Hypercalvinists

You thought they were an extinct bird, didn't you? Nope, they may be rare, but they exist, and the Baptist Board seems to have more than their fair share of them. Right now, I'm in a discussion with someone who doesn't believe in duty-faith. In other words, this person doesn't believe that the non-elect have a duty to believe, which is one of the classic hypercalvinistic beliefs.

Because they are rarish birds, the temptation is to ignore them. The problem in this case is that this hypercalvinist claims to be a Calvinist. Spurgeon, says he, is a "weak Calvinist", while he's the real sort. So there his posts stand, confirming all the suspicions about Calvinism that many noncalvinists already have, and it'd be a mistake to leave him unchallenged.

You don't know what hypercalvinists are? They come in different breeds, but here are two common signs of a true hypercalvinist:

• The denial that people have a duty to believe before they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and enabled to believe. This comes from the idea that God can't hold people responsible to do what they are unable to do. In this case, the argument is that the gospel calls people to believe that Christ died specifically for their sins, and since Christ only died for the elect, if people in general have a duty to believe the gospel, they are being held responsible to believe something that is a lie. Therefore, God cannot hold people responsible for not believing the gospel, since the gospel isn't true for them anyway.
  
• Based on the previous point, hypercalvinists deny that there is a universal call or offer in the gospel.
  

So that's where I was for a while this afternoon. There are some discussions I can take part in without much thought, because I know the various arguments inside, outside, upside down. This isn't one of those. I've never done this before and I've already made a couple of mistakes, but you are welcome to check things out anyway. I figure it'll be a learning experience.

In a related note, someone else in another Baptist Board conversation is arguing that God is the author of sin, and this time it isn't just a terminology thing. This man believes that God causes people to sin in exactly the same way that he causes people to do good: God is ". . . the Agent, or Actor of Sin, or the Doer of a wicked thing", to quote Jonathan Edwards. I'd comment in that one, too, but I can only handle one thread at a time.

Related post: The Authoring of Sin

Now It Comes Out

In the comments of Monday's post on the Baptist Board discussion I was participating in, I mentioned that

[w]hat really bothers me about the system being put forward in that thread is that it makes God unjust. People don't go to hell because God has just grounds for sending them there. After all, according to this theory, justice has been satisfied on behalf of every person

After I wrote that, I felt a little bit guilty, because although I could see that logically, this is where the so-called system was leading, it hadn't actually been said yet. Well, now it has. From the proponent the view under discussion:

Justice can condemn, but one can be condemned apart from any concept of justice as well. God has satisfied justice through His own sacrifice on our behalf. However, that is not the only way someone can be condemned, as the Bible clearly shows.

Well, yes, one can be condemned apart from any concept of justice, if the judge is an unjust judge.

By the way, this isn't typical universal atonement (You know, the unlimited side of the unlimited vs. limited atonement discussion!), which has God's justice satisfied potentially on behalf of every person, but only actually satisfied on condition of faith. Here's a short summary of the usual version of universal atonement, taken from this comparison chart.

Christ's redeeming work made it possible for everyone to be saved but did not actually secure the salvation of anyone. Although Christ died for all men and for every man, only those who believe on Him are saved. His death enabled God to pardon sinners on the condition that they believe, but it did not actually put away anyone's sins. Christ's redemption becomes effective only if man chooses to accept it.

Notice that universal atonement does not "actually put away anyone's sins", except as a person comes to faith. In that way, universal atonement does not have God condemning people who have no crimes counted against them. Neither does limited atonement, which has Christ's redeeming work putting away only the sins of his people. Limited vs. unlimited atonement is not the real issue here.

Update, March 1: No blogging today because I'm still working hard at this BB discussion. Leslie (see comments) took the time to read through the whole thing. As she says, there's some convoluted thinking there.

One example: In response to my statement that God can't condemn someone without just cause, we have this:

I’m sorry, but God can do what He wants.

I know a lot of people question the value of these sorts of discussions. I think that if you have the stomach for this sort of thing, and a rather thick skin, you can learn a lot from participating. At the very least, you'll solidify what you already know. When someone comes up with some rather novel idea, as in the case in this discussion, all the better, because you can't rely entirely on the apologetic work that others have done. When you have to develop the arguments yourself, you know what you know.

However, it's not for everyone, and it can be time consuming, which is why I began blogging and mostly gave up discussion boards. Blogging takes so much less time!

I've Been Amusing Myself

by participating in a discussion on the Baptist Board. This one's called atonement/justice and forgiveness, and the atonement theory put forward seems to be exactly the same one I posted about in the olden days when I first started blogging. So, of course, I couldn't pass the discussion by. (I go by russell55 on that board. At the time I signed up there, my first choices for name were taken, so that's my maiden name plus my birth year.)

In addition to being centered around an atonement theory I've already studied up on, this discussion is a rich source of the same kind of statements discussed in the series I posted recently called Thinking About Faith Alone and Christ Alone. (You can access all those posts from that link.) Here are some I could have added to the collection discussed there:

Man's sin is paid for in advance but, the condition [for salvation] isn't only having our sins paid for. You see that condition has been paid but, if there is no repentance and confession. The rest of the entire condition [for salvation] has not been met.

Can you see how this statement is a denial of Solus Christus, which affirms that what Christ did is sufficient for our salvation?

How about this?

Yet there is ONE sin that is UNPARDONABLE - Rejection of the Son - UNBELIEF

Yep, another denial of Solus Christus by the denial of the sufficiency of Christ's work. Christ's work was not sufficient grounds upon which the sin of unbelief could be pardoned.

Want more? The brackets in this one are original.

The atonement was done for all time for all in Christ Jesus. . . .

But since we did not sacrifice ourselves, thereby personally asking forgiveness, forgiveness became a different thing -- a personal thing. If not, then John would have never needed to say that if we confess our sins [then] He is faithful to forgive them. That is indeed an if/then proposition and not an accomplished fact on the Cross.

Christ's atonement, if this statement is true, is not sufficient grounds for forgiveness. We must add our confession to his work, thereby providing some of the grounds by which we are pardoned.

I could go on, but I won't. I have a life. At least I think I do.

Propitiation: What It Means, and Simpler Translation Possibilities

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post that brought up the subject of propitiation, but at that time, I didn't write anything about the meaning of the word propitiation because it wasn't necessary to do so in order to make the point of that particular post. Propitiation is a good word, but it's not one that's used in everyday language, is it? I'd be willing to bet that if you did street interviews asking random people to define propitiation, you'd go a long time before you found someone who could define it properly.

So what does it mean? It's a word that's used in some versions of the Bible in the translation of a family of Greek words: hilasmos and other words related to it. It may be that you use a translation that doesn't used the word propitiation at all, since many versions make other translational choices. Still, it's a good thing to understand what it means, at the very least in order to understand this facet of what Christ's death accomplished for us. Propitiation and the Greek words it translates have to do with turning away or appeasing anger. It has everything to do with dealing with anger or wrath, and in the New Testament, it's God's wrath that is being turned away or propitiated.

Propitiation is a personal word. Let me quote Leon Morris:

. . . [I]f we speak of propitiation we are thinking of a personal process. We are saying that God is angry when people sin and that, if they are to be forgiven, something must be done about that anger. We are further saying that the death of Christ is the means of removing the divine wrath from sinners.*

Despite the fact that it's a five syllable uncommon word, it's not really a difficult concept, is it?

There are scholars, as you might expect, who disagree that the words translated by propitiation must carry with them the idea of divine wrath, at least as far as the wrath of God refers to anything more than impersonal natural consequences of sin. I've read some of the arguments and I didn't find them very convincing. It seems the whole case rests, first of all, on the assumption that the wrath of God is not something personal, but rather an impersonal process of cause (in this case, sin) and effect (disasters and other things deemed to be sin's natural consequences). Then, given that assumption, examples are collected, from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) and other sources, where hilaskomai and other related words wouldn't necessarily have to carry the idea of wrath. All in all, without the assumption that God doesn't have personal wrath, it seems a rather weak argument. After all, just because a word might not need to carry an idea in a certain context doesn't mean that it doesn't carry that idea. You don't define words by what they might not mean in certain places.

If you take scripture seriously, it's hard to take seriously the assumption that God doesn't have personal wrath. Even in the New Testament, we find significant mention of God's wrath, and it certainly seems to be something more than just the natural or impersonal consequence of sin. Rather, God's wrath is frequently used–or so it would seem to me–in relation to God's personal action in response to sin. God is said, for instance, to give people over to the results of their sin, and the wrath of God is said to be revealed from heaven against unrighteousness (See Romans 1).

If you allow from the get-go that God has personal wrath against sin and sinners, then we need something that turns his wrath away from us. We need all those hilasmos related words to be propitiation, and nothing less than that. We don't need to use the exact word propitiation, but we need something that means it.

And I'm of the opinion that since propitiation isn't an English word that's commonly used, it's a good idea to have a few translations that use more common words to express the same idea. It's easy enough to say that everyone should just learn and remember what the word means, but not everyone will; and, for various reasons, not everyone does well with big uncommon words.

If we were to replace propitiation with something else in order to make things simpler to understand, what would be a good substitute? The word expiation isn't the best replacement for two reasons. First of all, I doubt that expiation is much clearer in meaning for most people than propitiation. Secondly, expiation doesn't mean exactly the same thing as propitiation, since it doesn't specifically have to do with turning away personal wrath. In fact, this particular substitute comes out of the argument that God's wrath is simply the impersonal natural consequences of sin.

In some translations, means of propitiation or propitiation in Romans 3:25 is replaced by mercy seat or sacrifice of atonement. Neither of these necessarily carry with them in the common understanding the idea of averting God's personal wrath, although technically, they probably do. But what they mean technically doesn't help when our goal is to have things stated in commonly understood language. Translations that talk about Christ taking away sin or being a sacrifice for sin aren't good replacements for propitiation in this verse, either, since they don't necessarily carry the whole meaning of propitiation, and understanding the whole deal is especially important when the context of the word is an argument for every single person being an object of God's wrath. My own favorite replacement for the difficult term means of propitiation in this verse is found in the footnotes of the NIV: the one who would turn aside his [God's] wrath.

Some wording similar to this would probably work in every place–there are only four of them–where propitiation is used in the New Testament. In Hebrews 2:17, where Christ, as priest, is said to make propitiation, we might say that he "turns away God's wrath." In 1 John 2:2, "he is the propitiation" could be "he is the one who turns away God's wrath." Same thing in 1 John 4:11: "the propitiation" becomes "the one who would turn away God's wrath."

I suppose, if you were a translator, you'd be hoping for a phrase with less words than this, but I can't think of a simpler way to do it without losing some of the meaning of the original language. What do you think? What word or words would you suggest to communicate the whole meaning of the original, which includes the idea of God's personal wrath against sin, without using the word propitiation? Or perhaps you'd prefer to always keep the word propitiation. If so, why not explain why you think that's the best option?

*Leon Morris, The Atonement: It's Meaning and Significance, page 152.

The Boxing of God

In a former life, I spent a lot of time on theology discussion boards. You don't have to be on discussion boards long before you realize that there are a few standard oft-repeated, but mostly meaningless, rebuttal phrases. The purpose of these particular sorts of rebuttals is to be such shocking accusations that no additional response is needed. I thought it would be interesting to consider a couple of them.

First up is the God in a box rebuttal. The discussion in which this phrase is used usually goes something like this: Someone makes a propositional statement about God that doesn't sit well with someone else, but instead of giving a reason that the statement about God is wrong, the person who disagrees trots out this all-purpose propositional-statement-about-God rebuttal, "You can't put God in a box like that!"

Of course, part of that statement is always right. We can't put God in a box. God is infinite, and our statements and ideas about him will never contain the whole of who he is. He is other, and in a category completely separate from us, and not exactly like anything we know or are able to experience. He is creator--the one who created us and created the box we exist in--and as boxees, we will never succeed at packaging the packager.

Nope, the problem with that rebuttal statement is not so much with the "You can't put God in a box" part, but with the "like that!" part. Sometimes those words are an objection to any definite statement about God, coming from the idea that God is so beyond us, so mysterious, that we can know nothing much truly true about him. Definite statements about God make some people really, really, nervous. They have the idea that since much of who God is is beyond the realm of our comprehension, any statement about him necessarily is false, in the sense that it reduces him to less than he is by attempting to contain an infinite God in a statement (or set of statements) about him.

More often than not, though, the objection isn't that we can know nothing about God, but that the particular statement doesn't jibe with the objector's idea of God. God, as they understand him, isn't "like that!"

Often this objection arises when someone says that God can't do something or must do something. Statements like this are seen as limiting God, and don't we all know that God is completely free? There are no rules or standards that God must conform his actions to, and no limitations on his abilities, so how can it ever be right to say that God can't or God must?

It is, of course, true that God is completely free. He's the only truly free being there is. Unlike any other being, he is entirely free to express himself, and if you think about it, that's what true freedom is, isn't it? It's when we can't "be ourselves" that we feel our freedom is restricted. But God has freedom to be himself in a way that no other being does. Absolutely nothing stands in the way of his self-expression, but it's himself he's expressing, and he isn't anyone-or-anything-at-all, he's someone. He has characteristics, so when he expresses himself, he expresses himself according to his characteristics, and that's not limiting, that's freedom.

And while it is correct to say that the whole of God is incomprehensible to us, there are things about him that we can understand, and there are some understandable things about himself that he's chosen to communicate to us, so it's not correct to think that we can know nothing truly true about him. While we can't box him up, he's given us hooks we can hang our hats on.

One of the most important hooks that God has given us is the hook of his immutability, because that characteristic ensures the constancy of the other characteristics. God's character is unchanging. He is who he is, and who he was, and who he will be, and he isn't going to morph into something or someone else tomorrow, or ever. If he tells us he is truthful, then he is always truthful. His immutability makes his truthfulness an everlasting hook to hang our hats on, too. It's because of this that we are not limiting God when we say he can't lie. We are not saying that there is a set of rules (including "don't lie!") outside of himself that he must always live up to, even though he feels like lying. Nope, we are affirming his perfect ability to be who he is, forever, freely; and to speak and act in accordance with who he is and what he wants, forever, freely.

Sometimes the God in the box objection comes in slightly different form, but it all boils down to the same idea. For example, in the first comment on this post at Jollyblogger, an objection is made to the idea of penal substitutionary atonement. The idea of a penal substitutionary atonement, says the commentor,

suggests that once the Father has made a law, that He is unable to subsequently be merciful until that law if fulfilled. That makes God's law more powerful than God.

If I understand the commenter correctly, her objection is to the idea that sin must always be given its just deserts, as if the just deserts for sin comes from a rule God set up outside of himself, and if he always has to go by his own rule, God is limited. This is really just another form of the God in a box objection--that any must or can't statements pertaining to God are limits to God's freedom. In this particular case, it isn't that God made a rule that he must always make sure sin receives what it deserves, but rather, that God exists as a God who is characteristically just. Expressing himself fully and freely means that he always gives justice to sin, and if he didn't he wouldn't be who he is. Therefore, he cannot simply pass over sin out of mercy for sinners, but his mercy must be given in a way that is also just.

Of course, there are things for which the objection of boxing God might rightly be made. Whatever limits we speak of in regards to what God can do, if they are not limits that arise directly from the specific characteristics he's revealed and explained to us through his word, then, in a sense, we are trying to put God in a box. If I were to tell you that God was confined to one place at one time, that'd be making God out to be less than he has revealed himself to be, and boxing him in that way. I still don't think that "You can't put God in a box like that!" is nearly as good a response as giving evidence that God has revealed himself to be a both a transcendent and immanent God.

Next up, the oft repeated rebuttal, "You're making God the author of sin!"

Definite Atonement and the Open Invitation of the Gospel

One objection some people have to the doctrine of definite atonement (a.k.a. limited atonement or particular redemption) is that they don't see how there can be a genuine free offer of the gospel if there is particularity in the atonement. The idea that the two things are incompatible comes, in part, from considering the atonement to be simply a commercial kind of transaction, the same sort of transaction I make when I go to the grocery store to buy groceries. If I buy 3 boxes of Cheerios, then I pay 3 times the price of one box. If I pay for my order, and then decide at the last minute that I need another box of Cheerios (my kids like them, okay?), I can't just slide that extra box by the cashier without paying more for it.

Those who raise this objection seem to consider the purchase made in the atonement to be much like my Cheerios purchase. The atonement is thought of as a certain quantity of atonement that has paid for a certain number of people, and if anyone were to be added to the number of those redeemed, then more atonement would have to be paid. Therefore, a genuine offer of forgiveness on condition of repentence cannot be made to those who are not among "the certain certified sinners"* for whom Christ died.

Charles Hodge answers this objection in his classic discussion of the extent of the atonement, For Whom Did Christ Die?, by reminding us that this is not payment that is "so much for so much", but payment by sacrifice:

The Scriptures teach that Christ saves us as a priest, by offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins. But a sacrifice was not a payment of a debt, the payment of so much for so much. A single victim was sometimes a sacrifice for one individual; sometimes for the whole people. On the great day of atonement the scape-goat bore the sins of the people, whether they were more or less numerous. It had no reference at all to the number of persons for whom atonement was to be made. So Christ bore the sins of his people; whether they were to be a few hundreds, or countless millions, or the whole human family, makes no difference as to the nature of his work, or as to the value of his satisfaction. What was absolutely necessary for one, was abundantly sufficient for all.

In other words, it's not really the number of people that counts, but the relationship of those people to Christ. Christ represented the people or his brethren in the propitatory sacrifice he made before God (see Hebrew 2:17). The sacrifice made would serve as propitiation for all of the people, no matter how many or few they were, but would not be propitiation for anyone outside of that represented group.

If you need to think of it as a commercial transaction, then think of it as something like a buying a lifetime family pass to the zoo. The pass will admit anyone in the family. If a family has 2 children, the pass will work for the parents and the children of that family. A family of 15 can also enter the zoo on the same sort of family pass. They don't pay more because they are larger. If a family who starts out with 2 children were to adopt 7 more, they wouldn't have to purchase more passes. This pass, however, won't work for the next door neighbour's child, because neighbour children are not covered by that one family pass. The pass works for all those of a certain relationship, not for a certain maximum number.

The invitation of the gospel is an invitation to be adopted into the family--to become part of the group that holds the pass. This group is open to absolutely anyone who responds in faith to the invitation of the gospel. And anyone who believes--who is adopted into that family group--has already been atoned for when Christ stood before God and represented his brethren.

The pass doesn't apply to those who never believe, who are not part of Christ's brethren, and who remain always outside of this represented group. This absence of a pass for those who are never united to Christ is not because the one pass that exists would not work for them if they were to become one of the brothers or sisters of Christ, but because they remain outside the particular group (Christ's brethren) for whom the pass was purchased.

This is what is meant by the phrase "sufficient for all, efficient for the elect". The one sacrifice is sufficient for any number of people--Spurgeon says even "ten worlds"--and would work for ten worlds worth of people if that many were to be united with Christ. It is, however, efficient only for those who are actually united with Christ. The call of the gospel is simply a call to be united with Christ through faith, and anyone who answers that call has been atoned for by the one representative sacrifice of Christ.

By the way, the belief that a definite atonement and a free offer of the gospel are incompatible is not exclusive to those who don't adhere to the doctrine of definite atonement. There are also a few who affirm definite atonement; and then, based on how they percieve definite atonement, conclude that there is no free offer of the gospel. In both cases, it seems that the root of the objection is the idea that the atonement is the payment of "so much for so much".

*The phrase "certain certified sinners" is one that I've heard bandied about by those who oppose the doctrine of definite atonement. I'm not sure anyone arguing for definite atonement has ever actually used that phrase. Perhaps they have; I just haven't read or heard it.

[I already linked to Jollyblogger's article on limited atonement. Adrian Warnock has one as well.]

[Update: Tim illustrates particular redemption from another angle.]

[Update 2: Also dealing with this specific objection, but in a different way, is Crusty Curmudgeon.]