Underground Exiles

So, as part of my research for the manuscript I’m still working on, tentatively titled Adoptive Grace, I’ve done some thinking on the Fatherhood of God - mainly on the theology side of things.  Since I’m emotionally stunted, I’ve yet to work out how this fleshes out in our actual lives (even in my own), so I post this hoping that someone will read it and give me their thoughts.

When we think of God’s fatherhood, it’s first necessary to make certain distinctions. There is, first of all, God’s fatherhood that is exclusively trinitarian; the fatherhood of the Father, the first person of the trinity, in relation to the Son, the second person. This applies only to God the Father in his eternal and necessary relation to the Son and to the Son alone. It is unique and exclusive. No one else, not even the Holy Spirit, relates to the Father in this sense. In modern theology, it is sometimes said that men by adoption come to share in Christ’s Sonship and so enter into the divine life of the Trinity - needless to say, that’s patently false. It is serious confusion and error. The eternal Son of God is the only-begotten Son and nobody shares his Sonship, just as God the Father is not the Father of any other in the sense that he is the Father to the Son.

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I recently interviewed with a church on the South Carolina coast, and the conversation with the gentleman I would have been working with left me a little upset.

On a good day, at most I’m a four and a half point Calvinist.  Other days, I’m maybe a three-point or at most four-point Calvinist.   I still just can’t figure out where I fall on the Limited Atonement question, so I often oscillate back and forth.  I didn’t become a Calvinist by just jumping on a bandwagon; I arrived here after throwing myself against the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Romans for about 2 years.  For reasons of biblical faithfulness, I hold to a Reformed theology.

The gentleman I would have been working for on the coast is an all-out Arminian.  These two teams of Calvinist and Arminian have been holding different theological positions for several hundred years - the argument between them ain’t new by any stretch.

So as I sat and talked to this man, he was the most hostile person to Reformed theology that I’ve ever met.  I was actually taken aback at the amount of venom he spoke with; to be honest, I was shocked, since I’m not that angry about folks holding to Arminian theology.  I believe since I arrived at being a Calvinist by a lot of theological reflection, then obviously an Arminian must have as well.  I think that stands to reason.

At any rate, our conversation got me thinking down a particular vein: why can’t we get along?  I’m convinced that there are good, biblical reasons to be Arminian in your theology.  I don’t think that the Arminian position says anything the Bible doesn’t say, I just don’t think it says everything the Bible does.  Nevertheless, it’s not heresy; this is an in-family debate.  I can’t think of a single Calvinist I know personally that would berate or browbeat someone of a Wesleyan Arminian theology.  Why is it then that Calvinists have the reputation of being bullies, when it’s the Arminians I know that are hostile?  I just don’t understand it.

There are only three questions I have to have answered to be able to work with someone:

1. Do you love Jesus?
2. Do you love the Bible?
3. Do you desire to see people reached with the gospel?

As long as the answer to all three questions is yes, I can work with you, no matter what you believe about election and predestination.  As long as we both love the Bible, we can disagree, and still have a place to go back to to settle our disagreements, since we both hold Scripture to be the final authority.

Has anbody else experienced this?

Here’s God’s providential timing for you:

Last night I posted about really needing an empowering work of grace in my life. I feel like my struggle with anger and arrogance is sin; there’s no other way to put it.

This evening when I got home from the job, I had a delivery waiting for me. Unbeknown to me, a buddy had ordered a copy of The Mortification of Sin by John Owen for me. At the moment I’m struggling, a friend that has no clue what I’m dealing with sends me a book about murdering my sin.

Then I’m trying to stay up to date on the other blogs I like by way of my feedreader, and I found this post, by Dr. John Piper.

I’m beginning to suspect that God is trying to get my attention.

“We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” - 1 John 5.19

As we look at this letter, we should be impressed by John’s realism, and the way that he doesn’t attempt to gloss over the difficulties and make light of the problems in our lives. Thank God, the Bible always faces things as they are. The Bible has a strength and power; it is concerned about courage, but courage in terms of its own truth, so it looks at this world as it is, at its worst. You may say that this is depressing; if it is depressing to you it is because you don’t accept the teaching of the Bible. To be realistic should never be depressing to people who think straightly and clearly, and this is at root a realistic book.

The other great thing that characterizes First John’s message, is the way that, having looked at the facts and having faced them honestly, it clearly applies its own glorious remedy. And in the verse we are considering, we are reminded of some of the great characteristic notes of this particular epistle. First you find that we come across these words: “We know.” Then, secondly, we find out something about ourselves - that we are of God. Thirdly, we find out that there are certain things that are always true about the world.

The first thing this is this mind-boggling certainty, “We know.” John wrote this so that they may know that they have eternal life. This is something that’s completely basic, because it meets the whole position. Christians aren’t a people that are marked by being in a state of uncertainty; the very definition of a Christian in the New Testament is of people who know where they are, what they are and what they’ve got. They aren’t men and women that are hovering around in the dark.

They days and times that we live in is a world of great uncertainty; there is uncertainty about truth, authority, and a myriad of other things. We are in a world where black isn’t always black, and white isn’t always white, and that state of things is dissonant with Scripture.

Christians are men and women who are certain, and John writes in order that these people, and we ourselves, may be absolutely sure. There were certain things that weren’t clear to them; this always seems to be the state of the Christian in this world. We start with the truth which we believe by faith. Then it is attacked, and we are shaken by various things, until, by God’s grace, we are made sure. There are certain things that you and I should know. Christians aren’t perpetual seekers and enquirers; they are men and women who have certainty.

So here’s the question which we have to ask ourselves before we can proceed:

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“A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.” - John Owen, D.D.

This quote is one of many from John Owen, who is generally regarded as perhaps the greatest English speaking theologian ever. As a pastor and theologian, Owen was a man intimately acquainted with controversy, and wasn’t shy about meeting it head on. His style of writing is, frankly, hard to read, as it is ponderous and quite weighty, but slogging through it is well worth the effort.

Owen is perhaps best known for his works on sin in the life of the believer, as well as his Brief Declaration and Vindication Of The Doctrine Of The Trinity. It’s his work on the believer and indwelling sin, however that have moved me the most profoundly.

“The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.” - John Owen, D.D.

Owen was a man that wrote prolifically on the believer’s need to put sin to death, and his works on personal holiness are some of the most practical and sound that I’ve ever read. If I can recommend one great Puritan to you, it would be John Owen.