Who should we pray for?

     "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may live 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." (I Timothy 2:1-6, emphasis mine)

     For whom are we to pray? Why ought we to pray for them? Who does Paul mean when he says "all?" These are all great questions, and ones I intend to answer.

     It's clear from verse 1 that we ought to pray for people who aren't Christians. "All who are in high positions" doesn't exclude any government official. "All" here means Christians, Mormons, Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Satanists, and all the rest. That we can agree on.

     Paul goes on to tell us that we ought to pray for these non-Christians so that we may live a peaceful and quiet life. That's nice - but it's not all. He then says that it is pleasing to God himself, because God desires "all" people to be saved. That's the ultimate reason for us to pray for these people. If God loves all of mankind enough to want them to be saved, then we ought to love them enough to pray for them.

     Paul's next aim is to defend his claim that God wants all to be saved, by reminding the reader that Christ gave himself as a ransom "for all."

     What we see in these verses is three key instances of the word "all" (pas, G3956), which I have highlighted in bold print for emphasis. The first key instance is in the phrase "be made for all people;" the second in "desires all people to be saved;" and the third is in "who gave himself as a ransom for all." These instances of "all" are each critical to Paul's central point (that we ought to pray for all people, including government officials), and they are intimately linked and related to one another.

     Christians stand enthusiastically united behind the idea that praying for "all" (v.1-2) tells us that we ought to care and pray for all people, but when we reach verse 4, the interpretations begin to diverge. Some say that "all" refers only to Christians in verse 4, others that it points to mankind as a whole, and still others say that it affirms that God wants all to be saved, but only in one sense.

     Paul makes himself clear from the outset that he doesn't just mean Christians by "all," so the first interpretation isn't a good one. The second one is the one I espouse, and I'll explain it soon. The third is trickier, so I'll give it its own paragraph.

     The claim is that God has two forms of wanting (or "willing") something. The first is that he wants it in the sense that he desires for it to happen, even if he only wants it a little bit, or if it contradicts a stronger desire he has that something else happens instead. The second is in the sense of God's intentions - what he actually plans to bring about. The argument in the case of this particular passage would probably be something along the lines of: "God desires in some sense that everyone would be saved, but not as much as he desires the damnation of some of us." This interpretation is no good either, because Paul's very next point is that Christ died as a ransom for all. If God had no great desire to save them and no intention of doing so, then why would Jesus die for all? Of course, it was that very question that led to the doctrine of Limited Atonement, the third tenet of TULIP. But who does "all" mean here?

     If Paul means only Christians, then he has done a poor job of relating that idea. In fact, his composition of 2:1-6 is so bad that it appears to tell us the very opposite of what he meant - which forces us to bend over backward in order to represent what he really meant. Paul lays out, in a very orderly, logical fashion, who "all" means. "All" includes those who are not Christians (v.1-2). God desires the same "all" to be saved (I say "same" because Paul indicates no distinction and so probably intends no distinction) (v.4). Christ died for the same "all" (v.6). This passage appears to be telling us that Christ died for more than just Christians, desires more than just Christians to be saved and (deeply) loves more than just Christians.

     Some might say that such an interpretation stands in opposition to the rest of Scripture - but the problem with this is that there is no direct Scriptural contradiction to what I have said, and in fact, several Scriptures directly agree with what I have said, and countless others indirectly.

     A good example of such a passage is I John 2:2. I like this one in particular because it clarifies many of the others: "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." Some will say that John only means the Elect, since only their sins were paid for - however, it isn't that complicated. I say complicated instead of simple because the interpretation of this verse to mean only the Elect requires a complex array of connections and interpretations and long explanations and theories and such, whereas the interpretation that when John says "the world" he simply means "everybody" is a simple one to explain and support. No, it's not as wordy of a theory, but it is much stronger. Such an interpretation fits with a great many instances of the word kosmos in the New Testament.

    When one reads passages in which Reformed Christians say that "world" means only the Elect, or only the lost world, many of them do not boast nearly as clean a distinction as they might think. In fact, those who read these passages without an assumption of TULIP will not often find that such distinctions are apparent at all. This is because, as I often say, "Limited Atonement is a philosophical conclusion, not a Scriptural one." How can I say this? I can say this because the Bible does not explicitly limit the Atonement in the way that Reformed Theology does. No one would read only the Bible and come to such conclusions. Rather, one must read works by such men as Sproul, Piper, Calvin or Augustine in order to place such "discoveries" into Scripture. Interestingly enough, Augustine, the earliest teacher of what we would now call "Calvinism" or "Reformed Theology," gleaned much of his interpretational style from Gnosticism, a mix-breed between Early Christianity and pagan Persian philosophy (manicheism). This philosophy was passionately resisted by the Church Fathers (of which group Augustine is not a member, because he was born much too late in history - "Church Fathers" is a term applied to men who studied at the Apostles' feet, not merely influential men from ancient Christian history) because of its teachings of determinism and Total Depravity. The Apostles' earliest students zealously ousted the Gnostics from their fellowships, refusing to allow their teachings to invade the minds of their young students.

    John 3:17 is a good example of unclear distinctions. Someone who reads: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" may or may not come away with the idea that Christ came only to save some and not all (and most would probably say that "world" means "everybody" in this instance). In fact, this verse on its own tells us very little about who "the world" truly is. But because of the philosophical assumption that God always gets what he wants (Reformed Christians call this his "sovereignty"), and if God always gets what he wants, and not all are saved, then God doesn't want all to be saved, and if God doesn't want all to be saved, then it makes no sense for him to die for all, Reformed Christians believe that it tells us that Jesus died only for those whom he wanted to save, and no others.

    Comparing Scripture with Scripture, however, yields very different results. The idea of Limited Atonement, according to the philosophical process I have recited, is clearly based on the idea that God's will is always accomplished. But this idea is false, for two Scriptural reasons. Firstly, it is false because God obviously doesn't always get what he wants. The Bible tells us this plainly. God is often angry. If he is getting everything he wants, he has no reason to be upset. Being angry that you have gotten your way is not a sign of intelligence or wisdom - it's a sign of lunacy. Secondly, the Bible tells us clearly that God prefers to show mercy versus meting out judgement (Ez. 18:23; Mi. 7:18; Ps. 145:17), and yet he judges. Thus, his preferences are being violated: he is not getting what he wanted.

    The philosophical basis for Limited Atonement is vacuous - it is no basis at all. Since Scripture is admittedly vague on this subject, but leans considerably toward "all" versus "some," it becomes apparent that Limited Atonement depends desperately upon that single philosophical assumption. Without that assumption, what are we left with?

    Put simply, we are left with passages like I John 2:2, Romans 5:15-19 and I Timothy 2:1-6. Yes, most of Scripture is vague on the extent and effect of the Atonement, but these passages are not - and without the philosophical assumption that God always has his way, their meaning is quite clear: God loves all, paid for the sins of all, and wishes for all to be saved.

    This is why we ought to pray for all people. Not simply because God asks that we love all people - but because he himself, as our example, loves all and wants them to come to a knowledge of the truth.

    Praise God that He is powerful enough to pay for the sins of all, and strong enough to refuse those who refuse him.

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

Why I Don't Use the Bible to Witness to Atheists

The Bible is the holy, perfect, eternal, redeeming Word of God. It is a powerful thing. However, not everyone is partial to this opinion - especially atheists. Because of this, I won't use something they'll automatically ignore and discredit in my efforts to dialogue with them about God.

That doesn't mean I won't share Scripture where relevant, or tell them Biblical things when I talk to them - it just means that the Bible is the potato on my witness-to-atheists plate, and not the steak.

Atheists don't trust the Bible as reliable, so they won't take Bible verses seriously when you quote them. It's a quick, reliable way to get atheists to tune you out.

Atheism

I've decided to take a break from my barrage against "Reformed Theology" for now, for two reasons. First: I have many other things about which to write, and Second: I have a tendency to be really repetitive when I write about a subject in large quantities over a short period of time, so taking breaks between bouts of anti-Calvinism talk helps me stay fresh and say things that aren't as worn-out.

What is atheism? Well, it comes in many forms, but we'll concentrate on Naturalistic Atheism, which is basically the idea that nothing exists aside from Space, Time and Matter (the sum of Space, Time and Matter is generally referred to as the Universe, and the Universe is often used interchangeably with the word "Nature," which explains the name). The rest is just either convenient or inconvenient illusion created by human consciousness. If that is true, then nothing supernatural can exist.

There are several reasons naturalistic atheists give to prove their case. The most common are:

1: The universe can create itself, so God isn't a necessary reality. The laws of nature would be enough to create the universe.

2: There's no evidence that God created the universe anyway.

3: Natural Selection is a suitable explanation for the origin of life.

4: Evil wouldn't exist if God was good, so if God is good and evil exists, then God cannot exist.

5: God is a more difficult thing to explain than the universe, so he is an impossible explanation of the origin of the universe.

Let's get started.

Nothing can create itself. I'll borrow from John Lennox here: (X + [create] = Y; X + [create] = X)  If X creates Y, then I can explain the existence of Y by the existence and agency of its predecessor and creator, X. However, if X creates X, one can't explain X's existence by the existence or agency of a predecessor or creator, since it had none. In order to say that X created itself, it would have to be its own predecessor, making it eternal and created at the same time. So, saying that the universe created itself is rather like saying that someone could be her own mother.

Another problem with this argument is that the Laws of Nature can't create anything. In point of fact, the laws of nature don't in themselves exist at all. Hear me out: We have a law of gravity because the law of gravity is a succinct acknowledgement and description of the gravitic behaviors of the universe. Similarly, the color yellow doesn't exist either. Yellow light exists, but only because our eyes interpret and describe the particular behavior of light particles, using the perception of color as the description. But while the particles and their behaviors exist, the color yellow is merely a description of those behaviors. Similarly, the laws of nature are descriptions of the universe's behaviors, and so can't be the predecessor or creator of the universe, since the thing being described has to first exist (at least conceptually) in order to be described.

As we have seen above, in order for the universe to have begun to exist (as the global scientific community agrees that it did), it must have had a predecessor. Some have argued that this predecessor was merely another version of this same universe. Others say that there is a universe generator, creating a slough of universes, and ours just happened to be one of the ones that came from that. My argument is that it wasn't just any predecessor - it was a super-powerful, intelligent, benevolent, personal creative force that most would refer to simply as "God."

There are several reasons why the creative force of the universe was probably intelligent. For one thing, while life may have evolved, the universe certainly didn't. It was just as ordered at 14.5 Billion BCE as it is now (in its nature and processes, not in its overall organization - a denial of that would be a contradiction of the second law of thermodynamics), so the universe was done right, the very first time around. Secondly, anything containing data is the product of an intelligent mind. For example, the words you're reading on this screen right now contain data that is designed to be recorded by my keyboard, encoded in the letters on the screen, visualized by your eyes and brain, and finally decoded by your brain in order to bring about a desired result. DNA contains data. It's its own written language with words, letters and phrases, and it contains information designed to be recorded in protein strands, encoded in specific groupings of molecules, and finally decoded by the cell's genetic decoding mechanisms in order to put the instructions in the data into effect. DNA is rather like an instruction manual for single cell organisms to live by. It is recorded, it can be decoded and understood, and it contains data. Therefore, it stands to reason that it is likely the product of an intelligent mind. We would never conclude that the word antidisestablishmentarianism, or the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis were randomly organized, or even this blog post, or even the computer on which it was typed (the computer did evolve, but by a very guided, intelligent process), and yet people all over the world claim that DNA, a long, complex written code for the formation, construction and function of organisms randomly accumulated over billions of years as part of a completely random, mindless, unguided process. My incredulity does not constitute a valid argument, but I remain incredulous.

The second argument, that there is no evidence that God was involved, is partly explained by the above paragraph on DNA. A second point is the understanding that the universe did not create itself, did not exist before it existed, and so requires something outside the universe, or outside of nature in other words - and at that point, you may as well say super-natural - in order to come into being. The word supernatural just tells us that what we're referring to didn't originate in the known universe. So anything, even if it's real, that isn't the universe and wasn't born in this universe is by definition supernatural. The universe began to exist and can't have created itself. The universe was created - therefore, the supernatural must exist. Er go, there is, or was, something beyond the known universe. Because of this discovery by science, it is my conviction that we are about to witness the demise of Naturalistic Atheism in the coming decades. So in answering this second argument, we have the evidence that whatever made the universe has to have been supernatural in order to preexist the universe, highly powerful in order to produce the incredible amounts of matter and energy extant in the universe, and highly intelligent in order to arrange the universe in an ordered fashion and to encode instructions in the form of DNA in even the very earliest and crudest of organisms.

The third argument refers to Natural Selection. The problem with Natural Selection being used as an explanation for the origin of life is that Darwin himself used it as an explanation for the origin of species, out of common ancestral bloodlines. Another problem is that evolution cannot bridge the gap between lifeless goo and living tissue by an unintelligent, unguided process - let alone a random one.

The very simplest organisms known to Man (single cell organisms) are comprised of a great many moving parts. Evolution cannot account for the sudden formation of all of these parts. In a cell, there are a great number of tiny parts and molecules that are entirely necessary in order for the cell to survive. Evolutionists make the argument that there may be simpler systems that we as yet cannot imagine. And that's a valid argument, except that we don't have evidence for it, so we have to accept the best option based on the extant evidence.

Evolutionists often explain the origin of life as involving a primordial soup, containing all of the vital components for constructing a living cell, from which living cells spontaneously sprouted, and evolution continues to this day (or so the claim goes). The problem with this is that this is an even more complicated and impossible situation than what I call the Cadillac Problem. Let's say that you have all of the necessary parts to build a 1969 Cadillac DeVille, and you stir them all together in a giant vat. The odds of the automobile being perfectly and tightly constructed in such a way that facilitates perfect and continuing function are just about impossible. And even if the car is constructed perfectly, which is almost impossible, it still won't start on its own. Similarly, not only is the cell's formation dubious, but once the cell has been constructed, there's no guarantee that it will jump-start itself. After all, a physically complete cell doesn't necessarily function in the modern day. A dead cell deteriorates, even if it's physically perfect. Once function has ceased (or in this case, wasn't begun), the cell will immediately begin to break down.

Bottom line: These complex mechanisms within living cells can't have evolved instantaneously in the very first generation. Just the formation of DNA in the first cell ought to tell us that cells probably didn't evolve on their own.

Another argument is that if God is good, then evil wouldn't exist, so if evil does exist (and it does), then God can't exist. This argument is problematic for its own reasons. The most interesting problem is that the absence of God leaves us with no absolute definitions for good or evil - something that naturalists gladly embrace in the name of relative morality, but unfortunately, this concept also defeats the idea that evil is an objective reality that disproves God's existence.

God can indeed be more difficult to explain than the universe itself, but that certainly doesn't mean that God can't be the creator of the universe. For example, if I were to point out this paragraph on a sheet of paper and tell you that I was the one who wrote it, then by the same concept, it could be argued that I can't be the creator of this paragraph because a human being is a much more difficult thing to explain than a paragraph on a sheet of paper. So in reality, we see that the process more often works in the reverse. Simple things are caused by complex things. Dogs cause barks, kids make sand castles, people write words, stars form planets, complex volcanic forces create tiny pebbles - and the list goes on.

I hope this brief list of answers to popular atheist objections to the existence of God has been helpful. If you are a Christian, please feel free to share these in conversation with your friends when the subject comes up - just don't be in-your-face about it. And remember the purpose of apologetics: To deconstruct intellectual objections to Christianity in order to demonstrate that the objector's problem was never really intellectual in the first place, but emotional. Sharing intellectual arguments won't save most people. They have to come to an emotional place of trust in God, after the intellectual objections have been successfully deconstructed.

If you are an atheist, I appreciate that you're reading the last paragraph. Not everyone would read the whole article, so it's encouraging that you have an open enough mind to do so. I hope you won't take my word for any of this, but keep searching. Go looking for these arguments and their more lengthy explanations. More importantly, look up the atheist objections that I have listed - and the rest - and compare them to Christian answers. My experience is that the right Christian answers stand head and shoulders over atheist theory. I especially recommend William Lane Craig, Frank Turek and JP Moreland.

Thanks for reading!

Five Myths Millennials Believe

Ah, we Millennials. How did we grow up so short-sighted, under-funded, emotionally needy and over-confident? How did we grow up and abandon religion, or at least good Christianity, good budget skills or good logic?
   [I thought it prudent to remind the reader that I'm 22 years old, and thereby just as Millennial as the next twenty-something. I speak for my own generation here, not someone else's.]
   Without further ado, 5 Myths that Millennials believe!

        Number 1: Global Warming is melting the polar ice caps at a rate never before seen, and we need to stop polluting practices to keep the ice frozen, like it's supposed to be.
        Facts: Yes, the average hot temperature has gone up over the last few decades. One interesting thing to note, though, is that almost none of the Global Warming people have actually been to either Pole. Those that have largely occupied two Polar missions to the ice cap above Greenland, Canada and Russia, in order to prove to the world that, according to their calculations and theories, during the warm season ships can now sail through waters that were previously were impassible. Both expeditions encountered massive ice floes and blockages, even whole huge sheets of frozen layers of ice that hadn't melted for years and years, despite the theories of theirs that say that this ice melts completely ever summer.

       Number 2: Rich people either inherited their wealth, or got huge help from other rich people to start up. Just look at Trump!
       Facts: Many millionaires worked their way to that point, often from ramen-eating, clunker-driving existences. Dave Ramsey is a good example. He worked himself to millionaire status from nothing, got stupid (his word, not mine) and lost it all, and then built himself up even better than he was, from the nothing he had left himself. So Dave Ramsey is good proof that it can be done - twice. But there are plenty of others. Just listen to Ramsey's "Millionaire Hour" on his radio show
(https://www.youtube.com/watchv=TBVc9RGmnl4&list=PLN4yoAI6teRNHlVsLUYTquLdh3kh1VXES), where real millionaires call in and talk about what they did. The secret, usually, is hard work, frugality and sacrifice. You don't get rich on Starbucks, energy drinks, a new phone, a new car, a bigger apartment or anything like that. You get rich by working big, earning big, saving big, investing big (in safe investments, not the crazy stuff) and spending tiny. Dave Ramsey's kids used to complain that he spent so little, but now they can all look back on college that he paid cash for, and numerous other things he's been able to do because of his lifestyle, and now they're working to follow his example. We can do this. But it won't be overnight, and we don't get treats along the way - we've got to work for it.

        Number 3: Religion has always resisted scientific progression, and science is now killing religion.
        Facts: Atheism doesn't make much sense as a philosophical theory (perhaps I'll make a post about that soon), but its scientific theories don't make much scientific sense, either. I don't say that as a layperson - I prefer to listen to scientists' opinion on this. Philosophy is killing atheism, and evolution is key in preserving atheism as a worldview. Without evolution, atheism can't explain life, especially intelligent life. But the problem is that science continues, not just to baffle, but to contradict evolutionary theory. A prime example: when Darwin's evolutionary theories first exploded into a mainstream worldview, the scientific community thought that cells were mind-numbingly simple organisms with basically no internal mechanisms. They thought they were little blobs of goo with a semisolid membrane protecting their otherwise amorphous insides. From this perspective, it seems almost reasonable to postulate that such an organism might have spontaneously evolved from some sort of primordial soup (the existence and makeup of which science has never really had good proof). The problem, however, is that cells are incredibly more complex than early evolutionists (or Creationists, for that matter) could have dreamed. They have complex proteins that make up their skin, molecular machines that pump fluid from one part of the cell to another and back, digestive processes, waste processes, reproductive mechanisms to ensure that the first cell is not the last, motor function machines within the organism that help it move about, to say little of the huge store of readable data found in cellular DNA and the mechanisms that translate it and put its messages into effect. These sorts of mechanisms, most of which are completely necessary, so far as we can tell, for a cell to survive at all. Without all of them, it would have none of them - or at least, it couldn't survive without all.
        In addition to this, the scientific explosion in the Renaissance was pioneered by Christians like Gallileo Gallilei and Isaac Newton, and scientists have a pretty good Christian population to this day.

        Number 4: Reformed Theology (a.k.a. Calvinism) is the greatest, purest, most consistent form of Christianity ever, and is the most effective version of the Gospel. John Piper and his contemporaries are great men of God.
        Facts: I've developed a degree of respect for my Reformed brothers and sisters, but this myth needs to stop. In my other posts, I explain why it is that this is a myth at more length, but suffice it to say for now that Reformed Theology claims to be Biblical, but isn't.

        Number 5: Feminism is the great celebration of women.
        Facts: How interesting to note that the way Feminism celebrates womanhood is by making women as much like men as they can... Feminists want men's jobs (which we don't deny them, provided they do a good job), they want men's pay (same), they want men's authority, they want men's apparel, they want men's hairstyles, they want men's sports, they want men's cars, they want men's civil rights - in other words, women want to have what men have and to be what men are. It sounds to me like Feminism is more a celebration of manhood than womanhood.

   So those are five of the myths we Millennials believe! How we got to the point of actually believing any of these five things is depressing and truly beyond me. I don't get it.
   Anyway, thanks for reading and check me out again back here in a week!

   God bless.

God's Character

God's Character

The Nature of Justice

Who is God?

That's a question that has boggled and busied mankind for millennia. What is God? What's he like? What does he want? Why does he do what he does? Why is there evil in the world if God is good? Questions, questions, questions. And not all of the answers are forthcoming.

Luckily for us, the Bible lays out many of the things we need to know about God right in front of us.

The Bible tells us that God is good, holy, righteous, just, gracious and loving (among other things – he has other attributes, but these are the ones most relevant to this discussion). No true Christian will contradict any of these traits of God's.

The Bible tells us that God is holy, which basically affirms, proves and supports his goodness. No conflict there. The Bible tells us that God is good, which kind of sums up his character and motives in itself. The Bible tells us that God is righteous, which tells us not only is God a moral entity, but that he is morally good and upright. The Bible tells us that God is just, and loving, and gracious. And this is where the conflict begins.

Calvinism defines Justice as “each receiving according to his merits,” and Grace as “someone not getting something bad that they deserve.” In Calvinism's definitions, it admits that this makes Grace and Justice incompatible. What's worse is that Calvinism admits that God doesn't always give each according to his merits – making him not completely just, really. So, modern Calvinists use the concept of “non-justice.” Non-justice, Calvinism says, is when God does something that isn't just, but isn't unjust either. Grace, it says, falls under this category. (Deuteronomy 32:4, among other passages, tell us that God is just in all of his ways. One of the most serious problems presented for the concept of non-justice lies in verses like Deuteronomy 32:4.)

[NOTE: I know that not all Calvinists agree on every single tenet of doctrine, and that not every Calvinist will feel properly represented by the concept of non-justice. If anyone feels I am misrepresenting their doctrine in its description here (though not the refutation), please feel free to let me know in a comment, and I'll gladly hear you out.]

But does Justice itself really leave any room for such a concept? Is there any righteousness outside of justice? Can God even express such contradictory attributes?

But let's concede “non-justice” for a moment. Even then, we still have God ignoring his own just character whenever it suits his fancy – in other words, God is only just most of the time, not always. Calvinism says that when God executes justice, he sends people to Hell (for something he ultimately caused, but that's already been covered). So when he spares people, he makes an exception in his just character. But also, justice is unloving in Calvinism. When God executes love, he spares the Elect and ignores justice. Calvinism sees beauty in this – the God that throws everything else aside to save his people. So the God of Calvinism is loving to some, and just to others – but he can't be both for both sets of people. The Calvinist definitions leave no room for it.

In order for God to be both loving and just toward the same group of people, as the Bible plainly teaches*, we must seek a definition that fits this model. And I believe good theology has done just that.

*[The Bible teaches that God is perfectly loving and perfectly just.]

Justice is to be defined as obeying and/or enforcing law. A just man is one who obeys law, and a just judge is one who both obeys and enforces it. “Justice is served” when a punishment demanded by law, for violation of law, is meted to the offender according to the requirements made by law. Justice punishes evil according to law.

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/justice    <> Full Definition C]

If justice seeks to destroy, and love seeks to build, how can they be compatible?

The answer lies in a final question: Why do we have Justice in the first place?

We have justice because of love. Justice is basically a set of laws designed, not simply to combat evil, but to protect the people that we love – that often involves combating evil, but that's not all that Justice entails. Justice is not incompatible with love – in fact, love requires and conceives justice. Love that will not protect is no love at all, and justice is that protection.

But the question remains, as to whether it is truly just for God to show grace to us. Calvinism would say no, it's not just. But again, that leaves us with a God that picks and chooses when he wants to be just, and when he feels like doing something outside his own rules. If the expression of God's grace lies plainly within the bounds of Justice, however, then it would be just for him to offer Grace to us. It depends upon one's definition of Justice, and more importantly, upon God's definition of justice.

The most disturbing question that is raised by this concept is this: If God were going to operate outside of justice in order to save us, relying solely on the allegedly unmeritorious systems of grace, why do we see an atoning death on our behalf? If God were ignoring the rules of his own character, couldn't he just bypass the atonement bit, the part that Jesus was so nervous about? If God could just bypass things like this, if he could save us without justice, without rules, then why did he let himself be tortured to death for us? If God were willing to save us without justice, then it follows that he would probably be willing to save us without payment – it completely nullifies the cross. If God saved his Elect with no regard at all for justice, then Jesus died for nothing. If God ignored justice, then there was no need whatsoever for such atonement – but we know that because of God's just character, he refused to save us without satisfying justice. Justice demands payment for sins, and he paid the price. Now that justice has been served, and love thus fulfilled, love is free to save by grace through faith.

Justice proceeds from love. If God justly saves via atonement of crimes because he loves the criminal, then justice is entirely compatible with this salvation. The concept of non-justice is not only ridiculous, but also completely redundant. Justice does not mean merits – it means law.

In summation, Calvinism claims that God is perfectly just, perfectly righteous, perfectly gracious and perfectly loving, but the essence of Calvinism tells us that God is kind-of-just, kind-of-righteous, kind-of-gracious and kind-of-loving, and maybe not at all.

God as Rescuer

Welcome back!

  Right now we're looking at Calvinism. So far, we've seen two distinct aspects of Calvinism's flaws. First, it leaves little room (if any) for the Christian tradition of evangelism, and second, it transforms Hell from being something to be dreaded and feared into just another destiny for human souls, that God actually delights in and enjoys, and it glorifies him. At that point, as I have said, Hell isn't something to be rescued from anymore, so the word "salvation" seems grossly misplaced in the case of Calvinistic elective predestination.

  This week we'll be discussing God's role as the rescuer of mankind. Like I said last time, Calvinism (essentially) doesn't really make Hell out to be something to be rescued from to begin with, but let's concede for sake of argument that God's still somehow rescuing us from something in this post.

  Many of you have probably seen the animated comedy known as Megamind. (Dreamworks, all rights reserved). For those who haven't, I'll briefly lay the premise.

  The protagonist is actually a supervillain, called Megamind. In the beginning minutes of the film, this villain slays his nemesis, the hero, and proclaims himself overlord over his home city. He quickly becomes depressed, stating that his life has no purpose because there is no good to combat his evil. "I'm a Yin with no Yang," he tells another character. So he purposes to create a new superhero, using the DNA from the previous hero. In time, he accidentally injects an utter fool with cosmic powers, and the newfound demigod zooms off to sweep the woman of his dreams off his feet.

  In this scene, the new hero arrives at the young lady's apartment balcony and seeks to woo her. Of course, she's completely taken aback by this eight-foot tall, five hundred pound mass of floating muscle - but he takes her along nonetheless, despite her vehement protests. He begins to understand her plight, as he remembers the supervillain's advice: If you want a woman to fall in love with you, all you have to do is rescue her.

  So he drops her. She plummets five hundred feet or so, and he catches her just inches from the pavement. What a hero! What a magnificent display of young love! Oh, all heroes ought to aspire to such courage and grace!

  I'm assuming that my exclamations are a little disconcerting. You've probably reached the conclusion that this young hero wasn't really a hero at all, but more akin to a self-centered, affection-starved creep. And you're on to something.

  I wish to clarify that I do not compare the pair's conversation at the apartment to Calvinistic salvation. I'm not asserting that the God of Calvinism saves people despite their protests. My assertion has more to do with the symbology of the young hero placing the fair maiden into a dire situation, for the sole purpose of isolating himself as her only solution to this plight, so that he could be known as her rescuer. Human beings doing this: Creepy, and wrong. God doing this: apparently, it makes him awesome, loving and the ultimate example of mercy and kindness.

  RC Sproul is a prominent leader in the Calvinist community (better known to themselves as Reformed Christians). He wrote a book some years ago called "Chosen by God." I own this book, and I've read it. It's a defense of the Reformed Faith (e.g. Calvinism), and honestly, one of the best examples I've ever seen of a privation of critical thinking masquerading as philosophy.

  In the third chapter of his book, Sproul lays out his case for the Calvinist perspective on a concept he calls Original Sin. On pages 63 and 64, Sproul makes the argument that when Adam sinned, all of mankind fell from grace as a result – that all of us are automatically Hellbound at birth because of this. In this chapter, Sproul defines “original sin” as “a sinful nature out of which particular sinful acts flow.” On page 66, Sproul says that as a result of Adam's sin: “after the Fall man is no longer able to refrain from sinning.” No great contradiction for most Christians so far.

  At the bottom of page 63, however, Sproul summed up the origin of this human evil up quite succinctly: “Original sin is the punishment God gives for the first sin.” So in Sproul's version of Calvinism, at least, Adam was able to choose whether or not to obey God (despite the fact that even John Calvin believed it was God's hand that brought Adam into sin – read on, and I'll explain in the final chapter). But since Adam has made the wrong choice, now Man is unable to obey God at all. Grace, Calvinism says, is the only answer – namely, Irresistible Grace. Since Man could never obey God's call to salvation anyway, and God wants some of mankind to be saved (though not all – God forbid!), then God has to make grace irresistible. Otherwise, no one could ever be saved from Hell.

First of all, we've already seen that Calvinism can't truly believe that people going to Hell need saving in the first place. Even the word “salvation” seems grossly inappropriate. 

  Second of all, I would like to repeat Sproul's words: “Original sin is the punishment God gives for the first sin.” According to Sproul, Man's inability to obey God, our inborn, core nature of evil and sin, came from God himself. God made us this way. To punish whom? Us? Hardly! This sort of punishment could only logically apply to Adam – but he's already dead, and presumably in Heaven. Why in the world would he be getting punished?

  “Oh, no,” Calvinism says, “It is we who are to be punished.” I hardly think this is the case, since it's not really provable that we were there, and it seems far more likely, given that the predominant thought throughout Christian history is that people are created individually at conception, not corporately at Creation, that we were not involved in Adam's decision at all. And if we were not involved in his crime, I hardly think we're being directly punished for his crime.

  (The word "directly" is key here. I accept that the Creation groans and laments, and that Nature is no longer perfect as a result of Sin - but that constitutes an indirect effect upon mankind at large, not a direct effect.)

  There is a second "Reformed" theory, and that is that Adam's tendency to sin, taken on at the Fall, has been passed down into his descendants, causing us to sin (not making sin possible: actually causing) - and it is this individual sin for which we are being punished. The problem with this theory is that mankind is still left unable to refuse sin (which would seemingly contradict I Cor. 10:13), which means that we aren't committing a crime so much as being the wrong thing. God punishing us for our family tree amounts, by definition, to racism, because he is meting out negative treatment, not based on what we have done, but what we are as people. Another problem with this theory is that it reduces Sin to merely a hereditary disorder, or a genetic disease - something to be pitied and rectified, not condemned and tortured. The Bible makes it perfectly clear that God is angry with us, and that he seeks to satisfy Justice by either saving or damning us (both of which are Just solutions to this problem). But the greatest flaw to this assertion is that it makes God both the source of the greatest plight of mankind and the solution to said plight.

  Let's say you're walking down the sidewalk, and a random man pulls a gun on you and shoots you at point blank. You're lying there now, bleeding out on the concrete while the ambulance begins its trek to your location. The man who shot you now stoops beside you, asking if you need help. He then offers to dress the wound for you. Now, are you going to trust this person to help you, when he's the one that shot you in the first place? I don't think so. In fact, I think that most of us would hope that standers-by would prevent him from interacting with you any further. His offer doesn't make him seem like a "Good Samaritan" - it makes him seem more like a deranged villain from a TV drama.

  When all of this gets to court, do you think it will matter that the man who shot you is a trained medical responder, or that he offered to dress your wound for you? "You don't understand!" he may protest. "I was trying to save his/her life!" And what will the judge say? "Oh, you're right. How silly or us." Or, more likely, "You trying to help this person means little to the court in light of the fact that you deliberately injured them in order to provide yourself with such an opportunity to be of service to them."

  So basically, the theory that Calvinism puts forward about human evil is that God himself arranges for us to go to Hell, simply for being what he made us, and then decides to save a few - just because.

  Calvinists protest at this. I don't know why. They claim that Calvinism doesn't teach that God causes mankind to sin. Both Calvin and Augustine took this view (that God causes human sin). Of course, as time has gone on, theologians have successfully demonstrated that this is an unacceptable view of God, so Calvinism has evolved to meet this standard. The problem, however, is that the essence of Calvinism remains. One of its assertions has been altered, but the basic essence of Calvinism remains the same in this regard - namely that God is the author of (at least) most (though more likely, all) human sin, decides that all humanity will go to Hell, because he gave them sin, which he hates, and then decided to save a few for some unknown reason. Our best guess is that at the end of it all, he wanted to be seen as a hero. But I'm sorry. A man who shoots a person and then wants to be remembered only for dressing the wound is in for a very rude awakening.

  So in summary: Calvinism claims that Man is perfectly responsible for his own sin, despite its other claims that God himself places irresistible sin in the hearts of all mankind (except, perhaps, for Adam and Eve), and punishes human beings for what they are rather than what they do. Finally, God is in a poor position to be praised as Savior when he's the one responsible for putting us in this situation to begin with. At best, we might thank him for undoing his unfortunate error, but we really oughtn't to call such a god "Savior."

  Thanks for reading! I hope it's been informative for you as the Reader. Come back for next week's post here on Christianity and Philosophy.

Happy Hell!

Hi, guys!

                I know, it's been a long time. I'm going to try to make myself post once a week from here on out. Had a baby back in March, and life's been hectic off and on ever since.

  The topic has been Calvinism and its assertion-essence gaps. Last post, I talked about Calvinism's problem of asserting evangelism while fundamentally making it not only unnecessary, but counterproductive.

  This time we'll be discussing Hell.

  In Calvinism, God is the only real decider of human destiny. He chooses who gets into Heaven and who does not. (Now, whether he acts actively or not in the case of someone going to Hell is nearly irrelevant, because ultimately he still decided that they would go there.)

  Happy Hell, everybody!

Does this sound like an oximoron to anyone else?

God is perfect and righteous and holy and just. His desires are perfect and righteous and holy and just. So how should we form our desires? How do we know what we should want and what should please us? Well, whatever pleases a perfectly holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly just God shares the aforementioned attributes, so if we want our desires to be holy, righteous, perfect and just, then logically, we should want what God wants.

Calvinism claims that God wants people to go to Hell, and them being there makes him happy. His desires and thoughts are perfect, righteous, holy and just – so if we think and desire the same thing, are our thoughts and desires also perfect, righteous, holy and just?

Calvinism would say no, but logically, the answer is yes. Truth is truth. Morality is morality. For God to be honest is morally identical to Man being honest. For God to fulfil a promise is morally identical to Man fulfilling a promise. What makes God just is just the same as what makes a man just – obeying and enforcing law. What makes God righteous is just the same as what makes a man righteous – unwavering adherance to moral law. When God expresses mercy, it is morally identical to when Man expresses mercy. The only exception that Calvinism attempts to make is the case of the concept of selective regeneration, unconditional election, irresistible grace and the like – concepts almost exclusive to Calvinism (and doctrines that are extremely similar). This is critically inconsistent.

Many times in the Bible, when God makes a command, he points it back at himself. “Be holy, for I am holy.” “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” These exortations are placed, without exception, as conclusions to moral edicts. In other words, God is saying: “Do as I do, and be as I am.”

So if the reason God himself gives for our acting according to the moral code he has set out for us is: “so that you will be as I am,” it would seem that this code is how God himself behaves. This code is perfect, righteous, holy and just.

So if God wants these people to go to Hell, and is perfectly pleased – in fact, he's "delighted" according to many Calvinist theologians – that these people are going to Hell, and we're to live up to his character, shouldn't we also delight in the fact that so many see damnation and suffering?

So again, we have to be careful, because we have only three options in this case: 1) The Bible is wrong, and Man is not called to exemplify God's character, so we're not allowed to celebrate people's entry into Hell, or 2) The Bible is right, and man is called to be as God is, and God delights in Hell, so we should delight in Hell, or 3) The Bible is right, and man is called to be as God is, and God mourns the loss of lost souls into Hell, and so we should as well.

But we can't have it both ways. The Bible makes that pretty clear.

To be fair, this isn't really an argument against Calvinism - just a demonstration of a very ugly (and very necessary) side of it.