "called", he immediately points it out, happily shouting, "look! Calvinism!"

This attitude is one of the things that convinces me that Calvinists have no scriptural basis for their idea of "unconditional election". Surely if it were true they would point out more clear scriptures than this!

Let us also look at the parable of the wedding guests, one of the times when Jesus used the word "chose".

Matthew 22
¹Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ²"The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. ³He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
⁴"Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.'
⁵"But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. ⁶The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. ⁷The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
⁸"Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. ⁹Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' ¹⁰So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
¹¹"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ¹²'Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless.
¹³"Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
¹⁴"For many are invited, but few are chosen."

What does Jesus say here? Many are invited, but few are chosen! What does this mean? The Calvinists would say it means that many people are invited to accept the Gospel message on their own, but few are chosen to be filled with irresistible grace so that they may accept it.

But now let us look at this verse in context. Read the entire parable. Who are the chosen ones, do you suppose? They are the ones who were invited and wore the wedding clothes.

Who was thrown out? The man who did not wear the wedding clothes!

Let's think about what these "wedding clothes" symbolize.

Wedding clothes are traditionally white. Jesus' blood clothes us and makes us spotless and clean. We are not actually pure ourselves, but we are pure in the Father's eyes because of Christ's blood, shed for our sins.

The man without wedding clothes, as I see it, was not clothed with the blood of Christ, so he was not saved. He was cast out, because he was a sinner.

The chosen ones were the ones who were clothed with the blood of Christ. They were chosen because they were wearing the spotless wedding clothes of the Son. Those wedding clothes were, of course, not their own invention! Christ provided them. But that man refused to wear the clothes he was graciously offered, and was cast into Hell.

When were the chosen ones chosen? They were chosen not before the dawn of time, but once all was said and done, at the end. They were chosen because they took the second chance they were offered.

See, not all that says "chosen" means Calvinism!

Calvinism in Ephesians 1?

2009-06-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

I am not Calvinist. If you have read much of my blog or talked with me about such matters you might already know that. I have been debating predestination and election, and Calvinists keep pointing me to Ephesians 1:4. So I have decided to go over all of Ephesians 1 in an expanded study.

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,"

As I see it, there are two possible meanings here:
1. God has chosen every single individual who will be saved out of the whole of humanity.
2. God has chosen the believers, not necessarily a set group of people, to inherit righteousness.

Let's look at the context of the verse.

Ephesians 1 (NIV)

"3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love 5He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will— 6to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. 7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9And He[d] made known to us the mystery of His will according to his good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, 10to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

11In Him we were also chosen,[e] having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, 12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory. 13And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of His glory."

In the context, what is Paul talking about? In the first paragraph, he talks about how the believers were chosen and predestined. He then goes on to talk about what the believers were chosen and predestined for: to be sons, to have redemption, to be given wisdom and understanding.

In the second paragraph, Paul starts out again talking about the believers being chosen and predestined. He then moves on to how individuals join this body of believers. "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit."

First off, note here what Paul did not say. He did not say, "and you were included in Him before the creation of the world." He said, "and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation."

I cannot think of a second meaning for this part; it has one meaning. Of the two possible meanings I gave earlier for the fourth verse, only the second one can be reconciled with this verse. This verse clearly says that those who hear the word of truth are included in Christ. They are not included in Christ before the dawn of time!

If you don't accept that, then I have more evidence that Paul intended to convey the second meaning. Obviously, if there are only two possible meanings, and one meaning contradicts other passages with only one possible meaning, then that meaning must not be true. It is simply good hermeneutics.

Romans 10:4
"Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes."

Romans 10:13
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Romans 10:9-11
"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Matthew 4:17
From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."

There are many such verses in the Bible, that exort us to repent, believe, confess, and be saved. And of course, if a person does not follow these verses, then he will not be saved. I believe in the simple truth of Romans 10:9-11. I believe the simple truth of John 3:16, the most striking and well-known verse of the Bible. Whoever believes in Christ will not perish, but have eternal life. Not the predestined, not those chosen, not the elected. Whoever believes.

Listen to what 2 Peter says.

2 Peter 3:16
He [Paul] writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

I believe firmly that the Calvinists have distorted the simple truth in Paul's letters. Look at what he said to the Romans! He clearly believed in a Christ who would take anyone who believed! He clearly understood the simple truth! Whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life! Anyone who says otherwise, no matter how noble their intention, is distorting the simple, beautiful truth of the Bible.

I do not believe in unconditional election. I believe that Christ died to give every man on earth one thing: a second chance. And I believe that God extends that second chance to everyone, and that Christ's blood is more than enough to cover anyone who will believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead.

Salvation!

Predestination Debate - Eklektos

2009-06-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

Sam and I were again debating, and I think there is some very interesting stuff here. I've been learning a lot, and I am beginning to see Calvinism as more incorrect than ever. Here is part of a message I sent to Sam. It is very long and rather in-depth, but I think it is interesting. Note especially the part about the possible mistranslation of the Greek word eklektos.

And what about the verse about the Holy Spirit being resisted? Can't that happen? What do people do when they listen to gospel messages, shake their heads, and switch off the radio? Don't they resist the Holy Spirit's urging? Were they predestined to do that? Were they unable to accept the message? What role does Satan play in that kind of encounter if it's already predestined? Why does Satan even care to try to distract us from the pure gospel if people's salvation is already predestined?

Oh, and what do you believe concerning infant baptism? Do you believe it is necessary?

Also, think about what you are saying when you say that election is unconditional. Jesus said that it is hard for a rich man to enter heaven. That means that the surroundings of a person can affect their eternal destination!

The Bible seems to very clearly say, to me, that "whosoever will" call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Therefore, whosoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved, not "whosoever has been elected". The verses on election and God's choice all seem to speak about the subject of salvation in a more muffled way, and I think that most of them are eisegesis, to be exact, reading Calvinism into the Bible. In other words, Calvinists take verses that are not really dealing with salvation and read Calvinism into them.

I looked up the verses you gave me, and they were pretty interesting.

I'll start with Romans 9:11-16. I looked at the entire context - Romans 9 itself. It talks about Jacob and Esau, and how God "hated" Esau and "loved" Jacob. I think this is an example of the Semitic monochromatic mindset. The Israelites believed things were either one way or another, and it seems to me they viewed things as additive. For instance, if you have a great love, and you add hate, the love becomes a little less. That's what Christ meant when He said that we have to hate our mother, sister, brother, father, and even our own life to be His disciple - we should love all those people less than Him, not hate them entirely! Or love Him so much that our love for everything else is like hate.

So I think God loved Jacob and Esau, He just loved Esau less.

In this passage, Paul is talking about physical stuff that happened to these people. In their lives on earth, we know Jacob received compassion from God, Esau did not. I don't believe we were ever even told in the OT whether Jacob and Esau were saved, but we were sure told about their lives, so that must be what Paul is referring to.

And as for Pharaoh's heart being hardened - his heart was already hard against God, God just increased the direction Pharaoh had already chosen.

Plus, it is absolutely true that nothing depends on man's desire or effort, but God's mercy. However, is this actually referring to salvation? The Bible seems to make it clear in other passages that in the case of salvation, God is merciful to and has offered a second chance to everyone. Titus 2:11 and Acts 17:30 both make it clear that Jesus died for all men. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God wishes for all people to repent.

If God desires every person to be saved as the Bible says, and as the Calvinists say, the only instrument required for salvation is God... then why is everyone not saved?

Also, this guy shines an awesome light on the Greek word eklektos and how it is used and perhaps mistranslated.
http://www.bobmoorepainting.com/Calvin/chapter_eight.htm
This could be where the whole "chosen" idea incorrectly receives its support. With this in mind, Ephesians also makes more sense.

As for 2 Timothy 1:9, yeah, God has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we've done but because of His compassion. (And having faith is not really doing, is it?) That's why He sent His son. And I do believe the plan of salvation was in place before time began. However, does it say that the individuals who inherited that grace were actually chosen? Not really.

On Romans 11:5, check the context. "And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace."

This passage includes a use of the Greek word eklektos, which, as the article I noted above points out, can also and most likely does mean "special". If you read this verse again substituting the word "special" for "chosen", then Calvinism has significantly less hold on this verse.

This is an excellent article.
http://www.biblehelp.org/sumsel.htm
This one is also good, although the writer seems very furious with John Calvin.
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Doctrines/Calvinism/john_calvin_exposed.htm

Oh, and I found how to search the old Greek manuscripts of the Bible... scripturetext.com does it. It's a division of Bible.cc. However, I can't figure out how to search it, so I'll just give you a sample URL.
http://scripturetext.com/john/3-16.htm
Just edit that URL to whatever verse you like. (Unfortunately, it can't do whole passages that I know of.) Just thought you might like that, I was excited when I found it.

Anyway, I am very much enjoying this debate. It has been helpful to get me to dig very deep into the Bible.

Calvinist Assumptions

2009-06-09T19:10:00.001-07:00

I have been having a bit of a friendly debate (more like a brainstorming session) with Sam. Basically, we're trying to figure out how predestination, election, and free will work. He's basically coming from a Reformed point of view, and I'm coming from a free will, sort-of Arminian point of view.

Here are my latest thoughts, just putting out into the open some faulty assumptions Calvinists make.

1. If God's will is more powerful than man's will, God's will must always overpower man's will, every time. (I.e. God does not restrain His power.)

2. If God has total control, then God will always use that control, down to the finest detail. (I noticed Jesus says God knows when the sparrows fall, not that He necessarily "makes" them fall!)

3. If God gives someone the ability to receive something (i.e. salvation) it must be given the moment they receive it, not when He created them. The general attitude of the Calvinists is that this somehow shortchanges His sovereignty.

4. Likewise, if God gives someone the ability to do a good work, of course for Him to be sovreign, He must give them that ability right at the very moment they are doing the good work. He couldn't give the ability to do good works when they're created.

There is also one statement that Calvinists repeatedly make against those who don't believe in election that cuts both ways. They cut off their own heads with attacks against their opponents, as John Piper (humorously, a Calvinist) would say.

1. Arminianism is deadly, because if you hinge your eternal security on your acceptance of Christ's gift and not on Christ, then you will be damned. This is true, but you could also theoretically hinge your eternal security on being elected, and not on Christ, and be damned.

And my final, closing point:

All those who believe in election also believe they are one of the chosen.

Thoughts on Predestination

2009-06-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

I had a meeting with Sam and Makenna today, and we briefly brought up the subject of predestination, that is, whether or not believers are "predestined" to be saved. I currently don't really agree with predestination, but I admit I could be wrong. Here are just a few of my thoughts.

As far as predestination goes, I know the Reformers believe in "irresistible grace" and that people are saved when the Holy Spirit irresistibly fills them. However, I found this verse. “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Acts 7:51) Please do note what I'm saying, here, though... I'm not saying that God cannot overpower people through the Holy Spirit! I'm definitely not saying that God does not have power over man's decisions. I'm just saying that maybe He doesn't choose to use the full extent of His power on us so that we can still make a choice.

Also, if everything we do was predestined, then why should humans be condemned for sins that God essentially forced them to commit? If we have no choice about what we do, believe, etc., then we might as well live the way the atheists do, claiming no responsibility for our actions.

And Scripture states that salvation is a free gift. If I received a gift on my birthday from my father, and I reached out and took it, would I get the credit? No, not really. My dad would get all the credit for giving me the gift, of course! Sure, I had to accept it, but accepting it really didn't take much. Actually, I would have been doing much more if I had rejected the gift! It would have taken a lot more effort and stubbornness.

I do think that in a way everything is "predestined" - God knows everything, so He knew before and outside of the confines of time who would be saved. But I don't think He moves humans like pawns in the salvation process. And I don't think it subtracts at all from God's sovereignty if He gives man a choice.

This verse from Ephesians is often used to support predestination:
"For He chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will - to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves."

This verse, to me, could be taken two ways. First of all, it could mean that each individual person who will be saved is predestined, that God hand-picked individuals to be saved before they were even created. It could also mean that God simply predestined the plan of salvation. He knew humankind would fall and created a way for the group of believers to be adopted as His sons. Christ was predestined, then. The believers are His chosen people, like Israel. But of course the Israelites did have the freedom of choice whether to follow Him or not. Not all the Israelites were saved, even though they were chosen!

I think a later verse rather helps to clarify this point. "And you also [referring to the believing Ephesians] were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,"

In other words, later on, people are grafted into this chosen Body of Christ. The Body of Christ was chosen, yes, but perhaps it is not necessarily predestined who exactly is included in that body.

I'd really like to check with a Greek scholar on this passage.

I don't know, these are just my thoughts, and I could be wrong. Predestination could be right, wrong, or part right. Scientists are still freaking out over how light can act like a particle sometimes and like a wave other times. Yet they use light, because they know that no matter how it does it, light scatters darkness, and light is good.

Like Sam said today, though, whether you believe in predestination or not, we can all agree that God first loved us. That's the most important thing. And if we trust that Christ's atoning death on the Cross is what saves us - not our own choice or our election - then we will agree on the important thing, and we will be saved.

MaryEllen's Trip to the Dominican Republic

2009-06-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

My friend MaryEllen (from Canada) took a trip to the Dominican Republic to, as she puts it, "to experience their culture and experience the different kinds of social injustices around there... and how they deal with them and what kind of things they do... and how we can take that and bring it home and work on things here."

Her blog on the subject is really quite interesting.

http://shatteringresilience.skyrock.com/

It was pretty refreshing for me to go and read a little bit about another culture that lived differently. We get so caught up with America, America, America. (Or Canada, maybe.) It's all about us, how we live and what we do. Well, there are other people out there, and they live very differently, and we can learn from them. We can teach them, and we can learn from them too. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Slow Progress From Wimp to Evangelical

2009-06-06T19:50:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm working slowly on becoming less of a wimp about sharing my faith in Christ. The title says it all. This post will be just a few witnessing-related thoughts.

Makenna gave me seven tracts a couple weeks ago. A biblical number, really. I took two to the grocery store tonight, determined to return with zero.

I did. Actually, I wish I had brought all seven.

I'm such a wimp. After years and years of being a Christian, I have spent probably less than a half hour total sharing my faith in Christ. Something is wrong with that.

Thousands upon thousands of people die every day. Every one of them goes, as a very nice black man I met said, "either upstairs or downstairs". And there is only one good destination if those people ever want to be joyful and full. The more I realize that, the more bold I become.

Seriously though. I wish I cared more. Satan has made me fall for a whole bunch of lies. I'm starting to see through these lies a little bit.

Lie #1: Shouldn't you get to know people before you witness?
Response: 9/10ths of the witnessing conversations in the Bible are to total strangers. If we're going biblical, we'll be witnessing to strangers. Besides, if you try to do it that way, it will never happen. You get to know someone and don't talk to them right away about Jesus. Three months into the relationship, you don't talk to them about Jesus. Six months, still no Jesus.

Lie #2: Jesus is kind of off-topic right now.
Response: By the world's standards, Jesus is always off-topic! That's the point! He will never be on-topic. What am I waiting for? Someone to ask me about Jesus? That could never happen, and there are thousands of people dying and going to Hell every single day. What's off-topic is the way those people - and us - are living our lives. In contrast to that stark reality. Witnessing is on-topic. Everything else is off-topic.

Lie #3: Isn't witnessing kind of invasive?
Response: Absolutely. Lots of acts of love are very invasive. It's extremely invasive to tie your best friend to a chair so he can't shoot himself, and yet I would do that any time, any day. Shouldn't we be quicker to be invasive if people are shooting themselves in an eternal sense?

Lie #4: That person is on the job, he/she doesn't have time for this.
Response: It doesn't actually take that long to witness. About as long as a friendly conversation does, and people on the job are supposed to have those. Besides, a person's soul is more important than their job!

I met an old man today and gave him a tract. He got sort of a twinkle in his eye and asked what it was about. When I gave him my version of a not-so-eloquently worded bare-bones plan of salvation through Christ, he absolutely lit up! This random old man I had selected to hand a tract gave me a big hug! He told me that he had been a pastor and had started five churches and most of all, absolutely loved Christ.

He was so enthralled that I would be out witnessing, and he gave me some extremely encouraging words. But the best encouragement was just the look in his eye, the absolute love for God and the delight that someone would be telling others about Christ.

I'm just really encouraged and a lot more ready to share my faith. I need to start learning to view witnessing as a joy. I can help Christ in the salvation process! Obviously, I can hardly move an iota in the grand scheme of things, but boy, am I happy to be able to help!

The old man took the tract, and I doubt that he will waste it. The man who took the other tract was a deli worker who seemed very genuinely interested in the information and tucked the tract inside of his white deli coat.

Even though you might not ever read this, thanks, Makenna, for turning my opinions on witnessing on their head.

Thanks to the old man in the grocery store, for all the encouragement. I really needed it.

And thanks, Jesus. I cannot believe what You did for me. Let me be able to share Your joy with others.

Overcoming Pride

2009-06-05T06:49:00.001-07:00

One of my great struggles in life has been overcoming pride.

Pride is extremely dangerous. As C.S. Lewis has noticed in his book, Mere Christianity, pride is the only sin that alienates people from other people.

Every other sin can bring people together in some way. People who like stealing go on raids together. People who like lying pull off complicated deceptions. People who like adultery will congregate to do inappropriate things.

But pride is different. Pride is the one sin that makes someone completely alienated. When you are prideful you want to be above and beyond everyone else, having no fellowship with them at all. Sure, people's compliments can fuel you for a while, but those compliments only serve to push your airy head as far past those people as it can get.

And worse, pride can alienate us from God. Ezekiel tells us that Satan fell from Heaven because of pride. He loved how good he was, he pushed himself above and beyond everyone else, including God, and he rebelled and got kicked out. He's still rebelling, and we're helping him every day.

Yup, pride is dangerous, and I've definitely been guilty of it. Worse, I've usually been very confused about how to fix it.

But I've been thinking about it a lot and studying the Bible, and I think I may have figured out my problem. It can be summed up in one phrase.

Dealing with pride is not done by thinking less of yourself. Dealing with pride is done by thinking more of others.

That's the problem. I usually try to think less of myself - oh, never mind, sure, I did that, but I'm not really that great a guy. I belittle myself and try to fake myself out that I don't think too highly of myself.

But maybe there's another way to fix the problem. Maybe instead of trying to knock my opinion of myself down, I can raise my opinion of others. Maybe instead of trying to serve myself less I can try to serve others more.

As a last thought, I think I'll share something from Communications class. It's the most valuable thing we learned all year, in my opinion. It is the acronym:

JOY

It stands for Jesus, Others, and You. That's the order of priorities.

Not the Kind You Kill

2009-06-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've been realizing something very big, and one phrase sums it up pretty well.

If you watch a lot of action movies and read a lot of Scripture, you quickly begin to run into some contradictions.

Like any kid, I've daydreamed of being an action hero - smashing through panes of glass and dropping fifteen feet to down one crook, giving another a jaw-crushing uppercut, backflipping to avoid a third crumb's kick, and delivering a whirling kick of my own right into his solar plexus. And naturally, I would save someone. Likely a girl. I'd be a hero with my quick moves.

Adrenaline is pretty intense.

But after lots of Scripture reading, studying the Bible and studying the ways of God, I've started to understand things in a different light. Actually, I'm rather embarrassed of my action movie and adrenaline-fueled ways of thinking, and I'm starting to view it as rather wrong.

There are really no bad guys. Not the kind you shoot at and punch and chop and kill, anyway.
We're all bad guys, really. We're all just out to feed our own selfish selves. We're all out to snub other people to make ourselves feel better. We're all just out in total opposition to God. Like my pastor says, with every sin, we try to kill God.

But the main thing I've been realizing is that those who would be portrayed as "villains" in action movies - villains to be attacked and decimated without regret - are just people. People every bit as real as you and me. People who have hurts and pains and desires. People with the Imago dei, the Image of God.

People Jesus died for.

That's how I hope to change my mindset. I am hoping and praying that if anyone ever pulls a fast one on me - stealing my money or kidnapping my friends - I will be able to do the same thing Jesus would do, the same thing Jesus did do for those who "pulled a fast one" on Him.

He loved them.

I hope and pray that I will be able to see everyone as valuable in God's eyes. I hope that I will be overcome with the beautiful love God has for people. And if anyone tries to "pull a fast one" on me, I hope I will not use him as a human punching bag like the action movies say to do.

I hope that I can show him the hope that I've found. It seems so right and so Jesus to witness to someone who's just wronged you. Because I could be there, in his shoes, by all rights a villain. Actually, I guess I am.

No human is so degraded that he is a punching bag to be kicked, shoved, and spit on. Every human deserves it, but that's what grace is all about.

Thoughts on Bible Translations, Mostly the KJV

2009-06-03T19:36:00.001-07:00

I was going to send the following message to a couple of friends of mine. We're working on starting a "Do Hard Things" (think Alex and Brett Harris) group under the premise that the world has enough groups that just sit and talk about things (including churches!) and very few that actually go and do stuff. So we hope to have a group that goes out and shares the good news of Jesus Christ, memorizes Scripture, and does service projects.

I was going to send this to my friends, but it's a bit long and rant-like, so I thought I would just post it here, on my blog, my thinking space and give them a merciful condensed version. These are just a few of my thoughts on Bible translations and especially the KJV. I edited it and expanded it a great deal. I wasn't actually going to send them all the Greek stuff!

As far as what translation of the Bible to use, I think we should use a modern translation, although be a bit careful in that respect, because a lot of modern translations are very off-base and liberal. I'm not a KJV-er, though, for various reasons.

First of all, I don't consider the KJV to be an English translation, because you have to understand Old English to read it. The point of a translation is to make things understandable to the reader, and the KJV isn't good for many readers, including me, since I grew up with the NIV. I can understand the Old English fine, but the extra step of deciphering it keeps me distracted from the actual content of the Bible. Of course, I am OK with the KJV, and I know those who have grown up with it and don't have a problem with it because they can understand it well. But if we're witnessing we will most likely encounter people like me who aren't so well-grounded in Old English, so we might not want to go KJV.

Secondly, I'm a little bit wary of the cult-like following the KJV has gotten. I know of many people who hold that the KJV isthe literal, inerrant Word of God. They believe it's an inspired translation. I simply don't believe that, and if you need examples of translation errors I can provide them . I think there is no substitute for studying the original Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts to truly understand the Bible. At the very least I don't think the KJV is an inspired translation.

Let's take, for instance, the famous verse, John 3:16. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The KJV-ers are quite pleased with the use of "only begotten" in this text. This phrase comes from two Greek words. You will probably recognize both!

mono - one, only
genesis - beginning, creation

So the KJV translators translated "monogenesis", a compound Greek word, into "only begotten". Good, right?

No, because like in English, compound words in Greek can mean something completely different than if the words were separate! For instance, "firefly" is very, very different from "fire fly". "Firefly" means a little flying lightup insect. "Fire fly" means flying fire! And so monogenesis means something very different than mono genesis!

I think there's a serious theological error here too. "Begotten" insinuates that Christ was created, which isn't indicated anywhere in the Bible. If He's part of the Trinity, then He couldn't have been created. Also, Christ was involved in the creation process, as the book of John tells us. How could He create if He was in fact created?

If I'm correct the actual translation of monogenesis is a lot closer to "unique" or "precious", which is how it is translated in the Psalms. It also carries with it some of the meaning of the birthright - the rights of a son to the power of the father, or something along those lines.

I use the NIV, which I definitely think has several serious translation errors, probably easily as bad as the KJV. I don't consider either translation more superior to the other, I'm just used to modern English and also a bit put off by those who insist that the KJV is inspired. I don't think there is an inspired English translation of the Bible, and if there is, I haven't run into it yet. KJV, NKJV, NASB, and NIV alike all have their share of translation errors.

But I believe the last statistic I heard is that English translations such as the ones above are 99% free of error, so we should be fine. I just prefer not to throw Old English at someone! But NKJV, NASB, and NIV are all fine by me for witnessing. If anyone has any comments or disagreements, please don't hesitate! Hopefully you two won't mind that I went on something of a rant concerning this subject.

I'm Solidifying

2009-06-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

I've noticed something rather scary that's been happening to me lately. In one sense it elates me, and in another, it scares me to death.

I feel like I'm beginning to solidify.

When I was a lot younger, I was much more impressionable. I mean, if anyone said something it would stick with me quickly. It would affect me seriously. Think about the word "impressionable" for a moment. What is an impression? It is like a handprint or a footprint. When you place your foot on the soft sand of the beach, you leave a mark of your foot there. The sand takes the shape of your foot.

As an impressionable youth, I was the same way. It was easy to shape me. I was like soft sand, and anything anyone said or did left an imprint on me.

I have done a lot of online debating, mostly on the subject of creation/evolution. Actually at one point when I was thirteen I debated for almost a straight week, spending every spare second online fighting for my beliefs.

I became very angry and confused. I didn't know what to think because so many atheists assaulted me all week long. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know if what I was taught when I was young (and even more impressionable!) was right.

I learned in debates this year that it doesn't matter which side sounds more impressive or has more evidence, the other side can still be right. There can usually be evidence for any idea if you look around hard enough. I think it's a combination of learning truths like this and just growing up that is causing me to solidify.

So in a way it's a good thing. I'm starting to be able to hold on to my beliefs more strongly. I debated atheists again over the past few weeks. I've been able to hold up a lot better. I guess I also have more knowledge in addition to more faith.

But in another way, I'm afraid of solidifying. I've heard that the teen years are the end of the impressionable years. When you're 16, 17, 18, you're becoming the person you're going to be for the rest of your life.

I'm scared that a lot of artifacts that I don't want in that person will solidify with the rest of me. What if I lose the most impressionable time of my life, the time when I'm shaping and molding myself and letting God shape and mold me into the man He wants me to be? What if I solidify before I'm ready, and it's no longer so easy to change?

I guess I should be comforted. Because with God, all things are possible. But I should also be careful of who I am now and who I am becoming.

So should you.

George Tiller's Death

2009-06-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

George Tiller, sometimes known as "Tiller the Baby Killer", a late-term abortion doctor, was killed on May 31, 2009. He was shot while serving as an usher in his church.

I have a few thoughts on this.

The first thought is that this man deserved the death penalty because he was murdering babies. By the laws of the country he should have received capital punishment.

I just really hate the mode of his death. It just seems very wrong to me.

There's something different about sentencing a man to death after giving him a fair trial with a judge, jury, etc., and having a sniper take him out.

And now it is a prominent worry of the pro-life movement that George Tiller's death will make him a martyr for the pro-choice cause.

Most of the pro-life movement has responded very graciously, and respected the life of George Tiller every bit as much as they respect the babies they try to save.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tiller#Reactions_from_pro-life_groups_and_individuals

I like Operation Rescue's statement. It says everything. "We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

Yeah. That is what we need to be doing. We don't need to be taking out abortionists with snipers. We need to be praying for them. We need to respect their lives and their salvation, too. Sure, we should keep them from aborting babies with every means possible, but in the end, their lives are no less and no more valuable than the lives of those babies. Abortion doctors are no more valuable because they're all grown up, and no less valuable because they are killers.

Jesus died for them, too.

I Quote My Wise Friends

2009-05-31T19:04:00.001-07:00

Here are just a few quotes from my friends that I found really inspiring.

"Maybe the problem with Christians is that we're told to live our lives for Christ, when we should really be sacrificing our lives for Christ."
-Joshua T.

"It's so easy to think that if I am pretty good and don't do really bad things throughout the day, I am living a godly life. It's not what we don't do, it's what we do do!"
-Makenna J.

Just some good stuff to think about. The first quote I like a whole lot. We tend to think that Christians will just do the normal unbelieving thing with a few edits here and there, but we're really called to do a whole new thing. We're not called to go to school, do our homework, watch movies, listen to music, hang out with friends at the mall, etc. None of that stuff is wrong, but we're called to be radically different. Jesus certainly was.

And Makenna's quote is also pretty impressive. It's not about what we don't do. In reality, even when we abstain from stuff, we're still doing something: choosing the right path. There is so much more to the Christian life than just not watching any movies over PG-13, not drinking and smoking, and not having sex before marriage. That stuff isn't even the main course, it is (or should be) just a byproduct of a deep, powerful love for our Jesus.

And it is so much more important to choose to do the right thing than to choose not to do the wrong thing.

Learning to Blog

2009-05-29T16:27:00.001-07:00

I've always been a writer. When I was very young I would write simple stories with predictable plots and morals. When I was older I would chronicle my life. Those writings usually ended up being deleted permanently from the computer, because they were simply so deep. So into my life. So real. I was afraid of them, because they were so honest.

I wish now that I had kept them. I could have a narration of my life by myself, and see how much I have grown. Things that were huge to me at one point are now silly and inconsequential. Things I thought were insurmountable are now trivial.

I could also see how much I have fallen apart. How far away I have gotten from God. How scary some of my life really was in a spiritual sense. I could see what a shaky, unstable organism I really was. How immature I was. How depraved I had become.

I wish I had chronicled then. I wish I had kept all my old journals and exposed them. So many life lessons can be learned from the scrawling of other human beings as they make their way through life. You can learn so much from what other people have been through.

Especially yourself.

And that is why I'm blogging here. I have longed to have a place to organize all my random thoughts, put the pieces together, see how life fits and flows and moves and loves. And when a good friend of mine got a blog, copycat or not, it was too hard to resist.

This will be my thinking place. The place where I learn from my own mistakes, pick myself up with my own advice. And I hope, in some simple sort of way, that maybe something I've written can help others, too.

I want to learn from this. I want to fit together all the truth that I can, piece my life together, understand it and shape it. I want to learn the simple things, the compelling things, the beautiful things, that I have been learning all my life. I want to learn the essential.

I want to learn to breathe.