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August 12 - August 13, 2020
It was a home founded on the glory of a crucified God of self-giving love, and around that center had sprung up walls of grace, free will, kenosis, and a peculiar sort of sovereignty. And in my opinion, it was quite a home.
the truth is never afraid of honesty.
The truth isn’t worried about winning an argument or creating a massive following. The truth just wants to come out into the light.
if God has libertarian freedom, then even though we cannot fully (or remotely) explain it, the fact that God has it means it is not an incoherent or absurd idea.
good number of Calvinists think free-will theism’s understanding of salvation inevitably leads to the unforgiveable sin: stealing God’s glory.
This is the typical charge leveled against synergism, which is the technical term for the libertarian understanding of salvation in which there is divine/human cooperation in salvation—God, in grace, does everything but humans have to cooperate by accepting this grace. According to people like James Montgomery Boice, free-will theists cannot give God glory: “They want to glorify God. Indeed, they can and do say ‘to God be the glory,’ but they cannot say ‘to God alone be the glory,’ because they insist on mixing human power or ability with the human response to gospel grace.”
But what about our ability to boast in our salvation? After all, we are the ones who “ultimately” decide whether we end up in heaven or hell. An illustration borrowed from Roger Olson might be helpful here. A man has fallen into a pit, is unconscious, and will eventually die. But God calls out to the man and offers help, awakening him from his unconsciousness. God starts pouring water down into the pit and tells the man that if he will just stay still, he can float on the water up to rescue. All the man has to do is not struggle or try to hold on to the bottom. All he has to do to be saved is
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But isn’t there still just a little smidgen of room for us to boast in our salvation, even if it’s just 0.000000001 percent? And here we reach a stalemate. No, I don’t think it leaves any of us any room to boast in our salvation—but a Calvinist does. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
I don’t think a God who takes on flesh to be murdered by his creatures is too worried about being taken advantage of, so we probably need not worry ourselves to death with it either.
I love this!
there is remarkable agreement that it was put to bed by Alvin Plantiga’s classic free-will defense:
Calvinists read the Bible and what jumps out to them is God’s all-determining sovereignty and commitment to glorify himself at all costs—their blik is the glory of power. Free-will theists read the Bible and what jumps out to them is the self-giving sovereignty of Jesus in which love is more important than control—their blik is the glory of love.
think we stick with a theological home because we prefer the monsters in its basement to the monsters in other basements. People don’t choose Calvinism or free-will theism because one side has clearly proven itself right, but because they “find one set of mysteries easier to live with than the other.”124
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf . . . and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Col 2:1–3)
The mystery is Jesus, God incarnate and God crucified for the whole world.
This is what happens when humans encounter God. Whether we call it a magnificent defeat or a crippling victory, when we bump up against the Mystery of mysteries, we receive a blessing but we also walk away with a limp.131 When dealing with I AM, we are all cripples seeking crumbs. And perhaps the surest sign that our theology actually brushes against God is the presence of a limp. It is the cultivation of humility, candor, and generosity. It is a certain trepidation, modesty, and restraint. Theology that doesn’t limp is not Christian theology.
The seeds of theological swagger usually germinate in the same place: certainty.
From the moment Adam and Eve bit into the ill-fated piece of fruit, humans have tried to transcend transcendence.
he discarded as unreliable any sort of knowledge that he could doubt.
It sounded promising enough, but eventually it became clear that certainty is a seductress, a tease, and ultimately, an illusion.
Objective truth can only be known subjectively.
certainty and swagger will not save us from skepticism. But limping will.
while our knowledge of God is not and can never be objective, neither is it wholly subjective. It is personal.
As Leslie Newbigin says, “It is obviously absurd to suppose that total objectivity is possible; for, if there is no subject who knows, there is no knowing.”137
We must embrace the fact that all of our knowing is, ultimately, personal.
the most meaningful type of knowledge—personal knowledge—can always be doubted!
there is something quite absurd about the posture of those who claim infallible certainty about God
humility, restraint, and moderation in our beliefs about God are not simply good manners. They are good theology.
They are the marks of a theology that has stopped trying to transcend transcendence.
We’re humans and that means we don’t get to be certain.
Faith, doubt, humility, and confidence—this is the stuff and substance of theology at its best.
Swagger, smugness, and certainty—this is the stuff and substance of ideology at its worst.
the only thing worse than being wrong is being certain you’re right—a
when you take a closer look at the gospel of the kingdom, you’ll find that instead of reigning from some celestial throne up in the heavens, the God of the gospel reigns from a cross.
how do we enter the cross-shaped kingdom of the crucified God?
Follow me. Search the Gospels far and wide, and you’ll find this is the only invitation Jesus ever really extends to anyone.
the New Testament is a book by disciples, about disciples, for disciples.
Jesus’s intention—and the intention of the gospel—was and is to create a community of disciples that loves God with heart, mind, soul, and strength and loves its neighbors as itself. It was to create a community where the crucified King reigns.
one’s theology is not tenable unless it naturally produces disciples of the kingdom.
At the heart of gospel-driven discipleship, there is the decision, by grace through faith, to surrender self and follow Jesus—that is, at the heart of gospel-driven discipleship, there is the belief that you have a choice and therefore a will that matters.
We find meaning in Jesus dying for us because we believe he did not have to.
in Calvinism, you simply do not have a choice and therefore do not have a will that matters.
So not only does discipleship fit into the narrative of free-will theism; it seems to be the thread that holds it all together.
Free-will theism provides discipleship a fitting home.
N. T. Wright notes, “For too long we have read Scripture with nineteenth-century eyes and sixteenth-century questions. It’s time to get back to reading with first-century eyes and twenty-first-century questions.”155
Romans 9–11,
What issues is Paul dea...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
all that Paul has said up until this point—about the impartiality of God, about the people of God being Jew and Gentile united in Christ, about the inadequacy and obsoleteness of the Law, about all coming to God on the basis of grace and faith in Jesus the Messiah—has begged the question of Israel. Why has Israel, by and large, rejected its Messiah? What is God doing with Israel? Has he forsaken his first chosen people (Israel) for a new chosen people (Gentiles)? If so, hasn’t God been unfaithful to his promises to Israel?
these questions are the glasses through which we must read chapters 9–11 and if you take them off for a second, everything is going to get fuzzy.
All that has been said comes down to this.
The peculiar, winding, unorthodox plan of God, through Israel and for the world, is to shut up all in disobedience so that he may show mercy to all.
