Theological Musings

logging buddy Brad over at Broken Messenger has been doing some defense of Reformed Theology. Brad is a great guy to have discussions with because he understands disagreement without having to label his dissenters as heretics. So, I feel safe at Brad’s blog!

Recently, a commenter named Todd Dombrow commented about the Reformed belief of election. For those of you who are not quite familiar with that term, Reformed Theology teaches, based on various Scriptural mentions of election and foreknowledge, etc., that before creation even began, God ordained everything that would happen, including the fall of mankind into sin, the sacrifice of Jesus as the atonement for that sin, and the salvation of a subset of human beings through God-provided faith in Jesus. The ones who are foreordained by God to believe are called “the elect”, and they are the only ones for whom Jesus died (the Reformed belief called “Limited Atonement”), and the only ones who can ever be saved.

The discussion (found here) started with a comment by another commenter, Dustin, about how the Reformed understanding of election and foreordaining assumes that God is operating within time, and therefore is faulty. (I’m paraphrasing heavily here, so I hope I don’t misrepresent anyone’s views.) And this is where Todd’s comment comes into play. Todd wrote:

So is God’s predestinating work contingent upon those who will believe? This was indeed what the remonstrants believed to be true which was a repudiation of Calvin’s theology and support of Arminius. If you said this faith came from God then I’d say Amen. But if you say that faith in Christ is that which God views as the determinating condition for His electing purposes then I’d say I’m not sure that the bible supports such a position. See Ephesians 1 in particular for a clear picture.

This caused me to do some more thinking about the concept of election. Ironically, Brad and I had already agreed to work through some passages (which I intend to do, using this post as an intro to the topic) which he claims are only taken “at face value” by Reformed Theology (which I shall abbreviate now as RT). One of the passages that Brad brought up was a portion of Ephesians 1, to which Todd refers in his comment that I quoted above.

I’ll interject at this point that I struggle with RT and its teaching. This probably comes as no surprise to most of my readers, but I want to be open and honest here. I’m engaging some of this from a dissenting position. It’s not that I think all of RT is wrong. I certainly applaud certain elements of RT, namely:

• A desire to elevate God above all else and maintain a high view of His sovereignty.
• An attempt to read Scripture at “face value”
• A desire to attribute salvation completely to the work of God
• Among other things, I’m sure, that slip my mind at the moment

I’m personally not sure that RT actually succeeds at these desires and attempts, but I do applaud the desires I see in what I read from RT writers. I will leave the discussion of the success or failure of these for later posts as I engage the Scriptures Brad has pointed out. I will say, however, that I think RT starts with Scripture, but then possibly goes too far in its conclusions and propositions (what I often refer to here on this blog as “derived doctrine”). They call it “biblical theology” because they think starting with the Scriptures guarantees a biblical conclusion. But I think that may be somewhat wishful thinking at times.

Anyway…back to the topic at hand. As I thought more about the election/predestination concept, I realized that it would be foolish to disregard the concept altogether. After all, it is a biblical term! For example, Ephesians 1:4-5 says that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world…[and] He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself….” Sounds pretty clear, right? Todd called it a “clear picture”. And so, RT claims to read this passage at “face value”, taking the “plain” meaning.

However, I would like to put forth another possibility and see if anyone has any thoughts in reply. The RT understanding of election is, from what I can tell, an individualistic concept. In other words, God elected each and every person who will be saved. In my response to Todd, I wrote:

Is it possible that the election (and Paul’s mention of it) is a corporate election — i.e., God chose a people, just like He did when He chose Israel as a people. Israelites were part of the people of God by nature of being born into that family. And foreigners could choose to join that group, collectively known as “the people of God”, thereby becoming part of “the chosen” by their own choice.

Now, this was a rather off-the-cuff comment that I’d like to flesh out a bit here. To do so, let’s look at some more from Ephesians 1. Specifically, I’d like to look at a fuller portion of Ephesian 1:4: “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him….” When I read this, that phrase “holy and blameless” jumped out at me. It sounded familiar. Sure enough, I found what I was looking for in Ephesians 5. Specifically, Ephesians 5:25-27 where Paul talks about husbands loving their wives:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

I’ve bolded the words at the end of that passage because I think it sheds some light on what Paul is talking about in chapter 1. It seems that Paul is talking about the body of Christ as a whole, not merely individual human beings. He refers to the bride of Christ as a corporate body in the singular. He doesn’t say “that He might present to Himself all of the members of the church in all their glory”, but rather “the church in all her glory”. And the use of the phrase “holy and blameless” in both chapters seems to me to show a correlation.

So, in chapter 1, when Paul says “us”, does he mean “each of us individually”? Or does he mean “us” as a corporate unity? I think that it’s quite possible that this has a bearing on how we interpret the meaning of “election” and “predestined”. In other words, I think that is possible to maintain the “election” of the body as a whole, while not extrapolating that, of necessity, to refer to each individual person.

In my comment to Todd, I referenced the nation of Israel. In Romans 11, Paul references the nation of Israel as God’s people “whom He foreknew” (verse 2). So we see a parallel in the fact that God “foreknew” Israel and also “foreknew” the Church. And to that end, I look at Israel as an illustration. In the Old Testament, God references “the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord” (Isaiah 56) and shows that they receive the same benefits as a natural-born Israelite.

Additionally, in Ezekiel 44:9, God says, “No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the sons of Israel, shall enter My sanctuary.” I think it’s understandable from this that a foreigner who was circumcised (both in heart and flesh) was treated as part of the nation of Israel and allowed to enter the sanctuary.

To me, this parallel shows the balance between election of an entire body (as a corporate entity) and individual choice to join with that body and become part of it. But, I’ll close by quoting my closing comment to Todd and open it up for discussion here:

1. Have I erred terribly in my summary above, and if not,
2. What are the implications in our consideration of the doctrine of election?

Until next time,

steve

want to apologize for the lack of writing, and even of responding to comments right now.  I do have several posts bouncing around in this head of mine.  However, the next week and a half are going to be incredibly crazy for me schedule-wise.  I’m still in the middle of production of the show “Always…Patsy Cline” with the Blowing Rock Stage Company — the show was slated to end this coming Sunday, but has been held over another week.  Additionally, I have a total of five recitals I’m accompanying at the University next week (including four next Saturday, before doing a show that night!), and so there are extra rehearsals, etc.  I’m not whining, but just wanted to explain my quietness this time around!

feel like there are things I want to say about the latest “fall” in evangelical circles. But I’m not even sure where to start. I have made one decision, however. I’m not going to mention names here or link to any other websites about it. It’s all over the blogosphere and Internet, so you can find it if you want to. But I don’t want to talk about names or specifics here because the points I want to make are not strictly limited to this particular incident. Additionally, I don’t want to mention specifics because I’m not the least bit interested in gaining traffic from search engines with regard to this topic. With that all said…

When are we, as the body of Christ, going to learn that we must stop elevating leaders to pedestals so high that they can’t possibly remain on them? And when are those on those pedestals going to stop accepting the adulation that is foisted upon them? When you have thousands (or possibly even just hundreds) of people calling one man their “pastor”, this is a recipe for disaster.

I would hope that even my friends in more conventional structures of church would recognize that this is a huge danger. Earlier this year, I wrote about multiplication ministry, and how it would minimize the burnout of leaders and the fallout from their “indiscretions”. But rather than follow a reasonable method of discipleship, we continually fall into the world’s thinking that “bigger is better”.

You know the mindset. If our church gets bigger, we can have a bigger impact on our community. If it gets bigger still, we can maybe even impact our nation. Or even the whole world! Wow. Just think what we could accomplish for God with more people, more money, larger ministries. Gather millions of believers together, slap a label on the group, and we can be a political action group. We could get legislation passed that would make our nation better.

Hogwash.

I’m sorry, but I cannot buy into that thinking. The greater impact seems to be the negative one that comes when that leader tumbles from his pedestal. It is a disgrace, and it should not be something that we continue to tolerate in the Church. It runs counter to the words of Jesus and makes us even more vulnerable to attack.

The other thought that continues to run through my mind is the words of Peter when he wrote in 1 Peter 2:

[W]hat credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

When you are accused of doing something, and you immediately point a finger at your accuser and say that they are falsely accusing you (for example, for political gain), and then it is found out that you actually are guilty of at least some of what your accuser said, you have lost the ability to be held up as an example of “patiently endur[ing]” your circumstances. You don’t get a pat on the back and a “Man, I hate that you’re going through this” as one who is suffering for the cause of Christ. And frankly, the motives of your accuser are no longer relevant.

Repentance will bring forgiveness, and ultimately restoration of fellowship. I personally don’t believe anyone is ever fully disqualified from ministry, unless they resist repentance in areas of sin. So far, very sadly, the present case has not shown this kind of repentance. Instead, there have been lies, cover-ups, and crafty Clintonesque language, all with a smile. That is a disgrace.

I pray very deeply that this situation will end in repentance and restoration. So far, I have been deeply concerned with what I have witnessed. And I’m just talking about the very things that this person has said. Not media reports about them.

When any one of us is caught in a sin, we cannot afford to gloss over that and try to make excuses. Trust me. I’ve been there. I know the fear. I know the pride. I know the instinctive defensiveness that comes into play. But we cannot allow ourselves to fall into that. Those things are not of God. And I know that true freedom and peace comes only with true brokenness and repentance.

Praying for the Church,

steve

still haven’t figured out where I fit into the spectrum of postmodernism, emerging church, etc. To be honest, I’m not in any hurry to find out where I fit, but sometimes it makes me curious about who all I do identify with. I mention that only because the topic on my mind today is one that seems to be strongly associated with the emerging church. Much of it relates to questions I’ve asked in the past about Scripture, but now it’s a bit more general.

So here’s what’s on my mind. As I’ve mentioned recently, we are reading through the Bible in our homeschool morning routine. We finish breakfast and then we usually read anywhere from one to four chapters in sequence. (We are not following a reading schedule. We just play it by ear based on the length and content of the chapters in our progress.) Admittedly, we have not read out loud for the past few days because we’re up to a chapter in Leviticus that talks about all kinds of bodily discharges, etc., and it seems a bit awkward at the breakfast table!! I’m trying to figure out how to get past that…

So anyway, this exercise of reading through the Scripture causes me to see how very important it is to see the big picture in Scripture. While I understand the perspective that leads to expository preaching of the text, I fear that expository preaching — and more specifically the process of dissecting individual words, sentences, and verses in minute detail — has led to a plethora of proof-texting methods which extract sentences (or even portions of sentences) from the whole and prop them up to stand on their own as propositional statements.

For example (and this is probably worth a post of its own, but I’ll forego that for right now), we came across the story of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. This story is the basis for what many term the “Regulative Principle of Worship“. However, I noticed something rather interesting with regard to this.

First of all, let’s set aside the fact that very little detail is given as to the exact nature of Nadab and Abihu’s sin. All we’re really told is that they offered “strange fire” before the Lord, and that it was something God had not commanded them to offer. (It’s possible that verse 9 actually indicates that perhaps Nadab and Abihu were drunk when they offered a sacrifice, but I can’t be sure.) The idea in the Regulative Principle, as I understand it, is that this text then is applicable in our worship in that anything that God has not specifically commanded in Scripture is forbidden in worship. I have seen this applied in some really frustrating ways.

What struck me, however, as we read this chapter, was that later on in that same chapter, Aaron and his sons burn all of the meat of a goat, rather than eating a portion that was given to them as part of the commands of God. Moses responded very angrily when he found this out. But Aaron tells him that they did it (if I’m reading this correctly) because they didn’t feel like they should benefit from the sacrifice after what happened to Nadab and Abihu. Moses was, according to the text, appeased by Aaron’s explanation.

Taking the single verse about Nadab and Abihu out of context, one can draw a conclusion that leads to the Regulative Principle of Worship. But even within the context of the very same chapter, we find someone (Aaron and his remaining sons) deliberately handling the sacrifice differently from what God had commanded, and there were no ramifications.

The big picture is even more significant when we take Scripture as a whole. All of the sacrifices that we read about in Leviticus, in all of their painstaking detail, can mean something completely different if we take them on their own without the completion of the story in the sacrifice of Jesus. If we don’t see the fulfillment of those sacrifices in Jesus, we are left with some very strange applications.

I could provide many examples of this problem. But suffice it to say that I think we need to be very careful how much we assume that individual verses or phrases in Scripture can be applied to our lives out of context.

I think part of the problem comes from the way we reduce statements like that found in 2 Timothy 3:16. In this verse, we read the very familiar words that “All Scripture is…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” And I believe this is where the concept of expository preaching derives its substance. After all, if all Scripture, every word, every phrase, every verse is useful for all of these things, then we dare not miss any of it, right? But the word “all” doesn’t necessarily mean that every single portion of it is such on its own. (Hear me carefully on this.) But the entirety of Scripture as a unit is profitable for all of the things mentioned.

Even just a cursory glance at the many different ways in which Paul uses this same Greek word within the book of 2 Timothy alone show the variety of possible meanings there. And just thinking about the ways in which Scripture verses have been applied out of context shows the necessity of viewing “all Scripture” as a unit.

In that sense, I’m enjoying the read-through. It’s helping me take a step back and see the big picture. And as Christy and I continue to comment almost every time we read in Leviticus, I’m so glad that Jesus came! What we are reading is part of our history as Christians. It’s part of the long, continuous story of God’s interaction with man. It’s part of the story in which we find ourselves. But the book of Leviticus is not the story all by itself. Nor is it “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” all by itself.

Until next time,

steve