Underground Exiles

So I had another conversation this morning at church before the service started surrounding the question of free will.  There is a dear, dear lady at the Well who walked up before church started and noticed that our pastor had a copy of Erasmus and Luther’s debate on Free Will.  She picked up the book and said she’d never read anything by Erasmus and thought she might be interested in the book.

Seeking to engage the conversation, I mentioned that Pastor Todd had loaned me the book several years ago, and that I thought Luther’s writing in Bondage of the Will was by far the best piece of writing he’d every produced.

When she heard the title of the Luther’s response to Erasmus, her immediate response was, “So Luther believed in predestination?  Well, I don’t want to read it then, because he’s wrong!”  I couldn’t just let that statement pass (although I probably should have), so I pointed out that “predestination” is a word that’s used in the Bible itself, and predestination was taught by Paul the Apostle.  Whether you agree with the Calvinist view of predestination or not, it’s pretty obvious that predestination of some sort is taught by the Bible.

This conversation just went downhill from here; this dear Christian sister proceeded to tell me that “this is the reason I stopped studying theology.  Everybody is so convinced that they are right!”  I took all of my self control to bite my tongue.  Of course they think they’re right - for that matter so do you!  Nobody intentionally says anything they think is wrong! Then came my absolute favorite statement:

“If you believe in predestination, then eventually you just wind up a Calvinist, and that means you don’t actually have to preach the gospel to anybody, since they’re elect and will get saved anyway.”

If you want to disagree with Calvinism, that is okay with me.  Honestly.  Nevertheless, if you are going to disagree, do at least two things.  First, be willing to actually discover what Calvinism teaches.  Don’t just say, “I disagree,” and never interact with the doctrines themselves.  Second, disagree with the system itself, not a misrepresentation of it. ¹  To assert that Calvinism teaches that you don’t have to preach to the gospel, since the elect will get saved regardless, is a terrible misrepresentation of what is taught by Calvinists.

Admittedly there are hyper-Calvinists that do teach that - and it’s not what Calvin himself taught from the Bible, and has been roundly condemned by even the most ardent defender of the Calvinist system.

My goal isn’t now, nor has it ever been to be a Calvinist - my goal is to be biblical.  I would hold to some form of the Calvinist system whether or not John Calvin or Martin Luther had ever lived and taught, purely because whether or not John Calvin taught it, the Bible itself speaks of predestination and election!  (See Romans 9.14-24 and Ephesians 1.3-6.)

For me it’s not a question of whether or not believing in predestination or believing in free will is heresy - it’s not!  This is a debate in the family; there are good biblical reasons to hold to both positions.  I don’t think for a second that Arminianism teaches anything the Bible doesn’t.  I just don’t believe it teaches everything the Bible does.

I would hope, if only for the sake of intellectual honesty, that anyone who is going to disagree with a position would have the common decency to at least not misrepresent the views of those they disagree with.  Is that too much to ask?

Unfortunately, this lady did go on to embrace heresy, when she said that she believed that God did not in fact have exhaustive foreknowledge of the future.  No matter what you believe about free will, denying God’s omniscience is a flat denial of the God revealed in the Bible!  When I pointed out to her that denying God’s exhaustive foreknowledge is ultimately heresy, she then proceeded to spout my second favorite quote:

Well, when we get to heaven, we’ll find out who’s right!!

I don’t want to wait until I get to heaven to find out!  I’d rather actually read the Bible, and believe it to be true when it says

Set forth your case, says the LORD;
bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.
Let them bring them, and tell us
what is to happen.
Tell us the former things, what they are,
that we may consider them,
that we may know their outcome;
or declare to us the things to come.
Tell us what is to come hereafter,
that we may know that you are gods;
do good, or do harm,
that we may be dismayed and terrified.
Behold, you are nothing,
and your work is less than nothing;
an abomination is he who chooses you.

I stirred up one from the north, and he has come,
from the rising of the sun, and he shall call upon my name;
he shall trample on rulers as on mortar,
as the potter treads clay.
Who declared it from the beginning, that we might know,
and beforehand, that we might say, “He is right”?
There was none who declared it, none who proclaimed,
none who heard your words.
I was the first to say to Zion, “Behold, here they are!”
and I give to Jerusalem a herald of good news.
But when I look, there is no one;
among these there is no counselor
who, when I ask, gives an answer.
Behold, they are all a delusion;
their works are nothing;
their metal images are empty wind. - Isaiah 41.21-29, English Standard Version.

God, speaking in this passage in Isaiah, declares the test of true deity.  Verse 23 gives the purpose of the testing as, “that we may know that you are gods.”  Right out the gate, we are faced with the claim that God can announce meticulously what is coming.  God puts his Deity to stand or fall on this question - and this should be the point that should decide the controversy over whether He or the heathen idols were the true and only God.

Since God himself declares the criterion by which the question of deity is to be evaluated, and since that criterion is the possession of a knowledge of the future that can be declared and verified by the unfolding of these future events, it is completely heretical to deny God’s divine, exhaustive foreknowledge and by doing so deny the very basis on which God himself declares that his claim to deity shall be made known! God says that if you worship a god that does not know the future, you aren’t worship the true God!

1. For a good place to start with understanding biblical Calvinism, read Chosen But Free by Dr. Norman Geisler.  While there are places where I do think Dr. Geisler slightly misrepresents orthodox Calvinism, overall, he’s spot on in this book. [↩]