I have enjoyed reading John Phillips commentary on Galatians. I'm working on an adult Sunday school series on Galatians and Phillips' commentary has been a help so far. It is the deepest commentary I've read from him to this point. I've learned a great deal about the history of the Galatian region and the origins of the Hebrew Talmud. Those were things I didn't expect to learn about, but I should have known there'd be a few surprises in a 224 page commentary on a book of the Bible that only has 6 short chapters. I wanted to note something here that he wrote regarding the sovereignty of God from Galatians 1:15:"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace..."
John Phillips wrote:
"At no time, however, did this overruling will of God infringe on Paul's personal sovereignty and accountability as a moral human being. God persuades, but he does not push. He convicts, but He does not coerce. He does not arbitrarily impose His will on the human will. Yet, at the same time, He never loses control of human affairs. His omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience enable Him to gather events into His hands with the greatest ease. From our perspective, events take place in a time sequence because we live in a time sequence, but God transcends time. He lives in the eternal present tense of time. He is the I AM. From God's standpoint, all of the events of time take place simultaneously. God can call the things that are not as though they are, because He does not have to wait for the future to reveal the end of a sequence of events nor wait for a specific moment of time to come before imposing His will upon that moment."
I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Phillips. A Calvinist would choke at these statements and, quite frankly, that's fine. I have been reading many arguments regarding Calvinism lately and I find that the more I read their arguments the more I am settled on the fact that I disagree with that theological system. The most interesting thing I found regarding Dr. Phillips' statements is that I have been thinking about this same thing for a long time. He mentioned that God "lives in the eternal present tense of time." If a Calvinist would grasp that and apply that to the Bible, all of the verses they use to argue God's sovereignty in salvation would suddenly have quite a different meaning. I've been working on a thesis, of sorts, regarding Calvinism to post on this blog. I was going to mention something in that post nearly identical to what Dr. Phillips wrote here.
As I have looked at both sides of the argument I have learned a great deal, especially where I should stand on the matter. Stay tuned for that post. Until then, ponder this thought.
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4 comments:
Having studied Calvinism for several years now,
(although there's enough of Calvinism I disagree with not to name myself as one),
I would agree that Phillips asessment of God's ruling over the free wills of men is acurate. The hyper-calvinist would disagree that men have any free will at all.
What free will means and how it chooses, and what stimulates us to choose is a totally different subject.
What I have come to realize is that whatever God has ordained to be, WILL come to pass whether it is my salvation, or my eating Lucky Charms for breakfast this morning. My free will chooses these things, but nothing I choose is out of God's control. He does not wait on me and wonder what I am going to do so He can make a decision. I guess that would go along with what you said about God being outside the realm of time.
How we understand all these things in our finite minds in the realm of time is through theological systems that try to connect all the dots. Some systems draw outside the lines to make certain dots connect for the sake of their system. I talked about this a few days ago on my blog about Grace and Faith and which one comes first. The Calvinist, insists that Grace comes before Faith, because it's the only way he can understand why a spiritually dead person can come to faith. In that, I think he goes outside the lines of revelation to connect the dots.
Keep studying the subject, but don't just read one or two books that refute one or the other.
Try not to study the subject with the mindset of disproving something. Be objective. It is my personal discovery that a lot of Calvinism really does hold to Bible truth and it is too obvious to ignore or it is too plain to try to re-define terms.
Then there are nuances that make logical sense in the system, but are hard to prove with explicit instruction of scripture. That's where I get off the bus and park it. Any systematic theology is not important to me as much as a right understanding of what the text of scripture says. Just like a movement (like fundamentalism) is not all that important to me, as much as the priciples that the movement is supposed to stand for are of my main concern.
I have tried to look at Calvinism objectively. Like I said in a post a week ago, if I am wrong about something, I don't mind and I want to know about it. Like you said, there's too much I can't reconcile with Scripture to really come close to adhering to that theological system.
Just so everybody knows, I wasn't reading Exploring Galatians to look for ways to argue against Calvinism. I just happened upon these statements quite unexpectedly. I have enjoyed reading very strong arguments for Calvinism on several different blogs. Those arguments are very thought provoking and challenging to me, but I still can't reconcile them with the Bible. I will continue to look at the subject.
"A Calvinist would choke at these statements."
Not really.
Would "gag" be a better word?
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