Introduction to "Pelagius, Augustine, and the Plague of Free Will"

https://www.amazon.com/Pelagius-Augustine-Plague-Free-will-ebook/dp/B074QN4RSF

I grew up in the First Assemblies of God denomination. The Assemblies are a Pentecostal denomination. I first “experienced” God at an Assemblies church. I was about 4 years old. My parents were new believers. My mother had converted from Catholicism, and my father had no prior church experience. He was a deacon, or an usher. I’m not sure. He wore a suit every Sunday and I would watch him diligently polish his black leather shoes every Sunday morning. We lived in San Jose, California, and the church we attended was set atop a tiny hill in a suburb.

I remember watching the movie "666", which was based on a book by Salem Kirban. The movie remains the most terrifying experience of my life. The heroine in the movie wakes up one morning and finds that her significant other has vanished while shaving. The world is in chaos. Millions of people have inexplicably disappeared. Soon the events described in Revelation become reality. Plagues, destruction, world government, the Mark of the Beast, all of it. But that’s not the terrifying part. The governing authorities, now a tool of the AntiChrist, begin to hunt all the Christians who refuse to accept the Mark. The movie ends as the authorities lead the heroine to the guillotine and execute her, who then wakes up from this nightmare to find her boyfriend has vanished.

This movie scarred me, and for years, whenever I was lost, or I couldn’t find my parents, I naturally assumed God had abandoned me, Christ had returned, and I was not worthy.

There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come
And you’ve been left behind

Those words are actual song lyrics. I believed them. What did I know? I was a toddler. I understood words well; I just didn’t understand God well.

Pentecostal and other Charismatic denominations frequently use fear to motivate Christians. They believe that if they teach Christians about the grace and love of God, then Christians will abuse God’s grace and live in sin. For them, fear keeps Christians in line. Charismatic denominations traditionally believe that a Christian can “lose” their salvation. If you sin enough times—we don’t know how many times, but God does—then you will fall away from God and burn for eternity in hell. You have abandoned God. These churches have “altar calls” and “rededication ceremonies” every week. Catholic churches have similar ceremonies, called “confession”. There are a lot of theological similarities between Catholic and Charismatic churches.

Charismatics, Catholics, and many other Protestant denominations believe that a Christian can lose his salvation by a simple choice. They believe this because they believe the Christian originally decided to choose to believe in Christ. If he can freely, through his own volition, believe in Christ, then he can freely choose to stop believing. It’s a perfectly consistent belief. It’s just not biblical.

The core of the problem is this notion of free will. Freedom is very Western, but not very biblical. God is not a westerner. He is not Socrates or Plato. He wasn’t created with the birth of Athens and he doesn’t subscribe to our beliefs. He commands us to submit to his, and the first notion that we must accept is that, because of Adam, we are dead in our sin.

I do not deny that we all make choices. Every day, every one of us makes choices. Our choices are limited by certain factors, however. Our environment limits our choices. All of us do not choose to walk to school, or to wear warm clothing throughout the year, for example. Our personality limits our choices. I will never choose to use hallucinogens or run shirtless through the mall. Our will is not absolutely free, yet we are free to make many of the choices we want to make: where we live, what we eat, who we love, etc.

The theological controversy surrounds our ability to believe in God. Do we freely choose God, or does he sovereignly (some say arbitrarily) choose us? The implications of both options present different dilemmas. If we freely choose God, then what does God do? God responds to our wishes, and we effectively become the Initiators of this Divine Covenant. We decide who God loves and doesn’t love. We hold life and death in our will, eternal salvation or eternal damnation. If God chooses us, then what about those he doesn’t choose? Why does he choose some and damn others? What about our freedom? What about his love? Does he even love everyone?

Many Christians believe that the controversy regarding free will is largely irrelevant to the whole of the Christian life. Most Christians remain completely unaware that there is a controversy at all. The truth is that what a Christian believes about free will and election relates directly to what they believe about sin, grace, and redemption. Free will places in man a spark, however small, of original righteousness. Free will says that we are not sinners at our core, but saints, for we choose to trust in God not by his Spirit, but by the strength of our moral character. With this belief, we become righteous at our core, apart from Christ. Consequently, we need neither grace nor redemption.

Free will flagrantly elevates man to a position equal with God. Theologians who believe in free will not only believe that man can thwart the plans of God, but that God is subject to the whims of man. Free will ventures beyond placing man and God on an equal plane; the doctrine of free will places man in a superior position to the God of the universe.

When a Christian believes that he is responsible for his salvation through the glorious strength and magnificence of free will, he assumes responsibilities that only God can be responsible for. This believer is now responsible for his continued justification, lest he deny God through ongoing sin and lose his salvation; for his sanctification through daily acts of prayer, Bible study, worship, etc.; for the salvation of his loved ones, and for the Gospel command of making disciples of the entire world. Only God has the power and wisdom to accomplish these and guide us through them. We are responsible to trust in God, and to act obediently through this trust, but only God can keep us in salvation, bring us through sanctification and present us holy before him, and guarantee the salvation of those he has elected.

If we believe that we choose God, rather than he choose us, we remove his sovereignty. God sits and waits for us to choose him. He becomes passive. Scripture does not describe God in this way. God sovereignty rules the universe in absolute sovereignty. He builds, he tears down, he uproots and he plants not only men but entire nations.

The Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whom he wishes, and sets over it the lowliest of men. 

Daniel 4.17

If we remove his sovereignty, we set ourselves in his place. We now rule our destinies, and we decide who enters the Kingdom. Many theologians believe that God willingly removes his own sovereignty to respect our free will.[1] If God is not sovereign over the will of man, none of his promises can be trusted, for his promises involve the world, and the world is shaped and influenced by our decisions. If God is not sovereign, God is not God.

This absence of sovereignty allows entire denominations and even the entire Catholic Church to create whatever doctrine they see fit. If God is not sovereign, then his word cannot be trusted. Scripture cannot be trusted. Therefore, we can change, twist, add, subtract, or rewrite as we see fit. The Catholic Church, among many other unscriptural teachings, teaches that we are saved by faith and works. Many denominations ordain practicing homosexuals. The so-called Prosperity Gospel teaches thousands (possibly millions) that God acts as a personal wish-granting machine. If God is not sovereign, man is, and within the church that teaches free will, men have become their own god.

[1] This is the whole point of The Grace of God and the Will of Man. Clark Pinnock, editor, Bethany House Publishers, 1995.

Introduction to "What is Calvinism?"

https://www.amazon.com/What-Calvinism-Arthur-Pink-ebook/dp/B076KK8LFX/

I discovered “Calvinism” through a friend many years ago. He never used the words Calvinism, John Calvin, or even Reformed in our conversation. What he did say was something regarding election. I don’t even remember exactly what he said. All I do remember is that I disagreed with him.

I possessed some familiarity of the reformed doctrine of unconditional election, and this doctrine offended me. I had been taught that God chooses us based on his foreknowledge of our choice of him. God chose those whom he saw had a “heart for him”. This version of election made sense. Bill Mooney’s version did not. God chooses his people freely, and without any influence on our part. We had this conversation in the Christian bookstore where I was working at the time, and as Providence would so arrange things, I had access to all the reformed theology I could get my twenty-two-year-old hands on.

I completed my 45^th year only two days ago. The past twenty-three years, among other things, have been an intense theological journey. Actually, the journey to Calvinism was a brief one. I was immediately convinced of its validity after reading John Piper’s The Pleasures of God, and upon a thorough reevaluation of the Scriptures I had read since I was a child. My true journey has been toward the construction of this particular book you now read.

I have written and re-written a “Calvinism Primer” over and over and over, again and again and again for the past twenty-three years. I have studied John Calvin’s Institutes. I have read Luther’s Bondage of the Will. I have read the Puritans and I have read Edwards and Spurgeon. I have discussed with friends and I have “debated” online. I have questioned not only Calvinism, but my very belief in God many times over the past two decades. My opinion on the branch of Protestant theology known as Calvinism has not changed. What I have learned is that the branch that is not Calvinism is plainly not the Gospel. If I were to contrast Calvinism with everything in popular, current Christian “doctrine”, it would look something like this:

Calvinism Man is a sinner, completely and utterly enslaved to sin, wicked, and depraved, an enemy of God to his dying breath.	Not Calvinism Man is a sinner, yet somehow enough of a saint to choose what is the highest and greatest possible good: to trust in God.
God sovereignly, without respect to man, to his desires, his sinful character, his selfishness, or his hostility to God, chooses to save some of humanity.	God submits himself to the whims of man and chooses those whom he foresees will choose him.
In spite of our frailty, our fickleness, our sin, and our pride, God keeps in his care those he has chosen for all eternity.	In spite of their weakness, selfishness, and inability to continue in grace without his assistance, God allows those he has chosen to perish for eternity after passing some threshold of unrighteousness unknown to them.

This is obviously a slanted simplification, but it is not an oversimplification. There are other issues. Not-Calvinism answers many questions that Calvinism raises:

·        Why does God choose some and not others?

·        Does God love everyone?

·        Why evangelize if God is completely sovereign?

·        Why pray if God will only do what he wants regardless?

The problem with these questions, and any of the questions that non-Calvinism answers, is that they are entirely anthropocentric. These questions are not concerned with God’s glory (which is what the Bible is concerned with, by the way), but instead are concerned with satisfying the concerns and dilemmas of a person who refuses to trust in the God as revealed in the Bible.

This brings me to my main concern: we do not accept what is known as Calvinism because we do not accept the God of Scripture. Frankly, he is offensive to our pride. He does what he wants and not what we want. He condemns us as soon as we are conceived. He does not rescue all of us from our sin. He uses us for his purposes and does not treat us as the free-thinking, sentient, sovereign, agents of human glory that we believe we are. But we are not, according to Scripture.

I will not likely complete my “Calvinism Primer”. Much wiser men have done so, far before I was even conceived. I have done my best to present their words here to explain Calvinism, or rather what I have come to know as the Gospel of the Glory of God.

Alejandro Gonzaga

October 13, 2017

Burn it all down

As I read Clark Pinnock’s Flame of Love, I came across this sentence:

I hope the reader will sense how in love with God I am.

and I couldn’t help but chuckle. In reality, a discerning reader will sense how in love Clark Pinnock is with his theology. Clark Pinnock does not love God, at least not the God revealed in scripture. Pinnock loves the God that he has created. Behold the scorecard of The Grace of God and the Will of Man[1]:

Chapter 1: Pinnock’s religious autobiography, or how he changed his mind from unpleasant scriptural truth that he didn't understand to anti scriptural pleasant doctrines that made sense.

Chapters 2-4: God’s salvation is universal.

Some of the chapters are written by theologically suspect Seventh Day Adventists, by the way.[2]

Chapter 5: God sovereignly limits his sovereignty. Also, God knows everything that will be, and because of this, he can allow humans their wonderful freedom by responding to them as they freely live their free lives of freedom.

Chapter 6: God doesn’t know everything because if he did, that knowledge would limit humanity’s freely living free lives of freedom. We prefer our freedom over God’s. If the future doesn’t exist, how can God know it, all claims of divine prophecy not withstanding?

Chapter 7: But God does know everything, just differently. If God knows all possible outcomes, then we can still be free and God can still be omniscient, because he doesn’t know exactly what free choices we will freely make.

Chapters 5-7 are all speculation.[3]

Chapters 8-10: God is not sovereign (part the second). Arminians are better Christians unless you consider the faith teachers, the legalists, or the Catholics.

Chapter 11-13: God doesn’t choose arbitrarily. In other words, he doesn’t do what he wants. God doesn’t choose individuals, but he has chosen Jesus, and this is not a weird or redundant thing to say at all. Election is corporate with regards to us. Also, let’s take a break from speculation and talk about experience.

Chapters 14-15: God is not sovereign (part the third) because we don't understand how he possibly can be and still be just. God is also not sovereign because we can't possibly understand how he can be sovereign and men be responsible simultaneously. Also God is subject to moral law.

We don't claim to have the last word but we do know that God absolutely does not.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Grace of God and the Will of Man.

[1] Clark Pinnock, General Editor, The Grace of God and the Will of Man, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers, 1989).
[2] Pinnock’s own admission. Page xi.
[3] “The debate about foreknowledge is speculative.” (page xiii)

Clark Pinnock's Flame of Love

Book Review: Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit

Alejandro Gonzaga

April 21, 2018

THEO 546

Clark Pinnock (February 3, 1937—August 15, 2010) was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College and explored varying schools of theological thought before his death. He tackles the difficult subject of pneumatology in The Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. From his introduction, Pinnock reveals his bias against a purely-scriptural theology, and instead declares that he will “provide the full perspective required by the church” by moving “beyond exegesis”[1]. Pinnock attempts to reconstruct the Gospel in order to make it more attractive to men, but only succeeds in diminishing the glory of God.

Pinnock begins his introduction with a prayer that asks, “Help us to overcome our forgetfulness of Spirit” [2]. Pinnock distinguishes between three different theological traditions and says that “in both Catholic and Protestant theology the place of the Spirit has surely been diminished”[3]. He says this because Western traditions neglect the experiential side of the Spirit. This point cannot be overstated. In his introduction, Pinnock states repeatedly that his book will forego a scriptural basis for pneumatology and strive to discover what other avenues have to say about the Holy Spirit. Pinnock alludes to finding a “more experiential basis for the doctrine of the Spirit”[4]. He wants to not only use Scripture, but “insights from the ecumenical church”. He says that we have to be “sensitive to things that are only spiritually discerned” as opposed to scripturally discerned[5]. He believes that “knowing the Spirit is experiential”[6]. Finally, as to drive the point home that Scripture is insufficient for his task, Pinnock says, “Exegesis alone cannot provide the full perspective required by the church. There has to be a wider sweep of investigation that takes into account other dimensions—historical, theological, philosophical, cultural, and mystical.”[7]

Pinnock aims to examine “the Christian vision from the vantage point of the Spirit”[8]. His book explores this through seven chapters:

• 1.       Spirit and Trinity
• 2.       Spirit in Creation
• 3.       Spirit and Christology
• 4.       Spirit and Church
• 5.       Spirit and Union
• 6.       Spirit and Universality
• 7.       Spirit and Truth

Chapter 1 covers the Holy Spirit in his relationship with God and Christ in the Trinity. Chapter 2 covers the Holy Spirit as Lord and Giver of Life. Chapter 3 explores how the Holy Spirit “anointed Jesus of Nazareth to heal human brokenness”. Chapter 4 dives into the presence and activities of the Spirit in the Church. Chapter 5 examines the goal of salvation, living in union with God through the Holy Spirit. Chapter 6 explains how God desires all men to be saved and the Holy Spirit is “present with every person in every place”[9]. Finally, in chapter 7, Pinnock explains how the Spirit leads the church in its mission to spread the Gospel.

If the Gospel tells us that God sent his Son to earth to save us from his wrath, then Pinnock has written this book to rewrite this Gospel. Pinnock consciously moves the focus of the Gospel away from God’s glory and directly towards man’s dignity. God’s love for man, and not God’s glory, is the central theme of Pinnock’s Gospel. In Chapter 2, instead of acknowledging God’s power to create conscious, living, thinking humans, Pinnock attributes the existence of humanity to evolution. He says, “The orderliness of the world is amazing—especially the capacity of nature [emphasis added] to produce living, conscious, personal beings.”[10] While the psalmist believes that the purpose of creation is to “declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19.1), Pinnock says that “theology declares that humanity is the goal of creation”[11]. In Chapter 3, Pinnock attempts to remove God’s wrath from the Gospel. He claims that the satisfaction of God’s wrath on the cross is “strange” and that God does not actually hate sinners and is not humanity’s enemy[12], but we know this is false (Prov 6.16-19; Romans 5.10). In attempting to state that the Gospel does not preach individual guilt under God’s law, Pinnock uses Philippians 3.6 to say that “Paul did not have a guilty conscience”[13]. This is a blatant distortion. Paul intends to say that if he were to be judged superficially by the Old Testament law, he would be guiltless, but regardless, his so-called perfection under the law does not matter in view of living for Christ. Pinnock often takes scripture intended only for believers and applies it to everyone. He says that “humanity is not destined for wrath, but for salvation”[14] (1 Thess 5.9). Chapter 6 is dedicated completely to asserting that the Holy Spirit is present everywhere, working salvation in men who do not hear and do not respond to the Gospel. He says, God “is the reconciler of the whole world” and “there is no general revelation or natural knowledge of God that is not at the same time gracious revelation and a potentially saving knowledge.”[15] Despite appearing to avoid claims of universalism, Pinnock plainly states that “Spirit works everywhere in advance of the church’s mission,”[16] and that even if someone is not a Christian, they are saved.[17] Pinnock’s aims to preach universalism and declare that everyone will eventually be saved.

Pinnock slants this book heavily toward a glossy view of humanity, and for this reason and others, I cannot in any way recommend it. Humanity is infected with sin and that to the core. We are dead in it and enemies of God. God’s is rightfully angry with us. Scripture teaches that we are sinners by nature and not by a conscious and completely “free” choice. If anyone is to be saved, God must save them, yet he does not save everyone. God remains perfectly justified in saving some but not all, for grace is elective, but wrath is obligatory. Pinnock desperately strives to rebuild the dignity and freedom that Adam and Eve had before the Fall, but he must completely shipwreck scriptural teaching in order to do so. Pinnock is not committed to scripture, but to his opinion, and for this reason, his book fails as theology.

---

[1] Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: Zondervan, 1996), page 17.

[2] Ibid, 9.

[3] Ibid, 10.

[4] Ibid, 10.

[5] Ibid, 13.

[6] Ibid, 15.

[7] Ibid, 17.

[8] Ibid, 18.

[9] Ibid, 18.

[10] Ibid, 67.

[11] Ibid, 71.

[12] Ibid, 107.

[13] Ibid, 156.

[14] Ibid, 109

[15] Ibid, 187.

[16] Ibid, 192.

[17] Ibid, 194.

more about you know what

the catholic church claims that truth lies in itself. truth is not in scripture, not in God's revelation, not from the holy spirit, but primarily from the church. they first of all claim that scripture is a creation of the church. therefore they change scripture, rewrite it, add or remove from it whenever and however they like. scripture is not the only means of God's revelation. it is written by men.
the church does this because they desire to centralize power, like any human institution. why do you think God has allowed the protestant church to splinter into a thousand different denominations? because a single denomination has power, and power desires to maintain and increase power. centralization brings wealth and unity, but in the case of the catholic church, the unity is not created nor maintained by the spirit, but by the organization itself. think about the world religions. is any so fractured as the protestant church? God allows this for a reason

Arminianism

Pride sits as the core of the Arminian gospel. Pride is the desire to understand God, his ways, his purposes, and his desires in spite of what scripture reveals. Whatever we comprehend we have power over. This is what their false gospel seeks: power over the almighty.
"I will send a deceiving influence." Does God lie? Does he deceive? No. He sends judgment. He removes the possibility of repentance. How fits this into "free will"? It does not. God judges now and he  judges before all creation. He determines or fate because he is God.  This arbitrary consignment to one side of eternity or that other baffles us. He is not comprehended by us. Would you remove scripture? Would you say it does not mean what it clearly declares? Feel free, but do not claim to minister the gospel of Christ.

The Fear of God

Fear is fear. The word means fear. We know what fear is. Yes, fear is reverence. That's the easy part. Let's talk about the hard part.
"It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Why would the author of Hebrews say this? Fear is reverence but it is also terror.
Terror is what is unknown, inconceivable, unnatural. The incomprehensible terrifies us. God is incomprehensible. He is far beyond anything and everything that we conceive or create. Terror also threatens us, not with mere harm or common peril or even death. Terror threatens us with uncommon destruction. Terror threatens us with a lasting trauma that affects us deeply and to our core. It causes us to question everything that we have built our identity on. Terror exposes us for the conceited, egotistical cowards that we are. Terror burns us down to ash. God is terrifying, for he passionately hates the sinner.  Outside of Christ, God threatens us with eternal, agonizing, burning destruction. Do not merely revere him. Fear him.