Saving Hell

Now National Geographic has stepped into the evangelical debate about hell (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160513-theology-hell-history-christianity/) (I do not make URLs here hyperlinks because, for whatever reason, hyperlinks I include always lead to the wrong place. Please simply cut and paste the URL into a web browser to read the article “The Campaign to Eliminate Hell” at National Geographic’s web site.)

We have discussed hell here many times since the birth of this blog several years ago. I find the National Geographic article relatively accurate and helpful but missing two major alternative views—to the traditional one (“eternal conscious torment” of a quasi-physical nature in literal fire).

The alternative views mentioned in the National Geographic article are: 1) no hell (traditional universalism),  2) annihilationism/conditional immortality, and 3) eternal conscious torment without literal quasi-physical torture in literal fire (hell as hopeless absence from God’s grace).

So what are the two major alternative views missing from the article?

First, some Christians who believe in hell believe it is temporal, not eternal. These Christians may disagree about the precise nature of hell’s suffering, but they agree that it is some kind of suffering from which every person will eventually be freed. This is, of course, a kind of universalism. A prime example of someone who believes this is German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (who just turned 90 and is still active as a theologian). His universalism-with-hell view is clearly spelled out in his later works including especially The Spirit of Life and The Coming of God. For Moltmann, hell is actually purgatory but not Dante’s purgatory. Everyone in hell is there voluntarily for whatever duration they choose—until they finally give in and accept God’s loving mercy and go to heaven. As I have heard Moltmann say, “The story of God is never finished with anyone”—a German theologian’s way of saying that “the Hound of Heaven” will pursue every individual to the depths of hell until they want to leave.

Second, some Christians believe hell is eternal, at least so far as we know, but it’s “door is locked on the inside” (C. S. Lewis). This is the view depicted allegorically in C. S. Lewis’s classic book The Great Divorce and repeated (at least by suggestion or implication) in Rob Bell’s Love Wins. In this alternative view, hell is not divine punishment so much as divine provision—for those who would not want to live in heaven which includes worshiping God daily forever.

I have long espoused the “Lewis view” of hell and I call it “saving hell.”

Why does hell need saving? Well, obviously, what I mean is “saving hell from the traditional view described by Dante and Jonathan Edwards and others who depicted it as the result of God’s hate toward sinners and love of his own glory including justice. Hell needs to be saved from that traditionalist view—in which God consigns sinners to eternal conscious torment without hope out of vengeance and hate—because it portrays God as less loving than God calls us to be.

Yes, I know all the arguments against my view (which is, I am convinced, that of Lewis and Karl Barth and popularized by Bell). Traditionalists, especially in the conservative Lutheran and Reformed traditions (among Protestants), argue that hell is the result of God’s justice. I agree that it is, but God’s love and God’s justice cannot be so pitted against each other than the latter makes the former meaningless. God’s justice has to be loving and that means restorative in intention. Whether anyone in hell is ever restored to communion with God is, I think, speculative. Lewis certainly suggested it as a possibility in The Great Divorce. The main point, however, is that hell is God’s “painful refuge” provided for those who he knows would hate heaven.

Not long ago I was walking my dog in a large field near my home. It used to be a golf driving range; now it is unused. There I can let her off her leash, which she loves; she knows her boundaries and never strays into danger zones. Nobody else is there (or I don’t let her off her leash). The moment I let her off her leash that day she rushed to a small, usually vacant metal shed where the driving range, when it was active, kept its lawn mowing equipment. She sniffed around it in that distinctive way that signaled something unusual about it. She had never paid any attention to it before. So I walked around to the front of the shed, which was open, and glanced inside. There lay a man who was conscious and awake but obviously homeless and very inebriated. There were oversized beer cans strewn all around him on the dirt floor of the shed.

After I took my dog home I drove to the nearest fast food restaurant and purchased a gift card and took it to the man who thanked me. Then I called a friend who directs an organization that includes a men’s shelter where homeless men can stay if they are willing to go through detox (assuming they are inebriated). He suggested I ask the man in the shed if he is willing to go into detox and then live in the men’s shelter. When I went back to the shed the man was gone and I never saw him again.

During my phone conversation with my friend who directs the organization that includes a men’s shelter I learned that he personally knows of over a hundred men in this city of about one hundred thousand who live that way—roaming around town sleeping in temporary places (under bridges, in park shelters, in sheds, etc.)—and usually decline offers to go through detox and get help (a warm, dry place to sleep, counseling, job training, etc.). Nobody can make them go through the program; the police will only put them in a cell and then release them when they are sober. Within a month after my conversation with my friend, the local newspaper reported on two homeless men found dead in public places. Both apparently died of natural causes. This is a huge problem in our society—alcoholics and drug addicts who refuse help (even avoid it), live horribly miserable lives, and eventually die relatively young.

Many of those men and women have been offered help numerous times by many people and have refused it. When I looked at that man in his squalid “living conditions” I saw a picture of hell. Heaven is communion with God; a mature person cannot be forced into it. People in hell are those to whom God says “Not my will but thine be done.” They are like the people of Jerusalem over whom Jesus, God, wept and said “How I would have…but you would not.”

This is the only concept of hell that saves it. Does it have problems? As I have said here many times before, all theological concepts have problems. When Scripture is not as clear as I wish it where (which is often the case) I choose the theological concept that has the problems I can live with. I suppose that’s what my German theology professor Wolfhart Pannenberg meant when he said theology “guesswork.” I wouldn’t put it that way, but giving him the benefit of the doubt I assume he meant that when Scripture is not perfectly clear about something and we need a model of the reality about which we are concerned we embrace the one that makes the most sense overall. And for me, the main litmus test for that embracing (or not) is the character of God and the character of God is displayed for me in Jesus Christ.

Saving hell. This is how—the C. S. Lewis way. I wish more people knew about it. I have presented it to college and seminary students for years and most of them have said they never heard it before. Apparently the author of the National Geographic article hasn’t either.

Review of The Future of Evangelicalism in America: The Definitive Scholarly Examination of Contemporary American Evangelicalism

It’s been a long time coming and way overdue when it finally arrived. A week ago I received my complimentary copy of The Future of Evangelicalism in America edited by Candy Gunther Brown and Mark Silk and published by Columbia University Press (2016). I wrote my chapter entitled “The Emerging Divide in Evangelical Theology” (pp. 92-123) in 2012! The editors are not to blame for the delay; that appears to have been due to the publisher. (And the delay between 2012 and 2016 does not seem to have affected the content as the editors updated statistics and other information that may have changed in the interim.)

This is a comprehensive scholarly examination of contemporary American evangelicalism including its history. The statistical information is partly based on the 2008 Trinity ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) funded by Lilly Endowment. According to that social-scientific survey, approximately 80 million Americans across most denominations (including non-denominational and “nones”) identify as evangelical and/or “born again.” I have my doubts about the reliability of all 80 million people’s awareness of and commitment to “born again Christianity” or “evangelical Christianity,” but the naked statistic itself is startling given the fact that far fewer would have identified that way decades ago.

Editor Candy Gunther Brown (Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University) claims that “Since the middle of the twentieth century evangelicalism has reemerged as the normative form of non-Catholic American Christianity, supplanting what is usually referred to as mainline Protestantism.” (1) The socio-scientific research behind the book and reported in it strongly supports that claim. At the same time, I must say, it seems to me the meaning of “evangelicalism” in this claim is extremely thin. As some of the authors admit, beginning in the 1970s when Time declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical” and a self-identified evangelical Baptist was elected president of the United States, being evangelical became popular. Increasingly, however, among those who are intensely committed to historical-theological-spiritual evangelicalism (as represented by Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley), self-identification as “evangelical” has begun to wax problematic. Many serious-minded evangelicals are backing away from the label as mega-church pastors like Joel Osteen are identified with it.

I must insert here that Brown’s claim is not absolutely new. Randall Balmer has been saying something similar since at least 1989 when his popular book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America was published by Oxford University Press. Balmer referred to evangelicalism as America’s “folk religion.” Both Brown and Balmer regard evangelical Christianity—defined as a spiritual-theological ethos—as having been America’s grassroots form of Christianity throughout most of the 19^th century. Both agree that it waned in importance and influence, if not numbers (or percentages) throughout the middle of the 20^th century. Both books examine evangelicalism’s “reemergence” to prominence during the last quarter of the 20^th century.

Here are the chapters in The Future of Evangelicalism in America: Introduction by Brown (a brilliant essay opening the book and previewing it), “American Evangelicalism: Character, Function, and Trajectories of Change” by Michael S. Hamilton, “Sound, Style, Substance: New Directions in Evangelical Spirituality” by Chris R. Armstrong, “The Emerging Divide in Evangelical Theology,” by Roger E. Olson, “Evangelicals, Politics, and Public Policy: Lessons from the Past, Prospects for the Future” by Amy E. Black, “The Changing Face of Evangelicalism” by Timothy Tseng, and “Conclusion” by Brown.

Virtually every facet of contemporary American evangelicalism is covered in these chapters—from fundamentalist roots to cultural accommodation, from strict doctrinal and moral boundaries to increasing pluralism, from mostly middle class white identity to cultural-ethnic diversity, from cohesion to fragmentation, from mostly Baptist to increasing “pentecostalization.” One unifying theme of the book, based on social-scientific research, is increasing diversity among evangelicals.

One tension within the book is fully recognized and acknowledged by its authors—that between 80 million Americans’ self-identification as “born again” and/or “evangelical” and the widely accepted scholarly identification of the evangelical movement with the National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today, Inc. and the Billy Graham ministries and historians David Bebbington’s and Mark Noll’s “evangelical quadrilateral.” The latter includes, of course, “biblicism,” “conversionism,” “crucicentrism,” and “activism” as markers of the evangelical ethos. These traditional scholarly “markers” of American evangelical identity do not seem especially important to the 80 million grassroots evangelicals.

Another unifying theme of the book is hope for American evangelicalism’s future. Every chapter except one expresses optimism about American evangelicalism’s future. The exception is “The Emerging Divide in Evangelical Theology” by pessimist (or realist) Roger E. Olson who regards American evangelical theology hopelessly divided.

This is an expensive book, but it is well worth the price. (And I say that as one chapter’s author who has no prospects of any financial gain from its sales; I’ve already been paid all that I will be paid for it.) Although it is scholarly, it is not esoteric. Anyone with a college degree (or working on one) will find its chapters accessible. The main difference between this book and the numerous others recently published on the same subject (viz., “American evangelicalism”) is its basis in social-scientific research.

In my opinion, Candy Gunther Brown’s “Conclusion” is worth the price of the book. It is a substantial interpretive summary of the book’s findings supplemented by Brown’s own insights. Hoping to avoid treading on copyright, I will offer a fairly lengthy quotation to give you a “taste” of the Conclusion:

As of 2016 American evangelicalism can be characterized by its biblicism, nondenominationalism, magnetic leadership, selective adaptation to popular culture, pentecostalization, globalization, ethnic diversification, political realignment, and general change. (204) … As American public opinion on sexual practices shifted, younger evangelicals became more likely to interpret sex outside of marriage and same-sex marriage as consistent with biblical principles. If younger evangelicals can read their Bibles in a way that reverses traditional evangelical views of issues that the Bible appears to address directly, it seems unclear how much the biblical text itself will matter to biblical justifications the rising generations use to authorize adaptations to American culture. (204-205)

This is just a taste of this trenchant “Conclusion” to the book. One cannot read this book without concluding two things: 1) Today’s “evangelicalism” is not your grandfather’s or grandmother’s “evangelicalism”—although some continuity exists–, and 2) Contemporary American “grassroots” evangelicalism is strikingly adaptable to culture—as opposed to being countercultural or culture-transforming. The latter point is both positive and negative. For example, Tseng helpfully points out the increasing ethnic-cultural diversity of American evangelicalism. That’s positive; evangelicalism can adapt to and absorb racial-ethnic-cultural diversity. At the same time, however, on the negative side, without any strong, central leadership such as Billy Graham once provided, the American evangelical movement tends to become endlessly adaptable to the winds of changing culture to the detriment of its own identity.

John Piper Does It Again: My Response to “The Self-centeredness of Arminianism”

For those of you who are new to this blog or have missed reading my earlier messages here about John Piper and his many anti-Arminian messages (both in writing and in talks), let me catch you up briefly. (If you are already aware of this history or have no interest in it, please skip down to paragraph 9 below.)  I have known John Piper “from a distance” for a very long time. I first met him personally in the early 1980s when he was teaching at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was there to visit a faculty friend with an “eye” toward joining that faculty at some point in the future. My friend was a professor of theology in the college (not the seminary) and was my former professor—as a “visiting professor”—at North American Baptist Seminary (now Sioux Falls Seminary) in South Dakota. My Bethel faculty friend, who was also hoping I could eventually join the Bethel faculty, showed me around the campus and introduced me to several professors including John Piper. I had read Piper’s article about “Christian Hedonism” in HIS magazine and so was glad to meet him even though I had certain qualms about that concept. At that time Piper was little known outside Bethel College and Seminary.

My Bethel professor friend, however, knew a lot about Piper and his spiritual-theological journey and spoke highly of him then. He had been chair of the Biblical and Theological Studies Department (BTS Dept.) and had been instrumental in Piper’s coming to teach at Bethel. In 1984 my dream of teaching theology at Bethel came true; I was called and hired after a rigorous interviewing process that including much talk about “biblical inerrancy.” Bethel then considered itself a centrist evangelical institution. Millard Erickson was a professor of theology at the seminary. The college and seminary were one institution under one president at one board of regents or trustees and controlled by the Baptist General Conference—a non-fundamentalist, non-cessationist broadly evangelical denomination that I knew very well. During my many interviews I expressed concern about the BGC’s and Bethel’s Statement of Faith because it included language about the Bible being without error in the original autographs. I did not consider myself an “inerrantist” and asked everyone involved in the hiring process what “without error” means in the Statement of Faith I was being asked to sign. My Bethel theology professor friend showed me a two page, single-spaced explanation of “inerrancy” written by John Piper specifically for Bethel when he was interviewing there several years earlier. It basically said that “biblical inerrancy” means “perfection with respect to purpose.” With that I could whole heartedly agree. So, with that understanding, I was brought onto the Bethel faculty and taught theology there (mostly in the college, occasionally in the seminary) for fifteen mostly wonderful years.

During those fifteen years from 1984 to 1999 John Piper pastored nearby Bethlehem Baptist Church. I don’t recall exactly when he resigned from the Bethel faculty, but it was before I arrived in 1984. He built that BGC related church up; many Bethel students flocked to hear him preach there. They often came back telling me that Piper was preaching a version of Calvinism inspired by Jonathan Edwards, his theological hero. Throughout those fifteen years many mostly male students began to look to Piper not only as their pastor (many of them never joined his church but only attended it) but as a kind of Christian mentor—even if they never met him personally. A habit developed among the Bethel faculty of calling those students “Piper Cubs.”

I was not particularly concerned because one reason I joined the Bethel community and then the BGC was that they both embraced Calvinists and Arminians equally. During my interviewing process I did nothing to hide my Arminianism and freely told everyone that I considered myself Arminian. That was fine, I was told, because the BGC and Bethel had always allowed both. The Statement of Faith did not require or exclude either one.

The first red flag appeared the day a devoted male Piper Cub came to my office after class and said “I’m sorry to say this, Dr. Olson, but you are not a Christian.” I kindly asked him why he would say that and he responded “Because you’re not a Calvinist.” I asked him where he ever got the idea that only Calvinists are Christians and he said “From my pastor, John Piper.” Years later, during a two hour heated conversation over lunch, the inquisition I have written about here before, Piper claimed he never said that non-Calvinists could not be Christians. I told him about the student and he laughed, saying that the student, whom he knew well, must have misunderstood him.

I left Bethel in 1999 partly because of John Piper. Bethel and the BGC were then in the midst of a very heated, very divisive controversy about open theism. My colleague Greg Boyd was actually tried for heresy on campus. He and his theology of open theism were exonerated and found by the jury, on which I sat, to be “within evangelical boundaries.” That only added fuel to the fire raging among BGC pastors and greater pressure came down on not only Greg but on me for defending him and his theology as not heretical.

It was clear to me then that John Piper was at the center of that controversy—at least within the BGC and Bethel. He told me to my face that he would not try to get me fired merely for being Arminian, as much as he did not like Arminianism, but that he would get me fired for defending open theism as an “evangelical option.”

After that meeting Piper and I exchanged many letters and e-mails. I read many of his books as they were published. I listened to many of his talks on tape and then watched many of his podcasts on the web. I believed I was noticing a harsher tone toward Arminianism. Students who heard him speak at Passion conferences and other places began to ask me about Piper and especially about his Calvinism. And, as they knew I am Arminian, many of them have asked me over the past seventeen years—since I left Bethel and the BGC partly to escape Piper’s influence—about what they perceive as Piper’s misrepresentations of Arminianism.

That was one reason I wrote Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (InterVarsity Press)—to correct misunderstandings and misrepresentations of true Arminianism. I made sure Piper received a copy. My main point in that book was that real Arminianism is not primarily about free will; it is primarily about the character of God. Using many quotations from Arminius himself and leading Arminian theologians since 1609 (when Arminius died) I demonstrated conclusively that true Arminianism is not obsessed with humanistic belief in free will; it is obsessed with God as revealed in Jesus Christ as loving and good and wanting all people to be saved. I have gone to great lengths there and here and in recorded talks later put up on the web to emphasize and prove that Arminianism is not what John Piper and other (mostly Calvinist) critics say it is. I have practically begged them to stop misrepresenting it as “human-centered love of free will and self-determination.”

Recently someone pointed me to yet another Piper blast against Arminianism entitled on Youtube “John Piper – The Self-centeredness of Arminianism.” It was posted to Youtube on May 19 last year (2015). So, reluctantly and with a heavy heart, I watched and listened as, once again, Piper misrepresented Arminianism.

If you watch and listen to this twelve minute clip of what must have been a longer talk, you will notice that nowhere in it (as I recall) does Piper actually say that Arminianism is “self-centered,” but someone at Desiring God Ministries (that put the clip on Youtube) interpreted it that way. I have no doubt Piper does as well. But I want to point out several things about Piper’s approach to the whole subject in this brief video clip. First of all, he ridicules Arminianism indirectly, but I’m sure the audience gets the point, by referring to himself before his own conversion to Calvinism. He was, he says, a “flaming free willer.” There can be no doubt that that is how he views Arminians—in spite of everything I have demonstrated from Arminian texts. As a lifelong Arminian I can confidently say that I have never been a “flaming free willer.” I have believed in and defended what I call “freed will” because I believe it is everywhere assumed in Scripture and without it the only alternative is divine determinism in which God monstrously (to me) “designed, ordains and governs” (Piper’s own words) every horror of human history including the fall and all its consequences including the Holocaust and hell.

In this talk Piper focuses primarily on his claim that Arminianism starts with philosophy and then rejects portions of the Bible that do not agree with a preconceived philosophy of free will. He also emphasizes that Arminians, not Calvinists, are uncomfortable with mystery and therefore cannot simply accept the paradoxes (my word for what he clearly meant) in the Bible. The message is clear: Calvinists believe whatever the Bible says and Arminians don’t. Arminians don’t, he suggests, because they place philosophy over the Bible as having greater authority.

The only evidence Piper offers for this in that talk is a second-hand account of an unnamed “evangelical philosopher” who allegedly teaches at an evangelical seminary. Someone e-mailed or texted Piper an account of a conversation with said unnamed Arminian philosopher. He reads that person’s account of his or her conversation from his cell phone. Basically, the person tells Piper that he or she heard the unnamed Arminian philosopher baldly say that the Bible is on Calvinism’s side but philosophy is on Arminianism’s side. I have to doubt that that is what the unnamed Arminian evangelical philosopher actually said. I suspect that the philosopher’s message lost a lot in the translation. I know that happens from hard experience of people misrepresenting things I said to others.

The implication of the anecdotal report is that Arminianism prefers philosophy to the Bible. Nowhere does Piper mention the many biblical passages Arminians have always relied on or how Calvinists twist and turn simple biblical passages such as John 3:16-17 to fit their systematic theology.

I believe Piper’s accusation can just as easily be turned around and used against his Calvinism: The starting point is not the Bible but a nominalistic/voluntaristic idea of God in which, in order to be God God must be all-determining.

However, while I think there is some truth in that regarding some Reformed theologians (clearly in the case of Zwingli, for example), I will not use that argument here. Here is what I will say—much to the chagrin of many Calvinists and Arminians alike: The Bible can be interpreted either way, both ways. I do not accuse Calvinists of “dishonoring the Bible” as I have heard many Calvinists say about Arminians. I can see how Calvinism (except “limited atonement”) can be derived from Scripture. I think it’s a mistaken interpretation; I think sound exegesis is on the Arminian side, but I do not say Calvinists place philosophy over the Bible or cannot be good exegetes. What I say is that if you are going to interpret the Bible that way—viz., as teaching double predestination, God as designing, ordaining and governing (rendering certain) all that happens including the fall and the Holocaust and hell itself including who will be there selected individually without free will “in the picture,”—you must swallow the “picture” of a monstrous God who gets glory out of the torturing of children and the eternal torment of people created in his own image and likeness predestined to that eternal torture without their free will decisions or choices.

I tell my students that when the Bible is not as clear as we wish it were, which is often the case (I’m not a fundamentalist), the way “forward” when you must move toward a doctrine about which the Bible is not perfectly clear you must look at all the options rooted in Scripture, good biblical exegesis, and choose the one that has the consequences you can live with. Then I tell them that there is nothing in the universe more important than that God is good in some meaningful way and not a moral monster completely unlike Jesus who wept over Jerusalem because he wanted them to embrace him but they would not.

I have heard all the objections to this approach, but they all come from a fundamentalist approach to the Bible deeply colored by a systematic theology launched first by Augustine, then promoted by the magisterial Reformers, then taught by Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hodge. No Christian before Augustine believed in unconditional individual election to hell or irresistible grace.

These Calvinist attacks on Arminianism are shameless and unworthy of Christian gentlemen and scholars. So much has been published in recent years about true Arminianism that anyone who continues to misrepresent it as Pelagian or semi-Pelagian or even “humanistic” or “man-centered” or “self-centered” or preferring philosophy to the Bible—is simply bearing false witness against his or her brothers and sisters in Christ. Or else he or she is ignorant. I don’t want to believe either about John Piper; I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But on what would that be based? He’s a scholar; he reads biblical and theological literature voraciously. He’s brilliant and articulate. I personally explained true Arminianism to him face-to-face. I sent him a copy of my book. So I do not believe he is ignorant. What’s left to think?

I delivered this talk at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama as part of the annual Holley-Hull Lecture Series on Wednesday, October 7. (The other lectures were at Samford University.)

A Relational View of God’s Sovereignty

Roger E. Olson

My office phone rang and I answered it. A stern voice said “Is this Roger Olson?” who which I confessed. The man introduced himself as pastor of Baptist church in the state, implying that he was a constituent of the seminary where I teach. Anyway, I got the message. “I hear you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty,” he declared. I responded “Oh, really? What do you mean by ‘God’s sovereignty’?” He said “You, know. God is in control of everything.” I decided to play with him a little. “Oh, so you believe God caused the holocaust and every other evil event in human history? That God is the author of sin and evil?” There was a long pause. Then he said “Well, no.” “Then do you believe in God’s sovereignty?” I asked. He mumbled something about just wanting to “make sure” and hung up.

My experience, based on teaching Christian theology in churches and three Christian universities over thirty-one years, is that many, perhaps most, Christians don’t know what they mean when they talk about “God’s sovereignty”—beyond “God is in control.” My concern has been to help Christians think reflectively about God’s sovereignty and arrive at beliefs about it that are biblically sound and intelligible.

My own view of God’s sovereignty is what I call “relational.” I believe in God’s “relational sovereignty.” What I want to do here, today, is explain what I mean by that and invite you to consider it as an alternative to the view of God’s sovereignty currently enjoying great popularity—the Augustinian-Calvinist view that I call, for lack of any more descriptive term, “divine determinism.” It could rightly be called “non-relational sovereignty.” Thousands of Christian young people are adopting it, often without critically reflecting on what it implies and without knowing any alternatives to it.

I identify with a different movement in contemporary theology called “Relational Theology” or “Relational Theism.” There’s no single “guru” of the movement and it’s not nearly as popular or easy to identify and describe. But it also has biblical roots and historical precedents.

In 2012 thirty theologians, nearly all self-identified evangelicals, wrote chapters in a book entitled Relational Theology: A Contemporary Introduction edited by Brint Montgomery, Thomas Jay Oord, and Karen Winslow. It was published by Point Loma Press, an imprint of Wipf and Stock publishers. The volume covers many issues of Christian theology and practice from a “relational point of view.”

It’s an excellent little book and I can recommend it highly as an introduction to contemporary Relational Theology—especially that segment of it that is evangelical. Most of the authors, maybe all of them, are Wesleyans in the evangelical tradition (or evangelicals in the Wesleyan tradition). However, one weakness I find in the book is the lack of a chapter on God’s sovereignty from a relational perspective. That is a gap I hope to fill here.

Everyone familiar with current religious movements knows about the “Young, Restless, Reformed” movement led by John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Louie Giglio (among others). Some call its theology “neo-Calvinism.” It’s actually a contemporary form of the theology of Jonathan Edwards, John Piper’s favorite theologian. Anyone who has studied Edwards or Piper knows they have a distinctive view of God’s sovereignty. It’s enjoying great popularity, especially among twenty-something Christians. According to it, whatever happens is planned, ordained and governed by God. Another way of saying that is that God foreordains and renders certain everything that happens without exception. As John Piper has said, according to his view, if a dirty bomb were to land in downtown Minneapolis, that would be from God.

Many people simply believe this view is what is meant by “God’s sovereignty” and anything else is a denial of God’s sovereignty. If God is not the all-determining reality, then he is not sovereign. Or, as Reformed theologian R. C. Sproul likes to say, if there is one maverick molecule in the universe, God is not God. Or, as British Calvinist Paul Helm says, not only every atom and molecule but also every thought and intention is under the control of God.

My purpose today is not to expound this wildly popular view of God’s sovereignty or spend a lot of time critiquing it. I will do both briefly. My purpose is to expound and defend an alternative perspective on God’s sovereignty that I believe is more appealing—biblically, rationally and experientially. And it has historical appeal as well, even if it has been throughout much of Christian history a “minority report,” so to speak.

At risk of over simplifying, I will argue that there are three main views of God’s sovereignty in Christian theology. That is to say, in spite of many variations, all views tend to “come home” to one of these. Think of them as large tents under which people with different interpretations of them gather, talk, and debate. They are divine determinism, relational theism, and mediating views. The third, “mediating views,” have much in common with each other and so represent a single over-arching view even if they emphasize singular points differently.

I begin with divine determinism which I actually began describing above. According to all versions of it, all events are traceable back to God who controls history down to every detail according to a blueprint. God has never taken a risk. God micromanages history and individuals’ lives. Nothing surprises God. Nothing can happen that is contrary to God’s will.

Now, of course, there are many versions of divine determinism. Hardly any advocate of that view likes my label for it. Sproul, for example, adamantly rejects “determinism” as a descriptor of his view. However, a quick look at any major English dictionary will reveal why it’s a fair descriptor. By whatever means, even if through “secondary causes,” God determines what will happen and that determination is as Helm says “fine grained.” Nothing at all escapes it.

Some proponents of divine determinism make use of something called “middle knowledge” to attempt to reconcile it with free will. Others reject that tactic. Some attempt to define free will compatibilistically, that is as simply doing what you want to do even if you could not do otherwise. Others reject free will altogether. Some admit that this view makes God the author of sin and evil; others adamantly reject that, appealing to God’s permission rather than authorship of sin and evil. However, when pressed, they say that God’s permission of sin and evil is “effectual permission.” In any case, God still plans and renders them certain.

The second view of God’s sovereignty, the one I plan to expound here, is relational theism. Oord, one of the editors and authors of Relational Theology, defines it this way: “At its core, relational theology affirms two key ideas: 1. God affects creatures in various ways. Instead of being aloof and detached, God is active and involved in relationship with others. God relates to us, and that makes an essential difference. 2. Creatures affect God in various ways. While God’s nature is unchanging, creatures influence the loving and living Creator of the universe. We relate to God, and creation makes a difference to God.” (p. 2) Another author, Barry Callen, says of relational theism (or theology) that it focuses on “the interactivity or mutuality of the God-human relationship. God is understood to be truly personal, loving, and not manipulative. The interaction of the wills of Creator and creature are real.” (p. 7)

Relational theism or theology comes in many varieties, some of them quite incompatible at points. All share in common, however, belief that creatures can and do actually affect God. The relationship between creatures, especially human persons, and God is two-way. God is, as Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof said, the “defenseless superior power” within a genuine covenant relationship with us whose immutability is not impervious to influence but “changeable faithfulness.” According to relational theism, the God-human relationship is reciprocal, mutual, interactive. God is not Aristotle’s “Thought thinking Itself” or Aquinas’ “Pure Actuality” without potentiality. Rather, God is Pinnock’s “Most Moved Mover”—the superior power who allows creatures to resist him and becomes vulnerable and open to harm as well as joy.

One of the best descriptions of relational theism, I believe, is found in Thomas Torrance’s little book Space, Time, and Incarnation:

The world…is made open to God through its intersection in the axis of Creation-Incarnation. … But what of the same relationship the other way round, in the openness of God for the world that He has made? Does the intersection of His reality with our this-worldly reality in Jesus Christ mean anything for God? We have noted already that it means that space and time are affirmed as real for God in the actuality of His relations with us, which binds us to space and time, so that neither we nor God can contract out of them. Does this not mean that God has so opened Himself to our world that our this-worldly experiences have import for Him in such a way, for example, that we must think of Him as taking our hurt and pain into Himself? (p. 74)

In sum, then, relational theology or theism is any view that imports the creation into the life of God so that God is in some way dependent on it for the whole or part of his experience. The implications of this for a view of God’s sovereignty are enormous and take it away from divine determinism. As I will be spending the second half of this talk exploring this view of sovereignty I’ll settle now for what I have said about relational theism in general.

The third main Christian view of God’s sovereignty is what I call, for lack of a better term, mediating. These are views that attempt to combine, usually with some appeal to paradox, divine determinism with relational theism. An excellent example is the late evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch. Throughout his career Bloesch boldly expressed and defended the paradoxical nature of Christianity following Kierkegaard and Barth. In his book The Evangelical Renaissance he declared that

God knows the course of the future and the fulfillment of the future, but this must not be taken to mean that He literally knows every single event even before it happens. It means that He knows every alternative and the way in which His children may well respond to the decisions that confront them. The plan of God is predetermined, but the way in which He realizes it is dependent partly on the free cooperation of His subjects. This does not detract from His omnipotence, for it means that He is so powerful that He is willing to attain His objectives by allowing a certain room for freedom of action on the part of man. (p. 53)

This may sound relational or deterministic and Bloesch reveled in that ambiguity. “The plan of God is predetermined” is deterministic; “The way in which He realizes it is dependent partly on the…cooperation of His subjects” is relational.

I think that many theologians and non-theologically trained Christians alike tend to embrace a kind of ambiguous, paradoxical view of God’s sovereignty. I often hear the same person say “Oh, well, God knows what he’s doing” and “People have free will, you know” in different circumstances—the former to comfort in grief and the latter to get God off the hook when evil raises its ugly head.

Relational theology or theism lends itself to a particular view of God’s sovereignty that is neither deterministic nor paradoxical. Divine determinism of any type cannot explain how God is good in any meaningful sense or how people are responsible for the evil they do. Mediating theology, theologies of paradox, cannot explain the consistency of God’s comprehensive, meticulous providence with genuine free will and prayer playing a role in the outworking of God’s plan. Relational sovereignty, which is what I will call the view of God’s sovereignty derived from relational theism, seeks and finds consistency and flexibility.

What I want to outline for you and recommend to you is a non-process, narrative-based, relational view of God’s sovereignty. It is not rooted in process theology which, while relational, detracts too much from God’s transcendence. Process theology is one form of relational theology, but not all relational theology is process. Process theology denies God’s omnipotence which is its main failing. From that flow other flaws such as its denial of any eschatological resolution to the struggles of history and eventual end to evil and innocent suffering. Process theology, in my opinion, sacrifices too much of the biblical portrait of God and, in the process, robs us of hope for the world. It is right in much of what it affirms but wrong in much of what it denies. It rightly affirms God’s vulnerability and the partial openness of the future; it wrongly denies God’s power to intervene in human affairs to rescue, heal and defeat evil.

No doubt some critics will regard my own non-process, narrative-based, relational view of God’s sovereignty as an unstable middle ground between divine determinism and process theology. I hope to show that it is not unstable or incoherent and preserves the best of both of those alternative perspectives while avoiding their fatal flaws.

Rather than focusing on proof texts of Scripture or philosophies, this relational view of God’s sovereignty arises out of and is justified by a synoptic, canonical, holistic vision of God drawn from the biblical narrative. Obviously I do not have time now even to summarize “narrative theology,” but I will mention a few of its major points.

Narrative theology regards stories and symbols as vehicles of truth. The Bible contains propositions, but it is not primarily a book of propositions. It is primarily a book of stories and symbols from which propositions can be drawn. The Bible is the story of one great “theodrama.” Its purpose is to identify God for us and transform us. Transformation is its first and highest purpose though it does also contain information.

Narrative theology refuses to treat the Bible as a “not-yet-systematized systematic theology” which is how I believe too much conservative evangelical theology treats it. No system can replace the Bible which always has new light to reveal and more truth into which to guide us.

Narrative theology resists too much philosophical speculation into matters beyond our possible experience and beyond the biblical narrative which is not about God-in-himself but about God-with-us. Narrative theology resists metaphysical compliments paid to God that cannot rest on the portrayal of God in his own story.

Finally, narrative theology insists on taking the whole biblical story into account when theology attempts to derive truth about God.

A relational view of God’s sovereignty begins not with philosophical a prioris such as “God is by definition the being greater than which none can be conceived” or “If there’s one maverick molecule in the universe, God is not God” but with God as the personal, loving, self-involving, passionate, relational Yahweh of Israel and Father of Jesus Christ.

This God is not aloof or self-sufficient in himself or impassible. His deity, as Barth taught us, is no prison. And as Jürgen Moltmann has taught us, his death on the cross is not a contradiction of his deity but the most profound revelation of it. And that because this God is love.

Does this all mean that God needs us? Not at all. This God could have lived forever satisfied with the communal love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but he chose to become vulnerable in relation to the world he created out of the overflowing of that love. Is that just a metaphysical compliment unnecessarily paid to God or a truth necessary to the biblical story of God with us? I would argue it is the latter. A God who literally needs the world is a pathetic God hardly worthy of worship.

The key insight for a non-process relational view of God’s sovereignty is that God is sovereign over his sovereignty. The missio dei is God’s choice to involve himself intimately with the world so as to be affected by it. That choice is rooted in God’s love and desire for reciprocal love freely offered by his human creatures. None of this detracts in any way from God’s sovereignty because God is sovereign over his sovereignty. To say that God can’t be vulnerable, can’t limit himself, can’t restrain his power to make room for other powers, is, ironically, to deny God’s sovereignty.

Allow me to use the words of Torrance again to express this view of God and God’s sovereignty. Contrary to classical theism,

If God is merely impassible He has not made room for Himself in our agonied existence, and if He is merely immutable He has neither place nor time for frail evanescent creatures in His unchanging existence. But the God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as sharing our lot is the God who is really free to make Himself poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich, the God invariant in love but not impassible, constant in faithfulness but not immutable. (p. 75)

There is a doctrine of God’s sovereignty subtly included in those phrases about God’s vulnerability. Torrance’s vulnerable God cannot be the all-determining reality of classical theism and Calvinism. Such a God has not really made room for us in his existence, his life, whatever certain neo-Calvinists might say. Rather, the God of Torrance and relational theism is the God who makes himself partially dependent on his human partners so that our history becomes his, too.

What does that mean, then, for God’s sovereignty? First, the relational God of the biblical story is not, to quote Baptist theologian E. Frank Tupper, a “do anything, anytime, anywhere kind of God.” (A Scandalous Providence, p. 335 ) Second, however, the relational God of the biblical story is a powerful God who lures, persuades, cajoles and occasionally overrides the wills of people. He is the “superior defenseless power” in the covenant relationship he has established with us.

I argue that such a view of God’s sovereignty, one that sees God as truly relational with us, that views us as genuine partners with and sometimes against God, can support and give impetus to commitment to participation in the mission of God. The picture of God as invulnerable, static, unmoved, all-determining derived from much traditional Reformed theology, for example, undermines participation in the mission of God towards God’s kingdom because it makes our participation with God superfluous. We are then seen as pawns rather than knights.

Am I, then, advocating so-called “open theism?” Not necessarily, although I think that’s far superior to classical theism in many ways. Relational theism and its attendant view of God’s sovereignty are larger than just open theism which is one form of relational theism. The view I have outlined here goes back at least to German mediating theologian I. A. Dorner in the middle of the 19^th century who helped Protestant theology complete the Reformation by reconstructing the doctrine of God inherited and left virtually untouched by the Reformers. According to Dorner, God is historical with us and we are created co-creators of history with God. Listen to Dorner after he has expressed his view of God’s ethical immutability in which he changes in relation to creatures, not in his nature but in his “thoughts and his will”:

To be sure, God does not hand over the reins of government to the faithful; but neither does he want to make them automatons [robots], beings resigned to a determined will. From the very beginning, he has preferred to give his friends a joint knowledge of what he wills to do…and to deal historico-temporally through them as his instruments, which as personalities may co-determine his will and counsel. (Quoted in Claude Welch, God and Incarnation, p. 116)

This is, so far as I have discovered, the best brief theological expression of a truly relational view of God’s sovereignty that I have found in Christian thought. The only correction I would offer is to the use of the word “instruments” for created personalities that “co-determine” God’s will and counsel. To contemporary ears, anyway, “instruments” sounds like “pawns” which is clearly not what Dorner intended.

Finally, in sum, then, a relational view of God’s sovereignty is one that regards God’s will as settled in terms of the intentions of his character but open and flexible in terms of the ways in which he acts because he allows himself to be acted upon. Only such a view of God’s sovereignty does justice to the whole of the biblical drama, to God as personal, to human persons as responsible actors and potential partners with God in God’s mission.

Whatever Happened to the Christian Mind?

Yes, I know, this has been asked before—numerous times and by many Christian philosophers and theologians. A relatively recent classic on the subject is Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994). Francis Schaeffer, especially in his early works, decried Christian anti-intellectualism. Recently a friend sent me this statement by A. W. Tozer, an evangelical preacher and writer of a previous generation (than mine or my parents):

“There is, unfortunately, a feeling in some quarters today that there is something innately wrong about learning, and that to be spiritual one must also be stupid. This tacit philosophy has given us in the last half century a new cult within the confines of orthodoxy; I call it the Cult of Ignorance. It equates learning with unbelief and spirituality with ignorance, and, according to it, never the twain shall meet. This is reflected in a wretchedly inferior religious literature, a slap-happy type of religious meeting, and a grade of Christian song so low as to be positively embarrassing.”

Recently I’ve been re-reading an old book I read many years ago—Hardness of Heart by Edmond Cherbonnier (who, by the way, is still alive at age 97!). The book is a study of the Christian doctrine of sin but begins with a scathing critique of relativism. Cherbonnier scorns the fact that some Christians cannot detect blatant paganism when they encounter it. (One example he gives in this book from the 1950s is an annual Easter performance of Wagner’s “Parsifal” routinely recommended even by some Christians as a “Christian-themed opera.”)

I absolutely hate to come across as a hyper-critical, “old-school,” Christian curmudgeon, but I have so often overheard Christians talking about Christian themes in movies, plays, novels, and other elements of popular culture that I groan inwardly. I remember well in high school being taught by my wonderful English literature teachers that any fictional character with the initials “J.C.” was a “Christ figure.” Whatever happened to discernment?

Just because a piece of popular culture, or even a classic, deals with perennial issues of human existence such as sin and salvation, life’s ultimate concerns, does not make it “Christian-themed.” But I digress…

I grew up in one of the most anti-intellectual of all Christian denominations, and yet…at least my spiritual mentors, for all their faults, emphasized what Hans Frei called allowing the Bible to “absorb the world.” (Or maybe that phrase was coined by Frei’s colleague George Lindbeck to describe Frei’s idea of the Christian mind in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.) From childhood I was trained to “see” the world “as” God’s world and to think about all reality in relation to the Bible’s story of God, creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Sure, there was a lot of confusion mixed in there, but the basic idea was to practice what James Sire called “discipleship of the mind.” After I extricated myself from fundamentalism I still found that to be an essential element of Christian living. Sadly, for too many Christians, it is not.

The problem is not just one of ignorance as in “not knowing facts.” That’s bad enough. Too many Christians, including conservative-evangelical Christians, don’t even know the Bible. How many can even find a book, chapter and verse in the Bible without being told the “page number in the pew Bible?” No, the larger problem is confusion of the Christian story with other stories. We live in a pluralistic culture and I celebrate that. But I also celebrate Christians in this pluralistic culture knowing and understanding their own story—the story of God and us told in the Bible. Unfortunately, many Christians know popular culture better. I know many Christians who saw the 1998 movie “What Dreams May Come” starring Robin Williams and thought it was a “beautiful depiction of life after death.” In fact, its depiction of life after death was a mish-mash of beliefs with no coherence and little to no concurrence with the Bible’s view.

Too many Christians today are so afraid of being called “fundamentalist” or “fanatic” that they flee from memorizing Scripture or learning doctrine, to say nothing of daring to call something parading as “Christian” false. And they not only see no value in, but positively avoid, forming a coherent Christian worldview in conversation with the great minds of Christian history: Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, Richard Hooker, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Charles Hodge, Walter Rauschenbusch, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Carl Henry, Stanley Hauerwas.

I have taught Christian theology for thirty-four years at three Christian universities and spoken in many Christian institutions of higher learning and churches. I have met many wonderful Christians determined to practice “discipleship of the mind,” to develop a biblical-Christian worldview and see the world through that lens. But I have also met many who simply don’t care, who think being Christian is emulating Jesus in terms of being a nice person. Even some Christian professors spout ideas they learned in graduate school that absolutely conflict with basic Christianity. And they don’t seem to worry about it when it’s pointed out to them. More often than not, pointing it out to them gets one labeled a member of the “evangelical thought police.”

When I taught Christian theology (mostly historical theology) at an evangelical Christian liberal arts college there was a strong emphasis on “integration of faith and learning.” And yet some of my faculty colleagues resisted the idea. Some ridiculed it. And some responded with benign neglect. I will never forget being taught in a faculty workshop led by a Communications professor that “If they haven’t learned, you haven’t taught.” Besides being simply stupid, that maxim is biblically false—however widely believed it may be by Communications and Education experts. It falls into conflict with the biblical-Christian doctrine of sin. I’m not talking about any specific doctrine of sin; I’m talking about the Bible’s teaching that we are all prone to willful ignorance—especially in spiritual matters. What I wanted to stand up and ask my colleague and the others in that workshop was “What about Jesus?” Nothing could possibly be clearer than that he taught and many of his listeners didn’t learn.

I’m not pointing the finger at one person or discipline; I’m using that as one example out of numerous possible ones. Another colleague, a computer science professor, told me he views God as a great “cosmic computer.” Another colleague, a social scientist admitted that he does not believe in miracles or anything supernatural. An anthropology professor told me there is no trans-cultural gospel. I could go on and on. (These examples are drawn from all three of the Christian universities in which I have taught.)

We live in a Christian subculture in America (I won’t speak for others) that has fallen into gross ignorance of basic Christian philosophy, metaphysics, worldview. We do not train ourselves or our young people to “see” the world “as”—God’s good but broken creation. Most Christians’ minds are a confused mess of ideas drawn more from popular culture than Scripture or Christian tradition. The evidence is near total lack of critical discernment with regard to popular culture and messages labeled “spiritual,” “moral,” even “Christian.” For the most part, unfortunately, only fundamentalists care about clear cut Christian ideas and critical discernment toward popular culture and messages labeled “religious” or “spiritual.” We moderates care about ethics and spirituality, but not doctrine or worldview. Christianity, we say, is a “way of life” but not a way of thinking. Is it any wonder we adopt naturalism and New Age ideas? Some of us are more interested in the Enneagram than the Nicene Creed!

Recently I was told in public that the problem I point to is the result of deviation from biblical inerrancy. Nonsense and balderdash. (For a counter example see Scottish theologian James Orr’s outstanding classic The Christian View of God and the World [Eerdmans, 1954]. Orr did not believe in biblical inerrancy but was a great Christian thinker nonetheless.) Unless “biblical inerrancy” just means belief that the Bible is the unique, inspired, and authoritative Word of God. But I know many Christians who would gladly confess belief in even the strictest sense of “biblical inerrancy” and still revel in willful ignorance, anti-intellectualism, gullibility and rejection of clear Christian thinking. The underlying problem is cultural populism and anti-intellectualism invading the churches. We have, as Tozer suggested, dumbed Christianity down to near emptiness.

The solution is simple. Go back and start over. Wipe away the last quarter to half century of sole emphasis on “practical Christianity” to the exclusion of Christian discernment. Start teaching children the Bible, not just “Bible stories.” Return to memorizing key portions of the Bible and singing songs and hymns with meaningful lyrics. Teach everyone that God expects us to worship him with our minds, not just our feelings. Institute catechism classes. Gently but firmly correct church members who protest that “All our ideas about God are equal.” Re-invigorate the idea that biblical-theological education is a must for pastoral leaders and that sermons ought to teach as well as inspire. Encourage “life groups” to study Christian books that teach and stretch the mind. Invite theologians and biblical scholars to speak in the church and (pastors) urge the people to attend. A few years ago I visited a church where the pastor routinely devoted ten to fifteen minutes of the Sunday morning worship service to a mini-talk by a visiting and invited Christian scholar. It’s a beginning.

Christianity in America has by-and-large been reduced to folk religion. A folk religion is a spirituality divorced from tradition and critical thinking. It thrives on clichés, evangelegends, and feelings (mostly of comfort). It lacks intellectual rigor, concern for coherence (among beliefs), thrives on spiritual stimulation devoid of discernment, and regards everyone as an “expert” in his or her own spirituality. The result is a loss of credibility and influence and, tragically, eventually of the gospel itself.

Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed a Year Later: Calvinism (Still) Isn’t Beautiful by Austin Fischer   “They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing.”[1] -John Piper   One of the more persistent myths regarding art (broadly defined) is that the artist understands what he or she is creating. It is, as it were, a half-truth. You understand parts of it, catch glimpses of its deeper meaning, shape it toward certain ends. But you certainly do not understand all of it. As Madeline L’Engle says, “The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver…each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.’”[2]   Two years ago, I started writing. I didn’t intend to write a book so much as document a journey I had taken in and out of Calvinism, with the hope it could help people in my own church who were treading similar paths. It ended up becoming a book and has helped people, and for that I am grateful.   But as I look back—now two years removed from when I started writing and a year removed from its publication—I feel as though I only now understand the deepest intention of the book. Bear with me if this seems indulgent.   Back when I was a Calvinist, I came across the above quote from John Piper: “They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing.” And while I didn’t fully understand it at the time, I knew what it was about.   I embraced Calvinism, not just because I found its exegesis and inner logic compelling, but because it made my heart sing. It was true, but also (and perhaps more importantly) good and beautiful.   Christians believe that truth (being grounded in God) is not only, well, true, but also good and beautiful. Beauty is “a measure of what theology may call true.”[3] Because God is infinitely good and beautiful, theology must be good and beautiful or else it’s not true. When properly understood, the truth invites not only the mind’s assent but the heart’s affection. The truth should make your heart sing.   This notion of the truth’s beauty is not an invention of secular humanism or some other boogey-man, but belongs to the deepest intuition of biblical Christian sensibilities. As the various psalmists never tire of telling us, “Great is the Lord and highly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable…The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works” (Psalm 145:3, 8-9).   God is infinite power but also infinite grace, so beauty “qualifies theology’s understanding of divine glory: it shows that glory to be not only holy, powerful, immense, and righteous, but also good and desirable, a gift graciously shared.”[4]   John Piper understands this better than most, and his brilliant attention to the aesthetics of Calvinism (channeling Jonathan Edwards) is one of the (if not the) primary reasons for the tremendous surge of Calvinism among young evangelicals. Simply put, plenty of people have argued Calvinism is true. Piper’s particular genius has been in arguing that Calvinism is also beautiful. Many young evangelicals have been convinced and their hearts sing for Calvinism.   My exodus from Calvinism was set in motion when I came to believe Calvinism was not beautiful—indeed, when I realized that Calvinism (consistent Calvinism at least) was, at best, cold and brutally enigmatic (which is, perhaps, why many cannot be consistent Calvinists). This realization then forced me to further reconsider its veracity.   The heart of the book, then, was a challenge to the aesthetic of the New Calvinism. The New Calvinists attempt to paint a ravishing picture of the manifold excellencies of the self-glorifying, all-determining God of Calvinism, expressed primarily through the doctrines of grace. I say that picture is a false veneer that only works when you ignore the reprobate. I say that picture cannot contain, as its central image, a crucified God who would rather die for sinners than give them what they deserve. Using the Bible as my measure of beauty, I say Calvinism isn’t beautiful.   People have asked if I could ever see myself “going back” to Calvinism—a little less young, a little less restless, and reformed again, perhaps? It’s a question I occasionally ponder. Depending on my mood, I can still find some of the exegesis and inner rationale for Calvinism compelling. As I’ve stated numerous times, I think Calvinism is one way to make sense of the teachings of the Bible (though as I also always state and many of my Calvinist friends have a hard time hearing, I think there is a better way to make sense of the Bible’s teachings that has far deeper ecumenical and historical roots).   And yet while I suppose I could again entertain the possibility that Calvinism is true, I don’t think I could ever again believe that Calvinism is beautiful. To my mind, calling Calvinism beautiful is to subject the very concept of beauty to so ruthless an equivocation that it loses any intelligible meaning.   So I agree with Piper: theology needs to make our hearts sing. That’s not a “strategic” statement about how to make Christianity more persuasive in its use of pathos. It’s a statement about truth. In terms of a quick (and perhaps overly simplistic) syllogism, I submit:

1. Christian truth is (by biblical, theological and rational necessity) good and beautiful (as measured by the Bible).
2. Calvinism is not beautiful.
3. Calvinism is not true.

I’d imagine my Calvinist friends would accept premise one (unless they adhere to an extreme voluntarism and absolute equivocation between God’s aesthetic and/or moral sensibilities and ours) and reject premise two, arguing that Calvinism is indeed beautiful, but sin has crippled our aesthetic sensibilities to the point that we wouldn’t know beauty if we saw it.   And of course I agree. That’s precisely what Isaiah says in his cryptic words about the suffering servant: the beauty of God is not something we naturally appreciate (53:1-3). We’re far too intoxicated with power and status to appreciate the unforeseen majesty of deity suffering and despised.   But it is the very measure of beauty given us by the Bible (gratuitously aggressive and kenotic, self-giving love) that threatens to burst the wineskins of Calvinism. The good news of God’s beauty is too good and beautiful for Calvinism to contain. And it is the very intoxication with raw power that blinds us to God’s true beauty that fits so snugly within the Calvinist vision of God.   So instead of retreating to shopworn quips (“Well if you just trusted the Bible more than your ‘feelings’ and ‘aesthetic sensibilities’ then none of this would be a problem”), I hope more of the New Calvinists will allow themselves to grasp the gravity of the dilemma Calvinism faces when it comes to biblical, Christian aesthetics. It is not a blemish of the surface, but a chilling abyss at the very heart of God.     [1] http://www.latentdesign.com/pdf/young_reformed.pdf [2] Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water, 18. [3] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 3. [4] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 17.

Why I Believe in Creatio ex nihilo (Even Though the Bible Doesn’t Directly Teach It)

Every once in a while I meet someone who, while exhibiting every sign of being a true Christian, denies the traditional Christian doctrine of “creatio ex nihilo”—creation out of nothing. This belief, the “prior actuality of God” (Austin Farrer’s term), combined with the idea that God created in the beginning out of nothing (not “Nothingness”—Greek philosophy’s me ōn), is not directly taught in Scripture. However, the early church fathers, especially (but not only) the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caeasarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus), insisted on it against Greek philosophy and Roman religious myths. Gradually it was raised to the status of dogma by most branches of Christianity even if rarely, if ever, explicitly stated as such in creeds or confessions of faith. Why?

Creation out of nothing is the only alternative to four alternative beliefs about creation that are absolutely untenable for Christian thought. One is pantheism or panentheism—belief that God and the world are either identical or interdependent. In either case the world is part of God or so inextricably united with God eternally that God is dependent on it. (Here “world” refer to creation, the universe, finite reality.) Another alternative belief about creation is that God created the world out of some pre-existing matter that he did not himself create. In that view God “created” by organizing an eternal something that was chaotic and stood over against him. Yet another alternative belief is that God created the world out of himself in which case the world is made of “God stuff”—God’s own substance. Finally, a mostly modern, secular view is that some world (or substance, energy) has always existed and God, if he exists at all, has nothing to do with its origin or development.

If there is a fifth possibility, alternative to creation out of nothing, I am not aware of it. All that I have considered “boil down” to one of those four.

Many Christians, to say nothing of non-Christians, embrace one of the alternative beliefs about creation, for whatever reasons, and feel permitted to do so because neither Scripture nor creedal orthodoxy explicitly requires creation out of nothing. (Some Christian denominations may require it, but most do not explicitly say so.)

So is creation out of nothing just speculation on the part of orthodox Christian theologians? Why has this idea been so prominent and defended so strongly by traditional Christian theologians if Scripture and creeds do not explicitly require it? Why do I believe in it while admitting it is not explicitly taught in Scripture and points to an impenetrable mystery?

Creation out of nothing is not mere speculation; it is based on other beliefs that are explicitly taught in Scripture and that are part and parcel of traditional, orthodox, classical “Great Tradition” Christianity.

Here is where I think many modern Christians, both conservative and progressive, across that spectrum, fail to realize there are necessary Christian beliefs that are not explicitly taught in Scripture. Yes, admittedly, they are “man-made doctrines” and are more part of Christian philosophy, Christian presuppositions underlying explicit dogmas about Christ, the Trinity, and salvation, than confessional, systematic theology itself. (This is a somewhat artificial distinction but I find it helpful at times and this is one such “time” or instance. Some would call it “the Christian worldview”—the set of basic perspectives, “blik” [to borrow a term from philosophy R. M. Hare], that underlie Christian dogmas about God, Christ, and salvation.)

Creation out of nothing is part of what Emil Brunner called “Christian ontology”—derived from revelation but not explicitly revealed. Without it certain revealed truths cannot be maintained or defended; they slip away without this ontological, metaphysical foundation.

Creation out of nothing (in the beginning, not moment-by-moment as Jonathan Edwards speculated) is necessary, as I said, because without it one will believe in one of the alternative views mentioned above and will eventually find crucial gospel tenets dissolving. It is the only alternative to those views of creation and alone supports and defends the revealed gospel of truth about God, Christ, and salvation.

Now, I find it necessary to warn not to attempt to provide an alternative to creation out of nothing by saying God created “out of love.” That is not an alternative to creation out of nothing; it is simply speaking of God’s motive or disposition behind and for creation—not the what out of which God created. It is completely compatible with creation out of nothing and does not replace it. When someone says God created “out of love” they are not expressing an alternative to creation out of nothing.

All of the above is to say that there is a Christian ontology, a Christian metaphysical worldview, perspective about reality, that is not itself explicitly revealed but is established because it is the only support for what is revealed and expressed in classical, orthodox Christianity. Often its support is that alternative views are simply untenable in light of revealed truth and, if held, lead inexorably to distortions of the gospel itself.

So what revealed truths, held and taught by all branches of catholic and orthodox Christianity (including the Reformers) make creation out of nothing necessary in spite of its impenetrable mysteriousness?

First is the transcendence of God, God’s holiness, wholly otherness, majesty, power, glory and freedom. Throughout Scripture God is revealed as not dependent on anything in creation for his actuality. Do you need a proof text? Paul to the Athenians in Acts 17:22-31: God does not need anything and gives life and breath to all mortals. Some may point to another portion of Paul’s soliloquy in Athens—that we “live and move and have our being” in God and are “God’s offspring.” None of that undermines and indeed must be interpreted in light of God does not need anything. That is a constant theme throughout Scripture: That God is “above” creation and does not need anything outside of himself to be God. A God who needs the world for anything is not the God of the Bible. “Without the world, God is not God” is Hegel’s heresy, the root of all panentheism, and it undercuts and undermines God’s holy transcendence. This is “another God,” not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Isaiah, Jesus and Paul.

Second is the gratuity of grace, the revealed truth that redemption is solely gift and that grace for salvation cannot be forced or necessary. It also cannot be presumed as if God owed it to himself or anyone or anything. This belief is integral to Christian soteriology and arises out of biblical revelation and out of the very meaning of grace itself: “For by grace are you saved…and that not of yourselves….” (Ephesians 2:8-9) If creation out of nothing is not firmly held and defended, the freedom of God in redemption and salvation, grace itself as sheer gift, slips away.

Third, finally, is the reality of evil and God’s non-involvement in and non-participation in evil. Creation out of nothing protects the reality of evil from being reduced to illusion (our not-yet-knowing of our own divinity) or necessity (in which case it is not really evil).

These three Christian ideas, derived from revelation itself, if not directly revealed, depend on creation out of nothing. One or more of them completely undercuts and undermines all the alternative perspectives on reality. Only creation out of nothing protects God’s holy freedom and wholly otherness, the gratuity of redemption, and the reality of creaturely opposition to God as evil/sin.

In other words, even though creation out of nothing is not explicitly revealed or normally stated in creeds and confessions of Christian denominations and churches, it inevitably appears as we bore down to inspect and think about the presuppositional pillars that uphold ecumenical Christian belief and experience. It is an aspect of Christian ontology which is just as important as Christian doctrine. The line between the two is admittedly blurry, not absolutely distinct, but we might say that Christian ontology appears not so much directly out of revelation as out of close inspection of Christian beliefs based on revelation in light of alternative religions, philosophies and worldviews in culture. Creation out of nothing was discovered, not invented, by the church fathers as they examined the worldviews, religions and philosophies around them in Hellenistic culture. So today we need to rediscover it and embrace and defend it as we examine modern and postmodern secular and pagan worldviews, religions and philosophies in and among which the same alternative beliefs about God and creation arise (as in Hellenistic culture).

In other words, we can no longer take creation out of nothing for granted; alternative beliefs about God and the world are seeping and creeping into Christian churches. We need to find spaces for teaching Christian ontology (under whatever name). We need to correct Christians who are confused about God and creation, especially those who are coming to believe that creation (e.g., our souls) are “part of God” or that God “did his best with what he had” in creation which is the explanation for evil.

Note: This is an opening to a conversation among Christians. I don’t expect non-Christians to believe in creation out of nothing (although some might). If you choose to comment or question, please keep that in mind. If you are not a catholic-orthodox and/or evangelical Christian (concerned for biblical revelation and basic Christian orthodoxy) you are free to ask questions about Christian belief including creation out of nothing, but please do not misuse this blog to promote your alternative belief system or worldview (or metaphysical/ontological skepticism). If you perceive yourself to be a catholic-orthodox and/or evangelical Christian and choose to respond negatively (with disagreement) state whether you agree with the three basic Christian dogmas/doctrines I stated that I argue require (together) belief in creation out of nothing. In any case, keep in mind that the purpose here is dialogue. Keep it civil.