Christian Carnival CLXXXI

The most recent Christian Carnival, a collection of current posts on Christian thought, is posted at Mere Orthodoxy. Matthew cleverly put together a little poem for each post, and the one for my new Earth post is:

Water becomes wine,
Science says that’s fine,
But cannot register an opinion.
The earth begins from nothing,
Due to God’s speaking,
where science finds its limits.


Check it out!

New Earth Creation

The year is 27AD. There is a celebration of a marriage in the town of Cana, in the Galilee region. One of the guests is a relatively unknown fellow who has attended with his mother, Mary. His name is Jesus of Nazareth.

During the festivities, a problem arises – the host of the wedding celebration has forgotten to have enough wine on hand for the party. Unless something happens fast, the host will be embarrassed and the party will be remembered as a failure. Discerning that her son can somehow do something about this, Mary tells her son that there is a problem. Jesus is not particularly receptive to her suggestion that he just ‘do something’. However, his mother ignores his reaction and instead tells the head servant to ‘do whatever he tells you to do’. The servants follow Jesus’ order, and where once water had been, wine now stood – the best wine at the wedding, to the amazement of many.

As we encounter the work of God in his miracles, in his actions taken and the results that follow that only he can do, we are faced with a question directly applicable to our creation dilemma: What scientific test could we perform that would tell us that the wine now in the jars was water only 60 seconds ago? What could we do to the wine to tell us of its sudden appearance, in apparent defiance of everything we know about how wine is created?

The answer is simple – nothing. There is no scientific test that would show that the wine was created instantly. There is no scientific test that would show that the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years was healed instantly. There is no method we could use to show how Jesus made a blind man see instantly. In every case, God spoke, and it happened immediately, and not only could we not show that it was so after the fact, but we also cannot show that each was ever broken in the first place, or that it was the word of God that did the healing.

“Young Earth” creationism is the same. Some have claimed that God making a creation that seems older than it is would be an example of God being deceptive in some fashion. Laying aside the inherent (necessary) foolishness of the assumption of universality – that, for example, the amount of Carbon-14 in a living organism now is the same as it would have been 1 million years ago – there is no more deception in a creation we can’t prove its age than the same problem with the water and the wine.

In fact, I am far more likely to assume that our failure to “prove” a young earth creation from science is answered better by the Scriptures than by science. “For God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised has God chosen, yea, and the things which are not, to bring to naught the things which are – that no man may glory in his presence.” (1 Cor 1:27-29)

Jeremy has said that to believe that the earth is young, in the face of scientific ‘evidence’ to the contrary, is completely irrational. While Jeremy is a theologian of the highest degree, I would differ slightly. I would say that it may be foolish, but that it is also an expression of humility that recognizes my limitations compared to the God who the heavens cannot contain, whose works defy all the wisdom of men. While both the old and new earth theories I’ve described fit a historical view of Scripture, I will stick with a new earth theory that affirms that “evening and morning was the first day”.

Old Earth Creation

As mentioned previously, to believe in theistic evolution - that God used evolution to create man - requires a previous commitment to an age of the earth that is old enough to allow this evolution to occur. If the earth is this old, it is essentially impossible to believe that the creation account is a literal six-day event, because a six-day creation has man in existence only five days after the creation of the heavens.

Old-earth theory was essentially unknown until the advent of evolutionary theory. As evolution became culturally popular, theologians tried to find ways to make the reading of Genesis 1 fit evolutionary theory. One attempt was the "gap" theory, which proposed that there is a very long time gap between Genesis 1:1-2 and the rest of Genesis 1 - between the creation of the earth itself and the creation of life forms. There often is an expansion that explains that there was a completely formed heaven and earth, but something catastrophic, such as the fall of Satan from heaven, led to the destruction of the earth, leaving it without form and void. My Scofield reference Bible has this explanation.

Another effort is the literary framework method, explained by Jeremy in the link in the last post. This essentially says that the framework of the text is poetic, indicating a section that is not intended to be read literally, and thus its point is not intended to be historically accurate, but instead to demonstrate that there was a logical order to the pictures of creation given to Moses by God.

A third effort is age-day theory. This explanation posits that the Hebrew word transliterated "yom" that we translate to "day" does not always mean a 24-hour day, but can mean simply an unspecified period of time. As that is completely true, it has some exegetical value behind it that the other two do not. Yet what has been a struggle for me in accepting this theory is an exegetical reason in that passage that would lead us to beleive that the intent of the author was to read anything other than a 24-hour day for "yom".

However, recently I was presented with such a proximate exegetical reason...the seventh day. The Scriptures read that "So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Gen 2:3)"

What did He rest from? He rested from creating. So, if on the seventh day God rested from creating, when did he stop resting from creating? Has he begun creating again? I don't think so. If God's rest from creating the heavens and the earth ended on the seventh day, and he has not begun creating the heavens and the earth again, could it not be the seventh day still? And, if we are not aware of when this end of creation began, may it be that the "days" are very long periods of time to us?

What do you think?

Creation, Evolution, and Theology

It's a grand sounding title, but the coverage will be limited. Two and a half years ago I wrote a series of posts about evolution, concluding here.

My position hasn't changed from what is stated - your stance on evolution does not have an impact upon your spiritual condition. What has changed is this - why you have your stance speaks volumes about your spiritual condition.

While Jeremy posted one of the better defenses of old-earth theory, a required component of theistic evolution I have seen here, based upon literary styles, I found it still pretty unconvincing. I don't deny the presence of poetic elements, I simply acknowledge (and I'm guessing Jeremy does, too) that they do not demand a rejection of a more literal interpretation of the days as days. (I do think the whole 'sevens' issue is of little value to the argument).

Yet, in recent months I have come across the two most compelling arguments for both old-earth and new-earth creationism. Stay tuned and decide for yourself!

Free Will III

How can it be that we are free to do what we want, yet God remains in control?

There are several example of how this works – how a man can do the very thing God intends him to do, yet the same man is condemned for it.

First, it is easy to see that we are condemned for our sins. Malachi 3:5 is one of literally hundreds of instances of declaration of future judgment for people’s sins.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

How does this apply when the person is explicitly doing what God intends? In the previous posts Robert mentioned Joseph and his suffering prior to gaining high office in Egypt.

So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. (Gen 45:4-8)

Here, in the quote Robert selected, we see that God is the author of Joseph’s life story. Robert mentioned that this excludes the culpability of the brothers, because, “it was not you who sent me here, but God.” Yet Joseph’s testimony about the situation doesn’t end in chapter 45.

But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (Gen 50:19-20)

What is seen in Joseph’s clarification is the crux of my position – that we do what we intend out of our desires. Here, Joseph’s brother’s, out of their own evil desires, wish to get rid of their brother and sell him into slavery. Yet, this very act, which they meant for evil, is exactly what God wills for good. The result of the divergent desires is the same – Joseph goes to Egypt – yet it is clear that their intentions and God’s intentions are far from each other. They have done exactly as they wanted to do, but the action that occurs is also exactly what God wanted them to do.

Another prime example is Assyria’s destruction of Israel as foretold by Isaiah. Note the clear proclamation of what will happen, who is making it happen, who is culpable and why they are culpable:

Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Is 10:5-6

But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few;…When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes. For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I remove the boundaries of peoples, and plunder their treasures; like a bull I bring down those who sit on thrones. (Is 10:7, 12-13)

Assyria executes God’s righteous judgment upon Israel, but the King of Assyria will be punished for it. Why? Not because he fulfilled God’s will, but because the desires of his heart were evil. He is culpable for his evil desires, thoughts and words.

So, it can be easily seen that a man’s desires are different from God’s desires, yet the very acts taken will be God’s desires. How can this be? In a previous post, John mentioned that I painted all Arminians with the same brush (and I do), yet there is a small group of Arminians who have figured it out – Molinists.

God has complete and exhaustive divine foreknowledge. Let’s call that a given, to avoid a lengthy proof. He not only knows everything that has and will happen, but he also knows everything that can possibly happen (example: Matt 11:21-22), which is called middle knowledge. While we are responsible for our own desires, God knows how we will react in any given situation and can manipulate the environment, experience and just about anything else such that our desires lead to the choice he wants us to make. I believe (thought I don’t have a Scriptural specific detail, just inference) that God can even make us consider something in our minds before we make the decision.

Look at the confrontation between Moses (God) and Pharaoh. Initially, Pharaoh hard heart tended to be self-driven. However, after six plagues, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. How he does this we do not know, but it is not God directly creating the desire for Pharaoh. Pharaoh was not a repentant or graceful man, and his natural pride, arrogance and hubris was used against him. Perhaps God encouraged advisers to whisper about what the people would think if Pharaoh caved in, or perhaps God gave Pharaoh that kind of concern directly. God manipulated the environment, internal and external, to glorify His name.

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.” But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just. (Rom 3:3-8)

There are none righteous, no, not one. Our condemnation is just, because God is just. We cannot claim we are not culpable because if we were not culpable, it would be unjust for us to be punished. We cannot appeal to “Who can resist his will?”, because we are responsible for our evil intents.

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ ” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”(Rom 9:14-26)

Free Will II

Arminians and Hyper-Calvinists share a definition of free will I previously called libertarian freedom. This freedom, simply defined, would be: the freedom to do, in any given situation, any action or lack of action. That is, one can choose to do something or not to do that something in any situation. For example, if a person is asking me to tell them some information about troop locations, I can choose to tell them or not. No matter what the pressures, tortures, etc may be that are thrust upon me, I am free to tell or not to tell as I will. This is libertarian free will – a free will the Arminian claims we have, and a free will the hyper-Calvinist claims we do not have.

Yet I also would claim we do not have this “free will”, because I hold it does not exist and has never existed – not because it is intentionally not present in creation, but because it ignores something we all agree we have – inclination. This free will would demand not only that I can do anything in any situation, but that I might actually do anything. It holds that I, as I sit with a man next to me on the bus, could decide to pull out my .38 and shoot him dead on the spot. With this freedom to do anything, I am just as likely to do this as not, actually. For if I am free to do it, and not restricted, why wouldn’t I? “Libertarian Free Will” s actually what I will hereafter call “freedom of indifference”. Because it holds that we can do anything at any time, it is indifferent to the situation and inclination.

What is it that prevents me from putting a fist through my monitor right now? It is simple – I don’t want to. In fact, in almost every situation in life, I am neither going to want to shoot a man on the bus next to me, nor put my fist through my computer. And thus, I will not. So, this freedom cannot be – I must not be free to do this act, because I don’t want to.

You who read are free, right now, to dump a glass of water on your keyboard as you read. But you won’t, right? So how can you be free to do it, if you won’t? You see, your inclination in the situation drives your decision completely. Thus you are not free to do anything, but you are certainly free to do what you want to do, which while it may vary from ceasing to read this post to continuing, will not include pouring water on the keyboard. Of course, you may decide to “prove me wrong” and pour water on your keyboard, but at that point, hasn’t your inclination changed? Isn’t what you most want to do to prove me wrong?

You have discovered the freedom I claim we have – not freedom of indifference, a random, who-knows-what-I-might-do-next freedom, but a freedom of inclination. You are free to do exactly what you most want to do. Here’s another example: You are strongly opposed to stealing. In most situations, you will not steal. Yet your mother is kidnapped by some criminals who tell you that you must participate in a robbery or she will die, so you do. In both cases, you do exactly what you most want to do – in the first you refuse to steal, in the second your inclination to preserve your mother’s life is greater than your inclination against stealing, and you most want her to live, so you steal.

This is compatibilist freedom, a freedom that recognizes that you do in every instance exactly what you most want to do. Right now I have no chance of willfully chopping off my hand – none. Thus, I am actually not free to chop it off! Yet a freedom of indifference would demand that I am as likely to chop off my hand as not.

The Arminian is committed to freedom of indifference, and because of his desire that it exist, he denies that God wills us to commit any act. Freedom of indifference is something the hyper-Calvinist thinks free will is, and (rightfully) denies it exists. He recognizes that God is sovereign, and thus we cannot have as likely a chance of doing something as not doing it. Thus, he concludes, that we are not free at all. The consequences of this are completely logical. If I am not free, whatever I do must be what I am supposed to do, and I am not responsible for my actions. If God is sovereign in his election, I don’t need to obey Christ’s commands to go and tell – and in fact, when I don’t, it is because God wills I don’t, and thus I am not accountable.

It is completely logical – yet it misses something. The hyper-Calvinist does not want to obey. He does not want to evangelize. So in both cases, he is not merely doing what God wills – he is doing what he himself wills – and we can certainly agree that my will and desires are not conformed to be exactly what God’s are!

Think about it – Jesus condemns us not for committing adultery, but for lusting in our hearts. We are condemned for our inclinations that lead to our actions, not our actions. We are condemned for our unbelief, not our failure to say the right words. We are condemned for our failure to love God and our neighbor, not because we didn’t do something for God or our neighbor. Of course, when we commit those sins of action and inaction, we commit them because they are exactly what we most want to do.

It may sound odd, but I believe it makes perfect sense. Furthermore, I hold that it is entirely Scriptural. With the next post I will demonstrate its Scriptural basis – so I ask commenters to try to hold back on demanding that until then.

Free Will

“God wants you to love him, and you can’t be forced to love someone, so you are free to choose to love God or not.”

If you’ve been around people who claim to be Christians and discussed the relationship between God and man, you’ve heard that idea. There is truth and falsehood in that proposition. I would agree that it is true that God wants all to come to Him and is willing that none should perish. I would also agree that you can’t “force” someone to love you. I would even agree that we are, technically, free to choose to love God or not. Yet, despite my concurrence with each of those propositions, I would hold that you, while being free, are completely unable to love God without His action, and once He has taken action, there is no possibility of you doing anything but loving Him.

By agreeing that we are free to choose to love God are not, I side with Arminians, who essentially believe that our salvation is of our own choice, not God’s action. Yet, by holding that we cannot love God unless he supernaturally and specifically moves us in His direction as individuals, I side with the hyper-Calvinists. How can this be? In a nutshell, I stand against both the hyper-Calvinists and the Arminians in their shared definition of freedom.

I described Arminianism here, so I won’t do so in detail again. Simply put, if you believe that you can, of your own volition with or without a prompting by God – a prompting which can be refused – choose salvation in Christ, you are an Arminian in general. Hyper-Calvinism, which many confuse with historical Calvinism, needs more explanation.

Since I also defined historical Calvinism (also known as historical Christianity!) here, I’ll point out what the fundamental differences are between it and hyper-Calvinism. Hyper Calvinism agrees with Calvinism in the sovereignty of God and the five Solas of the reformation. The two areas it differs most significantly are:

1) Its stand against evangelism and missions. As a hyper-Calvinist once told Andrew Fuller, “If God is going to save the heathen, he can do it without any help from you or me!” Hyper-Calvinists not only do not believe in focused evangelism in general, but if they are intellectually honest (which many are) they do not even believe in evangelization of their loved ones. Committed to the Scriptural picture of God as the author and finisher of our faith, the hyper-Calvinist trusts God to do the work He will do, and considers himself completely abdicated of responsibility to go and disciple.

2) The logical progression of this idea results in an abdication of personal responsibility, followed by an almost inexorable slide to antinomianism (a rejection of any moral law). It isn’t that the hyper-Calvinist is not a moral person with ethical stands, but because they rightly believe in the sovereignty of God in all things, they also believe that whatever they do is scripted by God and therefore they need not feel any responsibility to obey God’s precepts if for some reason they conflict with something else important in their lives. After all, if God is in control, if He would have wanted me to obey his command in this instance, I would have done it. After all, who can resist His will?

These stands may seem bizarre, but in many ways, they are completely intellectually honest – because of the hyper-Calvinist’s belief in libertarian freedom. The Arminian and the hyper-Calvinist bold hold to the definition of free will as libertarian freedom: the Arminian contends we possess it, and the hyper-Calvinist contends we do not. The historical Calvinist instead defines free will as compatibilist free will, or freedom of inclination. In the next post I will define both of these ideas and describe why they lead to the results they do. In the third and last post I will demonstrate the support for compatibilist freedom as well as propose a mechanism for God’s sovereignty in it.