From the Desk of the Editor...

Explanation

For this parable posted the other day.

It’s about Calvinist election and any belief system that uses it, and highlights my major issue with it.  Namely, it teaches an unjust God.

Consider the argument for a moment.  According to Calvinist election (and I say it that way because multiple systems use a form of election, though Calvinism is the most extreme and the one commonly associated with the term), mankind is entirely depraved, devoid of any good, and incapable of recognizing or appreciating the offer of salvation.  Which actually raises a number of questions, but we’ll try to focus on a specific scope for now.  As such, mankind is not capable of freely accepting grace.  Therefore, God must choose those who will be saved and those who will not, and being as powerful as He is, once His choice has been made it is impossible for humans to resist Him.  The problem here is that, while all of these aspects are based on teachings from the Bible, the end result stands in direct opposition to what it teaches.  I’ll explain why when we get there.

Mankind is fallen and flawed, according to the Bible.  We have become corrupted and bear inherent sin.  But is that the same as saying that we are only corruption, only flaws, only sin?  No.  It does mean that we will break the Law, that we are no longer perfect and must be renewed in order to stand before a perfect God, and that we are not worth the price Christ paid on the cross.  But it doesn’t mean that there is nothing good left in us, that there is no spark of God’s image still carried by us, or - and most notably for the current discussion - that there remains no desire in us to know the God we were created to be in communion with.

Because that’s really the core issue with the Total Depravity argument: are we sufficiently fallen that we no longer have any desire to know God or ability to recognize our own fallen state?  This argument may be less clear in the Bible than one would expect (the God-shaped hole argument, for instance, isn’t actually found in the Bible but comes from later attempts to describe Biblical ideas), but even from a purely sociological perspective this claim doesn’t hold water.  Mankind has, in every culture throughout history, felt compelled to not only believe in deities well beyond our own scope, but to seek to appease or contact the divine.  Even when this drive gets corrupted into an attempt to control the divine, there seems to be an aspect to the majority of world religions over time where its adherents understand that there are beings more powerful than themselves that they ought to appease but never seem capable of doing quite right or for quite long enough.  Even atheists argue a moral standard that no one quite attains.  Mankind, it seems, is not too fallen to realize its flaws.  And I know of nothing in the Bible to contradict this observation.  Even the verses that describe us as being enslaved to sin don’t fully deny this - after all, to say that it does is to say that there is no such thing as a slave that would accept freedom if offered it.

Free will doctrine does not deny that God must initiate the means of salvation.  We are not capable of attaining it ourselves, and only works-based soteriology says differently (which is not supported by the Bible, anyway).  Again, however, saying that man cannot initiate is not the same as saying man cannot participate.

Which brings us around to the matter of justice.  One of the big issues with Calvinists is the preservation of God’s sovereignty*; that is, we cannot teach something which undermines our acceptance that God has full power and opportunity to do whatever He wishes regardless of our opinion of it.  Which is mostly true.  There is one limitation placed on God in the Bible - He cannot deny His own nature.  He has certain attributes, and is incapable of altering those or going against them.  One of the attributes of God listed in the Bible is that He is a righteous, trustworthy, just judge.  Which means that, of we are to avoid heresy, our description of Him better not contradict this (or any other, for that matter) aspect of who He is.  Which brings us back around to the initial claim, that Calvinist election teaches an unjust God.

All Christians, Calvinist or not, must at least agree on the foundations of this discussion.  That is, there is a God, He has established a series of rules known collectively as the Law, and mankind has a fallen nature that was not part of the initial design but nonetheless ensures that none of us are capable of going an entire lifetime without breaking at least one tenet of the Law.  This Law, like all others, comes with a penalty for being broken, which in this case is death and eternal separation from God (I have heard the arguments for a temporary separation from God, but they are lacking and have no Biblical foundation, so for the purpose of this discussion it will be treated as a nonissue).  The price for our sin has been paid by Christ in His death and resurrection.  That’s the basics, so we’ll start from there.

The primary issue of contention is how Christ’s atonement is applied.  Given that mankind doesn’t deserve atonement, the options get a bit limited.  Either it gets applied universally, it gets applied to no one, or it gets applied on an individual basis with some specific criteria.  The first is directly contradictory to scripture and would presuppose a God who does not value justice at all, so that gets tossed out.  The second would make Christ’s death pointless, and contradicts the Biblical claim that salvation is possible, so it doesn’t fit.  All we have left is a case-by-case basis with specific criteria.  As discussed, the Bible does not allow for works-based salvation, so the criteria cannot be that we earn atonement through our own effort.  Which basically leaves us with free will doctrine, which states that atonement is available universally but only applied to those who accept it; and election doctrine, which states that atonement is only available to selected individuals chosen by God and is then applied universally among the chosen demographic.

Let’s assume for the moment that election is the actual system.  What criteria could God use that would maintain His just nature?  Who are the elect?  The problem that arises here for Calvinist election is that if God chooses the elect based only on His will - that is, there is actually nothing distinctive between those chosen for Heaven and those chosen for Hell - then the system is inherently unjust and arbitrary.  One could appeal to God’s ultimate sovereignty and absolute omniscience, but these are irrelevant.  The ability to know everything will not reveal differences in two individuals if no such differences exist.  In order to maintain justice, God must have an actual difference between those chosen for atonement or damnation.  Selection without basis is contrary to His nature.

The two remaining options for election, then, are inherent distinctions or acquired distinctions.  But the only distinction that works within the framework of the Biblical Law is who has avoided sin entirely and who has not.  Only God Himself can fully avoid sin, which means that inherent distinction is only applicable to Jesus Christ.  So the salvation of everyone else cannot rely on their own inherent difference.  It must be acquired, which is what Christianity teaches anyway - we have been given the righteousness of Christ to be cleansed of our sin and come into a relationship with God.  But if God chooses who to give righteousness to and who not to, we end up back at the same problem as the previous paragraph.  It cannot be given by anyone else, because only God is capable of offering salvation.  The only remaining option, then, is that God makes it available without distinction and individual humans must find a way to acquire it - which can only really be through an acceptance through free will, or effort to earn it.  And effort to earn it is contrary to scripture.

Therefore, the only system that both avoids contradicting scripture and avoids contradicting the nature of God is free will doctrine.  No other system manages to survive scrutiny that demands both scriptural basis and adherence to God’s unchanging nature.  Make no mistake, there are scriptures that adherents to Calvinist election can point to - but in the context of the entire Bible, the proposed interpretation of them doesn’t fit and therefore cannot be maintained.

*- The sovereignty of God is an important issue and should not be downplayed.  However, free will doctrine maintains it just as well as Calvinist election does.  What I mean by this is that the availability of salvation and God’s role in it is entirely decided by Him either way.  In Calvinist election, He chooses who will be saved; in free will, He chooses to make the offer open and has chosen to accept and redeem any who accept the offer.  He remains sovereign in all instances.