Series: Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses «

Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

by Will on September 29, 2009 · 0 comments

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

You’re probably familiar with the acronym TULIP. It’s just an easy way to remember some basic tenets of Calvinistic theology. There has been a lot of quibbling over the language of TULIP, so some people have suggested revised phrases. In case you need a review, here’s the acronym along with the updated language:

Total Depravity (Radical Depravity)

Unconditional Election

Limited Atonement (Particular Redemption)

Irresistible Grace (Efficacious Grace)

Perseverance of the Saints (Persevering Grace)

Even for people who use the new terminology, we still tend to talk about the acronym TULIP…because it sounds so much better than RUPEP.

But there’s a very serious problem with the language we use in this discussion. TULIP may not simply be a helpful mnemonic device; it may be a set of colored glasses that keeps us from seeing some very important aspects of the work of redemption.

You know those little decoder glasses you got as a kid? You would have a piece of paper that had a bunch of red dots on it. But when you put on the decoder glasses, the red disappeared, and you could finally read the hidden message, right? Without the glasses you could only see the red dots. But once you put the glasses on, you had a very different perspective.

When we use the language of TULIP we have on our special glasses, and we can only see parts of the picture. Perhaps we need to take off those linguistic filters and see a bigger picture.

Kenneth Burke, famous rhetorician, called this filtering aspect of language, “terministic screens.” In other words, we screen out certain aspects of ideas simply by the terms we use to talk about those ideas. I think we may unwittingly be screening out some very important aspects of the gospel because we fail to think of the gospel outside of the limits of the TULIP acronym.

I want to take a series of posts to accomplish several objectives:

I want to demonstrate how each of the points of Calvinism are not only right and biblical, but also somewhat misleading.
I want to show why a Christian who is committed to the doctrines of grace needs to take off the TULIP-colored glasses and look at the gospel from every angle.
I want to show how we need to use different language when speaking of the gospel in order to accomplish that goal, and perhaps suggest some different language to use.
And I want to point down some possible paths we may follow when we see that there are other paths of reality in the gospel message than simply TULIP.

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Total Depravity

by Will on October 1, 2009 · 0 comments

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

Total depravity is the idea that sin has so infiltrated every part of our being that we cannot take any steps towards God unless he first intervenes. This is the truth we find in passages such as the following:

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. (John 6:44)

There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, together they have become useless; there is no one who does good, there is not even one. (Romans 3:10-12)

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to this worldly age, according to the ruler of the atmospheric domain, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and by nature we were children under wrath, as the others were also. (Ephesians 2:1-3)

It is true that

I once was rebellious, corrupted by sin, Pursuing the Devil’s dark path, Oblivious, dead to the state I was in, An object of God’s dreadful wrath. (James Boice)

The following video of shows how even at an early age the depravity of children shows itself. No one has to teach children to be deceitful. Our inherited sin has so affected us that even as kids, we will do whatever it takes to get our own way.

(Okay, I’m not sure how well that video illustrates the point, but it’s my son, and I thought it was cute!)

However, it is also true that humanity is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), and as such human life is inherently valuable. That is why God linked the command not to murder with the creation of humans in God’s image (Genesis 9:6).

Sometimes we can so emphasize the depravity of man that we can forget that it is precisely that depraved humanity that God loved. And this is how he loved that depraved humanity: He sent his Son to die for them! Our language of “total depravity” sometimes makes us think that there is nothing in humanity to love or be excited about, or that somehow the image of God in mankind was simply obliterated in the fall.

The term “total depravity”–and even to some extent “radical depravity”–has screened out the reality that humanity is created in God’s image and has inherent worth because of that.

Now, just to clarify, the “inherent worth” of being made in God’s image is not the same thing as any “moral worth” or moral claim to favor with God. Man is still completely lost apart from God and is affected by sin in such a way that even the good that he does is not done for the glory of God but for his own glory, and is therefore tainted with sin. Man is definitely dead in sin and cannot come to saving faith apart from a sovereign work of God.

Perhaps we should consider using a different term. Or maybe it would be more helpful to add terminology to our vocabulary so that “total/radical depravity” is not the only category we use to speak of humanity. If asked to describe humanity, I might answer that we are bearers of God’s image who are fallen, helpless and broken.

I don’t want to despise the image of God in man, marred though it may be. Nor do I want to ascribe to mankind more moral ability than Scripture allows. Rather, my hope is that I will acknowledge the good things that humanity does while proclaiming without apology our great need and utter dependence upon God.

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Irresistible Grace

by Will on November 29, 2009 · 0 comments

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

What Is Irresistible Grace

Theologians often talk about two different expressions of the grace of God. One of those is sometimes called “effectual grace.” In discussions of TULIP (or Calvinism or the doctrines of grace) the term is usually called “irresistible grace.” Here are some excerpts form a very helpful article by Desiring God on the doctrines of grace:

The doctrine of irresistible grace does not mean that every influence of the Holy Spirit cannot be resisted. It means that the Holy Spirit can overcome all resistance and make his influence irresistible….

More specifically irresistible grace refers to the sovereign work of God to overcome the rebellion of our heart and bring us to faith in Christ so that we can be saved. If our doctrine of total depravity is true, there can be no salvation without the reality of irresistible grace. If we are dead in our sins, totally unable to submit to God, then we will never believe in Christ unless God overcomes our rebellion….

In John 6:44 Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” This drawing is the sovereign work of grace without which no one can be saved from their rebellion against God. Again some say, “He draws all men, not just some.” But this simply evades the clear implication of the context that the Father’s “drawing” is why some believe and not others.

Specifically, John 6:64-65 says, “‘But there are some of you that do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that should betray him. And he said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’”

Notice two things.

First, notice that coming to Jesus is called a gift. It is not just an opportunity. Coming to Jesus is “given” to some and not to others.

Second, notice that the reason Jesus says this, is to explain why “there are some who do not believe.” We could paraphrase it like this: Jesus knew from the beginning that Judas would not believe on him in spite of all the teaching and invitations he received. And because he knew this, he explains it with the words, No one comes to me unless it is given to him by my Father. Judas was not given to Jesus. There were many influences on his life for good. But the decisive, irresistible gift of grace was not given.

What Are We Missing

The question I’ve been asking throughout this series has been this: What concepts get screened out in our thinking by the use of the language of TULIP?

So it is right to ask now, What are we missing by speaking of “irresistible grace”? And I think the answer comes in two parts. But before I get to those, let me just say that this point in TULIP is probably not the greatest offender when it comes to terministic screens (i.e., language that screens out other concepts). We usually do a good job of balancing this truth with its counterparts.

First, if we are screening out some other concepts, one may obviously be the genuineness of human choice. It’s easy in any discussion of the sovereignty of God–not least of all this one–to forget that while man’s will may indeed be a slave to sin, we nevertheless make genuine choices.

This is not to imply libertarian free will, which I believe is untenable biblically. It is, however, to insist that the choices we make as humans are genuine.

Again, genuine does not mean uninfluenced. All of our choices are influenced. In the doctrine of irresistible grace, we are emphasizing God’s influence on a particular choice. Let’s not make that mean that the choice itself is not genuine.

That is one possible danger.

Second, if we forget something because of our emphasis on God’s irresistible grace, then it may be the common grace which he pours out on all mankind.

Common grace is also spoken of as God’s providence. He makes the sun shine, the rain fall; he gives health to regenerate and unregenerate alike.

We may risk de-emphasizing this providential, common grace of God in our attempts to emphasize the irresistible saving grace of God.

Like I said, though, I don’t think this is the one that causes us the greatest problems, but the dangers are there, so I want to remind us of what we’re leaving out if we only speak of irresistible grace.

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Limited Atonement

by Will on October 27, 2009 · 0 comments

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

Engaging the Controversy

Perhaps the most controversial of all of the points of Calvinism is this one: Limited Atonement. If you ever hear of people claiming to be “4-point Calvinists,” it is almost always this one point that they reject.

Here is the idea behind limited atonement in a nutshell: Limited atonement means that Jesus’ death on the cross only had saving effect for the elect. In other words, the sins of the non-elect were not paid for by Jesus’ death.

I’m not writing this to defend limited atonement. If you want a good defense of limited atonement, check out these resources at Monergism.com.

My purpose is to show why the language of “limited atonement”–while good and helpful in many ways–screens out some other realities about the work of the Messiah on the cross.

Perhaps this is why our non-limited-atonement friends get so upset. Perhaps they see some other biblical realities that take place at the cross that we ignore simply because we use language that screens them out.

Think about it: When we say we believe in limited atonement, we have just defined all of what happened on the cross in terms of “atonement.” But is atonement the only thing that Christ accomplished by his death? To ask it another way, is the saving of the elect the only effect of the cross?

This quote by Louis Berkhof comes from his work on Common Grace:

Reformed theologians…believe that important natural benefits accrue to the whole human race from the death of Christ, and that in these benefits the unbelieving, the impenitent, and the reprobate also share. In every covenant transaction recorded in Scripture it appears that the covenant of grace carries with it not only spiritual but also material blessings, and those material blessings are generally of such a kind that they are naturally shared also by unbelievers.

…

These general blessings of mankind, indirectly resulting from the atoning work of Christ, were not only foreseen by God, but designed by Him as blessings for all concerned. It is perfectly true, of course, that the design of God in the work of Christ pertained primarily and directly, not to the temporal well-being of men in general, but to the redemption of the elect; but secondarily and indirectly it also included the natural blessings bestowed on mankind indiscriminately. All that the natural man receives other than curse and death is an indirect result of the redemptive work of Christ.

More Than One Way to View the Atonement

Throughout Church history there have been (and continue to be) various views of what we call “The Atonement.” Wayne Grudem lists these:

Penal Substitution
Ransom to Satan
Moral Influence
Example
Governmental

[quote] There is a view not mentioned here, though perhaps hinted at, known as the Christus Victor view. In essence, this view claims that in his death and resurrection, Jesus claimed victory over everything: sin, death, hell, the power of Satan over all of creation.

Perhaps what we need to is to see how this understanding of the atonement and the penal substitutionary view fit together, since both are true. We have tended to neglect Christ’s victory over all things and have just focused instead on the legal aspect of the atonement.

When we speak of “limited atonement” we speak explicitly in penal substitutionary categories. We need to see more than that in the death of Jesus.

Justin Taylor pointed out in a recent post this quote by John Murray:

Redemption from sin cannot be adequately conceived or formulated except as it comprehends the victory which Christ secured once for all over him who is the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air . . .

[I]t is impossible to speak in terms of redemption from the power of sin except as there comes within the range of this redemptive accomplishment the destruction of the power of darkness.

(Redemption—Accomplished and Applied, p. 50)

So as we speak of the death of Jesus and what it accomplished and what God intended to accomplish by it, we need to remember that the bride of Christ is indeed at the heart of redemption, but that even creation itself has been affected by work of the Messiah. Jesus has set in motion his kingdom through his death and resurrection, and it is spreading throughout nations and communities and social structures and even the earth itself as people are being renewed in the image of God.

Let’s be careful not to screen out the greatness and the bigness of the gospel by only using language that focuses on one aspect of the gospel.

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Unconditional Election

by Will on October 8, 2009 · 0 comments

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

The Biblical Basis for the Idea and the Language

The idea of “unconditional election” is rooted in God’s choosing of his people Israel:

For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be His own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD was devoted to you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But because the LORD loved you and kept the oath He swore to your fathers, He brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8 HCSB, emphasis mine)

In the NT we read of God’s choosing of his people in passages such as these:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, in Christ; for He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6 HCSB, emphasis mine)

When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and glorified the message of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48 HCSB)

We must make the connection between election and love and understand that when we speak of unconditional election, we are really using one way of speaking about God’s love. It is clear from passages that teach election that this choosing of God’s people is not based on anything in them (e.g., foreseen faith, foreseen works, etc.), but in God’s unconditional love. This point is explicitly taught in Romans 9 where Paul uses the birth of Jacob and Esau as an example. He says that God set his love on Jacob and rejected Esau before birth to establish the “unconditional” aspect of this choosing prerogative of his.

We must make the connection between election and love and understand that when we speak of unconditional election, we are really using one way of speaking about God’s love.

The challenge, then, is to be able to speak of the unconditional election aspect of God’s love without at the same time screening out other aspects of God’s love which are also biblical.

The Ideas Screened Out by This Language

Unfortunately, though, our consistent (and sometimes exclusive) use of this terminology in Reformed circles has tended to cause us to leave out other aspects of the love of God. Here are some things I think we miss when we only think of the love of God and the gospel in terms of unconditional election:

The earnestness with which we ought to call men to faith.

One of the greatest Calvinistic evangelists was Charles Spurgeon. He called for men to repent and believe with such emotion and fervor that non-Reformed folk often don’t even realize that Spurgeon believed in unconditional election.

No real Reformed or Calvinistic person believes for one minute that election therefore negates the necessity to share the gospel or call people to repentance. The straw man that claims election discourages missions is not only a non sequitur, but also a complete blinding of the reality of history. The Great Awakenings were built on Calvinistic theology under the ministries of men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. The modern missions movement was fueled by Reformed teaching.

However, sometimes Christians who believe in election fail to be earnest in this calling to faith. I think our emphasis on God’s role in the process (while right and good) may scare us away from talking about man’s responsibility. We so value God’s sovereignty that we fear we will dirty it up, so to speak, if we also emphasize man’s responsibility. We must be careful to see the whole truth of Scripture here, and not to allow our terminology to screen out the rest of the story.

God’s love for the non-elect.

It is certainly true that the love God has showed to the elect is a very special kind of love, as demonstrated by the Jacob and Esau story in Romans 9. It is also true, though, that the love of God is greatly more complex than we often are willing to admit.

In his short, but excellent, book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, D.A. Carson lists 5 different ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God. Our American evangelical culture tends to flatten out the love of God into a warm, fuzzy, “smile-God-loves-you” kind of thing. We Calvinists, on the other hand, have a tendency to flatten out the love of God into a cold, exclusive, elect-only-privilege kind of thing.

The language of “unconditional election” needs to be kept in its proper context and not allowed to dominate every discussion of the love of God. God loves in many different ways, and I would argue that his electing love is perhaps the greatest form of that love. That does not mean, though, that God only loves when he unconditionally elects.

Suggestions for a refined vocabulary

I’m not sure that what this particular topic needs is a change in vocabulary. The phrase, “unconditional election,” is legitimate, biblical and helpful. What we need is a willingness to speak of the effects of the gospel outside of the realm of the elect. That is, what has God’s love accomplished through Jesus even for those that do not believe.

Here are some ideas:

The universe still holds together, even for those who are non-elect (Colossians 1:17).
The sun shines, and the rain falls, even for those who are non-elect (Matthew 5:43-48).
Beauty can be enjoyed, food can be savored, family and friends can be cherished, even for those who are non-elect (James 1:17).

God still displays his love outside the realm of unconditional election, and it would be good for us to remember that even as God’s chosen people with the benefits of his special electing love, the mission of God and the love of God are much bigger than unconditional election can capture.

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Perseverance of the Saints

by Will on January 18, 2010 · 1 comment

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Looking at the Gospel Through TULIP-Colored Glasses

A while back I started a series on the language of TULIP, and how some of those terms screen out other important realities. (Read the first article, in particular, to understand the concept of “terministic screens” a little better.) I’m finally getting around to the last point of the acrostic: the perseverance of the saints.

This particular point of the doctrines of grace is less problematic than some of the others. In short, the doctrine states:

The doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints is stated in the Westminster Confession in the following words: “They whom God hath accepted In His Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved” [Chapter XVII, Section 1].Or in other words we believe that those who once become true Christians cannot totally fall away and be lost, — that while they may fall into sin temporarily, they will eventually return and be saved. (Loraine Boettner)

If there is anything that the language, “perseverance of the saints,” might screen out, it could be the very Spirit-enabled work of this perseverance. That’s why defenders of the doctrine always seem to clarify up front that this is not a works-based, try-really-hard-and-you-might-keep-your-salvation kind of doctrine.

When I was growing up in the heart of Christian fundamentalism, the complaint against this point of Calvinism was that it taught people that final salvation was up to them and their works. Well, apparently that’s the danger of using a term like “perseverance of the saints.“

Some have suggested that we call this point the Preservation of the Saints. I’m afraid, though, that just doesn’t capture the idea in its wholeness.

Some (and I emphasize “some”) of the passages that indicate this need to persevere in faith are the following:

1 Cor. 6:9-10
Gal. 5:19-21
Eph. 5:5
Heb. 3:14
Heb. 6:4-6
Heb. 10:26-27

Those passages do not merely teach that God will preserve those who trust in him, but that those who are his are characterized by certain works (or the refraining from certain works). So to say that this doctrine is simply about God preserving us is to capture less than is meant.

Take this passage from Samuel Rutherford, for example:

Worthy Sir, I beseech you in the Lord to give your soul no rest till ye have real assurance, and Christ’s rights confirmed and sealed to your soul…. Take pains for your salvation; for in that day when ye shall see many men’s labours and conquests and idol-riches lying in ashes…oh how dear a price would your soul give for God’s favour in Christ!

Perhaps “Perseverance of the Saints” is the best label for it after all! Maybe this is the term that makes the most sense of passages like Romans 2:5-11. So it is right to say that if we do not, by the power of the Spirit, live lives that evidence saving faith, then we cannot lay claim to having the seal of the Spirit at all. That is the meaning of Perseverance.

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