Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't accept Reformed Theology. I've heard of Five Point Calvinists, Four Point Calvinists and some others, but at best I think someone might call me a One Point Calvinist. I only believe in the first and final points, T and P, but I don't accept the Total Inability side of the T, that some Reformed Christians place in it, so I can't hold to that form of it. So in short, I usually just tell people I reject the T altogether. As far as the P goes, I don't care for the terminology or even all of the rationale of that tenet of Reformed Theology, so I reject it as well.
Reformed Theology, or Calvinism as some know it, has many problems, but there is a fine analogy I like to use in dealing with Calvinism or any other false system of belief. In the old days, cities were defended by stone walls. These walls were extremely formidable, and presented a profound barrier because they were made from very sturdy materials that could not easily be moved by the attacking force. The best way to begin an assault on the city, then, was not in attacking the wall's strongest or best-defended portions of the wall - but the weakest. This was largely the reason why gates were prime targets. They were sometimes made of wood, but even the iron ones presented a soft target in comparison with the mass and immovability of the wall itself.
Similarly, belief systems have strong points and weak points. Granted, even the strongest walls can be brought down - but it has to start with the weaknesses. Total Depravity is a fairly reasonable claim. Unconditional Election is not baseless. Irresistible Grace has some basis for belief, and Perseverance of the Saints is actually true, in some ways. But Limited Atonement is not only false, like the others, but is so far off the mark that Scripture itself tells us that it can't be so.
Reformed Christians are quick to remind me that just about everyone limits the Atonement, but let me explain the nuance here. Of course, I do limit the Atonement. Reformed Christians limit the Atonement's scope, and I limit the efficacy. But, since Limited Atonement by definition limits the Atonement's scope, my Universal Atonement makes the Atonement's scope universal.
Apart from the "glory" or "power" aspect of the Atonement, let's take a look at the Atonement on a basic level. Or more particularly, one specific passage. There are some passages that seem to point toward a "limited" atonement, and some that seem to indicate a more "universal" sort. But none go so very far to point away from the Reformed notion of the Atonement as I Timothy 2:1-6.
Of course, depending upon your interpretational bent, the very best is I John 2:2, since John claims openly that Christ is the propitiation for "the sins of the whole world," but I Timothy 2 can really only be interpreted against the Reformed perspective. One has to basically bend over backward (metaphorically speaking, of course) in order to interpret this passage in a manner consistent with Reformed Theology. Why is that? Well, let's start with providing the verses themselves. These of course ought to be studied within their context, but I trust the reader has the resources to read the entire second letter to Timothy and understand the passage in context, so I'll press on straight to the heart of the matter.
"First of all, then, I urge that prayers, supplications, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, Godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time." (v.1-6)
Paul's goal in writing to Timothy is to encourage the young pastor of Ephesus (Timothy) to be strong in the faith and not waver in the coming storms of persecution and belittlement of young Christian leaders, and possibly more importantly, Paul is writing to Timothy with key regulations for the operation of the early Christian "ekklesia," or what we now call the Church.
After his salutation, Paul gets right down to the issue of prayer. For whom are we to pray? The answer to the riddle we're trying to solve comes down to the answer to this question, so for the sake of argument, let's limit the sense of "all" down to the very smallest number of people it's capable of including in the context of Paul's point. In verse 1, Paul tells us we ought to pray for all people, but in verse 2 he says we are to pray for world leaders ("kings and all who are in high positions"). That's about as tight as it can get in this context, but we're definitely talking about all high-powered government officials.
Again, for argument's sake, let's narrow it down even more. Let's say we're only talking about the supreme national leaders - kings, emperors, prime ministers, etc. - heads of their respective states. We're dealing with an awful lot of people we're supposed to love and pray for and thank God for, who aren't even Christians. Why are we supposed to pray for "all people" (which includes at least all the world leaders)?
We are to pray for these people because it pleases God. Why does it please God? Because he "desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." Given Paul's seamless transition and unbroken grammatical progression, it's safe to assume he means the same group in both cases. This doesn't at all break the idea of Unconditional Election, because even in Reformed Theology, God does love all people and he wants all of us to be saved, but he also hates all of us and wants all of us to go to Hell - simply put, Unconditional Election deals with finding out who God loves more than he hates, and vice versa. Because this isn't conclusive, I won't deal heavily with it, and so we'll move on now.
And here's where things get serious. It's important to understand that the Apostle Paul was a very process-oriented writer. He built ideas on ideas, concepts on concepts. There's a very deliberate, orderly progression to his writings - that's part of the reason he's largely believed to be the author of Hebrews - and his ideas are very cohesive and co-operational with one another. He's building a single, cohesive case, and each instance of the word "all" represents a key building block in this case he's building. He's laying down an ordered, logical statement in these verses, meant to be understood very directly and very clearly. So let's get serious.
The reason things are getting serious is that it's plain that Paul means the same group in all four instances of the word "all" (or pas in the Greek, G3956), and he applies the fourth instance of that word in verse 6. Paul turns the reader's attention to Jesus Christ's atonement for our sins in verses 5 and 6, as a furtherance for his case that we ought to pray for all people (necessarily including, but not necessarily limited to, the world leaders), in which he reminds the reader that Jesus Christ gave himself as a ransom for "all," which includes the same group of people as before (all the world leaders, at least). The reason that this is problematic is because if "ransom" means "atone" in this passage, then the passage is clearly teaching that Christ died for all the world leaders, many of whom have died without accepting Christianity - which, if true, presents a very difficult Scriptural situation for Reformed theologians.
Now let me explain why this is most reasonably interpreted as the atonement for sins. First off, if we love people selflessly (with a "Christ-like love"), we will pray for their salvation. If we don't care enough for them to want that for them, then it's clear we do not love them very deeply. Your passion for the salvation of a person is directly indicative of your love for them. I have heard Reformed Christians talk of the passionate, tearful prayers they offer for the regeneration of their children, the regeneration they know might never come - because their deep, abiding, sacrificial love for their children will not allow them to pray for anything less. Similarly, if we really love our neighbors with a deep, abiding, sacrificial, selfless, Christ-like love, then we will offer prayer for their regeneration, as Reformed Christians put it. We pray for our world leaders, we pray for our peers, we pray for our family members, but we do not deeply love them if we will not pray for God to save them from their sinful state and bring them into the Kingdom.
Why am I saying this? Why ought we to pray for the lost? Because truly loving someone means being elated in their highs and being broken over their lows. Their heart is your heart, their joy your joy, their pain your pain, their distress your distress. We love our children, and how many parents can deny a feeling of real, selfless fear, when we see our children entering dangerous situations? We feel something similar for anyone we deeply love. We're not afraid that we will suffer anything - we're terrified that the other person might suffer, and it breaks us into pieces. But true selfless love also means caring deeply about a person's most serious problems, and not only the convenient ones. It's been compared to a woman in a hospital bed, suffering a terminal illness. If the woman's husband joins a prayer circle on her behalf, but prays only for the woman's hangnails, and not for her daily agony from disease, everyone in the circle would immediately doubt the depth of that man's love for his wife - and rightly so. If we do not care enough for a person to be broken over their greatest problems, then we don't care about them in any meaningful way. And if we won't pray for that problem, then that is also an indicator that we don't love them very deeply.
No one has a problem greater than being a lost sinner. If we will not pray for them in this, then our love for them is petty and shallow - not truly deep, abiding or Christ-like. But herein lies the problem: if we love all people deeply enough to pray for their regeneration, then we are praying that God would save people he hates, and will never heed our prayers for - people God didn't love enough to send Jesus to die for. And if God doesn't care about these people's greatest problem, then what kind of love is that? Indeed, there are Reformed arguments that God is right to hate sinners and love them very little because of their evil - but there isn't a good Biblical or logical case for this. (Sounds like a good blog post...)
So if we are to love these people (Mat. 5:44; Lu, 10:27), and we are to pray for these people (I Tim. 2:1), then we ought to pray for their deepest and gravest problem - sin. In this passage, and a great many others, there is cause to believe that this is really the same sort of love God has for the sinner. He "desires all people to be saved," "gave himself as a ransom for all." Of course, the first reasonable Reformed response to the claim that "ransom" means propitiation is that the vague concept of "ransom" does not necessarily equate full redemption. While this is true, to an extent, the accomplishment of a ransom that doesn't actually have the potential to benefit the one it's "ransoming" in any meaningful or lasting way isn't much of an accomplishment at all. What sort of a ransom might Christ have offered on behalf of those for whose sins he was not atoning? Common Grace, perhaps? Common Grace doesn't require a sacrifice, because there's no reconciliation. There's no forgiveness involved in Common Grace, so it isn't a very good option for this passage.
In addition, the Greek term used by Paul for "ransom" (antilytron, G487)* more directly translates as "what is given in exchange for another as the price for his redemption; ransom," or we could even use the modern English definition of 'ransom': "payment given in exchange for the release of a captive" - the two definitions are extremely similar. So, if this "ransom" on Christ's behalf bore redeeming power, then from what is Christ redeeming all of the world leaders? In what sense did Christ redeem sinners but from sin itself? What did Christ "give in exchange for another," to buy back these sinners who died without being regenerated? From what was he redeeming them? There is no good answer for this but one: Sin.
*[https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G487&t=ESV]
The language, progression and message of the passage are clear: Christ died for all of the world leaders, and that is the reason that God wants all the world leaders to be saved, and God's desire for all the world leaders to be saved is the reason that we ought to pray for all the world leaders.
[And now, let me take a moment to say that I do not in fact think that the passage is speaking of only the world leaders - it is my firm conviction that Paul is speaking of the whole human race in all six verses. When he writes "for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions," it seems clear to me that Paul is making a reference to all mankind, and then deliberately including government leaders in that set of people in order to make it explicitly clear that he means kings, etc, as well as the average man and his peers. This is very consistent with both Christ's and Paul's commands to love and do good to all.]
The passage makes itself clear: We ought to pray for all men because God desires their regeneration, and God demonstrated this desire in ransoming all men for himself in Jesus Christ's atoning death on the cross. So, now we have a different, but deeply profound, question:
We must now ask ourselves, not if Christ died for all men, but why he died for all men. Indeed, the Scriptures are largely vague on the inclusiveness of the set of people Christ died for, but clear passages such as this one greatly clarify the more difficult ones. Christ indeed says that he dies for the sheep (Jn. 10:11), but this is no contradiction of the claim that he died for all, because the Elect are necessarily included in the set "all mankind." So, since it can be clearly seen that Christ did die for all, we must now clear away a Reformed objection to such a concept.
The objection is this: If Jesus paid for the sins of all people, then why would any go to Hell? What justification is left in punishing sin if those sins have already been atoned for? If God first slays the Lamb for all sins, and then still punishes men for the very same sins, what justice is there in that?
I eagerly look forward to answering such questions in my upcoming post: If Christ Died for All, why Hell?
No comments:
Post a Comment