So today is going to be a little bit like the first day in that if you remember the first day I laid out some concepts, some infrastructure, if you will, that we applied on the second day to Romans 9 to 11. So this is another infrastructure day. So we're going to have to do a lot of concepts and building. And then tomorrow we're going to apply that to a whole bunch of passages.
So because of that, because it's an infrastructure day, if you will, and there's going to be some new vocabulary and terms here, I'm going to try to go slow and take more questions, because there's some things that are definitely hard to wrap one's mind around the first time you hear it. So just a few takeaways from last time. Particularly, as you remember, my goal from yesterday was to have you understand Romans 9 to 11 in a whole new way that honors the context of the passage.
And so when we honor the context, we see a bunch of things. We see that the driving context is, since most of Israel has rejected its Messiah, how do we make sense of God's promises in the Old Testament? And Romans 9 gives us the answer using concepts like corporate dimensions of election to service. We spent a lot of time on that.
The concept of remnant, those who oppose God's people will be cursed, judicial hardening, and God showing mercy and hardening in order to accomplish the greater redemption of the world, both Jews and Gentiles. We talked about the importance of understanding a Jewish interlocutor. It's not an Arminian interlocutor. They're a very important idea. And the climactic application of the olive tree is about conditional salvation. And I think that's pretty obvious at face value.
And the passage is just not about unconditional salvation and damnation as Calvinists steadfastly claim. I think that whole passage is just so badly exegeted that it's almost hard to have a lot of compassion on that bad of an exegesis. Okay, so I want to recommend another book. So this is a book that this is a much easier read than the second book I recommended yesterday.
So the second book, if you remember, was that Commentary on Romans by Origen, which only do that if you're really willing to labor and slog through. But this is a very easy read and it's a great book. So it's by Roger Olson. He's a very prominent speaker and writer in the Arminian world. And you can even see that the foreword to the book is by Michael Horton. And if you remember Michael Horton, I mentioned him on the very first day. He's a very strong Calvinist who has that radio program, White Horse Inn.
And the fact that they could even be in dialogue, which they often are, I think, says a lot about Roger Olson and his fairness of representing the other side, the Calvinist side. And can you guess what these are down here? What are those supposed to be? Tulips. Yeah, wilted tulips. So there's a little bit of a subliminal message that is in that book cover there. So it's great.
And so if you had to pick just two books, I would say that first one, that Potter's Promise book, and this Against Calvinism, would probably be the two that I would pick. I'll give you a couple more, though, in the next couple of days. Okay, so what are Calvinists trying to do for God? What is the motivation? What is the Spirit about what they're trying to do? So somebody can jump in here. What's the virtues? What are the attributes they're trying to lift up about God? God's sovereignty. Yeah, God's sovereignty.
So that's probably the number one attribute that they're trying to raise, which we talked about that on the first day. Good. I'm glad you remember that. And somehow they believe that with God's sovereignty, with unconditional election, they feel that any human involvement somehow diminishes God's credit or his glory. That if you contribute even an ounce, a microscopic ounce of even saying yes to God, then somehow that's a man-based religion and it's evil and it has to all be God.
And there's a term for that when the only agent in salvation is God. What is the name of that? Monergism, very good, yeah. Mono is one. Ergo, Ergon is worker, so it's one worker, okay? But, as we've talked about as well, in their zeal to give God 100% credit, they inadvertently give God 100% blame as well. You can't have it both ways there. And the problem that Calvinists have had from the very beginning is that it seemingly makes God the author of sin. So, how do they deal with that?
Well, Calvinists simply cry out mystery when they hear this dilemma. They say, " We don't know how it works, that God can be the author of everything, can absolutely declare every event and render every event certain, but they'll disable mystery. " And John Calvin himself, all throughout his Institutes for Christian religion, he cites that Romans 9 verse and he says, " Who are you to talk back to God? Don't talk back to God. Don't go there.
" Basically every Calvinist from Calvin to Piper answers that criticism in the same way. We don't know how it works, but God is totally responsible for all of the deeds of the world, all of the happenings of the universe, and yet is not the author of sin. So this obsession with 100% credit going to God, I think it's way more philosophical than actual. I mean, it's the kind of thing that is the province of philosophers.
So what if I were to write you a check for a million dollars and you're blown away like, whoa, a million dollar check. And then you go, you deposit that check. Indeed, there's funds in it. It's now in your bank account. And then you go around and say, " I earned a million dollars because I deposited that check in the bank. " Everyone would look at you and say like, " You're a fool. Why are you saying that? You didn't earn that money. Somebody gave you that money.
" And the fact that you just happened to deposit in that check doesn't say anything about your earning that. You just received that. And so it's a pretty good analogy to salvation in that, where just because we receive the gift of salvation, that doesn't imply some kind of boasting that we can have because I would be the first to say that salvation is a gift from God. So this is something that, like I said, in the real world, nobody would ever contest.
But once Christianity becomes very philosophical and very ethereal, people start coming up with these constructs that, " Oh, even to receive the gift of salvation, " you can get credit for that, and that somehow diminishes God's glory. Austin Fischer puts it in a different way. He says, " Well, by means of the classic analogy, salvation is but a gift, but a gift still has to be received.
" And what sort of idiot receives a gift and then starts boasting about how he used the muscles in his vocal cords, tongue, and mouth to say, " Yes, I will accept this gift. " Nobody would do this, right? Nobody in their right mind would do this. And so I think even in this impulse to give God like 100% of the glory, 100% of the sovereignty, all these things, you just think, nah, I don't think you need that. I don't think that that's how the real world functions. And the Bible is written in fishermen talk.
It's not written in philosopher talk. It's written by simple people to simple people. And we don't need to posit these really weird hypotheticals and constructs where you get the credit for simply receiving a gift. And so, as was just mentioned, sovereignty or determinism is at the center of Calvinism. I'm going to hit this again because I just want you to see how important this is. So we said before that Calvinism in the system, God foreordains and renders certain everything. Absolutely everything.
So I'm going to quote from John Calvin now to prove to you this is what he said. He says, " No wind ever arises or increases except by God's express command. " And then elsewhere, he writes, this is all in the Institutes for Christian Religion, of Christian Religion.
He says, " To sum up, since God's will is said to be the cause of all things, I have made His providence the determinative principle for all human plans and works, not only to display its force in the elect who are ruled by the Holy Spirit, but also to compel the reprobate to obedience. " And when he says that, he means like the devil is obeying God. So he doesn't mean like turning the reprobate to obey God. He means that even sinners and the devil are obeying God in that. So I mean, this is serious here, right?
This is a big deal. And actually, for the Calvinism class that I'm almost done with myself, I had to write an outline describing Calvin's arguments where there's a section here, book one, and I gave you the pages in book three, those pages of the McNeill edition, where he argues that God does not merely permit evil. A lot of people will say like, " Oh yeah, God, he's responsible for the good, but he only allows evil or permits evil. " And Calvin says, " That's a total cop out. " Don't say that.
God is as actively involved even in evil. It's not just a permissive decree that he somehow is behind. So in fact, the title of that section is " No Mere Permission. " So he says, " Don't say that God permits evil. " He wants his hearers, his readers, to believe that God has actively rendered even evil. And there's a different book which he wrote in the 1550s. He was in debate with some people who were challenging him around predestination. And this is another place where he states the idea very clearly.
From this, it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by God's will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God permits them when Scripture shows him not only willing, but the author of them.
So straight from Calvin, he's not afraid to say that God is even the author of evil. Jonathan Edwards as well said that he was comfortable with the language that God is the author of evil. So two very, very prominent Calvinists. This is not me mischaracterizing them. This is a big part of their system. The god of Calvin is omni causal. What does omni mean? Whenever you hear that word omni is a prefix. What does that mean? All. All. Yeah. So like omnipotent, omniscient.
So omnicausal means God causes everything and unconditional. I think those two words are nice explanations of what is meant by sovereignty in the Calvinist thought world. Okay, so let's jump now to some more modern authors. Maybe Calvin was just some hardline extremists and maybe his descendants, his proteges and everybody else didn't believe that. Paul Helm, he was a professor at Regent. Regent is where J.I. Packer taught. So J.I. Packer, I mentioned him, wrote that book, Knowing God. And he, in fact, was the J.
I. Packer professor of theology there. And he's a very well-respected Calvinist. He wrote a book called The Providence of God. And he says, " Not only is every atom and molecule, every thought and desire kept in being by God, but every twist and turn of each of these is under the direct control of God. For, according to the no-risk view. " So he calls the view that he has of providence that God doesn't take risks. He's laid out everything according to his plan. So he likes that term, the no-risk view.
God controls all events and yet issues moral commands which are disobeyed in some of the very events which he controls. For example, he commands men and women to love their neighbors while at the same time ordaining actions which are malicious or hateful. See this? So this is recently written. This is not centuries and centuries ago. This is a very well-respected modern Calvinist who says, " God is telling people, " Love your enemies, " but then he's actively ordaining them to hate their enemies.
Loraine Boettner, I mentioned him before. God very obviously predetermined every event which would happen so that even the sinful acts of men are included in His plan. God has a definite purpose in the permission of every individual sin having ordained it for His glory. So Boettner is again saying that. So again, I'm hitting this so you know this is consistent. So let's go to John Piper. So the promoter of modern Calvinism or the most successful promoter of modern Calvinism.
So September 11th happened, and all of you probably don't even remember September 11th because you were too young. But I remember very well. I was in my master's program at the time. And September 11th happens. The planes crash into the towers there. And he writes an article. It's still up on the website I checked last night on September 17th, 2001, saying that God did not merely permit or is using September 11th but caused it. And he's got a whole article about that.
And then in another sermon in 2005, he said even a dirty bomb that levels Minneapolis would be from God. So you can imagine that this view of evil is going to have tremendous ramifications on your view of God, Christianity. I wish we had time to get into that. We're really not going to spend much time on it, but I believe this is one of the reasons why this whole system is so blasphemous and wicked is that it causes people to look at God in the wrong way.
And I mentioned this in the beginning that I think Calvinism at its core is a blasphemous system. Can anybody think of how you might respond to this scripturally? Are there any passages that just come to your mind right off the bat where you might try to respond to what you just read there from all of those prominent Calvinists? Each one giving account for their own sins or their own actions?
Okay, so yeah, so you're jumping to the kind of responsibility side, which is good, and actually we're going to talk about a little later. But in particular about God being sovereign and ordaining evil and those kinds of things and actively ordaining and not merely permitting it. God is not the author of confusion. God is not the author of confusion, okay, 1 Corinthians. It's a little bit out of context because that passage is about the church meeting and how he doesn't want people doing things out of order.
But yeah, on the right track, I would say. Other ideas? God is not willing that any should perish. Okay, yeah, that's a good one. And we're going to spend time looking at that not today, but later. So there's a couple of statements, or maybe four or five, where it says that God doesn't want anyone to perish eternally. The one that came to my mind was James 1.
So in James, there's many, but this one here says, " Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. But each one when he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown, brings forth death. Whenever you see do not be deceived, pay attention. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of the Lights with whom there is no variation and shadow of turning. I'm not exactly sure what James was thinking about when he wrote that, but it's almost like he's anticipating people attributing evil and temptation and bad things to God. And he's saying, " Don't be deceived. What comes from God is good. " And if you're going off into sin, that's not God who's ultimately behind that. It's you.
And he's very clear here, drawn away by his own desires and enticed. So I think this is one passage that I'm sure you can come up with others that speak to this issue. I like how Austin Fischer put it. He says, " Looking for free will, " so this is now jumping to free will, which we are going to talk about, in the Bible is like looking for gravity. It's assumed everywhere and holds everything together, so you probably won't notice it until it's missing and you float away.
This is why it's usually easier to rattle off multiple verses that seem to contradict free will than it is to name a single verse that affirms it. It's a brilliant insight. It's everywhere, and we kind of read it everywhere, and we don't even notice it or think about it. And so paradoxically, sometimes it is actually easier to come up with verses on the other side, because it's just all over the place. So it's, I think, a very, very timely, brilliant observation.
And then another observation from David Hart, who he wrote a book specifically about the tsunami. You all remember that big tsunami that went to Indonesia and killed, what was it, hundreds, 100,000 people, more than 100,000 people? And of course, the Calvinists would say that was rendered by God. That was from God in some sense. And David Bentley Hart says that that is theological fatalism.
And he says in its adherents, and I love this expression, defame the love and goodness of God out of a servile and unhealthy fascination with his dread sovereignty. It's a beautiful, beautiful writing there. David Hart is a very good writer, I should say, as well, for those who know him. So yeah, these are critiques that we can make of the Calvinist position. Okay, so if God has decreed all things, what about human freedom? So, this is the obvious question that should come to mind.
And I'm going to introduce a new word here that I'm guessing most of you aren't familiar with. So if I tell you that God has actively, sovereignly ordained, every single event, every atom, every molecule, every decision that you're going to make, well, isn't the obvious question. What does human freedom look like here? So what is the term that Calvinists use to combine the two?
There's a specific term that's used where they can still try to say that God has every single event mapped out and decreed, but at the same time, we're free. Does anybody know that term? Starts with a C. Anybody? Okay, so the term that is used is called compatibilism. And there's a person whose name is B.B. Warfield. So this is Warfield. He was a professor at Princeton in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Very prominent Calvinist, very influential Calvinist. And I'm going to read you how he defines compatibilism.
This is a word that you need to know. And it's an important word to understand how Calvinists think. So compatibilism, also known as soft determinism, is the belief that God's predetermination and meticulous providence is compatible with voluntary choice. How might that be true? In light of Scripture, human choices are believed to be exercised voluntarily, but the desires and circumstances that bring about these choices occur through divine determinism. And he cites two passages in Acts.
If we have time, we'll talk about these in a later session. Those two passages are where it talks about how God predestined and planned Jesus to be crucified. It should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism. Be clear that neither soft nor hard determinism believes man has a free will. Our choices are only choices because they are voluntary, not coerced. We do not make choices contrary to our desires or natures. Compatibilism is directly contrary to libertarian free will.
There's a lot in this. I want to stop here and spend a few minutes making sure we get this. Can someone put what Warfield said into ordinary simple English? What is compatibilism? How is he saying that God has determined every single thing that's going to happen, but you're still free? Yes? What do you say about the desires? Desires? Good, yep. OK. And we're choosing out of that. So talk to me about the word free, you or anyone else. You're totally on the right track, so that was excellent.
So the idea is that God makes our desires and we're acting in those desires. And how does that look free, Stan? Well, we think we're free because we think we're making our own decisions, but actually God planned it all. Yeah, it's kind of the illusion, and you say when we think we're free. So what you mean by the word free, and this is very important. So when most people use the word free, we mean you could choose A or B. There's the possibility of going one way or the other. And you're right.
What a Calvinist would say is you think you're free in that libertarian sense, but you're not. So they specifically use this term, and we should use it too, libertarian free will. So libertarian free will is that you could totally choose A or B. It's up to you. And there's the possibility of things going one way or the other. That's called libertarian free will. So compatibilism says there's really no tree of possibilities. There's only one event stream that's going to happen.
But how then is that construed as free? Because they don't like libertarian free will. And he says it in here, so if you read it carefully, you'll pick it out. Anybody see that? So the key sentence in this, well, there's a few key sentences, but I would say these next to last two one here. Our choices are only our choices because they are voluntary and not coerced. We do not make choices contrary to our desires or natures. So he would say that you are free if you are acting as you please.
So if your desires are in control, and if no one is coercing you, if no one is forcing you to do something against your desire, you're free. So it's a different definition of freedom. It's not that you could choose something different, but simply to be acting out of your desire. Some people have said that in libertarian free will, you can do what you please. In compatibilism, you do as you please. It's a subtle distinction, but I hope you get it.
That in the compatibilist thought world, you can't choose differently, but you're just following your desires. And because you're just following your desires and nobody's forcing you to do anything different, you're free. Does that make sense? Now, I think it's a total word game, and I don't think this is anything like what anybody would conceptualize freedom to be like. But they're trying to come up with some notion of freedom.
And so there's different thought experiments that people have proposed where let's say you're born and there's a microchip that somebody implants in your brain. And it doesn't hurt, you don't even know. And somebody's behind the scenes, and they've got a little joystick, and they're moving you around and doing all these different kinds of things. But you feel like that's coming from your own desires, from your own mind. In the compatibilist scheme, would you be free? Yeah, you would, right?
Because you're acting out of your own apparent desires. Now, in fact, there's a hidden person behind the scenes who's got the joystick, who's actually moving you. And in a libertarian sense, would you be free, though? No, because you're doing whatever this person with a joystick is telling you to do. Does that make sense? Okay, so this is a big, big, big, big, big idea. And Jonathan Edwards, who I mentioned, lived here in Massachusetts in the 1700s, he was a big promoter of compatibilism.
So compatibilists say that you can never choose differently, and to them, libertarian free will is a dirty word. If you say you have libertarian free will, they're like, get out of here. I'm going to throw tomatoes at you. So long as you are not coerced, you're free. So if you're born dead in your sins, if you're just sinning just recklessly and wildly your whole life, at the very end of your life, you can probably guess where I'm going with this, and you're standing before God.
So from a libertarian perspective, was that person free to choose God in the Calvinist scheme? In Calvinism, of course, you're born in total depravity. You're totally dead. You can't respond to God. And so in a libertarian sense, is that person free? No, right? Because they're doing nothing but sin. But in the compatibilist scheme of things on the last day, could that person say they were free? Yeah, right? Are you getting this? I really want you to get this.
Because they were just doing whatever their desires told them to do, and nobody forced them to do anything different. So if a person is born dead in their sins and sins according to their nature, compatible to say that he or she is free. If anybody has questions, stop me on this because I want to make sure you all get this. Don't be shy, because if you have a question, probably somebody else does as well. Yes, Sam? The person wouldn't be free at the end of their life if they. In the Calvinist scheme.
It's a total depravity for the libertarian means that you're not free, because all you can do is sin. And so when I say free, I mean free to do righteousness and free to obey God and repent and all that. So let's assume total depravity is true. Let's assume that Calvinism is true. At the very last day when that person stands before God and someone asks the question, " Hey, are you free? " And however we're defining the word free, the libertarian would say, " No, you weren't free because all you could do was sin.
" And you had nobody could get you out of that sin state. You couldn't save yourself. But a compatibilist would say, " Oh yeah, you were free. You're absolutely free. " So they're trying to make people they're trying to create this system where God is still in charge, but people are still free so that it doesn't feel so bad on the last day because they've kind of basically changed the definition of freedom. Does that make sense?
So you're saying that Calvinists believe that basically everything we do is ordained by God. Correct. Absolutely everything. We really don't have a choice. You don't have libertarian choice. You don't have libertarian choice. Whatever choices you do have, again, you can't do anything differently. When you're coming to that fork on the road here, it may feel to you like you can go right or left. But in fact, God has already foreordained that you're going to go right.
And so don't be under the illusion that you've got libertarian free will. Any other questions? These are great questions. I want us to have this discussion here. And I intentionally had a slightly fewer slides for this first half, because I wanted us to make sure we all get this. OK, so I think this is just yet another example of word games and redefining terms to fit the scheme. So they totally redefine freedom. It's not the ability to do otherwise. It's the ability to do as you please with no one stopping you.
There's many times where in order to make Calvinism work, you've got to play word games and use words in ways that nobody would ever use on their own. And certainly, that's not how we use natural language. But they've got to come up with something to make it fit. OK, so relating to this, we talked about this the other day. What is responsibility? And the word gives you what it is. I mentioned this, I think, on the first day. Yeah, the ability to respond, right? It's very, very simple.
The responsibility simply means able to respond. I hold it to be total sheer contradiction that in Calvinism we are unable to respond to God yet are held responsible. This is no mystery. This is rank foolishness. This is a quote from me. " Calvinism consistently tries to redefine words in ways that ordinary people do not. The New Testament is composed of fishermen talk, not the talk of speculative philosophers using words in incomprehensible ways.
So the problem is that how does libertarian free will versus compatibilism square with responsibility? What do you think? How do the two notions blend with responsibility? Because if God or danger is the man to joystick, yeah then we don't actually have the ability to respond. We're merely just robots acting on the command. So it's not actually the ability to respond at all. It's not, right.
And so what would you say about the compatibility of compatibilism with responsibility versus the compatibility of libertarian free will with responsibility? This is why I wanted to go slow on this. So in other words, maybe I'll write it on the board here. So we have this idea of responsibility. And so we said that's able to respond, responsibility. And I'm saying there are these two notions of freedom here, compatibilism and libertarian free will. So how do these two ideas fit or not fit with responsibility?
In the libertarian free will, just as it suggests, people have the ability to make their own decisions and respond. Absolutely. So there's like a great it's a very sensible idea that if you hold to libertarian free will, you can have responsibility, right? It makes sense. What about compatibilism? Yeah, that's right. You're shaking your head, Julia. You're right. It doesn't make any sense. This is like a ridiculous link here between the two. This makes sense. I can understand this connection here.
If somebody is able to respond, then they should have some free decision that they possess. If they're operating under a pure compatibilist perspective, they can't. Any questions on this? Yes, Julia? Yeah. So God would be ordaining the sin, although in a slightly different way than ordaining the repentance. He would ordain the sin in a way that is somehow not tainting God with the sin, which is the mystery. That's the mystery they always appeal to.
It's like somehow God is causing it, but he's not responsible for it, or you can't blame him for it. And then also, God is responsible for the repentance. And so that way, God gets all the glory. That's the whole idea they're driving for, is they want God to get 100% of all the credit in salvation. So in compatibilism, if it's the case that people can't really be responsible under a compatibilist worldview, I think it's just ridiculous. And don't ever be afraid to use common sense.
This is why yesterday I showed you that emperor with no clothes story here. This is going to come up again and again. If you see the emperor is naked, just say he's naked. Don't feel like intimidated by the words and the ideas and all that. Just call it as it is. OK, so under the compatibilist scheme, who is responsible? God. God, that's right. So Jeremy Evans says, " Ultimate responsibility resides where the ultimate cause is. " Right? That's common sense.
Ultimate responsibility resides where the ultimate cause is. Totally. That's an easy thing. We should all get this. And so under the compatibilist scheme, I would strongly contend, and I think most people would agree with me on this, that God is the one who is responsible. And so the problem is that everybody agrees that God created the world. But Calvinists believed that God ordained Adam's fall. Thus, the responsibility for the human condition of sin and Calvinism is God's.
And some Calvinists like Edwards, like Calvin himself, are even comfortable calling God the author of sin. All right, are we here? Are everyone getting this? Any questions? No? Okay, well, let's go on to another idea. So, okay, this is going to be a great test. If you've got everything we've done so far, then I want you to nail this. I'm going to contend that Calvinism actually minimizes sin and it minimizes grace. So that's a big statement.
And if there were a Calvinists in this room, they would be really mad at me for saying that right now. They'd want to throw a tomato at me. So how might it be the case that Calvinism minimizes sin and minimizes grace? Well, you don't have to take responsibility for sin. Yeah. So in the sense that sin is something that we're just doing, because God ordained it, it minimizes the heinousness of sin, because we're doing what we're doing. And that's just how we were created. So that's pretty easy to see.
That's how sin is, I think, minimized in Calvinism. Because in the end, God is the one who ordained all the events. It's not like we actively chose sin. See, that would make it bad, right? So what should make sin horrible is that you could have chosen to do the good, but instead you chose the bad. That's what makes sin sin. That's what makes sin so wicked. It makes sense. Now, here's a little bit tougher one, but I think you'll get this. How does Calvinism minimize grace?
Well, God is simply making up for His own sin. Bingo. Exactly. So you got it right, Sam. Excellent. Very well done there. Okay, great quote here. So he says, " Calvinism attempts to stress sin and magnify grace by emphasizing our depravity. We are so depraved that God has to do every single bit of our salvation. God even determines our acceptance of the gift of salvation because we could not otherwise do so.
" But as already noted, for me, this undermined both sin and grace because God is the ultimate cause of our sinfulness and depravity and as such is not saving us and as such is saving us is not an act of grace. God is merely fixing the problem he caused. Do you get that? That's a big, big, big idea. And so while I might respond to this gesture by saying, " God, you did the right thing, " I certainly wouldn't respond by saying, " Thank you. " Or at least I wouldn't know why I was saying thank you.
And as noted earlier, if you cannot stand before the cross and understand why you are saying thank you, there's a big problem. There's a huge problem. Sin is no longer sin and grace is no longer grace. No, in order for sin to be sin and grace be grace, we must stress sin and magnify grace in another way. The other way is rather obvious once it is pointed out to you. As copiously noted throughout, classic free will theism wholeheartedly affirms total depravity.
So he's saying that if you have free will, then you can meaningfully have wickedness of sin. And you can meaningfully have gratitude and thanks and all these things. Do you get this? This is like, ah, I just love this. If you get this idea, then everything I've done in these first few slides is worth it. And he concludes by saying, " Instead of belittling sin and grace, I have come to believe free will theism does the exact opposite.
" Because a lot of Calvinists will come out and say like, " Oh, you're just some liberal humanist and you just want to make a man the center of everything. " And you don't really get total depravity and all these kinds of things. And in reality, it's the exact reverse. In fact, in Calvinism, they're minimizing both sin and grace. Okay, so what makes our approach different? So this is something that I talk about a lot.
It's in the book that I wrote, King Jesus Claims His Church, that our approach in distinction to the Calvinist system should be Christocentric. It should be something that starts with Jesus and ends with Jesus. So there's a principle in the Bible. It's a very basic principle in the Bible that says, if you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. Because Jesus is the perfect revelation of God. And I'd like you to, this should be easy. I'm hoping a couple of you can do this. What are some verses?
There's a couple of classic, classic verses that teach this right out of the Bible that say that if you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. Good, so that's one of them. So that is in Colossians. So I picked three verses that are classics and that was one. I'm going to show you that one. That's not the first one I put down. I think that was the second one. Julia, do you have one? Good. That was the first one that I put down. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Well done. John 14:9.
And then the next one was the one that you just said. What was your name again? Deborah. Deborah. That's right. Deborah said he, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, Colossians 1:15, and I'll give you the last one. Hebrews 1:3, " He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. " So if you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. And in fact, the problem that people do is they actually do the reverse.
There's a quote from NT Wright who says, " It is important to begin by clarifying the question. When people ask, was Jesus God? " They usually think they know what the word " God " means, and are asking whether we can fit Jesus into that. I regard this as deeply misleading. Muslims do this mistake all the time. They have this idea of what God is, and they try to square that with, " Oh, does Jesus fit into that?
" In fact, in Christianity, Jesus reveals who God is, and we can't take some random idea that we have of God and assume that that's the right one. Fischer again says, " This means Christian theology moves from Jesus to God, not from what you think you know about God to Jesus. " This is a big concept here. So what we're going to do is look at, in the next few minutes here, is look at how do we move from Jesus and how do we start with Jesus to understand the sovereignty of God?
So let's think about, especially, the gospel accounts, where we can see Jesus up close, we can see Him personally. How do we understand sovereignty and all these issues that we've been talking about when we look at Jesus? And I'm going here for big picture, not necessarily specific Bible verses, but what's the sense we get when we see Jesus in the Gospels as connects to these ideas of sovereignty and freedom and all of that? Okay, so there was a sense of plan that God had with Jesus coming. Other thoughts?
Even the thought of God becoming man. The thought of God becoming man. Okay, so yeah, that's good. And we're actually going to spend some time talking about that idea. What about this notion of in Calvinism, God does everything, right? And we're just passive vessels in the Romans 9 sense, which I rebutted that yesterday in our session there. So God is really like the determiner of everything, and then we're just the ones that wouldn't even respond.
God causes us to respond irresistibly, causes us to respond, then we have faith and all those things happen. Okay, so that's the basic picture of Calvinism. How does that square with Jesus and the Gospels? You're a quiet bunch. Elijah, do you have something? No? So I'm asking, what is the connection between Jesus ' life and His ministry? What do we learn from that? To how that relates to what we just talked about, where in Calvinism God is responsible for everything. He's creating faith. He's creating repentance.
He's doing it all. Stan? Well, Jesus and His ministry would have been basically for nothing because what's the point of teaching people how to live and stuff, if they're going to do it anyway, courting is you know the way that God planned for them to do it. Right. Okay, so there's certainly, yeah, and that's all throughout the Bible.
There's certainly in Jesus ' teachings this implicit assumption, it's like that gravity that's there everywhere, even though you don't necessarily think about it, that there's a lot of shoulds and you should do this and you should live your life in this way that God ordained. And so implicit in Jesus ' teachings that's there. I would say implicit in the teachings of the whole Bible that's there. I'll read you a quote from Roger Olson. This is actually from that book I recommended in the beginning.
I love this quote. " Of course, Jesus being God could have healed everyone in Nazareth when he visited there, " Mark 6:5. But he couldn't do miracles there because of their lack of faith. Wow, that's really interesting, isn't it? That Jesus is somehow hindered by the lack of faith in the people that he was ministering to. As God, he had the sheer power to do miracles, but he had limited his power ordinarily to do miracles in the presence of faith.
He did not want to go around unilaterally healing people without some measure of cooperating or receptive faith on their part. So it is with God's sovereignty. He could exercise deterministic control, but he has chosen not to do so. As theologian E. Frank Tupper says, " God is not a do-anything, anytime, anywhere kind of God because he has not chosen to be that kind of God. He has chosen to make himself partially dependent on his human covenant partners while remaining the superior covenant power of holy love.
" Do you get this? This is a powerful idea here. So when Jesus comes and does His ministry all throughout, He looks for faith on the person on the other side. And if it's there, he'll do a miracle, and if it's not, he'll say, " It's going to be terrible for you on the day of judgment because it's going to be worse than it was for Sodom and Gomorrah. " So I love a couple of phrases in here that he says where it's not unilaterally healing people.
There's some measure of cooperation or receptive faith on the part of the individual. And he has chosen to make himself partially dependent on his human covenant partners. Now, the funny thing is, is now that you've read that, you're like, " Yeah, that's everywhere. " It's everywhere pretty much in Jesus ' ministry. But you don't think about it because it's like that gravity there, right? It's just there all the time.
But if God were the god of Calvinism, that doesn't square with this picture that we have of Jesus here. Okay, let's talk about a very important passage about Jesus ' incarnation. So there's a famous passage, you all know it, Ephesians 2. It says, " Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, or count others, more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Okay, so there's a term which I'm guessing you haven't heard of, which is called the kenosis, which the kenosis is the Greek word for emptying.
Let's use there where he emptied himself. Where Jesus emptied himself of his privilege and his power and takes on human flesh. So this idea here of what Jesus does the incarnation, and you had touched on this, is Jesus limits himself at the incarnation. He voluntarily accepts constraints and limits upon him. That's called the kenosis, the emptying. So what is, if this is who Jesus is, what is the alternative to divine determinism, what we've been talking about? Well, the alternative is divine self-limitation.
So Jesus freely, voluntarily chooses to limit himself, right? It's a big part of what the incarnation is. He chooses to go from occupying the throne of glory to being a tiny little baby in Bethlehem. And so this idea of God being a god who is, I'm going to call him sovereign over his sovereignty and chooses to limit his sovereignty is a very different idea than what Calvinists teach. But it's right there in the incarnation. Do y'all see this?
That in distinction to what I've just been talking about with Calvinism where God is omnicausal and every last event and everything that's out there is responsible God is responsible for and ordaining. Here we see that Jesus is limiting himself. So in other words, God is sovereign over sovereignty. So what we're left with now is this interesting choice where we have to pick our mystery. And everyone has to have some kind of mystery. But there are some mysteries that we all hold to, okay?
So the classic mystery that we all hold to is we would all say we believe that God created the world. We don't know how God created the world, but we believe that God created the world. So I'm just changing the word how and that, right? We don't know how God created the world, but we believe that He created the world. So everyone believes that, right? We all would hold that's a mystery. So for example, we don't know how God created the world, but we know that He created the world.
Both sides agree that God Himself has libertarian free will. So even Calvinists say that. They say God has complete libertarian free will. He can do whatever He wants. He can do A, He can do B, He can do C, He can do Z, you name it. But what they disagree over, as we mentioned, do humans have libertarian free will? Okay, so the mystery that each party has is a little bit different.
So the mystery that we would have is we don't know how God created humans with at least partially free will, if not fully free will, but we know that He created humans with free will that can respond to God. Okay, so that's our mystery. As we say, " God, I don't understand free will. I don't know how you created it. I don't get it. Nobody gets it. " But that's the mystery that we're going to adopt and hold on to. What is the Calvinist mystery?
The Calvinist mystery Leighton Flowers, he says, " Which mystery is more difficult to solve? One that seemingly suggests mankind might have some part to play in reconciliation. " That's the free will idea. Or the one that suggests God is the author of evil, that which divided the two parties to begin with. More importantly, which of these mysteries does the Bible actually afford? So do you get it? So everyone's got to pick your mystery here.
The one mystery is how is God doing absolutely everything, including ordaining evil and not evil? Or how is it the case that God can create truly free agents? Yes, Deborah? I have a question about God's free will. How would they handle the pathways for crisis in the wilderness? And in what sense? What are you thinking? They would say that he would have the free will he would be able to sin if he chose not to.
Yeah, of course, Jesus is a bit of a special case in the sense that Calvinists would say that he was not totally depraved because he was born of a virgin. He didn't have all of the same baggage that all of the rest of us do. And that because of that, he was able to choose the good or the bad. But if it were anybody else, that wouldn't be the case. So I've got one last slide, then we'll take a break here.
So the language of Scripture everywhere assumes that we can respond to God and have the power of choice, the power to choose. And again, it's like gravity, so it's hard to even identify. But let's just try to rattle off here. What are some passages that suggest or even directly say that we have the power of choice? Good. Choose this day whom you will serve. And it sure seems like, I mean, to me, when I read that, it seems like he's saying, " Choose this day whom you will serve. " Choose God, don't choose God.
It's up to you. Excellent. What's another one? Yeah, exactly. So God puts this test before Abraham, and then it actually happens. And at the end of it, God even says, or the angel says, I think it's actually the angel of God, it might say, now I know. Now I know. Like I put you through this test, and now you've proven yourself. Excellent. What's another one? Yeah, Moses is choosing to suffer the people of God. There's like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of passages.
We could probably go on till Friday, just sitting around trying to think of passages here. A lot of people say that, " Oh, you know Calvinists will say, " Oh, they lost that after Adam sinned. " But right after Adam sinned, and this is in Genesis 4, God comes to Cain and He says, " Why are you angry and why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.
" I mean, here he's like saying, he's telling Cain, like you can do well, you can not do well. There's these two choices right here. And he's even saying, you can rule over it. That's pretty amazing. So this didn't disappear right at the fall. Deuteronomy 30, this is similar to the Joshua passage. " I call heaven and earth to witness against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live. " This one I really like, Ezekiel 18:30 to 32.
" Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, everyone according to his ways declares the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions and let iniquity be your ruin. " Sorry, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone declares the Lord God, so turn and live. This is a passage that's a thorn in the side of Calvinists.
Anybody know why? It's a few obvious reasons why. Yeah, no pleasure in the death of everyone. So that's kind of interesting that God is on the one hand ordaining the death of the reprobate. But here he's saying he doesn't want to do it. He's like, " Don't take any pleasure in it. " So that's kind of odd. What else? Cast away from your own transgressions that you have committed. Yeah. And even more, make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
By the way, I put this from the ESV because I wanted it to be from even a Reformed translation. So yeah, I mean that sounds like God is saying you all, if you want, can get rid of your transgressions, you can make yourself a new heart and a new spirit. And the whole tenor of this passage is God saying, I've done what I can. I'm calling out to you. You're the block. You're the problem. Not me. Here's another one. Acts 17:30. The times of ignorance God overlooked. This is Paul at Mars Hill.
But now He commands all people everywhere to repent. It's pretty strong, right? God commands everyone everywhere to repent. Now, we mentioned this before. If I am going to go and command my three-month-old to go clean his room, there's something messed up and sick about that. It's even more twisted if when he doesn't do that, I get out a big paddle and I start beating him. If I did that, I'd be in jail.
If somebody saw me do that and telling a three-year-old, " Go clean your room, " and then they saw me five minutes later and they got out their camera and they put it on video, I'd be on YouTube, and I'd be in jail pretty quick. And yet, in the Calvinist construct, that's exactly what God is doing. He's telling people, " Everywhere, everywhere, repent. " Guess what? They can't do it because they're totally depraved. They don't have irresistible grace. Except it's even worse, because what does he do?
He sends them to eternal damnation forever. So this is the last line on my slide here, and we'll take a break. Should implies could. It's common sense. But all of these passages here where God is saying, " You should repent, repent, you should rule over sin. " Implied there, I could. No sense in which we use human language do we have a should where there's not a could. We just don't do that.
And for some reason, once the philosophers got hold of the Bible, they threw that principle out the door and it becomes this gobbledygook reading where you can hardly make sense of it because now a should means you can't. So we'll take a break there. Let's regroup at 9:40. So we've got a 12-minute break.