God saves sinners! (part 7)

The bondage of the will is not determinism

An objection to the doctrine of the bondage of the will stems from a misunderstanding of the terminology. Specifically, some might think that to make the claim that our wills are in bondage, and can only be inclined toward God by an act of supernatural grace, is to imply that we are mere automatons without any power to choose at all. But clearly, we’re able to make choices and then act according to them, right?

Free will and free agency

This objection fails to make the crucial distinction between free will, on the one hand, and free agency on the other. It is important to be clear that no one is saying that the fall has taken away our ability to make choices. That would be absurd since we obviously make them constantly—whom to marry, where to work, whether to have our eggs scrambled or over easy—obviously these sorts of choices are all well within our capacity. This ability to make choices in accordance with our desires is what we are calling free agency. Even after the fall, we are still free agents.

On the other hand, what Augustinians argue (the Reformed follow Augustine in this) is that the fall has taken away our freedom—in that it has taken away our desire and inclination—to choose what pleases God. It is this liberty to love and obey God that we are referring to as free will. Post-fall, we have retained our free agency, but we have lost our free will.

Free choices, motives, and self-determination

But if we have power to choose, how is it that we have no power to choose what pleases God? Is this a contradiction? In answering this question, it is first necessary to reflect on the nature of choice itself. Why do we choose certain things and not others? Do we really exercise perfect freedom when we choose? Or are our free choices determined by something else? This may seem paradoxical, but the fact of the matter is that our wills are not “neutral.” Our choices don’t come out of nowhere. Rather, when we choose, we do so on the basis of our motives and preferences. Our wills are guided and directed from within by factors that are not of our choosing.

An illustration may help. Suppose that someone places before you two plates. One of them contains your favorite food (let’s say prime rib). The other contains your least favorite (say fried okra). Now suppose you’re asked to choose between the two. Which plate do you choose? I guarantee, all other things being equal (e.g., no one is holding a gun to your head and threatening to pull the trigger if you eat the steak, and no one is offering you a free trip to Tahiti if you force down the okra), you will choose the prime rib every single time.

Are you able to choose the okra? Yes. Are you able to prefer the okra? No way! Try as you might, you cannot will your preferences to change. Your free choices are free, but they are at the same time (and without contradiction) the consequences of your preferences—preferences that you did not choose.

It is also important to notice that sometimes we find that we have preferences or motives that conflict with each other. For example, suppose someone is holding a gun to your head and threatening to shoot if you don't choose the okra. In this scenario, you would (I hope) choose to endure the okra and forego the steak because the strength of your motive to enjoy your favorite meal would pale by comparison with your powerful motivation to preserve your life!

In situations in which we have conflicting motives (most situations?), our free choices (yes, even with a gun to our head, we are still choosing freely since hypothetically we could choose the suicidal option if we wanted to) are determined by our strongest motive. As Jonathan Edwards concisely put it in his great treatise, The Freedom of the Will (which is perhaps the all-time classic work on this subject), "It is that motive, which, as it stands in view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the will" (The Freedom of the Will 1.2). Our wills are determined by our motives.

However, as R.C. Sproul points out, this is not tantamount to determinism, because determinism says that our choices are compelled from outside of us. (Sproul’s helpful discussion in his book Chosen by God is derived from Edwards’ work.) Rather, it “is what we call self-determination, which is the essence of freedom” (Chosen by God, p. 54). Our free choices are self-determined on the basis of our motives and preferences, and this power of self-determination is the very essence of freedom.

Free agency and the bondage of the will

These same principles apply as we consider the question of how much freedom we have by nature to love and obey God. He created us in Adam with the desire to freely choose the things that please Him—that is to say, with pure motives and holy affections. In Adam’s fall we forfeited our inherent righteousness, and along with it our heart-inclination to please God. Sadly, our desires and affections are now self-centered and focused on the creature rather than the Creator. The ancient indictment is ever apropos: "[T]he LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5; cf. Genesis 8:21). And it is this pervasive depravity of our hearts that determines the direction our free choices will take.

To be sure, we are still free agents because we retain the power and freedom to choose according to our desires. But our wills are in bondage in the sense that they are compelled to follow wherever our evil inclinations and motives lead. And try as we might, we have no power in and of ourselves to change our evil inclinations—any more than a leopard has power to change his spots. We are not compelled against our will. The bondage is from within, not from without.

Perhaps where the rubber meets the road with the greatest urgency concerning this issue of the bondage of the will is with respect to the question as to whether or not a sinner, apart from a work of divine grace, is able to trust in Christ for his salvation. Does a sinner have the power and freedom to respond to the call of the gospel?

R.C. Sproul responds to this query decisively in the negative, summing up the matter definitively on behalf of the Reformed tradition:

In order to choose Christ, the sinner must first have a desire to choose Christ. Either he has that desire already within him or he must receive that desire from God. Edwards and all who embrace the Reformed view of predestination agree that if God does not plant that desire in the human heart nobody, left to themselves, will ever freely choose Christ. They will always and everywhere reject the gospel precisely because they do not desire the gospel. They will always and everywhere reject Christ precisely because they do not desire Christ. They will freely reject Christ in the sense that they will act according to their desires (Chosen by God, pp. 61-62).

To sum up, the doctrine of the bondage of the will does not mean that we have lost the ability to make choices, nor does it mean that our choices are determined by forces outside of us. Rather, it means that we have lost the desire and motivation—and hence the ability—to incline our wills toward the things of God, even to the extent of lacking the power to repent and believe the gospel. When it comes to heavenly things, we are like bad trees that can do no other than bear bad fruit.

Now that we have dealt with a couple of common misconceptions (in this post and the last one), I’ll attempt in the next post to focus more specifically on what is entailed in the doctrine of total depravity.

(To be continued …)

God saves sinners! (part 6)

In this post and the next I want to try to help clear up confusion and address a couple of misconceptions concerning the doctrine of total depravity. (I thought I could do it all in one post, but alas, it will take two ...) Some may not realize that total depravity does not imply utter depravity. I'll try to deal with that misconception here. Others may think that the bondage of the will implies that we’re automatons. I'll attempt to deal with that next.

Total depravity is not utter depravity

First, the terminology of “total depravity” may conjure up images of a wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth, serial rapist (or something like that). But clearly we’re not that far gone, right? So one objection flows from the obvious fact that we are clearly not utterly depraved—at least most of us aren’t.

So the first thing to be clear about is that total depravity does not imply that we are as depraved as we can possibly be. On the contrary, the bible teaches that God preserves the human race by common grace (i.e., His grace toward all creatures, as distinguished from His special grace to the elect alone), such that fallen man is capable of “civil righteousness,” and of engaging in fruitful cultural endeavors such as agriculture, industry, and the arts. I’ll try to unpack this a little.

Common grace and the interim world order

When Adam and Eve defied God’s law (Genesis 3), He could have justly inflicted the covenant curse of eternal death immediately. Instead, He established a new covenant—one that operates according to a radically different dynamic, that of grace instead of works. According to this covenant, elect sinners would be delivered from God's wrath and ushered into eschatological glory solely on the grounds of the vicarious covenant-keeping of the woman’s Seed. Though Adam could no longer fulfill the “culture mandate” of world dominion, one day the second Adam would.

Therefore, in order to enact His redemptive plan, it was necessary that God preserve His creation—to see to it that the human race would be propagated and life sustained. He established the city of man as an interim world order, the arena in which He would enact the drama of redemption. Though His wrath would be displayed in one terrible act of (temporal) judgment, the Great Flood (which mightily prefigured the eschatological wrath to come), the covenant of preservation (see Genesis 9:8-17; Matthew 5:43-45) ensured that the cycle of seasons and days and years, rain and sunshine, harvests, and all other blessings of common grace, would continue uninterrupted until the end of the present world order.

Common culture and the city of man

Thus, in keeping with God’s redemptive purposes, the state was established to administer civil justice. Likewise, all the accoutrements of culture—arts and agriculture, science and industry—were granted as gifts of common grace for the purpose of preserving and sustaining human life and society until the eschaton. Though man had been exiled from the Garden and had forfeited his royal-priestly task, he was not left altogether without a vocation.

It is important to recognize that this common grace order was and is just that—common—to both believers and unbelievers, the godly and the ungodly alike, with all humanity living, working, and cooperating together in the divinely legitimated project of building the city of man. Interestingly (and perhaps contrary to the expectations of today’s “culture warriors”?), it was not necessarily the covenant people who had the most important role to play in the development of culture and civilization. (See for example Genesis 4:19-22.)

To be sure, there was from the beginning a radical distinction between the covenant people and the rest of the inhabitants of the earth. The former possess dual citizenship, are sojourners on a pilgrimage to heaven, living by faith, and calling on the name of the Lord. The latter trust in their own strength and cunning alone, striving to pile up earthly treasure without regard for the coming judgment. Crucial as this distinction is however, it is no hindrance to their cooperation together in the common project of building civilization.

Earthly things and heavenly things

So fallen humanity is not utterly depraved. If we were, civilization would be utterly impossible. No, total depravity does not imply that fallen man cannot think, invent, produce, create, and (for the most part) abide by the laws of the civil realm. What it does mean is that every constituent part of man—his body and soul, mind, heart, and will—has become incapacitated for communion with, and obedience to, His Creator.

It is necessary then to make the distinction between man's capacity for earthly pursuits and his capacity for heavenly pursuits. In the words of John Calvin:

It may therefore be proper, in order to make it more manifest how far our ability extends in regard to these two classes of objects [i.e., earthly and heavenly], to draw a distinction between them. The distinction is, that we have one kind of intelligence of earthly things, and another of heavenly things. By earthly things, I mean those which relate not to God and his kingdom, to true righteousness and future blessedness, but have some connection with the present life, and are in a manner confined within its boundaries. By heavenly things, I mean the pure knowledge of God, the method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom (Institutes 2.2.13).

Though God has preserved man such that he is suited for earthly pursuits (the sphere of creation), he is totally incapacitated for heavenly pursuits (the sphere of redemption and the new creation) apart from a work of God's special grace.

The Canons of Dordt sums up the matter nicely as follows, speaking first of our lack of ability with respect to heavenly pursuits:

Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform (CD 3/4.3).

Next, the Canons concedes our ability with respect to earthly pursuits, but carefully explains how little our capabilities in the sphere of creation help us in matters pertaining to salvation and the things of heaven:

There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall, by virtue of which he retains some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrates a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling man to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that man does not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways he completely distorts this light, whatever its precise character, and suppresses it in unrighteousness. In doing so he renders himself without excuse before God (CD 3/4.4).

(To be continued ...)

God saves sinners! (part 5)

Total depravity: why we need to know

My apologies for the length of time it’s taken me to get this post up. I’ve discovered that I can’t seem to say what I want in one post (the last one was too long!), so my current plan is to take the next few posts to discuss the doctrine of the total depravity of fallen humanity.

In what follows, I will use several terms more or less interchangeably: “bondage of the will,” “total depravity,” “total inability,” “dead in sin,” etc. These terms are not entirely synonymous, but very closely related. For example, “total depravity” expresses the idea that sin permeates fallen man’s heart to the core. The “bondage of the will” is a corollary of this, namely that because we are by nature totally depraved, our wills are enslaved from within. The main idea expressed by all these terms is essentially the same; the patient is not merely sick—or unconscious—in sin, but stone cold dead in sin.

In this post I want to focus on the importance of the question of how much (or how little) power the fallen will has with respect to matters pertaining to salvation. Then, in the next couple of posts, to help alleviate any confusion, I’ll attempt to explain what total depravity doesn’t mean (since the terminology is prone to be misunderstood). Then, I’ll try to explain exactly what total depravity does mean.

In Adam's fall sinned we all

Before we get to our focus on the importance of knowing how much power the fallen will possesses, we’ll briefly discuss the consequences of Adam’s sin. As we’ve already had occasion to explain, by virtue of the creation covenant, Adam had been constituted the federal head of all his posterity. Had he stood his probation successfully, he would have secured the heavenly inheritance for us all. But because he failed, he instead plunged us into the mire of sin and death: “In Adam’s fall sinned we all” as the Puritans were fond of saying. In the words of the Westminster Confession:

[Adam and Eve] being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by original generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions (WCF 6.3, 4).

That is to say that all children of Adam begin our existence first of all, under the judicial wrath of God and subject to His curse, and second of all, utterly dead in sin (not merely unconscious or sick) and therefore totally unable to will and/or to do anything that pleases God.

The second of these two consequences is our focus in these posts, namely, our natural state of being totally incapacitated for doing anything to effect our eternal salvation. Or to cite the Westminster divines once again:

Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto (WCF 9.3).

The dismissal of the question today

We'll unpack this truth more in the next couple of posts, but like I said, my intent in this one is to focus on why it's so important to know it and affirm it unequivocally. Has fallen man really lost all "ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation"? It's necessary to dwell on this question for a bit because the prevailing view among conservative evangelicals seems to be that, while sinners are by nature not able to obey God’s law, they are able to exercise saving faith; somehow, they are able to “choose for Christ.” In fact, it is not uncommon to hear evangelicals describe someone’s conversion in terms of their being “born again by faith,” which clearly implies that the sinner first exercised saving faith, and was only then regenerated.

And this brings us back to the question I raised in the first post in this series, viz., which comes first, faith or regeneration? Can we know the answer to this question? Is this a question we should even want to answer? After all, the bible isn’t really so clear on this issue, is it?

Many conservative Christians today would respond to these queries with a resounding “No!” followed by the assertion that to insist that regeneration must precede faith is to claim knowledge in an area that scripture has left “mysterious,” or to apply “man’s logic” to God’s revelation—or worst of all, to count angels on pinheads.

I well recall the frustration I experienced in my early years of Christian faith upon meeting with this response after inquiring of more mature Christians as to the nature of salvation, and what precisely God does, and what exactly I’m supposed to so. Finally I gave up—and even worse, I am sure I responded as I'd been taught when confronted with similar inquiries by wide-eyed new Christians.

The urgency of the question for Martin Luther

But when I finally began to dig into the treasure trove of Reformed literature several years ago, I was amazed to find that no less than the great Martin Luther was convinced that this question was an absolutely crucial one! In fact, he wrote what he considered to be his best work of theology, The Bondage of the Will (a must-read!) for the purpose of dealing with this precise issue.

The occasion for Luther's writing on the powerlessness of the fallen will was the urgent need for a well-reasoned and scriptural response to Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great Dutch humanist, who had written a treatise defending the doctrine of free will. Luther’s work is a thorough, powerfully argued, systematic defense of the truth of fallen man’s enslavement to sin.

The Bondage of the Will was the second classic work of Reformation theology I read (soon after Calvin’s Institutes), and I found it an amazing eye-opener. Prior to my exposure to these books, I had assumed that the conservative evangelicalism I had been immersed in for ten plus years was the legitimate heir to the Protestant Reformation. After all, we were the one resisting liberalism, right? We were the ones who still held to the “essentials” of the faith, right?

Well after reading the Reformers, I saw how utterly naive I had been. I couldn't help but agree with the translators of the book (J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston), who ask rhetorically in their historical and theological introduction:

With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. … we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own (The Bondage of the Will, p. 59).

Luther compelled me to acknowledge that one area where classic Reformation theology diverges sharply from what seems to be the prevailing evangelical consensus today is precisely in this doctrine of the bondage of the will.

A wise rebuke from Dr. Luther

I can do no better by way of demonstrating this than to quote some characteristic words of wisdom from Luther’s book. Erasmus (like most evangelicals today) had asserted that the knowledge of whether or not our wills are at all active in securing our eternal salvation was non-essential—in fact “idle and superfluous” knowledge. Luther responds to this assertion in no uncertain terms. Here he treats the question by way of analogy with various secular tasks and callings:

Suppose a would-be poet or speech-maker never thought to ask what ability he had, what he could and could not do, and what the subject he was tackling demanded of him … but went straight to work, thinking: ‘I must strive to get it done; it is idle and superfluous to ask whether I have enough learning and eloquence and ability’—what would you think of him? And if someone who wanted a rich crop from his land was not idle enough to perform the superfluous task of investigating the nature of the soil … but rushed precipitously into action, thinking of nothing but the work, and ploughed the seashore and cast his seed wherever there was room, whether in the sand or in the mud—what would you think of him? And what if a man who purposed war, … or carried responsibility for some other piece of public service, was not so idle as to reflect upon what was in his power, whether the treasury could finance him, whether the soldiers were fit, whether there was opportunity for action; … and charged ahead with eyes shut and ears stopped, shouting nothing but ‘War! War!’—pressing on with the work? Tell me Erasmus, what would you think of such poets, farmers, generals, and statesmen? (The Bondage of the Will, pp. 76-77).

And of course it goes without saying that such poets, farmers, generals, and statesmen would have to be numbered among the most foolish of workmen. And the point is that if counting the cost is so absolutely necessary in our temporal pursuits, then how much more so as we consider what we must do to be saved! So to discourage God’s children from taking stock of whether or not they are naturally able to turn to God, Luther argues, is a heinous sin because it keeps them in a state of perpetual ignorance of the task at hand.

But when you tell Christian people ... that in the pursuit of eternal salvation they should not concern themselves to know what is in their power and what is not—why this is plainly the sin that is really unpardonable. For as long as they do not know the limits of their ability, they will not know what they should do; and as long as they do not know what they should do, they cannot repent when they err; and impenitence is the unpardonable sin (The Bondage of the Will, pp. 77-78).

And because biblical Christianity presents us with a comprehensive worldview, false teaching concerning one doctrine has a ripple effect that reaches to all the others. Hence, to draw a veil over the knowledge of what God does versus what we do in securing our eternal salvation is to obscure our knowledge of all the essential doctrines of Christianity: God, man, salvation, etc. Luther sums up the matter as follows:

So it is not irreligious, idle, or superfluous, but in the highest degree wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know whether or not his will has anything to do in matters pertaining to salvation. … If we know nothing of these things, we shall know nothing whatsoever of Christianity, and shall be in worse case than any people on the earth! He who dissents from that statement should acknowledge that he is no Christian; and he who ridicules and derides it should realize that he is Christian’s chief foe. For if I am ignorant of the nature, extent and limits of what I can and must do with reference to God, I shall be equally ignorant and uncertain of the nature, extent and limits of what God can and will do in me ... Now, if I am ignorant of God’s works and power, I am ignorant of God himself; and if I do not know God, I cannot worship, praise, give thanks, or serve Him; for I do not know how much I should attribute to myself and how much to Him. We need, therefore, to have in mind a clear-cut distinction between God’s power and ours, and God’s work and ours, if we would live a godly life (The Bondage of the Will, p. 78).

Conclusion

So why do we need to know whether or not we are totally depraved—whether or not our wills are in bondage? We need to know for the simple reason that ignorance of the power of our wills with respect to matters pertaining to salvation will necessarily result in ignorance in all areas of Christian faith and practice. If we don't know the limits of our ability, we can't live the Christian life. For Luther, this knowledge was not just important—it was essential—to the extent that dismissing it as superfluous is enough to falsify one's claim to be a Christian!

Well perhaps you’re still not convinced, but I hope you can at least begin to see the basis for the claim that to dismiss this as non-essential knowledge is to part ways with Luther (and for that matter all the heroes of the Protestant Reformation, who were fully agreed on this) and is to pursue a brand of “Protestantism” that for all its claims to wearing the mantle of the Reformation, has “tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own.”

Relating this issue to our series topic, “God saves sinners!” the point is that we need to understand exactly how powerless and undeserving sinners are, so that we can then also truly grasp the grace of God in choosing us, and the almighty power He exerts in saving us. And of course these are all among the most important things a Christian needs to know, because they lie at the heart of the gospel.

(To be continued …)

God saves sinners! (part 4)

Adam's Fall

In the last post, we began to set the stage for our upcoming discussion of total depravity (to take place in the next post) by talking about man's original state of righteousness and the covenant of works. Now we’ll continue with the tragic sequel. This post will discuss Adam's sin; the next will focus on the imputation of that sin to his posterity (and especially the depravity entailed therein).

Adam’s fall

Everyone knows the outcome of Adam's probation. The serpent got to him through his wife Eve, and he succumbed to the temptation to transgress God’s holy covenant. Pride entered and the royal priest charged to guard the holy sanctuary of Eden allowed it to be defiled by an evil intruder.

Though Adam had been created with knowledge, righteousness and holiness, in the words of the Canons of Dordt,

rebelling against God at the devil's instigation and by his own free will, he deprived himself of these outstanding gifts. Rather, in their place he brought upon himself blindness, terrible darkness, futility, and distortion of judgment in his mind; perversity, defiance, and hardness in his heart and will; and finally impurity in all his emotions.

Instead of coming to “know good and evil” through triumphing over evil, Adam came to know it through yielding to it. R.C. Sproul, in his excellent introduction to Reformed soteriology entitled Chosen by God, points out that describing Adam's sin as a "fall" is a bit of a misnomer. The problem is in the danger that this label implies that there was something accidental about it, whereas in fact there was not. Adam dove headlong into sin, knowingly, willingly, and determinedly.

Adam’s depravity and guilt

But once Adam made the fateful and fatal choice to break God’s covenant and ally himself instead with the evil serpent, there was no going back. His holy nature was now irrevocably corrupted, mind, heart and will--body and soul. To put it in terms of Augustine’s taxonomy of man’s fourfold state, Adam was now non posse non peccare (“not able not to sin”).

It is important to keep in mind two distinct but inseparable aspects of the reign of sin. Having forfeit his holiness, Adam was now under the dominion of sin. That is, it now controlled him from within, and he could not help but sin. (I'll elaborate in the next post.) But he was not merely under sin's dominion. Having forfeit his righteousness, he was now also under the guilt of sin--that is, he was under God's wrath. Hence, there was now a mutual enmity.

The fall before the fall

Adam's transgression was immediately followed by God's judgment, but before discussing the penalty for Adam's sin (at the end of this post), we will take most of the remainder of the post to face up to an oft debated philosophical question regarding his fall, namely: How is it possible that evil ever entered into God's good creation in the first place? This is an important question, but before attempting an answer, we should touch briefly on the fact that there was actually a fall prior to man's fall. The narrative account of Adam's transgression is clear that evil did not enter history for the first time with the sins of humans; the satanic serpent became wicked first. Elsewhere in scripture, it is clearly revealed that prior to the fall of man, there had been a fall of angels.

We have relatively little scriptural data concerning this fall before the fall. Like man, the angels had been created holy, righteous, and good. Some of them God had willed to confirm in righteousness; but others He had not. This latter group, apparently comprising one third of their number, Satan led in rebellion against their Creator. Their demonic hostility would henceforth be channeled into the foolish and futile project of attempting to subvert God’s eternal purposes with respect to the creature made in His image.

The "problem" of evil and the mysteries of the Christian faith

Now back to our question: How could evil have entered into God's good creation? He's good, right? He's sovereign, right? He's wise, right? Then how could it have happened? Sometimes this issue is raised in the form of the skeptic's attempt to skewer the believer on the horns of a dilemma--to the effect that the presence of evil in the world necessarily implies that either God is less than all-powerful, or He is less than all-good.

Before facing up to this "dilemma," it is helpful to recall that this is not the only difficult philosophical problem Christians face--there are others. For example, How can God be one and yet subsist in three Persons? How can Christ be one Person and yet possess two natures? These are profound mysteries, and we may never receive answers sufficient to satisfy our curiosity. But since we have no natural knowledge of, or experience with, an eternal self-existent Being, we should not expect the message of scripture to conform to our finite reason and experience. Divine revelation can neither be squeezed into a preconceived rationalistic grid, nor can it be subjected to the scientific method.

With this caveat concerning the Creator/creature distinction and the limitations of finite reason and experience in mind, we will now briefly ponder the questions raised by the problem of evil with respect to God's sovereignty, goodness, and wisdom.

The fall and God's sovereignty

First, does the fall call into question the absolute sovereignty of God? Did He merely “wait in the wings,” as it were, to see what Adam would do? It seems that an increasing number of Christians today might answer yes, though many of these would concede that God "foreknew" that Adam would choose to disobey.

However, R.C. Sproul observes that it is a basic tenet of theism in general (let alone Christian theism) that God's sovereign decree embraces whatsoever comes to pass, including the responsible actions of His creatures. No, the fall did not take God by surprise. Nor is it enough to say that the fall was merely a matter of His foreknowledge. He did not merely permit the fall. For wise purposes known fully only to Himself, and for His own glory, He decreed to permit the fall. We cannot fully wrap our minds around this truth, but as we contemplate the fall, we must not lose sight of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

The fall and God's goodness

Secondly, does the fall call into question God's goodness? If He created all things, must He not also be the author of evil? This is a question about the very nature and origin of evil. There is great mystery here, but Augustine helpfully pointed out that since all that God created is good; we ought not think of evil as a created thing. It is rather a privation of the good. Man, though created good, was given the freedom to deprive himself of goodness.

Hence, the source of evil is not the Creator, but rather the sinful creature. God’s sovereignty over man's sinful actions notwithstanding, He is not the author of sin; rather, all the blame lies with the sinner. God is absolutely sovereign; man is absolutely responsible. In spite of the difficulties involved, we must insist on both of these truths. Our questions are not all answered, but as we contemplate the fall, we must not lose sight of the absolute purity of God.

The fall and God's wisdom

Thirdly, does the fall call into question God's wisdom? Why would He allow evil into His creation when (being all-powerful) He could have prevented it and (being all-good) would want to? This is a question about God's eternal purpose.

Some Christians (particularly those operating from within an Arminian frame of reference) respond by positing that the presence of evil is the necessary price that God paid for a world filled with free creatures. Dwelling on the problems with this paradigm is what this current blog series is all about! (I plan to include a discussion of “freewill” in the next post.) Not least problematic is that this model views man’s freedom as an autonomous freedom--a notion not consistent with Christian theism by any stretch. Adopting this solution is tantamount to being skewered on one of the above-mentioned horns.

Reformed Christians on the other hand point out that the presence of evil allows for a fuller display of God’s attributes—both His justice and His mercy. This is helpful, but ultimately does not answer all questions. In any case, for wise reasons which He has not revealed to us, and for His own glory, God has allowed evil into the world. It may help to remember that what is hidden from us now will be clearer later. Luther pointed out that just as the inauguration of the kingdom of grace (at Christ's first advent) unraveled many mysteries, so the inauguration of the kingdom of glory (at His second) will clear up many more. As we contemplate the fall, we must not allow our necessarily limited understanding to cause us to doubt God's wisdom.

Revealed truths and hidden mysteries

So how could evil have entered into God's good creation? A complete answer is impossible this side of the eschaton. But the "dilemma" is a false one. The skeptic asserts on his own authority that God cannot be both all-powerful and all-good; the believer confesses on the authority of the word of God that (in the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith)

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established (WCF 3.1).

Though we are faced with mysteries that cannot be penetrated by finite reason, we have ample grounds for trusting in the sovereignty, goodness, and wisdom of God. And while it is true that God's revelation cannot be fitted to the skeptic's rationalistic expectations, scripture does present us with a rational revelation. All that is necessary for us to know has been clearly revealed. Thus, we will want to be receptive to revealed truths rather than delving into hidden mysteries.

The Westminster Confession summarizes these revealed truths about God’s power, goodness, and wisdom, as they relate to the apparently contradictory truths concerning the apostasy of men and angels, in the following succinct and balanced way:

The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God, so far manifest themselves in his providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first Fall, and all other sins of angels and men, and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God; who being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin (WCF 5.4).

Adam’s exile and death

I've digressed for awhile in order to deal with some important philosophical questions concerning Adam's fall. I would like to now finish up this post with a brief return to my overview of the narrative account. With this in mind, we will now return to the scene of Adam's crime.

Immediately following Adam's transgression, the Lord of the covenant came to the site of His holy sanctuary in righteous judgment. Since Adam had failed his probation, he was now exiled from the garden of Eden, stripped of his royal priestly vocation, and consigned to live out his days east of Eden, toiling and sweating to produce food for his family. And though the race would be propagated, his wife too would suffer. Instead of inheriting life, they would inherit death.

They would experience a foretaste of this death immediately, in their banishment from the tree of life and God's presence, in their consciousness of His holy displeasure, and in the toil and misery of a mortal life under the sun. In time, their bodies would grow old and lose strength. Eventually, they would return to the dust from which Adam had been created.

But physical death would be far from the worst of it. Afterwards, they would face final judgment, and under the relentless terms of the covenant of works, their destiny would be to bear God's eternal curse, the justly deserved penalty for Adam's transgression. Within the constitution of this covenant, there would be no possibility of forgiveness; no place for repentance. Adam and Eve were on death row, as it were. There would be no hope for them, nor for us--no hope that is--apart from God's intervention to establish another covenant, a covenant of grace.

But as Adam and Eve would quickly learn, the Judge of all the earth was to prove Himself to be a gracious and merciful Redeemer. And in the divine judgment curse pronounced on the serpent, there was also contained the promise of a triumphant Deliverer to come--the Seed of the woman. And in the divinely supplied covering of their nakedness and shame, Adam and Eve possessed a sign that they would, by grace alone through faith alone, share in that promised deliverance.

In the next post, we will see how God's justice was manifested in the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity. In future posts we will see how God's mercy is manifested in His covenant of grace with sinners, grounded on the obedience and suffering of the second Adam, Jesus Christ.

(To be continued ...)

God saves sinners! (part 3)

Original righteousness and the covenant of works

The first point of doctrine in the TULIP mnemonic (though it's the third one articulated in the Canons of Dordt) speaks of the spiritual condition of fallen man. He is not only worthy of condemnation (i.e., under the guilt of sin). He is also “totally depraved” (i.e., under the power of sin). I had originally intended to talk about exactly what is entailed in "total depravity" in this post, but then it occurred to me that instead of starting with our sin and misery, I should start with a post about our original righteousness and the covenant of works.

Original righteousness

Reformed theology and the bible teaches that man was created good, with true knowledge of God, righteousness and holiness. God’s moral law was written on his heart, and thus his will was naturally inclined toward spontaneous obedience to God’s will. The divines of Dordt put it this way:

Man was originally created in the image of God and was furnished in his mind with a true and salutary knowledge of his Creator and things spiritual, in his will and heart with righteousness, and in all his emotions with purity; indeed, the whole man was holy.

As holy and righteous as Adam was in his original integrity however, he was not yet confirmed in his righteousness and holiness. That is, he was liable to fall. Reformed theology agrees in this with the great church father, Augustine of Hippo, who asserted that man as originally created was posse peccare, posse non peccare (“able to sin” and “able not to sin”). In other words, he had free will (more on this later). He had the power to obey God, and also the power to disobey God.

Probation and the heavenly inheritance

Scripture tells us that when Adam was created, he was placed in a beautiful garden paradise that was to serve as a type of the heavenly inheritance, and the arena for a trial of his faithfulness. As beautiful and overflowing with abundance as Eden was, it pointed to something far better. It was a holy sanctuary, but it was not heaven. Man had been created for eternal blessedness in union and communion with his Creator, a state in which he would be non posse peccare ("unable to sin") in the words of Augustine. But divine wisdom deemed it necessary that he first undergo a probationary trial of his obedience. After all, man had been created in the image of God, and just as the Creator had worked first and then entered His rest, so too the creature made in His image must work and then enter into the heavenly inheritance.

Therefore, in addition to the natural law written on his heart, Adam was given a commandment, a prohibition, by special revelation, which would serve as a test of his fidelity to his Creator and Lord. The question at issue was whether he would keep his covenant with the Creator, or instead succumb to the temptations of a satanic usurper, violate the holy covenant, and in its place form an unholy alliance with the tempter. Would he remain faithful to God and His word? Or would he despise the word of the Lord and prefer the lies of the serpent?

The covenant stipulated that if Adam remained faithful, then he would receive the eternal heavenly inheritance (sacramentally signified by the tree of life) as a justly earned reward. But if he broke the covenant, then he would receive the justly deserved eternal condemnation that comes as the wages of sin to those who transgress the Law imposed by an infinite Creator. Just as God Himself (the Archetype) had entered His rest only after His work had been pronounced “very good,” so Adam’s (ectypal) work must also be perfect in order for him to enter the heavenly rest. Hence, although Adam was created righteous, he had not yet been justified. And according to the terms of the creation covenant, he was to be justified by his works – that is to say, the principle involved was “do this and live.”

Federal representation and imputation

Scripture also reveals that the constitution of the creation covenant was such that Adam was not merely to undergo his probationary trial for himself; rather, he was to serve as the federal representative of all his descendants. If he succeeded, then his righteous standing before God would be imputed to all his posterity. But if he failed, then his unrighteous standing would be imputed to them. His triumph would be their triumph; his failure, their failure. That is, all humanity would stand or fall with him.

There is a helpful analogy to Adam's federal representation in the ancient custom of representative combat. When faced with the alternative of suffering severe casualties in all-out warfare, armies would sometimes instead choose to settle their hostilities by having each side select a champion to represent it. These two champions would then face off in mortal combat. The biblical example of this that springs most readily to mind perhaps is the representative combat between David and Goliath. Goliath's death at the hands of the young Israelite spelled the defeat of the entire Philistine army, which demonstrated this in its terrified flight from the field of battle.

It is very difficult for us modern individualists to see the justice in an arrangement such as this whereby one man's success or failure would determine our destiny as well. Our notions of justice, however, are warped by the fall, and our sinful hearts are prone to forget that it is we, not God, who are on the dock. We do not always understand God's ways, but ultimately we must bow before the justice of the Judge of all the earth.

But it is also important for us to see that humanity could not hope for a better representative than Adam, who by nature possessed perfect righteousness and holiness, and whose will was wholly inclined toward the love of God. If he had succeeded, and merited the heavenly inheritance for us, would we still complain that this arrangement is unjust?

And of course we haven't yet discussed the federal representation of Christ, the second Adam (a subject for a future post!). If you know the joy of being "under grace"--that is, if you have experienced the mercy of God displayed in the vicarious obedience and suffering of Christ on your behalf--then you also realize that this knife cuts both ways.

Reformed theologians refer to this covenant of man’s original creation as the “covenant of works” because man’s perfect obedience, that is, his works, would be the judicial ground of his inheritance of eternal life. By his works alone Adam would stand or fall, and so would we who are represented by him.

(To be continued in the next post ...)

God saves sinners! (part 2)

An ages-old threat to the gospel of grace

There is not much new under the sun and the Arminian controversy of the seventeenth century really turned out to be yet another revival of the age-old battle fought between the Apostle Paul and the Judaizers in the first century, Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century, and the Protestant Reformers and the medieval church in the sixteenth century. In all of these debates, the main question at issue was whether salvation is entirely attributable to the sovereign grace of God, or whether the sinner contributes just a little bit too (even if it’s only the decision to believe).

An international synod of Reformed ministers convened in the city of Dordrecht in Holland to decide the question, and they reached an overwhelming consensus that Arminianism was false teaching and “another gospel.” Their conclusions are eloquently, thoroughly, precisely, and pastorally articulated in a confessional statement known as the Canons of Dordt, which remains to this day one of the greatest statements of the gospel ever penned. It is still part of the doctrinal standards of Reformed churches.

What many do not realize (I sure didn't) is that the same essential controversy that has raged throughout church history is still alive and well in today's conservative evangelical church. I was entirely unaware of this for my first 15 or more years as a Christian, unknowingly wallowing in the mire of a confused and darkened understanding of the gospel. I thought I understood it, but I really did not. What I did understand often did not seem like particularly good news. I now realize that in my muddled thinking, I was unknowingly succumbing to a very standard temptation to mix the gospel with some law, creating a volatile combination that at least one contemporary Reformed theologian refers to as "g'-law-spel."

The light finally began to dawn for me through reading J.I. Packer’s wonderful (and paradigm-shattering) introductory essay to the classic defense of the doctrine of limited atonement (I'll post more on this soon), The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, written by the great British Puritan theologian and pastor John Owen. If you are coming to the conclusion that evangelicalism leaves something to be desired, if somehow the gospel has ceased to really seem like good news to you (really good news), then you simply must read Packer’s essay.

Packer’s burden in the essay is to contrast the “old gospel” (i.e., that of the Reformed faith and historic Protestantism) with what he labels the “new gospel” (that of contemporary evangelicalism) to demonstrate that what passes for the biblical gospel today is actually a serious distortion and dilution of the biblical message, and that “one of the most urgent tasks facing Evangelical Christendom today [is] the recovery of the gospel.”

There is no doubt that Evangelicalism today is in a state of perplexity and unsettlement. … This is a complex phenomenon, to which many factors have contributed; but, if we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that these perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip on the biblical gospel. Without realising it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty.

Packer goes on to argue that this “substitute” gospel proclaimed in today's evangelical pulpits is essentially the same old distorted Pelagian/Arminian doctrine once again reasserting itself. If he is right (and I am convinced that he is), then we would do well to have some familiarity with the controversy, and especially with the biblical doctrines handed down to us by our Reformed forefathers in the Canons of Dordt, the classic statement of Reformed soteriology (the doctrine of salvation).

The main five points of doctrine at issue are popularly represented in the mnemonic “TULIP,” standing for “total depravity,” “unconditional election,” “limited atonement,” “irresistible grace,” and the “perseverance of the saints.” For a wonderful introduction to the five points, you can do nothing better than to read Packer’s essay. I certainly can't approach Packer's eloquence, clarity, and power; nevertheless I will now attempt my own brief and rough statement of the five main points of doctrine at issue (which, as Packer helpfully points out, are really just five different aspects of one main point, that is: God saves sinners!). I'll do this in a series dealing with each of the five points individually (beginning with the next post).

God saves sinners! (part 1)

One of the things I appreciate about the technical aspects of blogging is that you can keep editing and revising already existing posts. I really envy those folks who seem to effortlessly get it right on the first attempt, but I’ll never be one of them. Therefore, expect that I may continue to revise posts that are a week (or several) old!

God saves sinners … but what does “save” mean?

I had said at the end of the previous post that I would try to unpack some of the items that I had listed as “crucial truths.” I think the one I want to start with is the first on the list (though I may not follow the listed order in future posts). I hesitate to prioritize these items in terms of importance, but the first one is definitely near the top, and at the beginning of my Reformed “conversion,” it was the one that really began the process of turning my poor evangelically-muddled brain inside out. It is that God does not merely provide an opportunity for sinners to be saved, but He actually saves sinners, the three Persons of the Godhead concurring in the work of salvation--the Father electing, the Son redeeming, and the Holy Spirit applying redemption to the elect.

God saves sinners! Now the fact that God saves sinners would hardly be a controversial notion among evangelical Christians, but once we get down to articulating exactly what we mean by this, and what is the precise nature of that salvation whereby God saves sinners, we find ourselves right smack in the middle of one of the most important doctrinal controversies that ever shook the Protestant church, the Arminian controversy of the seventeenth century. The controversy arose over the question of whether salvation was entirely a sovereign work of God acting to rescue spiritually dead sinners who couldn’t lift a finger to help themselves--or whether God in Christ merely made salvation a possibility contingent upon whether a sinner would employ his freewill and choose to believe. (The followers of a minister named Jacob Arminius argued for the latter position.)

In other words, the debate was over the question: What exactly does “save” mean? One way to get a handle on the issue at stake is by asking yourself the following question: If you have trusted in Christ for your salvation, can you attribute your faith to the fact that you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (and nothing else)? Or did God “choose” you on the basis of His foreknowledge that when confronted with the gospel, you would exercise your own free will and “decide for Jesus”? Does your faith flow from your election? Or your election from your faith? (Though it may appear to be, this is not simply a "chicken or the egg" type of question!)

To put it another way (and here I’m stealing a very helpful illustration used by R.C. Sproul in his excellent article, On the Pelagian Captivity of the Church): Can we best compare God’s saving of sinners to someone rescuing a drowning man by throwing him a life preserver and helping him to grab hold of it? Or is it more like someone diving to the bottom of the ocean to rescue a stone cold corpse, bring it to the surface, and then breath life into it? It has often amazed me that many (most?) Christians, in my experience, don’t consider this to be an important question. As you've probably figured out, I have become convinced that it is crucial, and I want to argue vehemently for the latter option!

(In order to keep this post “bite-sized,” I’ll continue the discussion in the next one …)