Consider Your Witness

There is a good discussion on Presuppositional versus Evidential Apologetics on a recent Unbelievable podcast. You can listen to it here. (HT: AOMin)

Kurt Jaros speaks on the evidential position and Scott Oliphant speaks on the presuppositional position. They discuss alternate terms for the positions and sometimes use them. The alternate term for Evidential Apologetics is “Natural Theology”. The Alternate term for Presuppositonal Apologetics is “Covenant Apologetics”. I mention that so you won’t be thrown off if you dive into the middle of it without listening to the whole thing.

One thing I wanted to point out: At just past the 1 hour mark, 1:03:00 Jaros asks, “How do we know?” He’s asking the epistemological question about how we convey with certainty the assertions regarding our Christian theology over and against other beliefs. The argument Jaros is making is that presuppositonal apologists still need to provide evidence to back up their assertions.

Oliphant’s response is that God can use all kinds of things, but that doesn’t make those things true or epistemologically revealing. Evidential apologetics are still constrained to probability. Jaros understood the response well enough, but I wanted to unpack this briefly.

Neither Evidential nor Presuppositional apologetics are convincing unless the Holy Spirit opens someone to the truth of the gospel. Now, my non-Reformed friends will disagree with this. That’s what makes evidential apologetics more appealing to the non-Reformed.

But in either case, the most convincing presentation isn’t evidential in the classical sense, it’s testimonial in the legal sense. That’s why our witness is of the utmost importance. Those of us who have the Holy Spirit can testify as to his work in our lives. We can testify as to the living work of Christ through the Holy Spirit today.

It’s not like a science experiment where we can say that this is most likely to be true, but like a court case where we take the stand as eyewitness testimony to the living God. Yet we do not make our case to the jury as it were. We call out fellow witnesses to recognize their own testimony of the work of God in their lives. That is the truth that Presuppositional Apologetics upholds. Consider, therefore, your witness.

SBC Calvinism Committee Report

Last year Frank Page, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, called together a committee to study the issue of Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Calvinism has been debated passionately in recent years and the debate has threatened the unity of the SBC.

Last month the committee released its report. The report has been well received by both Calvinists and non-Calvinists alike. A multitude of helpful blog articles were immediately written you can Google it and see all the material that has been written on it. At the convention last week in Houston, the new tone of the debate seemed to be in play and everyone is happy. I’m certainly glad.

The response I have to this is an observation that I hope someone picks up on, thinks about, and acts on. I don’t have any authority in the SBC or recognized qualification to develop something that will be widely accepted. So the best I can do is point out the issue I see in a couple of venues and hope someone recognizes the value of it and puts something together.

The observation I have goes back to the history of the five points of Calvinism. These five points are the points of contention. I won’t go into detail about the five points here because that’s a distraction from the point that I’m trying make about them. As far as being the point of contention, the debate came to a head when a group of non-Calvinists got together to puttogether a reaction against each of the five points and to label their position the “traditional” Baptist position. Like it or not, they have taken the label “Traditionalist” for their own position against Baptists who are Calvinist although the founders of the SBC were largely Calvinists.

They have ten articles, five of which answer the five points of Calvinism. The rest are an additional five more points of contention against Calvinism. But the five points of Calvinism themselves aren’t a full treatment of Calvinistic soteriology*. The five points were a summary of the Canons of Dort that were a response to the five points of contention Jacobus Arminius developed against John Calvin’s Reformed theology.

So the five points of Calvinism are not a summary of Calvinistic soteriology. They are not even a helpful system of categorizing anyone’s soteriology*. It’s a system of contention. Likewise, the original five points of Arminianism as well as the Traditionalist statement are systems of contention.

But the statement issued recently by the Calvinism committee includes a summary of areas where we all agree. Where we agree is far greater than where we disagree. So this statement is a great start for what I propose.

I think that there is a system of categorization that would help frame the differences in terms of our agreements. I wrote an article recently about free will that illustrates what I mean by this. This kind of system could also clear up the tendency many have of misrepresenting what the other side believes. It doesn’t help the debate when anyone misrepresents the opposing position.

So this is my challenge to SBC theologians. Develop this kind of system that demonstrates the strength of our agreement and places on a friendly foundation the areas where we disagree so that healthy debate is fostered. I’ll work on it myself and you may see more articles in the future as a system of categorization becomes clearer to me. But I don’t have the influence to do anything. If someone of influence sees that this pursuit has value, then I welcome any movement they do even if it duplicates anything I’ve done.

*soteriology is the area of theology that talks about how we are saved.

Does Going to Church Make You a Christian?

There’s a common adage among evangelicals that states, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.” A thoughtful article written by a Lutheran addresses the subtle mistake in this:

It it true that your action of going to church does not turn you into a Christian.  No work of ours gives us our identity as Christians.

But it is precisely in going to church that one is made a Christian.  First at the font.  Then in the assembly.  Later at the table.  God does his work of making and keeping us Christians in his Church.  It is why the phrase “I believe in the Holy Spirit” is followed quickly by talk of the Holy Christian Church in the Creed.  As Luther says, “the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts,sanctifies and keeps us in the true faith.  We are only made Christians by the Gospel and Gifts of God.  And those are given out in the church.  So in this sense, it is precisely by going to church that you are made a Christian and remain one.

As a Baptist who was once a Lutheran and still ministers among Lutherans on a regular basis, I’m going to temper the ecclesiology that Baptists disagree with in my analysis. Namely, Baptists do not believe that Baptism does anything particular for the believer aside from serve as an expression of the faith he or she already possesses. Baptists also do not agree that the presence of Christ is somehow mystically in the elements of the Lord ’s Table.

However, we Baptists do hold to the priesthood of all believers. We do believe that the gospel must be preached and that the normal way for people to come to faith is because Christians as members of all believers reach out to them with gospel ministry in one form or fashion.

There are a few Lutherans who believe that being baptized actually saves someone. However, most Lutheran’s who I have discussed this with acknowledge that just because someone is baptized as an infant doesn’t mean that they are automatically going to heaven. Likewise, partaking of the Eucharist doesn’t save anyone. Someone can grow up in church being baptized and attending every Sunday, being confirmed, etc. and still possess the wrong motives thereby losing all at the final judgement. So I appreciate the opening statements in my quote from the article.

But rarely is anyone saved outside of the actions of the church. There are exceptions we hear of from countries that are closed to the gospel where Christ has appeared to individuals or groups of people and called them to faith in similar manner as he did with Paul on the road to Damascus.

However, people make a good point when they ask about the native in deepest Africa who has never heard the gospel. It’s why we do missions. Our goal is to proclaim the gospel so all people hear it and have the opportunity to respond in faith. It doesn’t happen unless the church goes. Perhaps, therefore, it is better stated that “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, but it sure helps when the Church goes to you.”

Christians, go and proclaim.

What Message Comforts You?

After the big tornado in Oklahoma, John Piper tweeted a scripture passage intended to provide words of comfort for people. It was too long for one tweet so he posted two:

• @JohnPiper: “Your sons and daughters were eating and a great wind struck the house, and it fell upon them, and they are dead.” Job 1:19
•  @JohnPiper: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.” Job 1:20

Word came back to John Piper that many people were not comforted by this passage. Many people felt that the passage was insensitive. So he deleted the tweets. Tony Reinke of Desiring God, John Piper’s organization, discussed the decision here.

What I observe from this is that the kinds of statements that comfort people are tied to what they believe.

John Piper finds comfort in the sovereignty of God. So do I. When disaster happens and the effects of a fallen world are brought to bear on our lives, we are tempted to despair. What comforts me is the knowledge that God is still in control and knows what he is doing. We often forget that we deserve far worse and that even the disaster that affects us is gracious compared to what we deserve. So we can give thanks in every occasion and glorify God.

But many are not so comforted by this message. The reason is that they believe that we don’t deserve any disaster that befalls us. As such, they believe that such disasters are not warranted and are inherently evil. Therefore, they conclude that a loving God couldn’t possibly cause such evil things to happen. They feel the need to limit God’s sovereignty to protect God from having cause evil to befall his creation.

The Bible is clear that we deserve death, however. The Bible is also clear that God is absolutely sovereign. My comfort is in the truth of this. Comfort aside from what God has revealed  is false comfort. Nevertheless, when calamity befalls and distorts the ability to understand these things, there may be tension between what is believed to be true and is really false and what is really true for those who believe God could not have caused calamity.

So what message could be given to someone? The truth is too bitter to bear for them and a lie is not acceptable in any case. No written or spoken message is possible. Nothing Job’s friends could have said would suffice. The message that is best is the unspoken message of an empathetic closeness: simply to mourn with those who mourn. If we fail to send this message, we lose the right to speak truth later when a person is in a better state of mind.

Pray For Our Men and Women in the Armed Forces

Today, as we remember the men and women who gave their lives in the service of our country, I want to acknowledge that their sacrifice is a mirror of the One who gave himself to pay the penalty for our sin against God. Just as Jesus reconciled us with God, the hope of the deaths of these men and women has been that of eventual peace.

War will be with us until Jesus returns. Therefore, we can expect the deaths of men and women in the Armed Forces of the United States to continue. Peace might ensue for a time, but another enemy will seek our demise and we must be prepared to defend ourselves.

However, in a post-Christian nation, many of these who will give their lives after the pattern of Christ do not know Christ. Their deaths will not result in their personal peace with God. Pray for these men and women who will yet go to war, make the greatest sacrifice, and be recognized with honor by us to know their eternal Savior and rest peacefully with him forever.

From Star Trek "Into Darkness" to God's Revelation: Into Light

I’m watching a special on the History Channel that’s investigating physics from observations of the latest Star Trek movie. One statement was made that I think relates to understanding God. One of the contributing physicists made the comment that we don’t know why time dilation exists. This isn’t entirely true. He didn’t qualify this comment, but let me investigate it briefly and then turn to what this means for understanding God.

The speed of light is the speed limit of the universe despite theoretical speculations of warp fields and wormholes. The reason why is related to the production of electromagnetic radiation, aka “light”. Light doesn’t have mass. We can say that light transfers energy. More accurately, it is a pattern of energy manifest in multiple spacetime frames of reference. I’ll keep it as simple as possible:

Energy is transferred from particle of matter to particle of matter when those particles come close enough for their respective systems of forces to influence each other significantly. When a photon of light is produced, the particle that produced it approaches the speed f light and suddenly loses energy. That energy is transferred to the object the photon eventually strikes. As the particle that produced the photon approaches the speed of light in the process, the distance between it and the object that will eventually absorb the photon that is produced is diminished infinitely within the frame of reference of the originating particle. This is called distance contraction and is part and parcel of time dilation. So as far as the source particle is concerned, it hits the receiving particle and thus loses energy.

To the outside observer, no distance ever closed in. What happened is that time dilated for the originating particle and distance contracted. Once the energy transfer happened, the distance snapped back to “normal” and its temporal frame of reference became relatively aligned once again with its surrounding objects. But the distance contraction is represented to the outside observer as a photon and the observation of the originating particle hitting the receiving particle is represented as a difference of time related to the distance. This is the speed of light.

The reason we have time dilation is more easily thought about with a simple thought experiment. If Bonnie and Clyde drive by in their automobile and fire a gun down the road, the velocity of the bullet relative to Bonnie and Clyde is roughly the same as if the vehicle were not in motion. To someone standing by the side of the road, the bullet whizzes by at the velocity of the bullet if the vehicle were not in motion plus the velocity of the vehicle.

But light is different. If it were night time and Bonnie and Clyde had their headlights on, the velocity of the photons being emitted from the front of the vehicle would be precisely the speed of light. To the observer on the side of the road, the velocity of the photons would also be precisely the speed of light. So what happened to the speed of the vehicle? That’s where time dilation comes into play. There is a time differential between the vehicle and the observer on the side of the road that accounts for the difference due to the velocity of the car. That’s time dilation.

Now add to this that a vast spectrum of electromagnetic radiation is passing around us constantly in all directions. We perceive a relatively uniform temporal frame of reference. However, it is anything but uniform. On the subatomic level, time is extremely volatile and changing. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be able to perceive anything around us. The chemical processes that make our bodies work couldn’t happen. We wouldn’t be able to see the world around us. There would be no life.

Where to go from here? I could talk about creation and how this applies to developing cosmologies. I could talk about how this isn’t often applied very well when people consider the various speculations regarding the beginnings of the universe. But I want to make another observation regarding God’s revelation of himself.

What I’ve written above in very simple and short order is understood by very few people, including some physicists who are interviewed by TV shows. The reason is that most people find it acceptable to relate to and survive in the world with the mere macroscopic perceptions available to us. Most people couldn’t tell you how a simple radio works, but they know how to use one.

God revealed himself to us in a very practical way. In this way, even many intellectually challenged people can grasp the basics about God. However, the depth of information included is enough to make the brightest among us wrestle with some of the issues he revealed to us. Most people are able to function quite well with the information God has provided although some concepts are difficult and present apparently conflicting concepts.

The fact is, God knows the range of intelligence of the creatures that bear his image and planned on giving us all enough to warrant a knowing faith as well as keep us learning about him for a lifetime. The Great Commission is more than simply leading someone into the Kingdom. The Great Commission is more than simply teaching a new believer the basics. We are all to be disciples until we pass from this world.

What Is Free Will According to the Bible?

The issue of free will is a common topic of thought that influences so much of how we perceive the world. In Christian circles, it delineates how we understand God’s sovereignty. The relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s will may not be immediately evident if you’ve never thought about it, but when the different views are investigated, it’s not man’s will that is primarily at stake, but God’s sovereignty.

The two general views I will be discussing loosely be referred to as “synergism” held by “synergists” and “monergism” held by “monergists”. Other terms are often used for either view, but these more closely describe their differences.

1. Synergists hold that God created man with a free will that God has no control at all over. This doesn’t speak to how God has no control over man’s will. Synergists vary widely on their explanations here and I won’t discuss those here. Essentially, for man to be saved, God does his part and man does his part.
2. Monergists hold that God created man with a free will that is limited by God’s will. For man to be saved, God does all of it including giving faith to the man. With the faith that God has given, man therefore freely chooses God.

Systems of Categories

To properly understand the issue, we need to clarify the differences in categories. Because of cultural sensibilities in the West, most people categorize willful actions into two mutually exclusive categories:

a. Things God controls.

b. Things man controls.

This is the basic understanding of synergists.

The question then arises whether this categorical system is understood and employed by the Biblical authors. Paul, writing to Jews and Greeks alike in his letter to the Romans, understands that some may use this system. In chapter 9 he anticipates the question, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But his answer is to imply a different system of categorization: “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?”

Paul had already discussed this other system of categorization in Romans 6. There he indicates that we are either in bondage to sin or in bondage to righteousness. There is no middle of the road. He indicates that we will either desire sin or desire God’s will when he says in verse 17 that “you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.” Even still, he recognizes that cultural philosophies will make it difficult for many to understand when he says in verse 19, “I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.”

He also teaches this to the Corinthians in the second letter we have to them. In chapter 4 Paul writes in verse 7 that “the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” The verses that follow spell out the nature of what this means. But the previous verse tells us something else about how the will of man and God’s will differ:

‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shown in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

Some synergists contend that this means that God brings us up to the point where we can choose freely, indicating that we could choose to deny God at this point. I would disagree saying that this is a description of what Paul indicates in Rom 12:3. However, I want to point out something else that both side should agree with in this verse: God’s will is creative and man’s will is reactive. In other words God’s will creates what God desires by the sheer power of God. Man can create nothing. Rather, we make choices that are before us based on factors that are entirely within God’s creative order. God’s will creates. Our will reacts to creation. There is nothing above God that hinders him in any way.

But perhaps our best example is Jesus Christ. Both God and man, he has a will that is both creative and reactive. This is why he told the disciples in John 6 that he came “not to do my own will, but of the will of [the father].” Therefore, we are to use a different system of categorization than the one above:

a. God’s will

b. Man’s will

This is the basic understanding of monergists.

On the surface, this looks like a different way of writing the same categories. However, they indeed are different. In the first set, man controls things that God does not. The set of things that man controls are subject to his decisions. Following God is not in the set of things that God controls. In the second set of categorizations, man can either choose to do God’s will or to do his own will. If it is God’s will that he chooses to do God’s will, then even that is God’s will. Man’s will is anything that does not agree with God’s will. So if we do Man’s will, we are in bondage to sin. If we do God’s will, we are in bondage to righteousness and free from sin.

The mistake in most debates is to conflate these two systems. You can’t impose one system on the other and expect to have a reasonable debate. The reason is because the method of God’s influence is confused. Synergists will incorrectly interpret monergism as indicating that God manipulates his people like puppets. This is an incorrect understanding of the second system. Monergists may incorrectly interpret the first system as indicating that synergists don’t truly believe that God is sovereign. 


The Fundamental Difference

However, Monergists aren’t far off base. What synergists do in order to claim God as sovereign is to modify their definition of sovereignty. Many of them hold definitions that are within the pale of Christian orthodoxy, so they should be well accepted as brothers and sisters in Christ.

What I do note is that synergists actually hold to some limitations on the free will of man. For example, who would say, if asked, that men can make decisions that are not before them to make. Can I decide to buy a blue car if only a green one or a red one is available? No. That decision is not before me. Can I decide to create a new universe that does not exist? No. I don’t have that power. I can perhaps imagine another universe to some small degree, but actually creating one is outside of my will. Can I make a decision that belongs to someone else? To be sure, people try to do this. They influence public opinion with propaganda or try to manipulate the factors that influence a person’s decision. However, none of us has the power to directly make a decision for someone else. We have limits on our will.

So, synergists should agree that man’s will is limited. Monergists already hold this openly. The difference is merely one of degree.

What is truly different is that monergists place no limit whatsoever on the sovereignty of God. Synergists must. If man is to have things that he controls that God does not, then God must not have control over those things. That’s a limitation on his sovereignty. So the question of free will is really no so much about the will of man, although it is to a degree; it’s really about the sovereignty of God. 


Monergistic Method of Free Will

For the Synergists out there who might chance to read this, you may be wondering how it is that monergists believe that God gives free will, limited as it is, and yet remains completely sovereign over all things. I will explain what it is that monergists generally believe.

There are two areas of influence that God takes with people. Everyone is influenced by his created order. No one makes any decision or choice that isn’t contingent on God’s created order. God doesn’t directly influence decisions, but the free will of man flows out of what is to us an extremely complex set of physical and spiritual factors. Remember that I said that God’s will is creative and man’s will is reactive.

But there’s another factor that only some people have. God himself indwells some people. That doesn’t mean that God is directly making the decisions for the people he indwells. Rather, he guides, like a father, those he indwells. He holds back information until his people are mature enough to handle that information. They can use the information they obtain as they grow in their understanding of God to make decisions. What God creates in them is not a compulsory faith, but a faith of life. Indwelling his children has made them alive so that they are no longer in bondage to sin, but free from sin and in bondage to righteousness. That means that they have a desire for God. What God gives his children in the regenerating life of the Holy Spirit is a desire for God that they absolutely did not have before.

That’s how God influences his children. As such, I will testify that my will is not my own, but my desire, like Christ, is to do the will of my Father in heaven.


To God be the Glory!