Theology

Living in an Activist age: Escaping Thought by Turning to Action

August 8, 2022 by wagraham Leave a Comment

The world of the Bible feels far from us. The psalmist claims that the blessed person “meditates day and night” on God’s Torah (Ps 1:2). Paul tells us that growing in the Christian life means not just doing something but standing there, “beholding the glory of the Lord” and so “being transformed” (2 Cor 3:18).

The one thing David yearns for is “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps 27:4). David even looks to the work of the Creator to contemplate his glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” The drive to know God and his works, wait and not act, to contemplate spans the Scriptures and is everywhere present in the ancient world.

But not so for us. We live in an activist age, one characterized by escaping thought into action, fleeing thorny problems into political solutions, running from theology to a more practical faith. [Read more…] about Living in an Activist age: Escaping Thought by Turning to Action

Calvinists are Uncommonly good at Affirming free will

July 29, 2022 by wagraham 1 Comment

Calvinists are some of the best in class at affirming free will. Granted, things went awry around 1800. But I mean before that. Everyone affirmed free will and free choice. Even Luther in his characteristically bombastic way denied free choice when it comes to matters of salvation, not free choice in civil, moral, mundane matters.

But I am thinking more of the mainline reformed tradition. For example, Peter Vermigli (1499–1562) wrote, ““God foreknows everything and our freedom of will is retained” (Common Places 2.33).” Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) in his 1562 Helvetic Confession wrote, “no one denies that in external things both the regenerate and the unregenerate enjoy free will” (Ch 9).

No one denies that. That’s right. Only the most cage-staged Calvinist in his college dorm room would be silly enough to proclaim, “There is no free will!”

Everyone agrees that natural necessities limit freedom: disease, death, and so on. And after the Fall, we cannot please God with our works since sin is everywhere. “And without faith it is impossible to please him” (Heb 11:6). So we are not free to do whatever we want—I cannot fly even if I choose to do so.

But we still have genuine freedom: I can choose red or blue or white or green. I can do one thing, but I might have done otherwise. I am not constrained by any external thing but my mind judges and my will chooses.

A Calvinist affirms all this. Yes, some like to nuance things in various ways. Calvin himself was not very clear on how to put the pieces together (click here to learn more). His contemporary Peter Vermigli was though. I wrote an article on him and free choice, which you can read by clicking here.

Later reformed theologians like William Perkins really found the language to speak about human freedom and divine freedom concurring. (To learn more about Perkins’s view, click here). And it is this idea of concurrence that makes Calvinists—or better Reformed Theologians—thinkers really skilled at affirming free will.

Here is how. [Read more…] about Calvinists are Uncommonly good at Affirming free will

If God Knows Everything, do we have free Choice?

July 29, 2022 by wagraham 1 Comment

If God knows everything, you basically have five types of explanations when it comes to free choice in saving faith:

1. God sees into the future and knows your choice. So his decree to create includes your choice. (Arminian)

2. God has middle knowledge, knows all possible worlds, and selects the one that both guarantees creaturely freedom and occurs just as God wills. (Molinist)

3. God causes everything. He is the pool cue. We are the billiard balls. (Determinist)

4. God ordains genuinely free acts since he, as First Cause, acts in a way that transcends the physical ordering of things. He is first cause to our free choices, not in time nor in physical order, but in a way that only can make sense to God before whom all things are present in his timeless eternal existence. (Early Reformed / Reformed Orthodox)

5. God ordains all things, but he does so in a way that is compatible with human free choice. So God determines all, yet does so such that humans experience genuine freedom (compatibilism).

What Are First and Secondary Causes?

July 25, 2022 by wagraham 2 Comments

When reformed theologians speak about the first cause and secondary causes, they do not mean sequences in time. They refer to two ORDERS of causality:

1. Divine (first cause);

2. Creaturely (second or contingent causes).

The reason why the first cause—logically prior, but of a different order than secondary causes—can concur with secondary causes is BECAUSE they are of a different order.

Could Adam not Have Sinned? Some Augustinian Considerations

April 30, 2022 by wagraham Leave a Comment

When Adam and Eve sinned, God exiled them from the garden, and through them, sin entered the world. Christ came to redeem sinners and make them into saints. But if Adam had not sinned, then would Christ have come? Could Adam have not sinned?

Here are some Augustinian considerations. [Read more…] about Could Adam not Have Sinned? Some Augustinian Considerations

One Reason Why Pettiness Is Regarded as Piety

March 9, 2022 by wagraham 1 Comment

Herman Bavinck once wrote, “There is so much narrow-mindedness, so much pettiness among us, and the worst thing is that this is regarded as piety.” Bavinck was referring to two Christian groups the separatist churches of the Grievers and Seceders. Both groups left the state church, but they could not get along.

Why? Not because of matters of orthodox doctrine. Both had it. But because of pettiness and narrow-mindedness. It is the old problem of Donatism, of a drive for purity that that cuts itself off from other people. We often feel holier than the body of Christ.

But Jesus accepts us just as we are by faith. And so the body of Christ should welcome one another just as Christ welcomed us (Rom 15:7). To do anything less is to miss the mark of Christ’s love and formation of his body, the church.

One reason why we often become petty and narrow-minded as Bavinck says is because we do not understand how God’s Spirit gifts the created world and people in it, even of unbelievers or believers whom we disagree with. We think we are at the centre of it all. We are not because any truth or goodness that we find in this world has its origin in God. [Read more…] about One Reason Why Pettiness Is Regarded as Piety