The "not quite forgotten" Jesus: My challenge to Calvinists one year later

In "The Waning Authority of Christ in the Churches", AW Tozer wrote, "The Lordship of Jesus is not quite forgotten among Christians, but it has been relegated to the hymnal where all responsibility toward it may be comfortably discharged in a glow of pleasant religious emotion."

And later:

We evangelicals also know how to avoid the sharp point of obedience by means of fine and intricate explanations. These are tailor-made for the flesh. They excuse disobedience, comfort carnality and make the words of Christ of none effect. And the essence of it all is that Christ simply could not have meant what He said. His teachings are accepted even theoretically only after they have been weakened by interpretation.

While every Christian needs to be cautious of this danger—and Tozer was addressing the evangelical church at large—possibly the worst result that I see in the life of Calvinists is the tendency to pay little attention to our Lord Jesus' words and life, and when we do venture into the Gospel accounts, to refuse to take Him at His word.  

My challenge to you

We will examine what I think are the causes below, but first, here is my challenge: Spend some time in the Gospels, and focus on the Lord Jesus.

Pastor Bruxy Cavey said about his own journey away from Calvinism (MP3 link, at 46:26):

For me, actually just staring into Jesus made the shift; studying his life. I went through a season in my life... I just started reading commentaries; first century background studies; so that I could understand Jesus better. And the more I started to understand Jesus, the more I realized that this system of thinking was not sufficient to help me say, “This is what Jesus was expressing”. Jesus then, I would say, got me to rethink everything.

It has been just over a year now since I left Calvinism, and looking back, I can’t help but believe this was part of my story too.  It was meditating on the Lord Jesus, and His words like:

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:44-48 ESVUK)

and:

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:35-36 ESVUK)

which the Holy Spirit continually placed on my conscience, that forced me to rethink everything.

I am convinced that focusing on the Lord Jesus is the best response to Calvinism: spend some time—real time—focusing on the Lord Jesus and meditating on His life and words.

Now, what causes Calvinists to treat the Lord’s words this way?

I think one of the causes of this is the Calvinist understanding of Election which places the Lord Jesus at the peripheral, rather than the centre; He is seen as a means to an end rather than the All in All.

Arminius thought, “the Calvinistic idea of election to faith rather than in view of faith or in view of one’s union with Christ [...] involves God settling his elective love on people without regard to Christ’s work or one’s participation in it.” (Pinson on Arminius, link).  In his “Declaration of Sentiments”, Arminius wrote:

This doctrine is highly dishonorable to Jesus Christ our Savior. For,  

1. It entirely excludes him from that decree of Predestination which predestinates the end: and it affirms, that men were predestinated to be saved, before Christ was predestinated to save them; and thus it argues, that he is not the foundation of election. 

2. It denies, that Christ is the meritorious cause, that again obtained for us the salvation which we had lost, by placing him as only a subordinate cause of that salvation which had been already foreordained, and thus only a minister and instrument to apply that salvation unto us. This indeed is in evident congruity with the opinion which states "that God has absolutely willed the salvation of certain men, by the first and supreme decree which he passed, and on which all his other decrees depend and are consequent." If this be true, it was therefore impossible for the salvation of such men to have been lost, and therefore unnecessary for it to be repaired and in some sort regained afresh, and discovered, by the merit of Christ, who was fore-ordained a Savior for them alone.

Contrast this with the Articles of Remonstrance.  As Martin Glynn explained regarding Article I:

Something else that needs to be pointed out here is how Christocentric (Christ centered) this is. God’s purpose in this decree is Jesus and that those who are saved are saved “in Christ, for Christ’s sake, and through Christ”. We are saved within the body of Christ, we are saved because Christ loves us and wants us saved, and we are saved only through the power of Christ, not our own. Christ, as opposed to eternal decrees, is the center of salvation–the crux, if you will, upon which salvation rests.

Ephesians 1

Take Ephesians 1, for example.  It seems to me that most Calvinists would be just as happy (or maybe happier?) if the words, “in Him”, “in Christ”, and “through Christ”, were not in the text at all (after all, the Calvinist may reason, these words only confuse Arminians into believing election is Corporate and Christocentric!).  But Paul ties each line to the Lord Jesus, and makes it absolutely clear that we are only blessed (v3&6), only chosen (v4), only predestined and adopted (v 5), only redeemed (v7), only know the mystery of His will (v 8), only obtain an inheritance, and were only sealed with the Holy Spirit (v 13) “in Him”, “in Christ” and “through Christ”.

Pastor Keith Coward, writing about his journey out of Calvinism, said:

I decided to shore up my confidence [in Calvinism] by reading some Reformed writers. But my plan backfired: I began with a small booklet about election; the author opened by stating his case from Eph 1:4 – a verse that I had studied when teaching through Ephesians the previous year. I had been struck by the parallels between Deut 4:37; 7:6-11 and this text: In the former, God says that he chose the Israelites to be his holy people because he loved them for the sake of their fathers; in the latter, Paul says that God chose “us” to be holy in Christ, which may easily mean “for the sake of Christ”. Election was a corporate, vocational, conditional concept for Israel; perhaps it was the same thing for Christians (see 1 Pet 2:9-10). Whatever the case, I knew that there was a lot of room to interpret Eph 1:4 differently than this author did. He was building his case for election on a verse that I knew could not bear that weight, and I began to wonder what would happen to other classic proof texts if examined more carefully, without Calvinistic presuppositions.

The Calvinist understanding of election has God choosing individuals without regard to Christ; the Lord Jesus, in this scheme, is no more than an afterthought.  Is it any wonder, then, that Calvinists so rarely meditate on Jesus and His words?  The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, places Jesus our Saviour at the centre, and Arminius and Arminians follow his lead.

Can this be seen in Calvinist Leaders?  James White, a case study

Admittedly I use James White as the example because he is an easy target; there have been two instances in the last year which have already made their rounds on social media.  Although James White is just one individual, he is a prominent Calvinist, and—especially given that, in the first instance below, he led the crowd to laugh at the words of our Lord—perhaps his, and his audience’s, example of lack of knowledge of Jesus' own words can serve as a picture of New Calvinism generally.

Example 1: the Flowers-White debate.

At one point in the debate between Leighton Flowers and James White, Flowers made the remark that we should humble ourselves like a child (summarizing the Lord Jesus' statement in Matthew 18:4). Not realizing (I assume) that this was the Lord’s own words, James White responded sarcastically, “I think I just heard Professor Flowers say that a child is humble?” leading the audience to laugh, not at Flowers, but at the words of our Lord Jesus!

Again, I don’t believe it was deliberate; I believe James White, like most Calvinists I have known (and was a part of), does not sufficiently study and meditate on the words of the Lord Jesus.  Still, it is surprising that any Christian leader of Dr White’s prominence could hear our Lord Jesus’ own words and mock them, not knowing their true source. (Given this incident, Dr White and his audience might also want to consider the Lord’s words in Mark 8:38/Luke 9:26; if your theology makes you ashamed of the words of our Lord Jesus, to the point that you can unwittingly mock them for not fitting into your theological framework, it is time to rethink your theology!).

See Professor Flowers comments on the debate here.

Example 2: James White responds to a sermon by James McCarthy.

Another example comes from back in January. James McCarthy, author of John Calvin Goes to Berkley, stated in a sermon, “God doesn’t love you strictly because of yourself; He loves you because of His Son. Didn’t the Lord Jesus teach that...what did He say? The Father loves you why? Because you have loved Me.”

On his radio program, James White responded, “I’m trying to figure out where that reference was. The Father has loved you because you have loved Me? …I couldn’t find that one. I would like to know what text is being paraphrased at that point, because that would make the Father’s love of us, dependent upon something we’re doing, and I think something was misstated there. I’m not sure.”

Notice that James White’s own words are nearly a direct quote of the passage he does not think exists!  Jesus said, “In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.” (John 16:26-27 ESVUK).

It is clear that James White is unfamiliar with the words of the Lord Jesus.  Yet our Lord said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32 ESVUK), and:

If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. (John 14:23-24 ESVUK).

See more on this incident here.

NT Wright, "Look at Jesus":

Dr NT Wright, when asked what he would say to his children on his death bed, offered a similar challenge to the one I have presented above.  Here is his response:

AW Tozer asked once, “Does God get only the tattered bits of your time, yet you say you are a follower of the Lamb? Do not fool yourself.” (The Crucified Life). We could even more seriously ask, “In your life and theology, are the words of the Lamb no more than 'not quite forgotten', yet you say you submit to the Lordship of Jesus? Do not fool yourself!”

*A note to regular readers: I will likely not be posting regularly again for a few months as I have a very heavy semester.  I also apologize if you comment and it takes a few days before it gets through moderation or before I respond.

NT Wright, "...this is the number one moral issue of our day"

With national election campaigns beginning in both Canada and the USA, and the first debate in each country overlapping tonight, here is an excerpt from NT Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, (Google Preview or Find in a Library) to remind us--if we, as followers of Jesus, are going to influence priorities--of where our focus should be.

Pages 216-219 (while this was published back in 2008, and the first symptom he mentions--third world debt--is less on the radar today, the massive economic imbalance has only grown). Bold mine:

As far as I can see, the major task that faces us in our generation, corresponding to the issue of slavery two centuries ago, is that of the massive economic imbalance of the world, whose major symptom is the ridiculous and unpayable Third World debt. I have spoken about this many times over the last few years, and I have a sense that some of us, like old Wilberforce on the subject of slavery, are actually called to bore the pants off people by going on and on about it until eventually the point is taken and the world is changed. There are many good books on the subject from different points of view, and I don’t want to go into the arguments now. I simply want to record my conviction that this is the number one moral issue of our day. Sex matters enormously, but global justice matters far, far more. The present system of global debt is the real immoral scandal, the dirty little secret—or rather the dirty enormous secret—of glitzy, glossy Western capitalism. Whatever it takes, we must change this situation or stand condemned by subsequent history alongside those who supported slavery two centuries ago and those who supported the Nazis seventy years ago. It is that serious. I can’t develop the arguments here; I just want to make four brief comments, in light of the subject matter we have explored in this book, about the nature of the debates that you run into when you raise the subject. (I know this only too well: every time I write on these issues some commentators, usually in the United States, write to tell me that I should stick to Jesus and Paul and not meddle in economics and politics. Fortunately, there are plenty of others, in that country and elsewhere, who encourage me to keep going.)   

First, notice how the rhetoric regularly employed against the remission of global debts echoes the arguments used against the abolition of slavery. Read the writings of the eighteenth-century Quaker John Woolman (1720–1772). Read again the story of Wilberforce (1759–1833).2 The patronizing, temporizing, and sometimes bullying they had to put up with; the tone of voice that says, “We know how the world works; don’t bother us with moral arguments”; the powerful interests that lobbied the great and the good against them: all this is routine today as the Western global empire fights back against the cry for justice. But every time we put it off one more day, several hundred children die. And that’s just the start. We must learn, therefore, to recognize the complex arguments against debt remission as what they are. People tell you it’s a tricky and many-sided subject. Yes, it is; so was slavery. So are all major moral problems. The fact remains that what is now going on amounts to theft by the strong from the weak, by the rich from the poor. I am choosing my words carefully; read the literature and see. If a police officer catches a thief red-handed, the officer doesn’t need complicated arguments about the thief ’s motives, the complexities of the thief ’s and the victim’s intertwined economic situations, or any other prevarication; the important thing is to stop the thieving and stop it right away. In the light of this, we should learn to recognize the complex stories told by those with vested interests as corresponding closely to the complex stories told by the Sadducees to show how impossible it was to believe in the resurrection. Jesus’s answer was blunt and to the point: you’re wrong because you don’t know the Bible and you don’t know God’s power (Mark 12:24). Our response must be that because we believe in the resurrection of Jesus as an event within history, we believe that the living God has already begun the process of new creation, and what may seem impossible in human terms is possible to God.  

Thus when people object, as they do, to me and others pointing out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer—by commenting that wealth is not finite, that statist and globalist solutions and handouts will merely strip the poor of their human dignity and vocation to work, and that all this will encourage the poor toward a sinful envy of the rich, a slothful escapism, and a counterproductive reliance on Caesar rather than God—I want to take such commentators to refugee camps, to villages where children die every day, to towns where most adults have already died of AIDS, and show them people who haven’t got the energy to be envious, who aren’t slothful because they are using all the energy they’ve got to wait in line for water and to care for each other, who know perfectly well that they don’t need handouts so much as justice. I know, and such people often know in their bones, that wealth isn’t a zero-sum game, but reading the collected works of F. A. Hayek in a comfortable chair in North America simply doesn’t address the moral questions of the twenty-first century.  

[...]

Unfortunately, last week I saw a poll suggesting that in the USA 58% of “white evangelicals” want Donald Trump to remain in the race (link; and, as another blogger pointed out, it comes as no surprise that less than 20% read their Bible on a daily basis: link).  It seems we are content with the same old politics:

The trick never ages, the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital-gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization efforts. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.   

(Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? As quoted by Paul Krugman in The Conscience of a Liberal, p 176-177)

I think Brian Zahnd put it best (link):

Until you see the kingdom of God politics trumps everything.    

Which explains Christians supporting Trump over the Sermon on the Mount.

Related Posts:

• NT Wright, "How do you answer someone who says...that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world?";
• VIDEO: NT Wright on Predestination, Election and Romans 9;
• Irv Brendlinger, "John Wesley's theological challenge to slavery" ;

Ronald Stone, "Wesley’s demand for mercy and justice in the economic world";

• Loraine Boettner's Postmillennial Vision of Ecological Health and the Great Commission;
• Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox, "God's Program for the Restoration of Creation".

NT Wright on Predestination, Election and Romans 9

In this video, NT Wright answers the question, “What do you think Paul means when he uses language like ‘election’, ‘chosen’, ‘predestination’?” (HT: @DerwinLGray)

Also see Michael F Bird, N.T. Wright on Election in PFG, where Dr Bird includes two excerpts from NT Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God.  My own understanding of Romans 9 is very close to the view Dr Wright presents.

Related posts:

• NT Wright, "How do you answer someone who says...that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world?";
• On Corporate Election;
• Dr Thomas Schreiner reviews Dr Abasciano's book on Romans 9;
• Questions to ask as you approach Romans 9 (with a little help from recording artist Flame).

NT Wright, "How do you answer someone who says...that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world?"

Related to my last post on the Christian expectation of resurrection, final judgment and new creation (link), below is an excerpt from Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, by NT Wright (page 221-222, Google Preview) on why Christians should try to bring justice to our world today:

The paradigm I have set out in this book tells heavily against both sides. This is the point where a genuine biblical theology can come out of the forest and startle both those who thought that the Bible was irrelevant or dangerous for political ethics and those who thought that taking the Bible seriously meant being conservative politically as well as theologically. The truth is very different—as we should have guessed from Jesus’s own preaching of the kingdom, not to mention his death as a would-be rebel king. His resurrection, and the promise of God’s new world that comes with it, creates a program for change and offers to empower it. Those who believe the gospel have no choice but to follow. 

And if people tell you that after all there isn’t very much they can do, remember what the answer is. What would you say to someone who said, rightly, that God would make them completely holy in the resurrection and that they would never reach this state of complete holiness until then—and who then went on to say, wrongly, that therefore there was no point in even trying to live a holy life until that time? You would press for some form of inaugurated eschatology. You would insist that the new life of the Spirit, in obedience to the lordship of Jesus Christ, should produce radical transformation of behavior in the present life, anticipating the life to come even though we know we shall never be complete and whole until then. That is, actually, the lesson of Romans 6. Well, apply the same to Romans 8! How do you answer someone who says, rightly, that the world will not be completely just and right until the new creation and who deduces, wrongly, that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world (or for that matter ecological health, another topic for which there is no space here) until that time? Answer, from everything I have said so far: insist on inaugurated eschatology, on a radical transformation of the way we behave as a worldwide community, anticipating the eventual time when God will be all in all even though we all agree things won’t be complete until then. There is the challenge. The resurrection of Jesus points us to it and gives us the energy for it. Let us overcome our surprise that such a hope should be set before us and go to the task with prayer and wisdom.

Also see (external links):

• Vimeo: NT Wright on The Justice Conference (2014).
• NT Wright, Jesus Is Coming – Plant a Tree!.

Related posts:

• Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox, "God's Program for the Restoration of Creation".
• Ronald Stone, "Wesley’s demand for mercy and justice in the economic world".
• NT Wright on Predestination, Election and Romans 9.