May 31st, 2006
Puritan Bob in a comment on my post on Limited Atonement asks the following:
As for limited atonement, I ask did Christ die for all the sins of all people? If your an Arminian you really can’t say yes because then everyone would be saved (I actually think Universalism is a consistent form of universal atonement). So there is one sin Jesus did not die for, unbelief (in the Armenian framework). So Jesus did not die for all our sins.
I would have to say that I agree and disagree with this. Here is how. I maintain that Christ’s death was universal, that He died for all mankind. See 1 John 2:1-2
1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
It would take some pretty good finagling on my part to suggest that when the Bible says “the sins of the whole world“, it really means “the sins of the whole world, well, not the whole world, just those that God has selected and not the rest of the world“. I think that it would have been much cleaner to just come out and say that it was not for the sins of the whole world.
When Jesus died on the cross in the place of our sins, the payment was retroactive and applied univerally. All the sins of the world, past, present, and future were paid for by Jesus at the cross. Reference this idea with Hebrews 10:11-14:
11And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
To further express this point, later on in chapter 11 in the book of Hebrews, we see that the faith of those in God before the coming of Christ has the same effectiveness of those after the coming of Christ:
1Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2For by it the people of old received their commendation.
So, Christ’s death is good as a sacrifice for all sins for all of time. It is a gift that is presented to mankind out of God’s love for us. However, we also know that not everyone will partake in this gift. What does one have to do in order to receive this gift? All one must do is have faith in Jesus.
This is not a work of ours. It is an action, but it is not a meritous one. One does not “earn” salvation. It is given to the person.
This is potential universalism, not actual universalism. There is action in recieving the grace of God, not merit on our part. We must believe and we will receive the free gift of salvation. This is how one can hold to a unlimited atonement and still maintain that not everyone will be saved.
Categories: Calvinism vs Arminianism |
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May 31st, 2006
I would love if none would ever fall away. However, if we choose to revice God’s grace, then it follows that one is able to choose to give back that grace. The following verses drive him this idea:
Hebrews 3:
12Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
16For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
and then Heb 10:26
26For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
Categories: Calvinism vs Arminianism |
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May 30th, 2006
I was wanting to write up a post after seeing the DaVinci Code, but then I read by brother-in-law’s writeup at relevintage: 2036. There is really nothing else to say; he pretty much echoed my thinking in advance.
Categories: Culture |
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May 30th, 2006
Early on in my thinking, Luke 9:27 presented a challenge to me. Jesus says the following:
But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
I always thought that it meant the coming of the second coming of Jesus. I guess it more than likely talks about the initiation of the church age and Acts 2.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Categories: Eschatology |
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May 30th, 2006
Limited Atonement:
The doctrine of Limited Atonement (or Particular Redemption) is probably the most controversial of the doctrines of grace and most difficult to accept by many believers. Limited Atonement states that Christ’s redeeming work was intended to save the elect only, and actually secured salvation for them. His death was the substitutionary endurance of the penalty of sin in the place of certain specified sinners. In addition to putting away the sins of His people, Christ’s redemption secured everything necessary for their salvation; including faith which unites them to Him. The gift of faith is infallibly applied by the Spirit to all for whom Christ died, therefore guaranteeing their salvation.
This doctrine of Calvinism is the hardest one for me to fathom. I can understand the predestination idea and verses many speak in favor of it, at least on the surface. Limited atonement, however, seems to degrade God. A God who says that He is love and He is not a respecter of persons:
34So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
The story of the Bible is a God that loved his creation enough to suspend His power and authority and allow the pinnacle of His creation, man, to accept or reject Him. All men, save one have sinned and as a result are all subject to His anger as Puritan Bob rightfully points out. However, the story gets much better. Jesus, God incarnate, comes to earth, lives through the same temptations as man, rises above them all, and still chooses to die for the sins of the world. With Jesus’ act of self-sacrifice, he is the blameless lamb that took our place. He died for the sins of the world. God extends this promise to all. It is the universal gift that He allows us to chose to accept:
15And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
Christ came do to His father’s will. What was His father’s will? It is the will of God that all men should come to seek him:
9The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
It is in the light of the above and below verses that I cannot accept the doctrine that there is a “special love” of God toward those random people that He arbitrarily chose to save before the founding of the world. I think that it makes much better sense that God exists outside of time, chose the plan of salvation, knows who will partake in that promise and therefore it can be considered to have choosen those that are with Him before the founding of the world.
Other Verses to consider: (more…)
Categories: Calvinism vs Arminianism |
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May 23rd, 2006
I came across a very interesting article on Physics Web[1] the other day. It was entitled Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts[2] and it was on the personal religion of Einstein. Yes, that was a pun and read on to find out why.
There are many quotes on religion from Einstein. Here is a sampling[3] :
- Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not
- I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice
Perhaps the best quote of his that really captures his views on God and religion are
A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist[4].
and
Common to all these types [religion of fear and religion of morality] is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. [5]
The article from Physics Web makes it clear that Einstein disavowed in the strongest terms the idea that there is a personal god. It also gives a short history of his religious development:
- He had a secular Jewish upbringing
- Had a very intense religious phase at the age of 12 that lasted about a year.
- Then he found ‘rational’ Euclidean Geometry’
- This geometry offered a level of certainty that religion could not
- This certanity freed him from the ‘merely personal’
This idea of the ‘merely personal’ was an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Instead of the personal god, Einstein maintained a ‘cosmic religion’ that was rooted in the awe in the ability to understand the universe. He said that there were hints of it in the Old Testament, Islam, and Buddhism. The rationalization of God in its purest form, one rooted in Rational Science. It is suggested that Einstein thought a personal god was too small a deity to respect. He describes the cosmic religion in his essay ‘The World as I See It”[6]
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery ‘ even if mixed with fear ‘ that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man’ I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence ‘ as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Religion absent of the idea of a personal god is very reminiscent of Pantheism[7] This has lead many to brand Einstein as a follower of the ‘God of Spinoza’. However, he was asked once if he did in fact believe in such a pantheistic god. He said that he was not an atheist and did not know if he could define himself as a pantheist. The main difference was that while Pantheists maintained that nature was God and not created, Einstein thought the two were separate as nature was created and God was not.
As a personal note, while I am a Christian, I very much respect his thoughts on religion. The awe that captured him draws me to science and religion at the same time. The awe found in understanding what we are not a part of - moves my heart. I do disagree with the idea of a non-personal God. However, I do agree with that we should not anthropomorphize God. It may be that our tendency to do that is rooted in his non-human nature. We have a disadvantage because we lack words that truly describe God in an accurate way. This may be, as the Physics Web article suggests, why Einstein himself used personal words to describe his god, such as ‘malicious’ and ‘rational’. We simply lack the language to easily describe such a being without using ourselves a frame of reference.
Linknotes:
- Physics Web
- Physics Web - Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts
- Stanford.edu - Einstein Quotes
- Quotes on Religion and Science
- Positive Atheism - Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science
- The World as I See It - Albert Einstein
- Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Pantheism
This was cross-posted at the Unsound Agument
Categories: Science, The Existance of God, Trinity |
2 Comments
May 23rd, 2006
The follwoing is a response of mine to Blair’s objections to Andy’s Post, What Makes A Christian
Comment from: blair
I’ll try not to just start talking for the sake of talking, but I thought Dave’s last point was the best one made. This posting reminds me of an Indigo Girls song “Least Complicated” where she says
“So long ago when we were taught,
For whatever kind of puzzle you got
You just stick the right formula in.
The solution for every fool.”
I may not be a doctrinally sound Christian, and probably not a Christian if you go by this list of right belief that decides the divine “yes” and allows us access to the disembodied heaven, but I see nothing in these nine statements of belief that have anything to do with grace, peacemaking, and the life of the church the three things, as I see it, that Christ came to exhort us to. (certainly you have said that we should be baptized and practice communion, but as part of the church is probably more of an afterthought than anything since they seem to be simply part of the larger list of personal beliefs).
We (and I would use we in two senses, we the entire human race and all things on earth meaning through Christ all and all things are redeemed and we meaning it is a grace that must be received and shared collectively if it is to have any relevance) are receivers of grace sent to proclaim peace, through the body life and politic of the church, to a world caught in judgement of each other. With lists like this though we pervert that story of peace born out of grace and insert ourselves into the role of divine judge and jury declaring that only those who fit within OUR definitions are allowed in.
We have found many ways of creatively declaring who is in and who is out, creeds, right “belief”, someones definition of sin based on the socio political leanings of the day, however, very rarely have we been able to be a people of peace and love in the face of our own desire to be God and judge, and unfortunately we have used the bible, spirituality, and the lust for power to excuse our failings in these areas.
Anyway, I am just disappointed to see us continue the use of lists of disembodied beliefs rather than a call to the story of Christianity and the practices therein.
12/23/05 @ 06:02
Good thoughts Blair, but I think there are some things to be said in response to your comment.
You complain that there is nothing in Andy’s post about the actions of Christians, such as the proclamation of grace and peace. I just want to point out that Andy was not trying to encapsulate the whole life of a Christian in one short post. Rather, he was making a list of beliefs that he thinks Christians should have and as such, one should not be surprised that items out side his scope are not on the list.
What other kinds of beliefs are there besides disembodied ones? Since there are not other kinds of beliefs, I have to assume until directed otherwise that you are attacking religious beliefs in general. I have to take issue with this. Beliefs are very powerful and in a certain percentage of occasions, very positive. It was not their zeal to help the poor that helped Christianity through their early trials and persecutions; instead it was their hope and their faith. Now, when faith becomes ossified in the time-frame, scientific understanding, and culture that it is first developed, it becomes dangerous. Such was the case with Galileo and is the case now with the Islamic Fundamentalists, and young-earth creationists, and to some extent, with the Religious Right, in my estimation.
We have found many ways of creatively declaring who is in and who is out, creeds, right “belief”, someone’s definition of sin based on the socio political leanings of the day, however, very rarely have we been able to be a people of peace and love in the face of our own desire to be God and judge, and unfortunately we have used the bible, spirituality, and the lust for power to excuse our failings in these areas.
Good point, but just as there is a difference between driving and driving unsafely, there is a difference between being a hyper-exclusionist and not having doctrinal integrity. We are pursuing truth and love. Just because one extreme is bad (Andy, I am not saying you are guilty of it above), that alone is not a case to migrate to the other extreme. With that said, I really do emphasize with that point. The hyper-exclusivity was a great failing of mine 7-8 years ago. About 4 years ago, I woke up to that tragedy and have tried to reevaluate it.
Truth with out love is folly and so too is love without truth.
Categories: Culture |
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May 23rd, 2006
Scotsman.com News - International - Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday. Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.
He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.
Well said. Religion and science are not opposed to each other. Science helps us learn about the phenomenumenal world and religion talks about the noumenal world. To quote Sir William Bragg:
Religion and science are opposed … but only in the same sense as that in which my thumb and forefinger are opposed - and between the two, one can grasp everything.
P.S. This post was cross-posted at Hundie Jo dot com and the Unsound Argument.
Categories: Culture, Science |
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May 21st, 2006
How does one go about determining who is and is not a Christian?
I bring this up because I recently read Mark Driscoll’s post on N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg: “N. T. Wright Denies Primacy of Jesus’ Resurrection?“. I was referred to Driscoll’s blog by my brother-in-law, Brad Andrews of Relevintage. Over the Mother’s Day weekend, a small group of us, Henry Thomas (a cousin of mine who is going to a Baptist seminary this fall), Brad, and myself were talking about Henry and I’s upcoming school work. I mentioned that one of the books on my reading list was Meaning of Jesus : Two Visions by Wright and Borg. Henry Thomas and Brad had heard of Wright and had heard good about him. I told how I was surprised at Wright and even Borg’s treatment of Christianity in the first couple of chapters of the book. Their treatment was remarkably fair and open minded compared to other books on the subject I have read.
This past week Brad emailed me the above posting from Driscoll’s blog. Driscoll warned about Wright’s friendship with Borg because Borg denies the resurrection of Jesus. It got me wondering about a few questions on this topic:
- Can one ever make a determination about anther’s salvation?
- At what point is a person saved? How wrong or right about Jesus can a person be and still be saved>
Boy oh boy, I used to have the answers to those questions. During late high school and early college I was the apologist. I wanted all of the hard answers and I got them. Once I got those answer I promptly went to work evaluating everyone’s picture of Jesus and if it did not match mine, thy were moved into the heathen camp. Everything became a “true Jesus” versus the “cult conspiracies.” For some reason, I thought that everyone with the “incorrect” view of Jesus and his work knew they were wrong and were trying with some demonic purpose to attack the true Church.
Luckily, I have a wise friends and family. Several people saw me in my fervent search for all the fake Christians and encouraged me to not be as harsh, to give people the same grace as God has given me. I myself have become increasingly weary about making that pronouncement about who is a true Christian myself anymore. I keep hearing the words of Jesus in my mind:
36Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
37“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
However, perhaps we are to judge ideas and not people. In this, the case of the Bereans comes to mind:
11Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
So, while we are to not judge the person, we are to evaluate the truth content of what that person speaks. In the case of Borg and Wright, we can say that while Borg is absolutely wrong when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, we can’t speculate about his salvation. After all, who is there among us who can determine a person’s relationship with God? I would say none. We can speculate about what constitutes a believer. After all, it might be the case that a person can be awefully wrong about Jesus and still love him with all his heart and be saved. Who knows? I don’t and I know you don’t either. Still, we are to love and minister to all, just as Jesus did.
Categories: Culture |
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