Arranging the Order of the Eternal Edicts

In the last post, we introduced the idea of eternal edicts.  We stated that there are essentially five eternal edicts that we will need to arrange.  Afterwards, we will discuss the more commonly held, and also heretical as we have seen, end of the spectrum.

Did God create evil?  The answer to this question fairly uniformly, if you believe that God is Good (with a capital “G”,) is absolutely not.  This creates a problem for those of us who hold that God is all powerful, all knowing and intentional.  The paradigm that is used is that while God did not introduce evil into the world, God permitted evil to enter the world.  And since He permitted it, He is still sovereign over evil.  He controls evil so that His ends are met even through the presence of evil in the world.  A good example of this is found in the Old Testament in God’s relationship with Pharaoh.  Pharaoh hardened his heart to the pleas of the Israelites, but this was used by God through Moses to fulfill God’s purpose of getting the Israelites out of Egypt.  How did evil enter creation?  Romans 5 tells us that evil entered the world through the action of one man, Adam.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.  (Romans 5:12-14 ESV)

We can say, then, that God permitted the Fall of Man.  We will come back to this passage in a later post to discuss original sin.

The next question is over Salvation.  Since God has allowed the Fall of Man, how will God go about saving man?  The first point to realize is that we are assuming that man cannot save himself.  He is going to require some help from God at the very least, or God is going to have to do all the saving Himself at the most.  This is the basic point in the discussion of synergism versus monergism, does God help man to salvation or does God do all of the work of salvation by Himself. 

If you believe that God does all the work, then we come to our next major issue: how does God decide who He will save and who He will not save?  This is the question that begins to pry open the Gulf between the Reformation and essentially all other positions, whether Roman Catholic, Arminian, Wesleyan or Pelagian.  Notice that this places the vast majority of American “Protestants” on the same side of the discussion as Rome!  Why do we say this?  Let’s look at the issue more closely.  The issue is predestination.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (Romans 9:6-13 ESV)

I wonder how many people even know that this passage is in the Bible?  Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls….  That has to be the most earth shattering, paradigm blowing passage in the Bible.  God’s purpose is independent of man, independent of our deeds, independent of who is called.  Our salvation is dependent only on Him who calls, not those who are called.  It’s there in black and white.  Why?  That, we are not told.  Look at this passage:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV)

What is this about God preparing beforehand?  That sounds like predestination to these hairy ears.  It is not our doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of works.  That’s pretty clear.  The idea of predestination and an elect remnant goes back through the whole Old Testament.  Look at this example:

There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” (1 Kings 19:9-10, 18 ESV)

God holds back his remnant.  The whole world will be saved through that remnant.  There were many in the covenant community of Israel, but only a few (relatively speaking) were within that remnant of whom God spoke to Elijah. 

Back to the eternal edicts, in which order shall we place them?  Let’s try this one.

• Creation, the Fall, Election, Provide Salvation, Call the Elect.

How does that look on the ground?  God creates man, then He allows man to Fall.  God then elects people from throughout time to be His people, His remnant, His elect.  Remember that for God there is no time.  These are placed in chronological order because we are chronologically oriented creations.  Next, God determines how He will provide for the salvation of His elect.  Finally, He calls His elect to Himself.  This ordering is called Infralapsarian, and it the predominant Calvinist position.

• Creation, the Fall, Provide Salvation, Election, Call the Elect.

How does this look on the ground?  Because Salvation precedes election, we have caused two very important effects.  First, whereas in the example above, only the Elect are saved, now every person on the planet has the opportunity to be saved.  Second, because election occurs after Salvation, the means of Salvation will not be wholly sufficient for some people who will perish.  Therefore, God is unable to accomplish exactly what He intends with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.  Surely, if God can create the world, He can save exactly the number of people that He intends to save, regardless of the number.  This system is called Amyraldism, and it is the position of the so-called Four Point Calvinists.  It is beyond my goals to explain this nuance at this time.

• Creation, the Fall, Provide Salvation, Call all to Salvation, Elect those who believe

This is the classic Arminian position, and it will seem more familiar to you.  God provides for the Salvation of all man, calls all men to receive salvation, then elects those who believe.  Arminius talks about prevenient grace at this step.  Because he believed in original sin, God still had to provide a part of grace to those who would believe so that they could believe.  Some go so far as to say that God elects based upon foreseen knowledge of who will believe.  Whichever way you explain it, it lessens even more the power and precision of God, at the same time increasing the role of man.  Our egocentricity must supersede the Christocentricity of the Bible, in our fallen minds.

The last question for this post is: did God permit the Fall before or after creation?  If God permitted the Fall prior to creation, then God would have created a flawed world.  If this is the case, then Adam was not a perfect creation capable of the full obedience required by God.  See above that that Adam was of a type of the One who was to come, Jesus.  This position is called Supralapsarianism, and we can see that it is not tenable.  I bring this up because there is a group called hyper-Calvinists who hold this Supralapsarian position.  There are others who hold this view, but I point out the hyper-Calvinists so that you will see that there are some who claim to be Calvinists who may not hold to classical Calvinist doctrine.

In summary, we have examined the eternal edicts from Biblical theology with an eye to first recognizing our own positions and secondly to understanding how the other positions work.  When we examine the implications of one doctrine on others, often we will run aground on a contradiction.  Contradictions mean one of three things, by definition.  Our understanding of one doctrine is wrong; our understanding of the other doctrine is wrong; our understanding of both doctrines is wrong.  Our willingness to let go of our suppositions as we demonstrate that they do not fit with the Biblical text is vital in understanding God and His Word.

In the next post, we will look at the main problem of man: what is it, and how do we fix it?

– Troll –

Eternal Edicts and Covenants

As we discussed in the last post, there are specific events that are theologically supposed in the beginning of the universe before time.  It is important to understand that these events, while discussed chronologically are logical orders as opposed to chronologically ordered.  For God, there is no time.  Nonetheless, there is structure and order to this argument.  The importance of these will become apparent as we go along.

The first of God’s eternal edicts is the decision to Create the universe and with it man.  Later in this discussion, we will see an extreme position in which this is not the first of the eternal edicts.  But for the most part, we can assume that the decision to create came first.

The second of God’s eternal edicts is to permit the Fall.  Without much debate, the four major orderings of soteriology (study of the religious doctrines of salvation) will place the fall after creation.  There will be some discussion in a few areas about this ordering, but again, this is fairly consistent.

At this point in all of the soteriological systems, we can start asking questions.  There is the problem of evil and sin.  There is also the problem of salvation, how does it happen and for whom does it happen?  We will examine passages for each of these questions after we finish laying out the edicts, but I wanted to point out where the questions will arise.

I have mentioned above that most views of soteriology view that the fall of man occurs at this point.  It is important to understand that a heresy that is now rampant in the modern religious world holds that the fall of man is figurative or symbolic, and that the actions of Adam could not possibly have any consequence for anyone but Adam.  It must be said that the whole of Christianity other than full blown Pelagians rejected this idea in the fifth century.  There is another position as well (Semi-Pelagianism,) that we will discuss later, but it does not deny the fall.

Since Pelagius, no prominent theologian advanced a theology based upon a denial of the fall of man until Charles Finney in the nineteenth century.  Now, thanks to Charles Finney and revivalism, the default position of most people in the United States is Pelagian.  It is hugely important to recognize that this position was uniformly viewed as heretical prior to Finney.  This is the sadness we face in the church today, that so prominent a leader in US Protestantism was a heretic.  In the next post, we will discuss Finney, Wesley and Arminius, and how Finney's point of view makes light of these eternal edicts, while Wesley and Arminius have somewhat different edicts.

Finishing up the eternal edicts, we have in some order depending on which school of thought, the decision by God to save some or all, the decision by God to make possible the salvation or some or all and the decision by God to not save others or passively to overlook others.  That will be two points in most of the arrangements, depending on the theology involved.  We will call these two steps Election and Provide salvation.

Finally, there will be some sort of Call by God to his elect or to everyone. There is some agreement again that this Calling is mediated by the Holy Spirit.  Notably, in the synergistic (working together) systems, this Calling will not look the same as it does in monergistic (working alone) systems.  The reason for this we will investigate in the next post.

Switching gears for a moment, there are eternal covenants as well.  There is an eternal covenant between creator (God) and creature (man).  There are eternal covenants between the persons of the Trinity.  These covenants are not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, but they are implied by scripture.  Later, we will examine how these covenants work.

In summary, the purpose of this post was to point out five eternal edicts, which have to do with salvation or soteriology.  These five edicts are Creation, permitting the Fall, Election, Providing salvation and Calling.  We discussed that there are eternal covenants between the Persons of the Trinity and also between God the Creator and his creation, man.  In the next post, we will explore how rearranging these edicts greatly effects our theology, or vice versa. 

– Troll –

Who is God?

This sounds like too much of a basic question, but it is fundamental to Christianity.  Who is God?  Is God one person or three?  Is God the Father?  Is God the Holy Mother?  Is Mary divine?  Is Jesus divine?  When did Jesus come into existence?  When did the Holy Spirit enter the world?  All of these questions have been asked about God just in the world of para-Christian theology.  Who is God?

God tells us He is the Great I Am. “I am God Almighty.” “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” “I am who I am.” “I am the Lord.” All of these quotes are from Genesis and Exodus. God is eternal.  With God, there is no time.  “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8) While God tells us much more than this, what can we say of these first few quotes? 

God created all of the world, the heavens and the earth, the universe, the stars, the lands and the oceans, the plants and the animals, and people.  Man, we can then say, is a creature.  What is the relationship between creator and creature?  Man can create many things from many materials.  All things that we create, we have the power to destroy.  No man-made thing has dominion over man.  Such is the relationship of creator to creature.

Therefore, what God creates, He can wipe away from existence with the shrug of a shoulder, or the blink of an eye.  What is more, God creates ex nihilo, from nothing.  Everything that man can make, man must start from some raw material.  Only God can make something from where just before there was nothing.  This is the God moment of creation, to create something from nothing.  All philosophy and science must eventually address this one issue.  It is the moment of existence that cannot be explained by reason, philosophy or science.

But we do not need to remain in the dark about this event.  God has revealed much to us through His Word.  Is it reasonable for us to expect to understand creation?  Are the motives of God in creation revealed?  Are we to be given the knowledge of ex nihilo creation?  Certainly, it can be argued that these questions and many others remain hidden.  God does not reveal the nuts and bolts of creation, nor does He reveal his motives.  What does God reveal?

God reveals that He expects worship and obedience.  That’s not asking much for One who created everything.  Fear and awe might be expected of One with such omnipotent power and omniscient knowledge.  Certainly, we may expect that this is a posture that should be assumed in approaching God, dare we ever deem it necessary to approach God.  Clearly, this is the sort of relationship that existed between God and Israel. 

In creation, there are what theologians call eternal covenants, edicts or decrees.  These are not actually documented in the revealed Word of God, but covenants that can be inferred by logic and understanding of Scripture.  For example, what is the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  While we have revelation about these relationships, the actual nuts and bolts of these interactions remain unknown to us.  John 1 tells us that Jesus was with God before time and that He was involved in creation as its instrument.  This is a controversial position, despite its clear presentation in John 1.  The Arian heresy, the first great heresy that required resolution, remains with us to this very day.  Ask a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon about John 1 and you will get either a  vastly different Bible version or a wholly different Holy Book that enables them to deny this basic Christian premise.  So, we can say that there were covenants or formal relationships between the persons of the Trinity before time, eternal covenants. 

In creation, we have eternal decrees implied as well.  These eternal decrees will form the basis of the next post in this series.  These decrees are the basis of Truth that we receive through divine revelation.  These decrees order all of creation and therefore our relationship with God.  We cannot understand all that God has revealed about Himself without some manner of addressing these eternal decrees.

Therefore, Who is God?  God is the great I AM.  God is the creator.  God is capable of erasing that which He created.  God expects worship and obedience.  God is Good.  God is Just.  This opens up two more huge kettles of fish that we will also address in the future.  If God is good, how did evil enter the world?  If God is Just, how can He allow injustice to occur in His creation?  The answers to these questions will reveal more about God.

The purpose of this post was to raise an important question: Who is God?  Without understanding all that we can know that God has revealed to us about Himself, it is impossible to understand how we should be expected to live, to worship, to know and to understand God.  We all want to have a relationship with God, and yet we do not take the time to know who God is.  Let us endeavor then to understand the nature and Truth that God has revealed about Himself through Scripture.

Who is God?

 – Troll –

Blog plan for 2012, part A

Every team needs a game plan, and the dynamic duo of Troll and Ogre have come up with the blog plan for 2012.  At the start of the new year, after assessing my progress as a theologian and a blogger, and listening to suggestions from all interested readers, I have come to the conclusion that the following series will done over the next 6 months.

1.     Complete the discussion of Hebrews.  I owe that to the readers who were following along with it.
2.     Complete the Heidelberg Catechism discussion.  I discovered we stopped about one section short of the end.
3.     Repeat and make shorter and more accessible to lay readers the series on critical doctrinal issues, the building block series.
4.     Post various papers that I write for seminary.  In this area, I may or may not post them with instructor comments or corrections.  This will probably have to be taken on a case by case basis.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the name of the blog continues to receive much negative feedback.  I cannot teach the reason and meaning behind the name if I lose my readers before they start reading because of the name.  Towards that end, I’ll be floating some alternative names by on various media and in person, and let’s see what you think about them.

Maranatha!

—Troll—

New Year 2012

The Troll and Ogre have now been writing for a whole year.  There are a few regular visitors, and there have been a number of transient visitors over the last year.  This cycle of days that we call a calendar has brought about a season of change unlike any other for me.  But rather than dwell upon my year, I would like for this New Year to focus upon that cycle we call a year in terms of the Church Calendar. 

A week ago, we celebrated the start of the year, with the Birth of Jesus.  But really, isn’t that just the beginning of the New Testament cycle?  When do we as Christians learn and grow to understand the Old Testament?  When do we take time to understand the events that lead up to Christmas Day?  How do we understand why God required of Himself to condescend to become fully human if we do not understand the events of redemptive history that preceded that eventuality?

We do not know God.  We do not understand His Holiness.  We do not understand sin.  We do not understand death.  We do not understand righteousness.  We do not understand Salvation.  We do not understand that we have lost all of this knowledge.

And yet, it is there for us to read in printed form, the Word of God.  The lessons are there to be read.  The teachers exist who can lead us to understand the meaning of the Old Covenants.  The teachers exist who can lead us to understand the New Covenant in Christ.  The Scripture reveals all that we need to understand God, His Holiness, sin, death, righteousness and Salvation.  We need teachers who teach about Christ.

Therefore, Christmas, which many consider the beginning, is actuality the climax.  Christmas is the moment when God condescends to become man, to intervene on our behalf as one of us, to fulfill all of the Law and the Prophets.  Everything that comes afterwards is a necessary part of the drama that leads inexorably to Easter. 

Lent is a season before Easter that is about Atonement.  We have lost the meaning of Lent.  It has become the symbol of piety and pseudo-pious displays of deprivation, meant to impress each other rather than God.  Lent, instead could be a season to learn and understand about the Old Covenant symbolism, the types and shadows that will be fulfilled at Golgotha.  Lent might be an opportunity to learn about the Holiness of God and the complete desolation and death of sin, but it is an opportunity that we eagerly forgo for the opportunity to turn inward and focus on our own piety and righteousness, no longer realizing the emptiness of that gesture.

Easter is the holiday about which Christians seem to be most embarrassed.  In some circles, it is fashionable to celebrate Passover with Sadder suppers, never once focusing on the events of the first Passover outside of the lentils sealed by Lambs blood soaked hyssop branches.  Holy week so closely mirrors and yet completely outshines Passover that perhaps the close connections are hidden from us now.  The game of types and shadows that Christ plays with the whole of the Old Testament is broken into pieces so small, that all the king’s men cannot endeavor to put the story back together again.  The unbroken thread of redemptive history is tangled beyond recognition for all but the most diligent scholar, a game that used to be child’s play.

After Easter, we learn about Pentecost and the Ascension.  Instead of the vicarious substitutionary atonement, we get the substitutionary salvation and continuous special revelation, inwardly derived and superior to the antiquated written Word.  Perhaps, just maybe, Jesus had a higher view of the Word than this.  John calls Jesus the Word.  Perhaps the Word should be viewed with greater esteem that these later, nonscriptural, personal revelations, dreams and visions, inspired by spirits, no doubt, but doubtlessly not the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is described as the Helper, not the Savior.

We have that long season of the Trinity that links us to the last season of the Church calendar.  The Trinity are easily named by most, and easily explained by few.  Their relationship and their unity of substance is no longer considered a worthy topic for teaching, no longer relevant.  We do not need to know God to have a personal relationship with God.  We just jump right into “personal” relationship with the internal projection of what and who we think God should be, rather than who God reveals Himself to be through His Word and Sacraments.  The Trinity season, an opportunity to do so much of the background teaching, is instead lost in the American ritual of summer vacation, because we all know that God needs a holiday as well.

And finally, Advent ends the calendar.  After the long season of Trinity, that season that symbolizes this long period known as the Last Days, we come to Advent, the season about the Second Coming of Jesus, the season about the beginning of the Age to Come, the season about Revelation, Judgment and Salvation, the season about Resurrection and everlasting life.  Advent has become a shopping season rather than a season of learning about our certain future hope for Salvation through our faith in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ on the Cross and His Resurrection and Ascension, Firstborn from the Dead, Prophet, Priest and King.  Advent is the most Christian of seasons, and the most lost in our present evil age.

I had a year to remember.  I started a blog.  I ended a career and started another.  I began in earnest a process of learning that will continue for several years to come.  And yet, I can say today, that I am ready.  I will not be caught unawares by the thief in the night.  There is oil in the lamp and my best rags on my back.  You will find me, from time to time, here, under my bridge.  I will take time to teach, when the weary, wandering soul takes refuge here with me.  I will offer a rock or chair for sitting and a rock or bread for eating.  And I will teach.  There remains much for me to learn, but the gulf between where I was a decade past and now has become so vast, that I am certain that I was in good mind deciding to teach, and not wait for the conferment of credentials by man.  I will continue to teach.

The warnings of Peter (2 Peter 2:1) mean much to me now.  I understand their import and their gravity.  There is a responsibility with claiming the title of teacher.  Those who do not believe in judgment do not fear it, to their personal and particular peril.  Those who do not understand righteousness, do not fear judgment to their impending surprise, shock and bewilderment.  Those who understand righteousness and its source, have full and certain hope in the One who has declared them blameless before God, and they must teach.

2011 was a most interesting year.  2012 will be spectacular.

Maranatha!

Troll and Ogre