Recap: We have been answering a series of vexing questions regarding the doctrine of election and predestination. In the past several posts, we looked at three questions that often cause some "heartburn" for the non-Calvinist. We will be turning the tables in future posts and asking some questions that reveal the inconsistencies/contradictions in the Reformed/Calvinistic doctrine of election.
But first, I'd like to offer another short excerpt from my upcoming book, God's Elect: The Chosen Generation. The book (available at all the usual places) presents a non-contradictory, true-to-Scripture understanding of the New Testament doctrine of election that is neither Calvinistic nor Arminian. It is simply, well, biblical.
If you've been following my posts, you will know that I am not a Calvinist, nor an Arminian, nor a Traditionalist, nor a Provisionist, nor any other "-ist" that currently occupies the traditional thinking regarding God's doctrine of election. The fact that the debate over this doctrine has gone on for so many centuries without any resolve is testimony to the fact that the truth regarding God's purpose of election is still frustratingly misunderstood. I could be wrong too, but since the centuries of debate have not produced any consensus, I figured, what have we got to lose by considering a fresh perspective?
Before continuing, I highly recommend you take a moment and re-read Posts 1 thru 3. They will help put this post in context.
What Happened to God? (cont.)
The Final Straw
Yesterday upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away ...
- William Hughes Mearns
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously – Noam Chomsky
Very Strange
In the popular Netflix series, Stranger Things, there exists a parallel world, an “upside down world.” The upside-down world is similar in its general form to the real world of color and life, light and warmth, but it is dark and murky, filled with dread and despair. The upside-down world is ruled by a monstrous creature who enters the real world through a portal - a hole in the temporal fabric that separates the two worlds. The creature inhabits people, changing their genetic structure, making them part of a larger organism under the control of the monster. Of course, the monster is evil.
One of the solid rocks on which we stand in Christianity is that God cannot act contrary to his nature. God is love; he cannot do hate. God is light; he cannot do dark. God is just; he cannot do injustice. God is good; he cannot do evil. I suppose that God did not have to be this way. He could have been anything he desired but he chose to be true and faithful, merciful and gracious, patient and loving. He chose to be a God we can depend on, a God we can trust. If anyone’s god is contrary to these qualities, we must reject him. He is not the God of the Bible. If anyone’s doctrine promotes a god who is contrary to these qualities, we must reject it. The doctrine is sub-Christian.
We can call a doctrine in which God predetermines eternal misery for the vast majority of his creation, “loving”... but it’s not. We can claim that a doctrine in which God punishes people for the sins he determined for them to commit, “just”... but it’s not. We can deny that it’s a contradiction to say that “every choice we make is free and every choice we make is determined.”[i] We can even give it a fancy name like “compatibalism”, but it’s still a contradiction. And we can call a doctrine in which God is indistinguishable from the devil, a “doctrine of grace”... but it’s not.
The Upside-Down God
After several years in the Reformed church it seemed as if I had fallen through the mysterious portal of Calvinism into the “upside-down world” where nothing is as it seems, where contradictions abound and human beings are just part of a larger organism under the complete control of an evil monster named “God.”
This was the last straw for me. When the God who is revealed in the Bible becomes unrecognizable – or worse, a corruption and a horror – it was time to seek the truth. Somewhere in the Scriptures was a doctrine of election and predestination that reveals the real God; merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; a God who loves his creation such that he gave his only Son so that all of the “whosoevers” in the world – you and me, the inmates in the jails, my own son - would have a chance at eternal life in fellowship with him.
So, I concluded, after years of searching for understanding, that the god of Calvinism was not the God of the Bible. In the next chapter we’ll see how their god was born from a distortion of the beautiful, big picture of the gospel, the result of a very basic flaw in their perspective of the doctrine of election.
[i] R.C. Sproul, quote taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcyttnC6cjg, Ligonier Ministries, What is Free Will? Chosen by God.
To learn more, please consider picking up my book - God's Elect: The Chosen Generation
(also available on Kindle)
Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Elect-Generation-John-https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Elect-Generation-John- Chipman/dp/1632695723/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1507WZLOS9FHL&keywords=god%27s+elect+chipman&qid=1682632127&sprefix=god%27s+elect+chipman%2Caps%2C293&sr=8-1
(Also available at Barnes & Noble & Christianbook.com)
Next Post: We'll begin to take a closer look at Augustinian/Calvinism and we'll pose some perplexing questions that challenge the Calvinist perspective on the doctrine of election.
Here's a link to the next post:
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