The Doctor will see you now. (Faith)

Pretend that I am a Doctor. I am not but humor me for a moment. You will soon find that I am not the kind of doctor you would ever want to treat you. You come to my office with low potassium. Your health, your ability to live depends on your getting that potassium. Without potassium your heart will soon stop and you will die.

I, as your doctor, suggest that you take a potassium pill once a day. This simple act will assure you a long and healthy life. You refuse. You have an aversion to pills and you just will not take them no matter what good they might produce. I then suggest that you have a banana once a day. That would be a good substitute for not taking the pill. You inform me that you hate bananas and no matter what good they will do you will not eat them.

As your doctor I feel an obligation to assuring your health. I know what is best for you and I am determined to see you get proper treatment. I ask if you are averse to taking a shot. You reply that you have no problem taking a shot at all. I give you the shot. It produces in you a great craving for bananas. It is quite a permanent craving that you will live with the rest of your life. You cannot go a day without a banana. I present you a nice ripe banana and you eat it eagerly.

For eating the banana I commend you. I heap lavish praise on you for doing what is good for you and for being obedient to my instructions about eating bananas satifying your need for potassium. My commendation is profuse and very lavish.

You look at me as if I was out of my mind. You are being praised for something you have no power over. You can not help yourself. The doctor may as well being praising himself. He is the one that made you like the banana.

What is wrong with this picture? Why does the doctor lavish praise on his patient for something that the patient cannot resist doing because I as the doctor made him do it in the first place. I can see why the patien is upset at this point. He is now doing things he never wanted to do in the first place and he is receiving praise for that behavior even though he cannot resist doing what he is doing. Yes he will live longer and better, but he is being made to do so.

Heb 11:1-13 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (2) For by it the people of old received their commendation. (3) By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (4) By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. (5) By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. (6) And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (7) By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (8) By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. (9) By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. (10) For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (11) By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. (12) Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. (13) These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

Under Calvin’s theology man cannot please God in anyway. Man is totally unable to approach God. Faith is only expressed by a person that has been given that capacity by God through regeneration, through rebirth. God is like the doctor above who produces a desire in his patient that did not exist before he treated him.

The Hebrews passage above speaks about people being commended for their faith. These were people of the Old Testament. They lived before Christ had come and before the cross had been endured. They expressed faith and acted in obedience before the Holy Spirit had come to fill those who would follow Jesus. “(13) These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

Why did God commend them for something they could not do? Why did God commend them for actions that He was producing in them? Why did God commend them for faith that only God could produce according to Calvin? Doesn’t that seem as silly as the commendation the doctor gave his patient above? It is silly because faith is not produced by God.

Faith is a capacity that is in man. God is commending them for their using their faith, something they possess and can exercise on their own without having been born again. They could not be born again if verse 13 is true. They died in faith, not having received the things promised. The things promised that the Hebrew writer is talking about is clear, it is Christ the better way. It is the New Testament Gospel of salvation in Christ.

Faith is not something that is created by being reborn as Calvin teaches, it is a capacity that God has preserved in man so that man can respond to the Gospel. Faith does not come from rebirth it come from hearing the good news of salvation in Christ.

Rom 10:4-17 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (5) For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. (6) But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) (7) or "'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). (8) But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); (9) because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (10) For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (11) For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." (12) For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. (13) For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (14) How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? (15) And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" (16) But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" (17) So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Faith comes by hearing, it does not come by being regenerated as Calvin claims.

Total Inabilty

Ron Hossack has a clear article that presents his rejection of the TULIP of Calvin’s theology. The article is found here http://www.biblefragrances.com/studies/tulipHossack.html

I grew up a Presbyterian learning the Westminster confession at a young age. Many of the principles contained in the confession bothered me then and they bother me now. Calvin took Augustine theology as the basis for his own theology. He wrapped this theology in his contemporary understanding of Sovereignty. Arminious his student later defended Calvin’s theology but ran into a problem when confronted by those opposed to his teaching. They presented to him some strong Biblical arguments that seemed to undermined what Calvin had taught. Arminious then did a study and came up with a Biblical argument against Calvin. He formulated his argument in five statements. After his death a council was called to resolve the stark differences between Calvin and Arminious. Both men had died and neither were alive to argue for themselves. The council was politically stacked in Calvin’s favor. The Arminian support actually left the council and never defended their position because of the unfair rules imposed against them. The Council produced counter points to the Arminian position known today by the acronym TULIP. All but the last point of the TULIP present a Biblical concept prefaced by an adjective.

T - Total Inability;
U - Unconditional Election;
L - Limited Atonement;
I - Irresistible (efficacious) Grace; and
P - Perseverance of the Saints."

It is fascinating to me that the nouns in these phrases are Biblical while the adjectives are not. When you discover that truth the system begins to unravel. Taking liberally from the article sighted above I will demonstrate what I mean.

The Total Inability or as it is sometimes called the Total Depravity of man has as its basis the ideal that man cannot save himself. There is nothing in man that can appeal to God for his salvation. Man cannot produce any work, any devotion, any thought or activity that will earn his good standing before God. Even God’s law is not a means for salvation because man is not capable of keeping that law. This is an absolute Biblical truth. So man has an inability associated with his fallen, sinful state that can be traced back to the Garden of Eden and Adam coming under the influence of a spirit other then God’s. That is a spirit belonging to Satin that presented Adam with the lie that he could be like God, that he could discern what was good and what was evil. Only God can change the fallen state of man. That, as we know, is the Gospel, the good news found in the saving grace of God in Christ. It is only in God’s work of the Cross that man can be set free from his sin and the death that it produces. It is only in Christ’s death and resurrection that we can have new life, be born from above, in a way that brings us into eternal relationship with God. Again this is Biblical truth.

What is not true is that man is totally depraved or that man is totally incapable of responding to God. The T in tulip infers that man has no desire for God. Man will not seek God on his own in anyway unless God changes man first. We move from man’s inability to produce his salvation to a state in which he will not even seek his salvation, not from his own work, but even from God’s gracious gift. We move from man’s unwillingness to accept God’s offer of salvation to man’s total inability to even consider such an offer. This is so blatantly unscriptural that it boggles the mind.

Over and over Scripture describes mans unwillingness to receive God’s free gift. Never does it describe mans inability to receive that gift. The article sighted above does a good job of presenting this Biblical truth. I will give one example. (John 5:40), "You will not come to me, that you might have life." It is about ones willingness not about ones inability. It is about the fact that you will not come. It is not about the concept that you cannot come.

The Gospel is a free offering to man. The Gospel is a dialogue from the Word (logos) who became flesh, who dwelled among us and who presented compelling proof of who He was and what he was to bring to man. The Bible always presents man as persuadable and God as the presenter of truth, the pursuer of man.

The Calvin understanding of Total Inability distorts Scripture, including God’s call, the meaning of being reborn, mans response-ability to God, the fundamental meaning of faith and its source and much more. The more I know about this theology the more disturbed I become.

What a world!

This will be short. I just wanted to note the decision of our President to forgo any White House activites for the National Day of Prayer. He has opted to "pray in private". I simply note this decision an one more step towards removing spiritual things from our public life. How far from our Judeo/Christian roots are we willing to go. At what point will our Government begin to actively oppose religeous expression. It's sad.