Well, Paidion, it also shows that Calvinists are not always in agreement (just like universalists, etc.) - as I shall demonstrate.
In fact, this first cartoon, illustrates a universal truth. If you put 2 folks, from a particular group (i.e. theologians, philosophers, universalists, etc.), into a room - guess what? You have 3.7528 opinions and growing.
Let’s look at what Calvinist, Matt Slick (as contrasted to the Calvinist, Got Questions response), has to say at:
As Paidion has pointed out here, in Joe’s perverted mind, he is doing a “good” thing. He gets a pair of shoes for himself without having to work and pay for them.
I think God is an unchanging Daddy of love. I realize that not everyone shares this perception of Him; but I think that anything else is either ignorance, or deception. God in Three Persons is only, ever, kind and good.
Anytime the sacred Scriptures seem to assign anything less than perfect goodness to our Creator Daddy, the human mediator was, in that instance, ‘seeing through a glass, darkly.’ The Bible is only part of a progressive revelation of the goodness of God in Christ; this revelation continues and increases forever.
I have come out of Arminianism, which believes that, through poor performance, a genuine Christian can lose his salvation, and go to a never-ending hell of torture. (And I don’t buy trying to dress it up, and saying that the people who are in hell will choose to reject God forever;* that with clear understanding* they will simply prefer to stay there…for eternity.)
Equally egregious to me is Calvinism, with its idea of limited atonement, and that God has predestined some people for (again) a never-ending torture chamber.
These, to me (finally) are evil misunderstandings about God’s true nature; people are sometimes confusing their friend, God, with their enemy, Satan. To quote Thomas Talbott:
God doesn’t deceive, or perpetuate any evil. Satan does.
I disagree with charismatic Calvinist John Piper, in the “comfort” he gives his young daughter. After a terrible bridge collapse in Minneapolis, here is his bedtime discussion concerning this “decision” of God, with Talitha (11):
Again, where is Satan in this discussion? Where is the exhortation to resist and fight him, with spiritual weapons? Should we use our influence to set up people to be victimized and defrauded by the destroyer? Should we continue to perpetuate the idea that God actually wants bad things to happen? I say, NO! God has disallowed all evil in Christ; we must receive and apply the victory of that finished work.
Christ was fully obedient. We take thoughts captive to his obedience; to his finished work of victory over darkness and death.
God doesn’t bless us because of our obedience, but because of Christ’s obedience. We can’t earn or deserve these blessings, only freely receive, and gratefully share. But that strikes against religiosity and performance, and the “lesser reality” law of sowing and reaping.
But the “greater reality” of grace and mercy trumps the law of sowing and reaping.
Grace: getting for free what you don’t deserve, and didn’t earn. Mercy: not getting the bad consequences of what you do deserve, and did earn.
As to the question of morality (good vs. evil), I identify morality with subjective religion, more than with God. There were two trees in the Garden:
-The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—which represented the exit sign from depending on God, and following taskmaster and legalist Satan, and,
-The Tree of Life—who is Jesus, who has everything we need for life and godliness, for free.
We must each choose which tree we will live in.
Qaz, I haven’t read that book by Brad Jersak, but I know he believes in a nonviolent God like me–although he and I may disagree about the ontology of Satan. I think he’s great. After all, he published my all-time favorite article, “SATAN: Old Testament Servant Angel or New Testament Cosmic Rebel?” by Richard Murray, on his Clarion Journal
And I really enjoyed him in Kevin Miller XI’s excellent Hellbound?, which also stars our own Robin Parry:
Hermano, I have been reading Richard Murray’s book. I’m not very far in it, but he has given the first real solution that I have encountered to “the problem of pain” (which has been argued philosophically for ages). I have believed that God’s essence is LOVE (Heb 1:3) for a long time and "in Him is no darkness at all) (1 John 1:5). But my problem was “the problem of pain.” Here’s the way I looked at it prior to reading Murray:
In this world that have been horrific acts that have been perpetrated for ages: mental and physical torture, extremely painful forms of rape, murder, and poisoning, and many other cruelties. God usually does nothing to stop these atrocities. Since He has the power to stop them, and usually doesn’t then doesn’t this mean God is responsible for them?
Richard Murray first states there are some things God cannot do. For example, He cannot lie (Titus 1:2). So is God not omnipotent after all since He cannot lie. It depends upon how you define “omnipotent.” He cannot lie since lying is contrary to God’s character. God CANNOT do anything that is not in keeping with His character. God’s character contrary to using force to cause people to do what He wants. Therefore He cannot stop the evil acts in this world. Thus God does not ALLOW evil in any sense of the word “allow.”
I am still reading Murray’s book, and my inclination is toward this way of solving “the problem of pain” as far as human action goes. Of course, it does not solve the problem of pain that results from natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, attacks by animals, etc.
How do you know this? What morally justifiable reason does God “allow” little girls to be tortured, raped, and murdered? Could God not bring about his intentions in any other way?
He usually doesn’t stop the billions of atrocities constantly occurring in the world. So in what sense is He “in control”?
As I see it, the “everything” in this passage does not refer to every event. Look at the context of Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.For those whom he foreknew he also pre-appointed to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he pre-appointed he also called, and those whom he called he also made righteous, and those whom he made righteous, he also glorified. (Rom 8:28-30)
Paul is talking about God working together for good everything He does within the called ones—and there is a sequence to this working:
They are foreknown
They are pre-appointed
And if they respond positively to this appointment then
They are made righteous.
The result of being righteous is
They are glorified.
Step 4 has not yet occurred, but in God’s economy it will surely happen, and so you might as well say it has already happened.
Here is another example of this. God has put everything in subjection to man , but at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to man"
It has been testified somewhere, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor,putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. (Heb 2:6-8)
I have to ask about the trailer you shared for Hellbound. I assume it’s the 2012 movie. From the Wiki description at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbound%3F it says this:
And I look at IMDB, whom I use for ratings, as to whether to see a movie or not. They only rate it 6.2 out of 10 (based upon user ratings) at imdb.com/title/tt2325719/.
So here are my questions:
Have you seen the film? If so, what do you think?
Do they cover other viewpoints besides ECT, like exile, P-Zombie (Rev N.T. Wright), metaphorical, annihilation, and universalism’s purifying fire?
I know it because I’ve experienced God’s love. Because of experience and divine revelation I know He has justifiable reasons. God is not in the same category as man. He alone is God. He sees all of reality past, present and future even in I don’t. Logical explanations are infinite. Especially when it comes to a being of infinite wisdom and knowledge. I simply trust God and do acts of service in mercy and justice. His sovereign will is His business alone. I’ve surrendered under the mighty hand of God just like Jesus did when He said “not my will but Yours be done” just before He went to the cross. I am nothing God is everything. God is all in all.
He’s in control in the sense that He brings good out of evil and evil situations.
It brings me comfort knowing that God works everything together for my good because I love Him. I have hope. No need for anxiety or worry about the future. I can live in the now.
Foreknown means foreloved as in “Adam “knew” his wife Eve and had sons and daughters”
The chain is unbreakable.
It Must Be Fate
I know that our union is surely fate
Predestined to be Your soul mate
For I am complete in union with You
A love so pure and a love so true
Forever in this holy love Divine
Your heart beats lovely with mine
Bringing me joy from love’s holy fire
You satisfy my heart’s longing desire
That’s because you have to surrender to God. There’s three aspects to God’s will. Two of them are
His hidden or secret will (Sovereign).
His Revealed will.
People disobey His revealed will nonetheless He works it according to the counsel of His sovereign will.
Does He always do that? What good can be brought out of the evil situation of a little girl being tortured, raped, and killed?
There is no obvious evidence that God is controlling conditions for that little girl.
Paidion, I am thrilled you are reading Richard Murray. To hear that is a great Christmas present for me! Btw, his web page is thegoodnessofgod.com.
“Those whom he made righteous, he also glorified.” We see the past tense here: “glorified,” not “will glorify.” So as to Step 4, I think perhaps it has already occurred, outside linear time, in eternity. That is to say, I think that we are all in two places at once: inside linear time here on earth, on Dec. 25, 2016, and yet already with God, outside linear time, in eternity.
I believe that in eternity, we are all already there, reconciled to God and enjoying never-ending celebration and adventure with Him. But here inside time (including hell, and certain perceptions of heaven), we are still in a time-bound classroom, until everyone has freely received God’s gift of reconciliation in Christ.
Again, we see it’s already done: we ARE seated with Christ, now. In two places at once.
Holy-Fool-P-Zombie, watch that movie, you won’t regret it. It compares and contrasts universalism, annihilationism, and infernalism, favoring universalism. I love Kevin Miller, although I disagree with the Girardians about Satan: I think the devil is a real person.
It is rated 67% fresh at Rottentomatoes.com, which is very high for them with Christian films. And their audience score is 78%. * But regardless of the critics, I think it’s a great movie. *
Wikipedia says, “The film [Hellbound?] features interviews of theologians and commentators who discuss various views whether Hell exists and if so, who would go there after death…Interview subjects include:
Glen Benton
Mike Bickle
Gregory A. Boyd
Ray Comfort
Ron Dart
Mark Driscoll
Hank Hanegraaff
Peter Kreeft
Bob Larson
Robert McKee
Brian McLaren
Necrobutcher
Robin Parry
Jonathan and Margie Phelps
Lazar Puhalo
Frank Schaeffer
Oderus Urungus
David Vincent
William P. Young”
They leave out of their list Brad Jersak, Michael Hardin, and Sharon Baker (author of Razing Hell), if not others.
I would lend you my copy, but you’re there, and I’m here…
So you can get inside of God’s mind with no ego or megalomania in order to know that He always allows evil for a good purpose, and thus is always in control.
But you cannot get inside God’s mind in order to explain how you know (1) that He always allows evil for a good purpose and (2) that He is always in control without moving toward ego and megalomania.
I’ve already explained that I know God is in control through Biblical revelation and have experienced His love and therefore know He has justifiable reasons. The Bible reveals that He is infinite. We are finite. The finite cannot fully grasp the infinite. I don’t try to use logic and figure God out. Relationships are about trust. I can trust God and do mercy and justice. I let go and flow.
In order to reach union with the Divine
it is necessary to leave the intellect behind.
One must let go of things and empty oneself
of everything in order to make room for
the flood of Divine illumination.
Romans 12:19 - Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Romans 8:28 - And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.
Proverbs 3:6 - In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Psalms 46:10 - Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
Mark 5:36 - As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.
Romans 15:13 - Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Matthew 6:25 - Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Psalms 9:10 - And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.
Psalms 28:7 - The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.
Psalms 112:7 - He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.
Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
Perhaps, under the new Trumpenstein administration, when we are all singing this Easy Street song: at youtube.com/watch?v=JoQ4GidQP-k, I might say this:
Speaking of evil. I ran into it, many years ago - with a pretty senorita’s boyfriend:
We love God because of a changed heart. That is, we love and obey because we want to. That’s the essence of true freedom. This scripture tells us strongly of the New Testament Circumcision of the heart:
It’s about having a changed heart or new nature. Motives count too. Not just choices.
When I read this part of your reply, I flashed back to my own upbringing and remembered that my reaction to what I was taught to believe paralleled the response you gave here. I was taught Calvinism.
At that time I was attending a Baptist High School and Bible Class was part of the curriculum. The theology I was taught unsettled me, and I asked questions. Soon enough the exasperation I created in my instructor led me to learn to keep my mouth shut; for I was just a teenager and did not know, yet, how to refute the logic of Calvinism.
So, I decided that it was all a mystery, but I still felt responsible for my own actions. This led me to a decision. I decided that I was going to trust God; He seemed trustworthy, given the totality of my learning up to that point, even if the theology I was taught made me uncomfortable. So, for that decision, the desire to do good was aroused in me, even though I failed more often than not. But that’s a different thing to address.
All that was typed so I could type this: given that I perceive a Calvinistic influence in the thoughts you’ve typed out, your reaction is the best it could be because you are saying, “I trust God!” And that’s always a good thing!
That was the one thing that was required from the first humans, who failed to trust God, right into the billions of humans, many of which say, right into the face of horror, “I trust God!”
And keep on struggling to be good, if a struggle it is. For God knows your heart and that is how He fore-knows you.
I have two-cents in my brain that I would like to throw into the pot of this fabulous discussion.
Romans 8 is being bandied about here and, I will be honest with you, given my upbringing, I grew to despise Romans 8:28-30 because that passage along with Rev 13:8 and Rev 17:8 were the de facto passages provided as the foundations for the logic of Calvinism. I hated them because I could not refute them, and therefore could not refute Calvinism. I stewed in that for a very long time. During that time I learned of Arminianisim, which only left me a little less queasy. Frustration was also adding its unsavory flavor to the stew I was in because I could find no one who was willing to challenge these theologies with me, except to debate the contradiction that results when Calvinism and Arminianisim go toe-to-toe.
To make a long story short, I taught myself how to use the tools of Biblical research and eventually discovered exactly how Calvinism was translated into the English texts, which meant that neither Calvinism, nor its obverse side, Arminianisim, were the theology of the first Believers!
Soon a friend came along and introduced me to Universalisim! Cool! I still remember well all the instantaneous clicking that went on in my brain as the connections snapped one into another.
I was amazed to discover that the very method I had developed to refute Calvinism was the exact same method Universalist used to refute the deliberate mis-transations of aion and *aionios * and the passages wherein three proper nouns are translated with one generic verb-cum-noun, “hell.”
This changed the meaning of everything.
Including those pesky scriptures in Romans 8 and Revelation.
Then I discovered the Greek scholar A.E. Knoch’s translation, The Concordant Literal Version, and, through the confirmation of his translation, I fell in love with Romans 8:28-30 and Revelation 13:8 and 17:8 because those three scriptures, as they were originally written, seemed to support some very different thoughts that I was then wrestling with; thoughts that later became my heart.
So, if you will bear with me, I would like to present those passages from the KJV and the CLV, in parallel, and then provide a brief-as-possible comment that might bring a different perspective to this debate.
Of course punctuation changes everything. As the joke goes:
“Let’s eat Grandma!”
“Let’s eat, Grandma!”
Commas save lives.
Knoch was led in his understanding to join verses 8 & 9 with the conjunction, “that,” and a comma - as opposed to the KJV translators separating the two verses with a period followed by beginning the next sentence with the preposition, “For” (Indeed, the artificial verse division is because of this splitting of the thought!). The meaning is now changing.
Also, Knoch chose to translate proginosko, with the simple past tense verb conjugate, “foreknew,” while the KJV translators used the present tense conjugate, “foreknow.”
The difference between simple past and present tense is that the first tells of an action as if it already happened, while the second tells of an action as if it is happening right now.
The meaning is now changed even further!
Also, the addition of the pronoun, “his,” before purpose in the KJV is purely from supposition because none of the Greek pronoun forms are in the original text prior to, “purpose.”
Therefore, the article, “the,” as Knoch translated, is more appropriate: So, “His purpose.” becomes “the purpose…” This makes an even bigger difference!
Additionally Knoch translated proorizo with the phrase, “designates beforehand,” rather than an especial coined word, “predestinate.”
The difference in this is difficult to see if one doesn’t know that the second root word from which proorizo is built horizo carries the meaning of designatenot “destinate.” The difference is that to designate is to assign, to destine is to fix one’s fate.
So, in the KJV translation it is implied that God’s purpose for those human beings He foreknows was to, “destine them before” (destined before what?) to be conformed to the Image of Jesus, which is God’s purpose for them, and by implication, them alone.
Thus, this passage is separated out from the context and twisted to support Calvinisim.
In Knoch’s translation verse 27 must come into play to understand how he saw his way clear to translate the way he did; for the context of this chapter is a monologue addressed to Believers on how the Spirit of Jesus makes a difference in the life of those in whom this Spirit makes His home. Thus the passage in question is a reminder to them, as well as an exposition on, the process of how God comes to designate those who are to receive this Spirit.
So, God foreknew the, “we,” of whom He says, “Now, we are aware…” because he is, “searching the hearts” (plural) and through the insight He gains for being able to see into the heart, God is aware of what His indwelling Spirit’s disposition is concerning any single Believer.
Therefore, it is by searching the heart that God foreknew anyone and, in this search, given what He finds there, He assigns (designates) certain ones to be reached by His Spirit, before they actually believe.
Obviously then His foreknowledge comes from this ability to search the heart, which is a lot different than foreknowledge of someone before they ever thought a thought.
He then reminds them of what they know from their own experience of salvation and the infusion of holy spirit they received and reminds them that this process of designating and calling and justifying and eventually glorifying a believer applies also to any others of whom God foreknew for searching their heart.
Given all that is written in the Bible about the heart, this makes more sense than the KJV idea that God sent Jesus just to save those whom he chose to save before they were ever born.
One word. Just one word is all it takes to make a difference.
And so, the debate over this one word rages hot, still, exactly because Calvinism (and Arminianisim) falls to dust if katabole does not mean, “foundation.”
So, why did Knoch dare to tread on the sacrosanct and translate, katabole, with, “disruption?”
The succinct answer is because his learning brought him to the conclusion that, “disruption,” was the best English word to express the original meaning in katabole. There is a lot more to be said about this word that would take a lot of typing to convey.
However, all I wish to do for now is point out that by changing this one word the meaning is changed in this passage from an imperative that discloses a book already written of those who will be saved from before the foundations of the earth were laid… Into a revealing that there is a book that is being written in, even now, with the names of the redeemed; and that entries into this book began at the disruption of the world, which can only be true if the world was already, “founded!”
It’s no wonder to me that there is so much debate over this word.
Why?
Because if the Apostle John had been told to choose themelios over katabole there would be no debate possible and Calvinism would have its most important supporting scripture, and, in that, Calvinism would be unassailable.
So, the question this raises is, “When did the the disruption of the world occur?”
