Recap: Last week we took a well-deserved break to remind ourselves that, although God wants us to "love knowledge", "incline our hearts to understanding", and "call out for insight", we should not neglect God's command to seek rest in him.
Error
Urban myth has it that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water it will instantly leap out. But if you put it in a pot filled with pleasantly tepid water and gradually heat it, the frog will remain in the water until it boils to death. Allegedly, the frog is not able to detect the gradual increase in temperature until it's too late. For the record, this is not scientifically true, but it can be a useful analogy for human behavior.
In a similar way, I believe that much of the error with regard to the gospel comes from a slow, steady, sequence of missteps that usually begins with a false premise, follows a path of logic based on the false premise, and ends with a false doctrine, a corruption of the character of God and/or the nature of the gospel message. What makes us so vulnerable to this pattern is, like the frog in the slowly heating water, the step-by-step progression of the logic subtly coaxes us down a wayward path, so subtle that it leaves us unable to detect that we have veered from the path of truth. However, even well-reasoned logic presented by an eloquent expositor, when constructed on a faulty foundation - a bad premise - will necessarily produce error, yet, it can have the seductive power to slowly, methodically, convincingly lead us astray, nodding our heads in agreement until the eventual false conclusion leaves us far from the truth and with no alternative argument. "It must be true," we say of the false doctrine.
If the error is inconsequential with regard to the nature of God or the truth of the gospel, so what? But if the error distorts the character of the God we worship, and/or the truth of the gospel we trust, we need to be concerned. I believe that while traditional non-Calvinism gets some of the details wrong, it conveys a true biblical vision of the nature of God and the essence of the gospel. With regard to the nature of God, it presents a beneficent God - "merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Psalm 103:8 ESV) - who "takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Eze 33:11 ESV) and "who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4 ESV). And with regard to the gospel, the non-Calvinists believe in the biblical truth that Jesus came to save the world, not just a chosen few (John 12:48).
On the other hand, Calvinism, because of a false premise, corrupts both the character of God and the truth of the gospel. As a reminder, here is the basic Calvinistic understanding with regard to election:
“All (people) are not created on equal terms.”[i] God, from before the foundation of the world, divided all people into two groups; those he chose to save (the elect), and those who were not chosen to be saved (the non-elect/reprobate). God’s choice was not based on anything in the person, including foreseen faith. The elect will go to heaven. The non-elect will go to hell. God’s election is unconditional and final. [i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, paragraph 5
The false premise? - the unscriptural belief that from before the foundation of the world, God divided all of mankind into two groups. There is no biblical support for such a position. Although not addressing Calvinism directly, D. Martin Lloyd-Jones crystallizes the concern regarding a gospel built on a faulty foundation in his book The Kingdom of God:
How does it come to pass that, with open Bibles before them, men and women should be wrong not so much about certain details with respect to the Gospel, but about the whole thing, about the very essence of the Gospel?... it is indeed very surprising that... men and women should still be all wrong about what the Gospel is; wrong about its foundation, wrong about its central message, wrong about its objective and wrong about the way in which one comes into relationship with it.
Sophistry
The potential damage caused by error in doctrine is compounded when it is cloaked in religious sophistry. Many religious scholars are really good at "spinning" passages and manipulating words and their definitions to support whatever interpretations they are trying to convince us of. And while I don't believe that the majority of biblical interpreters distort the truth with intentional malice, the apostle Paul warns of such tactics and defends his own plain, simple speech:
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. (1 Corinthians 1:17 ESV)
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. (1 Corinthians 2:1 ESV)
For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:17 ESV)
I want to emphasize that I do not doubt the honorable intentions of most expositors on both sides of the argument regarding the doctrine of election. The vast majority, I believe, are seeking to truly understand and convey accurately the word of God. Yet, we should always be on the alert for "lofty speech" and "words of eloquent wisdom" in all theological discussions.
The control of the lexicon is a powerful tool in concealing or masking error - even unintentional error. In many discussions regarding the doctrine of election, even the definitions of common Christian staples like "grace", and "faith" and "sovereignty" and "glory" are often subtly manipulated to support and defend incorrect theological positions.
In the upcoming posts we'll look at some of these issues in detail. There is a tried-and-true hermeneutical principal which maintains that we must allow "Scripture to interpret Scripture" and that the meaning of biblical passages should be based on the original intent of the writer, avoiding any manipulation that "bends" the meaning to fit a preconceived understanding.
George Orwell said it best when he warned that such manipulation is "designed... to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Next Post: For the next several posts we will begin to build a foundation of Christian doctrine based on the unmanipulated word of God. We'll challenge some common traditional understandings about God and about us. In the next post we'll explore the holiness of the God we worship. Here's a link to the next post:
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