With the publisher’s permission I am posting an excerpt from Austin Fischer’s new book Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed here. Please buy the book. In fact, buy two copies–one for yourself and one to give to a friend who isn’t sure if being a Calvinist is right for him or her.

Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed by Austin Fischer

Introduction: Black Holes

Gravity

When a big star dies, a remarkable thing happens.^[i] Its own gravity crunches it until it becomes a small core of infinite density—matter squeezed together so tightly the known laws of physics cease to exist. The dead star now has a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. And at this point, the dead star has become a black hole, and everything within its reach is dragged towards its center. It can swallow planets, stars, and even other black holes. Get too close and you’ve bought a one-way ticket on a journey to the center of a black hole. Its gravity is irresistible.

Gravity is an integral part of human life. It doesn’t take us long to learn that what comes up must come down. And it’s not as if anyone enforces gravity—it just is; a physical force to be accepted and not conquered. Gravity is also a spiritual force in the sense that we humans find ourselves drawn to things beyond our control. We are constantly sucked in to things—a job, a person, a hobby, an addiction. But of course if you really put spiritual gravity under the microscope, you see that the thing we are being sucked in to is ourselves.

We are black holes—walking, talking pits of narcissism, self-pity, and loneliness, pillaging the world around us in a desperate attempt to fill the void inside us. Unless something is done, you will spend the rest of your existence as a human black hole, eternally collapsing in on self in a tragic effort to preserve self. It’s bad news.

But Christians believe there is good news that is better than the bad. We believe something has been done—that through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done what we could not do ourselves. We no longer have to live under the crushing gravity of self because where sin and selfishness abounded, grace now abounds all the more. It certainly is good news, but…

Options for the Restless

Leave it to us to take something so beautiful and other-centered and turn it into something (you guessed it) about us.

The universe-altering message of the gospel becomes a message about me: Jesus died so I could be happy and comfortable forever and ever. While this may pass for gospel in many circles, there is a growing swell of opposition to it in many others—a recognition that such thin, therapeutic, self-centered expressions of Christianity lack the gravitas to hold a human life together, much less make it thrive. A crowd of voices calls us out of consumerism, moralism, and skepticism and into sacrifice, risk, and commitment.

And for those who are restless for more, Neo-Calvinism^[ii] often appears as the strongest—and perhaps only—alternative for thinking biblical people. It offers the new center of gravity that can finally draw us away from self. Such was my conviction, and I still believe Neo-Calvinism is a strong alternative to cultural Christianity.

But I believe we best say yes to God’s glory and sovereignty by saying no to Calvinism. I believe that I—along with many others, past and present—have found an even better option. It’s not new, and it’s not novel; indeed I would argue it is simply the historic consensus of the church. But correctly understood, it offers the greatest hope for a restless church. Unlike Calvinism, it doesn’t replace the black hole of self with the black hole of deity, making both God and the Bible impossible (more on that later); however, it does offer an infinitely glorious God, a crucified Messiah, and a cross-shaped call to follow Jesus.

Egotistical Sincerity

These are my convictions, and anyone with convictions faces a dilemma: would you rather be convincing or honest? Is it more important to get people to agree with you or to honestly present the best of worthy options? While I have certainly tried to be convincing, I think the truth is best served when we are honest, and so I have also tried to be honest. And the best way I have found to be honest is to tell you my story: a journey in and out of Calvinism. As Chesterton once confessed, sometimes you have to be egotistical if you want to be sincere.^[iii]

In this reminiscing, something became clear: theology and biography belong together.^[iv] We try to make sense of God as we try to make sense of our own stories, our own lives. As such, theology is meant for participants, not spectators. I write as a participant and not a spectator in the hopes it will help you become a better participant in your own theological journey, wherever it takes you. These things said, let the journey begin. Only it can’t quite begin without two quick detours.

Detour #1: The Wrong Girl

I once had a friend who was convinced the wrong girl was the right girl. He thought she hung the moon while walking on water and while I thought she was nice and all, I was convinced there was someone out there better for him. Whether I was right or wrong isn’t the point—the point is that when I talked with him about it, I wasn’t trying to sabotage his current relationship so much as I was trying to encourage the prospects of a new one. I feel much the same when I talk to people about Calvinism because while I think you could put a ring on her and live happily ever after, I also think there’s someone better out there. On top of that, it’s a shame to be known for what you’re against, so for clarity’s sake I’m not trying to get anyone to not be something (a Calvinist), but to be something.

Or to make the point with different strokes, the silhouette of the crucified God of Golgotha is an image chiseled into my heart. When sin within rises, chaos without descends, confusion all around lays waste to any semblance of comprehension—when I don’t feel like I understand a damn thing—I look up there and I understand enough to say thank you. I understand enough to call it love.

So when someone messes with this picture, adding a cryptic backdrop that threatens to stain the whole thing, I’m against the backdrop only because I’m for the picture I think the backdrop ruins. I’m not against the Calvinist picture of God so much as I am grieved by what that picture does to the picture I love, turning the full-truth of Golgotha into a duplicitous half-truth. The rest of the book is a description of what happened when my Calvinism was subjected to the searing scrutiny of that image, in the hopes you might glimpse the terrifyingly beautiful God of Jesus Christ.

Detour #2: Everything

The most devastating combination of words in the English language form a statement masquerading as a question: who cares? When this “question” is asked, a statement is made. The asker is expressing his apathy and disregard for the issue under discussion. It does not appear to matter, so why waste our breath? Why kick a hornet’s nest just so we can count the hornets? And it’s a good “question” to ask because many of the issues that hoard our energies and efforts are dead ends. It’s also a “question” I’ve been asked many times when debates about Calvinism and its alternatives arise.

Does it really matter if Calvinism is true or false? Does it really matter if we have free will? Does it really matter? Not at all, and yet, more than you could imagine.

No, it doesn’t matter because God is who he is and does what he does regardless of what we think of him, in much the same sense that the solar system keeping spinning around the sun even if we’re convinced it spins around the earth. Our opinions about God will not change God; however, they can most certainly change us. And so yes, it does matter because the conversations about Calvinism and free will plunge into the heart of the question the universe asks us at every turn:

Who is God?

And this is a question that has everything to do with everything.

Review of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism by Molly Worthen (Oxford University Press) Part One

This review will appear in three parts corresponding with the three parts of the book. This first installment covers the book’s introduction and Part I: Knights Inerrant.

(Feel free to skip the first nine paragraphs which are autobiographical. The review of Worthen’s book actually begins with paragraph ten.)

I admit to having a weakness for books about evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is my spiritual family and reading books about it can be almost an emotional experience. Few of them have resonated with me as powerfully as this one (which happens to be the most recent of scores that I have read). Worthen’s book is not just a book of facts; it’s her interpretive history of evangelicalism—especially so-called “neo-evangelicalism” (more about that later).

When I was growing up in a pastor’s family with many close relatives in ministry I was well aware that we were most definitely evangelicals. As I look back on my home church and denomination now I realize we were also fundamentalist Pentecostals. I knew then that we were Pentecostals even though we preferred the label “Full Gospel.” However, throughout my childhood and youth we spoke the language of American evangelicalism and evangelicalism’s heroes were ours—especially Billy Graham. The music that filled our home was “gospel music”—on “Christian radio” and from evangelically-produced “sacred albums.” Our home and church were filled with evangelical publications. I was raised on childrens’ stories such as “The Sugar Creek Gang” series.

We thought of ourselves as “special” evangelicals. We were “Full Gospel” evangelicals. Baptists, Evangelical Free (my grandparents’ church), Evangelical Covenant (my aunt’s and uncle’s church), Nazarenes, Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) (the church of many of my relatives and the one in which my father was baptized at age 16), Christian Reformed (other relatives’ church), were “Not Quite Full Gospel” evangelicals. But we felt a real kinship with those churches and many others we distinguished with ourselves from “nominal Christians” (so-called mainline Protestants and Catholics).

My uncle was president of our little Pentecostal evangelical denomination for twenty-five years. He served on the boards of both the National Association of Evangelicals and the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America. As I grew older and became more actively interested in our religious “family tree” he and I had many discussions about all things Pentecostal and evangelical. It was he who informed me that we were “conservative” and “evangelical” but not “fundamentalist.” We were not the latter because we were not cessationists (which in our informal taxonomy, anyway, all fundamentalists were by definition). We also didn’t practice “secondary separation”—refusal of Christian fellowship with all who didn’t agree with us. Compared with hard core fundamentalists we were downright ecumenical.

My father read and introduced me to magazines such as The Christian Herald and Eternity and Christianity Today. (He also read The Sword of the Lord but often only to laugh at it or borrow a sermon outline from it.) We watched both Billy Graham crusades and Oral Roberts healing meetings on television (when we had a television). Our ideal Christian hero would be a hybrid of Graham and Roberts. When it came to the past our heroes of the faith were (after Jesus and the apostles) Luther, Wesley, Finney, Moody, Amy Carmichael, Fanny Crosby, Aimee Semple Macpherson, Billy Sunday, A. W. Tozer, and, later, Kathryn Kuhlman, John Stott, Alan Redpath (Keswick) and David Wilkerson.

My father attended all the local Evangelical Ministerial Alliance meetings and participation in Youth for Christ was taken for granted—as much as was church attendance. I saw every Christian film from “Without Onion” to “The Tony Fontaine Story” to “The Restless Ones” as a kid. (We didn’t go to movie theaters but often viewed these and many other gospel-themed films at churches and YFC events.)

Eventually I graduated from an evangelical Bible college and an evangelical theological seminary. My published piece was a book review for Eternity. Then I graduated to writing book reviews and articles for Christianity Today. I taught theology at two evangelical universities over seventeen years and have for the past fourteen years taught theology at a broadly evangelical seminary. Most of my sixteen books have been published by evangelical publishing houses. I edited evangelically-inclined Christian Scholar’s Review for five years and served two years as co-chair of the Evangelical Theology Group of the American Academy of Religion. I wrote The Westminster Handbook to Evangelical Theology at the publisher’s (Westminster John Knox Press) invitation. My most recent writing effort was a lengthy chapter on “The Fragmentation of Evangelical Theology” for a forthcoming volume on evangelicalism to be published in 2014 by Columbia University Press).

All that is to say that being evangelical in both senses (ethos and movement) has been part of my identity for sixty-one years. So whenever a new scholarly book on evangelicalism appears I buy it, read it and often review it.

(Review of the book begins here…)

I first heard of Worthen’s book while writing “The Fragmentation of Evangelical Theology” for the forthcoming book The Future of Evangelicalism edited by Mark Silk and Candy Brown. An anonymous reviewer of my chapter’s manuscript suggested I read and incorporate material from Worthen’s book into my chapter. It was too late for that, but I bought the book at AAR/SBL in Baltimore in November and have begun reading it. At first I swore I wasn’t going to use my usual red marking pen to underline. I was just going to read for enjoyment. But after a few pages I started marking up the book with red (which designates interest, not criticism).

I do not know Worthen or anything about her other than what it says on the dust jacket. She is a historian who teaches at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But from this book I know that she is a meticulous researcher. She’s also a very good writer. One of the most interesting things about the book for me is that she sprinkles her narrative of neo-evangelicalism with quotations from arcane sources—letters from neo-evangelical leaders to each other (for example).

It’s important to know what this book is about. It’s not about “evangelicalism in general” although there’s a lot of good information and interesting interpretation about what I call the “evangelical ethos”—a style of Christian spirituality and theology that was born out of the Pietist movement of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and was shaped especially by the “awakenings” (revivals) of the 1730s-1740s and the first decades of the nineteenth century. This book is mainly about neo-evangelicalism—the term founder Harold John Ockenga preferred for the postfundamentalist “new evangelicalism” that started formally with the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942 and 1943.

One thing I like very much about Worthen’s book is that it tracks almost exactly with my own interpretations of these subjects. Although she does not use the language of “ethos” versus “movement” (as distinct if inseparable things) she presupposes it. Throughout Part I she juxtaposes the Ockenga-inspired movement of postfundamentalist neo-evangelicalism with the wider evangelicalism of much of conservative Protestant Christianity in America—including non-fundamentalist Pentecostals, Pietists, Holiness churches and ministries, and Anabaptists. This is what I mean by “evangelical ethos” versus “evangelical movement.” The former is that spirituality with a conservative doctrinal component shared by many diverse Protestant traditions. The latter is the quasi-ecumenical evangelical movement begun by Ockenga and friends in the 1940s to move beyond fundamentalism’s anti-intellectual, schismatic, separatistic, and insular ethos that it acquired between the 1925 Scopes Trial and the late 1930s.

For example, Worthen notes in the Introduction that Jonathan Edwards and Count Zinzendorf were “among the very first evangelicals.” (6-7). She could have thrown John Wesley in there for good measure. She argues that evangelicalism is “a creature of the Puritan and Pietist revivals.” (6) As I said, throughout Part I she discusses at great length and in great detail the interactions between diverse denominational expressions of this evangelicalism (spiritual ethos) and neo-evangelicalism (postfundamentalist movement).

One of Worthen’s main themes is that Ockenga’s and Carl Henry’s neo-evangelicalism always was and still is (as represented by Christianity Today, for example) heavily Reformed. Putting this in my own language, her point is that neo-evangelicalism privileges Reformed theology and more or less expects other evangelicals (Holiness, Pentecostal, Anabaptists, Restorationist) to adjust to that to be acceptable. And many non-Reformed evangelicals have succumbed to that pressure while others have resisted it—causing tensions among evangelicals and within denominations.

Another point where Worthen and I agree is about neo-evangelicalism’s failure to extricate itself from fundamentalism completely. She highlights and provides evidence for neo-evangelicalism’s founders’ and leaders’ inability to leave the fundamentalist past behind. Two examples are their obsession with biblical inerrancy and their concern for certainty through authority. I would add their continuing separatism. When a past leader of the NAE suggested eliminating the rule that member denominations could not also be members of the National Council of Churches he was so heavily criticized by fellow neo-evangelicals that he had to resign.

Another point of agreement is that inerrancy became a mere shibboleth among neo-evangelicals, a test of evangelical fidelity without real meaning. As I have often argued, and as Worthen demonstrates, so long as one is perceived as adequately conservative and loyal to the evangelical cause and untainted by liberal theology he or she can define “inerrancy” just about any way and be accepted by conservative evangelical leaders.

One of Worthen’s main points is that, according to her, anyway, neo-evangelicals sought a unifying authority not so much in the Bible, as they claimed, as in a Reformed epistemology—presuppositional apologetics combined with Common Sense Realism combined with Calvinism combined with biblical inerrancy that formed the “groundwork for an ideology.” (46) Carl Henry is her main case study and illustration of this.

Here is one example of her conclusion (and excellent writing):

“The neo-evangelicals were refugees from churches conquered by modernists a generation earlier, and this freed them to preach across denominational lines. Yet when it came to institution-building, a separatist hangover combined with the ideological mindset of the early Cold War to dampen any ecumenical spirit.

Scratch a neo-evangelical and underneath you would likely find a fundamentalist who still preferred the comforts of purity to the risks of free inquiry and collaboration. Their efforts did not calm evangelical anxieties over the place of the Bible in modern life: Instead, they institutionalized them.” (46)

Worthen goes to great lengths, into great detail, to argue that fear of liberalism (accommodation to modernity and secularity) drove non-Reformed evangelicals who did not have a history of affirming biblical inerrancy and who were by-and-large free of the influences of Princeton Orthodoxy (Alexander, Hodge, Alexander, Warfield, Machen) to seek shelter under the neo-evangelical umbrella and to imitate neo-evangelical institutions.

I would put it this way. For neo-evangelicals the theology of Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen (largely stripped of Warfield’s openness to evolution) served as the interpretive framework, a kind of informal magisterium, for developing theology. Alternative evangelical theologies were expected to adapt to it to be accepted into the neo-evangelical fold. Pentecostal, Holiness (e.g., Nazarene), Anabaptist (e.g., Mennonite) and Restorationist (e.g., Independent Christian) did not have the Princeton theological influence, but gradually adapted it (here and there, with controversy) in order to “fit in” with neo-evangelicalism because it was the best game in town—for fighting off liberalism and fundamentalism.

One thing that really strikes me about Worthen’s book (so far) is her inclusion of non-Reformed theologians in her story of evangelicalism and neo-evangelicalism. For example, she discusses at some length the life and ministry of H. Orton Wiley, leading Nazarene theologian who tried to steer the Church of the Nazarene away from fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism. She also discusses Nazarene theologian Mildren Bangs Wynkoop—a much neglected evangelical theologian—probably because she was non-Reformed and a woman! And she discusses Mennonites theologians Harold Bender and John Howard Yoder and their ambivalence toward neo-evangelicalism. The same with Pentecostals and Restorationists.

At one point Worthen goes so far as to agree with a critic who referred to neo-evangelicals as “fundamentalists’ more polite and articulate cousins.” (66)

Worthen says of Pentecostal, Holiness, Anabaptist and Restorationist “non-Reformed leaders [that they] conveyed…a mixed message that both pushed Reformed neo-evangelicalism away and pulled it close.” (95) I can testify to that from my own life experience. Many, many Pentecostal, Holiness, Anabaptist and Restorationist schools adopted curricula written from a Reformed neo-evangelical perspective.

Worthen concludes Part I by saying that the story of the neo-evangelical movement in America reveals “different ‘evangelicalisms’ at odds with one another over the nature of religious experience and the gathered church, and a Christian’s place in politics and culture.” (96)

Near the beginning of the book Worthen puts her finger on the main problem with postfundamentalist, “neo-evangelicalism.”  She says “The sundry believers who share the evangelical label…are all children of estranged parents—Pietism and the Enlightenment—but behave like orphans.” (7) I would adjust that to say they (we) are all children of estranged parents—Pietism and Puritanism (especially Princeton Orthodoxy)—and behave like orphans.

Neo-evangelicalism tried to draw together concerned conservative Christians of disparate types to fight the hegemony of liberal Protestantism as seen, for example, in the National Council of Churches’ domination of the airwaves in the 1930s and 1940s. The founders’ Reformed theology was the implicit glue holding the new coalition together. While attempting to maintain their non-Reformed identities, Pentecostals, Anabaptists, Holiness and Restorationists (and I add Pietist Free Churches) gradually succumbed to the Reformed hegemony of neo-evangelicalism. Neo-evangelical leaders pretended to include non-Reformed evangelicals on an equal footing, but they never really intended to do that.

I have been criticized by some Reformed evangelicals for claiming that Arminians (among others) have been persecuted by Calvinist evangelicals. Worthen’s book provides support for what I say—not that we non-Reformed evangelicals are actively persecuted but that we have been patronized and treated like stepchildren by the Reformed leaders of neo-evangelicalism and that we have been accepted by them only to the extent that we take on their flavor of intellectual life and spirituality.

Explaining Calvinism to Calvinists (and Others)

One surprising feature of the new Calvinist movement is that so many claim to be Calvinists but have not studied Calvinism thoroughly. Nothing shows that more clearly than the responses offered here to my critique of the Calvinist pastor who prays that his son be “among the elect.”

Many Calvinists simply do not understand Calvinism. I, as an Arminian, understand it better than they do. And right now, here, I am not talking about understanding it as inconsistent. I am talking about understanding its basic tenets.

Of course, someone will object that there is no one thing called “Calvinism.” There are many Calvinisms. True enough. There’s supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism and Amyrauldianism, etc., etc. But there are certain features common to all Calvinism historically. At least I, when I encounter someone who claims to be a Calvinist (not just “Reformed” in some vague sense) but denies certain universal features of historical Calvinism am not sure he or she really should be called a Calvinist. An example is unconditional predestination of individuals.

Many self-identified Calvinists, especially today where Calvinism is often shallow, learned from a conference or podcasts or one author but not imbibed deeply or understood profoundly, confuse “election” and “salvation.” This is not true or historically faithful Calvinism.

I have read literally scores of books of theology by Calvinists—most of them about Calvinism. From Calvin himself to Jonathan Edwards to Charles Hodge to Lorraine Boettner to R. C. Sproul to James Montgomery Boice (one of my seminary professors) to John Piper. I have shelves full of books about Calvinism by Calvinists. One thing all of them say, in some way, is that individual election to salvation is unconditional, an eternal decision made by God “within himself” (Calvin’s language) without regard to anything about the persons elected (or reprobated). Calvin, for example, never tired of emphasizing this point. (See Institutes of the Christian Religion III.XXI.7 [including especially “Summary survey of the doctrine of election”].)

One place where Calvin makes crystal clear the difference between election and salvation is InstitutesIII.XXIV.10 “The elect before their call” and 11. “Not growth from seed but divine deliverance.”  There Calvin states clearly that the elect are in exactly the same condition as the reprobate at birth and after birth until the inward, effectual call of God. There is no difference, he says, between the elect and the reprobate, as to their spiritual condition, until the elect receive from God the effectual call.

According to Calvin and all faithful Calvinists, “salvation” happens when an elect person receives the inward, effectual call of God which works faith in their hearts, justifies them on the basis of that faith, and they respond with repentance and are regenerated and united with Christ. All this is laid out in detail in Institutes III.II: “Faith: Its Definition Set Forth, and Its Properties Explained.” In that chapter of the Institutes Calvin sets forth his ordo salutis—order of salvation. What is absolutely and abundantly clear is that election is not conditioned on anything other than God’s good pleasure and will but that salvation is conditioned on faith. To be sure, Calvin (and all true Calvinists) argues that faith itself is a gift of God to the elect, but it follows and is a result of the effectual call which happens to the elect.

Here is a homely illustration (not to be pushed too far). Every four years we in the United States vote someone to be our president. When the person elected to be president (in November) is not already president (incumbent) he or she becomes, as a result of election, “president elect,” not president. He or she does not become president until January at inauguration. And yet many people begin to call the elected person “President So-and-So” before inauguration. That is the mistake many Calvinists make—they confuse election with salvation. Calvin clearly distinguishes them as have all true and faithful Calvinist theologians. (My illustration is of only one point—that a person can be “elect” and not yet enjoy the benefits of election.)

I have heard many Calvinists say that when they are asked when they were saved they say “The moment Christ died on the cross.” That is not true Calvinism. According to Calvinism, Christ’s death secured their salvation; it did not then save them. (John Piper is very careful to use that language but many of his followers miss the distinction and go on saying they were saved when Christ died on the cross.)

Why is this important? Well, for one thing, it shows why it is wrong (inconsistent) for a Calvinist to pray for someone to be included among the elect but (possibly) not wrong (inconsistent) for them to pray for someone to be saved. Salvation is conditional. A prayer for someone’s salvation can be a “foreordained means to a foreordained end.” God foreordains that someone will pray for an elect person’s salvation and that prayer becomes an instrumental cause (not efficient cause) of God sending his effectual call through his Word into that person’s life resulting in faith and justification.

But election is something entirely different. Calvin, anyway (and I would argue all true Calvinist theologians), described election in such a way that no prayer could possibly effect it even instrumentally. It is an eternal decree of God “within himself” not dependent on anything outside himself about who will be saved.

Many Calvinists came here and posted comments claiming that there is no reason why a Calvinist could not pray for someone to be elect. Many of them equated “election” with “conversion” or “salvation.” That’s false to true Calvinism.

Of course, if all they mean is that any person can express a wish to God, that’s true. But I assume the Calvinist pastor who said he prays for God to include his son among the elect did not mean that. He means that he hopes his prayer will somehow effect or contribute to God’s decision to elect his son. If he did not mean that, then he was simply confessing that his prayer is wishful thinking only and not true petition.

My advice to Calvinists all: “Drink deeply at the wells of Calvinism or drink not at all.”

Recently I heard of a well-known Calvinist pastor, author, speaker, who, on a podcast, testified that he often goes into his little son’s bedroom after he’s asleep and prays over him that he be among the elect.

While I certainly understand the pastor’s sentiment and desire, I wonder if this is consistent with Calvinist theology? For any of you who are coming here without knowing me, let me assure you I have read a lot of Calvinist literature–from Calvin to John Piper and virtually every well-known Calvinist in between (including Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, Lorraine Boettner, Charles Spurgeon, et al.).

Is it logically consistent for a Calvinist to believe that prayer can play a role (even as a foreordained means to a foreordained end) in bringing it about that a person prayed for be included among the elect?

This seems very different to me from the common Calvinist claim that prayer for the unsaved can be a “foreordained means” to help bring it about that the person, if he or she is elect, comes to repent and believe.    (Although I admit having qualms about the logic of that as well!)

According to Calvinism, God elects individuals unconditionally. Salvation itself is not unconditional, so Calvin argued, because it depends on repentance and faith. However, according to Calvin and most Calvinists, an elect person will come to salvation. God will assure it via irresistible grace. But God uses means which he has foreordained to bring it about that the elect repent and believe.

But is it consistent with Calvinism to believe that God uses human means to decide who will be elect? I don’t think so. I do not remember any Calvinist theologian saying so.

If God used means to decide who is among the elect (e.g., prayer), then election would not be strictly unconditional. And it would raise questions such as what kind of prayer, how fervent, etc., can cause God to include someone among the elect. And it would raise serious questions for Calvinism about God’s sovereignty (as defined by Calvinists). It would no longer be absolute.

I think there are Calvinists who simply cannot stomach the implication of Calvinism that a loved one, especially a child, might not be elect, so they revert to inconsistency.  Charles Spurgeon, for example, prayed “O God, save all the elect and then elect some more.”

If a Calvinist thinks that his or her prayer for his or her child might affect God to elect the child, why not pray Spurgeon’s prayer–for everyone in general, not just one’s own child?

But how consistent is Spurgeon’s prayer with Calvinist theology of God’s sovereignty? I don’t think it is at all.

Nor is the pastor’s prayer for his child.

God in Our Suffering

Roger E. Olson

            I’m no expert in suffering. I’ve neither suffered much myself nor observed much suffering close up. In fact, to be perfectly honest, suffering scares me. I’m a suffering sissy. I don’t like suffering. However, suffering is part of life in this world. There is no truer statement in the Bible than that “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). Evil and innocent suffering are major challenges to my profession—theology, the “science of God.” How can God be all-powerful and all-good in face of such horrible suffering, including especially innocent suffering, as we experience in the world? Many philosophers and poets have raised this objection over the centuries but none more succinctly than Scottish skeptic David Hume: If God is all powerful he can stop evil; if God is all good he wants to stop evil; and yet evil is real. Some skeptics and atheists have called the problem of evil and especially innocent suffering, the suffering of children, “the rock of atheism”—especially in light of the holocaust.

Most recently atheist Christopher Hitchins who died in 2011 wrote God Is Not Great. His book relied heavily on the enormous suffering in the world to deny God’s existence. But most, if not all, of his arguments were familiar ones to those who have studied the history of philosophical theology. Theologians and religious philosophers have wrestled with this problem for thousands of years—as did some of the writers of Scripture. The books in print on the subject could fill a library. Unfortunately, there is no consensus among devout believers about why there is innocent suffering in God’s world. And every time a new book appears purporting to solve the dilemma, those of us steeped in the tradition of Christian theological reflection on it recognize a new form of an old answer. None has achieved the much sought but elusive status of “solution.”

There is a word for these attempts: “theodicy.” It was coined by an eighteenth century philosopher named Leibniz and it means “defending God”—more specifically “defending God’s providence in light of evil and innocent suffering.” Leibniz believed this is the best of all possible worlds. Why would God create anything less? Therefore, every instance of evil and innocent suffering must be necessary for the greater good. This is known as the “greater good defense” of God in the face of evil and innocent suffering. A popular version of it was presented by Christian evangelist Corey Ten Boom who, when she spoke to audiences about her experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, would hold up a tapestry showing only the back of it. She would point out how ugly the back looked. Then she would turn it around and show the front and how beautiful it was. Her point was that from our finite viewpoint the world seems an awful place, filled with gratuitous evils and sufferings, but from God’s viewpoint and ours eventually it is a beautiful place. The bumper sticker version is simply “God knows what he’s doing.”

There are other theodicies than that, however, and I’ll come to some of them eventually. Most will sound familiar to you if you’ve read any books on this subject or even thought deeply about it without reading. My point so far is simply that innocent suffering, the suffering of small children, for example, is a serious challenge to Christian faith in an all good and all powerful God, the God of Scripture and Christian tradition, and that Christian thinkers have risen to attempt to meet the challenge in various ways without arriving at consensus or settling on one response, one theodicy, as the total solution.

In fact, I will lay some of my cards on the table right now and tell you that no solution is totally satisfying and most Christian thinkers who engage in “theodicizing”—a verb I just invented—know that. Only a few claim to have settled on a totally satisfying solution.

You might wonder whether the Bible offers a theodicy. What about the Book of Job for example? The paradox is that the Bible says much about evil and innocent suffering but never offers a theodicy. Which leads at least some Christian thinkers to reject the whole project of theodicy. If God didn’t see fit to inspire one in Scripture why should we think it worthwhile to invent one? The Danish Christian thinker Kierkegaard, a notorious iconoclast of intellectual systems of philosophy and theology, rejected theodicy for biblical reasons. Many of his postmodern fans follow him in that and argue that theodicy is a human attempt to solve a problem rather than live with mystery. God is infinite, so we should simply embrace mystery and not attempt to think God’s thoughts after him or solve every problem our minds come up with when contemplating God. We turn God into an idol when we do that. Christian existentialist thinker Gabriel Marcel famously distinguished between a “problem” and a “mystery” and, following Kierkegaard, argued against turning every mystery about God into a problem for the human intellect to solve.

On the other hand, many astute and devout Christian thinkers have argued that in this modern world of doubt and skepticism theodicy is necessary as part of what the Bible means by being prepared to give every man an answer for the hope that lies within us (1 Peter 3:15). Theodicy is part of engaging in the mission of God in the modern world. Otherwise we leave the field to skeptics and atheists like Hume and Hitchins. Inquiring minds want to know and we do a deep disservice to sincere questioners when we mutter “mystery” rather than attempt to give intellectually satisfying answers to their questions about God.

The great German Lutheran theologian and preacher Helmut Thielicke came to America once after World War 2. He was one of the few leading pastors of Germany who did not support Hitler and survived anyway. He pastored a large church in Hamburg throughout the war including the devastating bombings in its later months. He wrote many books of theology and his sermons fill many volumes. When he was asked by an American during his visit to this country what one thing he thought Americans needed more than anything else he said “a theology of suffering.” Like many people around the world he thought America has been largely immune to the ravages of war, pestilence, famine, epidemic, earthquake. Because of that, he believed, Americans are ill equipped to respond to innocent suffering.

I have to agree with Thielicke. But I put it somewhat differently to my students. I think we church leaders, theologians and pastors, do not do enough to equip our people, our parishioners, to think about suffering ahead of time. Too often (and I know there are exceptions) we don’t offer them a clear minded, if not perfect, doctrine of God and suffering. We skirt the issue. Then, naturally, when people face extreme suffering, they ask “Where is God?” In the midst of their grief and anguish and confusion it hardly helps to offer a theodicy or theology of suffering. What we ought to do, I believe, is develop and offer to them the very best, most biblically and rationally satisfying, theology of suffering possible ahead of time so that when suffering comes, as it usually does, they already know an answer—the answer for their community of faith and their faith tradition.

So now I am going to tell you what I would teach my people were I a priest or pastor. It’s what I teach my students—while encouraging them to develop their own answers if they disagree with mine. I do not claim my answer is rationally satisfying. I know of no perfectly satisfying answer. My own answer leaves me with some unanswered and, I think, unanswerable questions. But, to me, anyway, it’s better than all the alternatives. Better in what sense? Well, theology has four criteria: revelation, including Jesus Christ and Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. To me, the answer I have come up with, touches all four of those criteria and comes closest to satisfying their demands—closer than any known alternative. You may disagree. Let’s find out.

First, we have some preliminary issues to discuss. One of them has to do with what type of suffering we’re talking about. What I mean is, what type of suffering offers the most profound challenge to Christian faith in an all good and all powerful God? What type of suffering is most difficult to explain? Perhaps there are different types of suffering that have different explanations? Which one needs the most justification in light of belief in God?

There is suffering that is deserved and suffering that is innocent—not deserved. I take it we all know that. Deserved suffering hardly requires explanation. Scripture is full of examples of deserved suffering. So is ordinary experience. If all suffering in the world were deserved, there would be no need for theodicy. What calls for explanation is innocent suffering—especially the suffering of innocents. Then there is therapeutic suffering versus gratuitous suffering. Some suffering, we all recognize, is therapeutic—necessary for healing. Some suffering, however, seems to be absolutely gratuitous—serving no good purpose. Many question that until I mention the suffering of a child being murdered by a sexual predator or a soldier or concentration camp guard. Then, suddenly, most people intuitively agree that some suffering is gratuitous. Finally, there is subjective suffering and there is objective suffering. In other words, some suffering is imaginary and some is real. A person born into wealth may think he is suffering when his stock portfolio takes a plunge during a recession. That’s entirely different from a child suffering cancer. One is subjective, imaginary suffering; the other is objective, real suffering.

So when we talk about God and suffering we need to be clear that we are talking about innocent, gratuitous, objective suffering. That’s the kind that rightly causes some people to doubt God’s goodness, power or existence; that’s the kind of suffering that presents a real challenge to Christian belief.

Another preliminary matter has to do with the Bible and suffering. What does the Bible say about the subject? Why can’t we just turn to the Bible for our answer? Doesn’t the Bible contain all the answers? The Book of Job is the only sustained discussion of suffering in the Bible. It offers no theodicy. In fact, it rejects the theodicies of Job’s “friends.” All it tells us is that not all suffering is deserved. The book was apparently written with that one purpose in mind—to reject the common belief that suffering is always the result of sin in the suffering person’s life.

The Bible offers examples of suffering and sometimes explains their reasons. Some suffering is for spiritual discipline—to remind people of their need of God and turn their minds toward God. Some suffering is the result of sin and rebellion, but not all. Some suffering is punishment, but not all. Much suffering seems to be simply embedded in the human condition of finitude and fallenness. Some is for God’s glory. Never addressed directly, however, is the problem of totally innocent suffering—the suffering of innocents. Nor does the Bible provide a clear, comprehensive, rationally satisfying theodicy—“This is why all suffering is justified in God’s world.” Rather, as many Bible scholars point out, the Bible’s alternative to theodicy is eschatology—the promise that someday all innocent suffering will end. “Every tear will be wiped away” and the creation will be liberated from its “bondage to decay.”

I believe one of the great mysteries of suffering in the Bible is often overlooked in people’s thinking about suffering—God’s own suffering. I believe that is an essential part of any holistic explanation of suffering for God’s people and for skeptics. It’s both a mystery and part of a solution to the problem of innocent suffering—that God, the creator of heaven and earth, suffers with those who suffer innocently and for those who suffer guiltily.

Now I will turn to theological perspectives on suffering. Here we move into the realm of rational speculation about God and suffering—especially God and innocent suffering.

Some theologians make the whole problem magically disappear by denying, whether explicitly or implicitly, God’s goodness or power. Traditional Christianity, of course, claims that God is both perfectly good in a way analogous to our own highest and best intuitions of goodness, and perfectly capable—all powerful in the sense of capable of doing whatever is consistent with his own nature. Take away either of those two claims and the problem of innocent suffering magically disappears. But with that magical disappearance arises automatically a problem greater than that of suffering—namely, a less-than-perfectly-good God or an incapable, impotent God are both unworthy of worship. And they are not the God of the biblical revelation.

Divine determinism is that form of speculative theology, common in some Protestant circles, that claims that God “designs, ordains, and governs” everything without exception including all events of suffering including innocent suffering—for his own glory. One of the most influential contemporary pastors who promotes this view to thousands of so-called “young, restless, Reformed” Christians is Baptist pastor and author John Piper whose books sell by the millions. According to him, and his precursors such as Puritan theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards, God foreordains and renders certain even the agonizing death of an infant. God thus becomes sheer power without goodness in any sense of “goodness” meaningful to us.

The opposite speculative solution to the problem of innocent suffering is process theology—the view common in liberal Protestant circles that God is not all powerful but only possesses the power of persuasion. Some years ago Jewish rabbi Harold Kushner wrote Why Bad Things Happen to Good People—a book that communicated a version of process theology. Contemporary Christian process thinkers abound in mainstream seminaries. Their solution to the problem of evil and innocent suffering is that, to quote their guru philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, God is the “fellow sufferer who understands” but cannot really relieve suffering or abolish evil. This theology sacrifices any hope for eventual overcoming of evil and innocent suffering in order to get God off the hook. God is not in any way responsible for evil or suffering; he does the best he can to persuade creatures to stop hurting each other, but he lacks the power to intervene in human or natural affairs. In this view, God is a cosmic cheerleader but not the creator of heaven and earth. He lures every being toward his vision of perfection but cannot coerce.

Another speculative answer, one that does not sacrifice God’s goodness or power, distinguishes between two wills of God—God’s “antecedent will” and God’s “consequent will.” It appeals to God’s self-limitation to explain why there is evil and innocent suffering in God’s world without sacrificing God’s goodness or power. A contemporary example of this in Christian theology is pastor and author Gregory Boyd who wrote Is God to Blame? But he stands in a long tradition of Christian thought called Arminian theology (after Jacob Arminius who died in 1610). According to Boyd and Arminians, God has to limit his power to allow for human free will. Human rejection of God has pushed God away so that the world is under a self-chosen curse. Evil powers, whether personal or structural or both, rule the world. God depends on us, for now anyway, to alleviate suffering. That there be no innocent suffering was God’s antecedent will—antecedent to human rebellion against God by means of misuse of free will. That there be innocent suffering in this fallen world is part of God’s consequent will—consequent to human rebellion.

This answer preserves God’s power, however self-limited, and claims to preserve God’s goodness. God wants to use his power to end evil and innocent suffering but doesn’t for now—and therein lies a problem with this view. Why doesn’t God exercise his power to end innocent suffering now? Why does he wait? That’s the Achilles Heel critics of this view claim to see and point out. As one process theologian told me, if God could end the suffering of children he should and would if he were perfectly good and all powerful. Advocates of this view, however, argue that God respects free will and cannot intervene every time someone is about to misuse free will to cause innocent suffering or else free will would be a mirage, an illusion, not real. And God cannot intervene to stop every instance of innocent suffering from illness or calamity because that would be to make this world something other than it is—a “veil of soul making” in which there must be risk and danger in order for people to recognize their need for God. C. S. Lewis, an advocate of this view, said that suffering is “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world to its need of him.”

Another speculative theological view attributes innocent suffering to Satan in a dualistic way. That is, Satan is credited with having equal power with God—at least for now—until some mysterious eschatological denouement occurs in which God conquers Satan and takes away his power to wreak havoc including innocent suffering in this world. Ultimately, this view has to fall back on the preceding one—the distinction between God’s antecedent and God’s consequent wills—Arminianism—to explain why Satan has so much power in the interim—before God “steps in,” as it were, to defeat him. It can only be that humans have given Satan that much power over themselves if God is allowing it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer seemed to have something like this view in mind when he said that God has allowed himself to be pushed out of the world and onto a cross. Both Jesus and Paul referred to Satan as the “prince of this world”—meaning of this present evil age—which seems to give this view biblical support. But, again, the problem is, why God allows Satan to have this power if he could reign him in and stop innocent suffering. Both of these views, which may be only one view, have no real answer to that question except God’s patience. But why is God waiting when he will eventually stop in to stop innocent suffering? “God’s patience” doesn’t really seem to answer that.

A final speculative theological solution to the problem of God and innocent suffering is that innocent suffering is simply part of finitude. Finite being is subject to it; there’s no escaping it without escaping finitude. Finitude is fallenness and innocent suffering is a result of fallenness. This was the solution of the ancient Gnostics—a group of second century Christians Catholic and Orthodox Christians rejected as heretics. It is a solution that has cropped up in various forms throughout Christian history and usually been harshly rejected by established forms of Christianity—Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. One of its most recent forms is so-called Christian Science and its cousin Unity. These so-called “New Thought” religious groups are the modern heirs of ancient Gnosticism. They say that suffering is illusion and can be overcome by positive thinking which is “getting in tune with the infinite”—the mind of God. That hardly solves the problem of infant suffering, however. And it hasn’t worked for most adherents of New Thought.

There may be other speculative theological solutions to the problem of innocent suffering, but these are the major ones. Every time I see a new book about the subject, purporting to offer a “new solution,” I quickly recognize it as a version of one of these. Or of simply rejecting all speculative solutions in favor of embrace of mystery or waiting for eschatological relief.

There is one other approach to the problem of innocent suffering that holds promise, but it isn’t a theodicy. It does not claim to solve the problem speculatively or rationally. It aims at pastoral comfort rather than defeat of skeptics’ challenges. And it has become extremely popular in recent decades even though it has been around for about a century and a half. That is the approach that says the Christian answer to innocent suffering is that God suffers with those who suffer innocently and for those who suffer guiltily.

In his Letters and Papers from Prison Bonhoeffer said “Only the suffering God can help.” This has become the theme of countless post-holocaust books, articles and sermons on innocent suffering from a Christian perspective. In a nutshell, the approach is twofold: 1) There is no speculative, theoretical solution to the problem of suffering, so 2) The answer to innocent suffering is pastoral and that is that God suffers with those who suffer innocently and suffers for those who suffer guiltily. As early as the mid-nineteenth century New England pastor and theologian Horace Bushnell said that before there was a cross on the hill of Calvary there was a cross in the heart of God. That was revolutionary because traditional theology said God cannot suffer. God is, Christian tradition says, impassible—incapable of suffering. Bushnell rejected that most emphatically which was one reason he was considered a revisionist heretic by his more conservative New England heirs of the Puritans.

Tradition says God is incapable of suffering, impassible, because to suffer is to change and God is perfect. To change is to change either away from perfection or toward perfection. God, being eternally perfect, cannot more away from or toward perfection. Suffering is change because something always causes a person to suffer. God cannot be caused to be anything. He is always perfect fullness of being—pure actuality without potentiality. Critics call that the “logic of perfection” and see it as an element of Greek philosophy wrongly imported into Christian thought by the early church fathers. Bushnell and Bonhoeffer, among others during the last century and a half, radically rejected both God’s immutability, unchangeableness, except of character, and his impassibility—on the grounds that a God who is love must suffer with those he loves who suffer.

How does this differ from process theology? Process theology says God’s suffering with is involuntary; Bushnell, Bonhoeffer and other orthodox Christian thinkers who have adopted the idea of a suffering God in modernity see God’s suffering as voluntary in the sense that God could have avoided suffering by not creating the world or by preventing sin and its consequences. Once God created and permitted human defection from fellowship with him into sin God had no choice but to suffer because God is love.

I see this pastoral approach of emphasizing God’s suffering with and for those who suffer as compatible with the speculative view of Arminianism—the distinction between God’s antecedent will and God’s consequent will. In other words, if we are going to say pastorally, as I think we must, that God is present with those who suffer, suffering with them and for them, because God is love, then we must say that this is due to a voluntary self-limitation of God in relation to creation itself. Innocent suffering is a side effect of creature’s misuse of free will. It is part of the human condition under the curse of defection from God. We have pushed God out of the center of our world and our lives onto the cross. God goes voluntarily to the cross—not only of Calvary but of the world of suffering. God is present whenever and wherever innocents suffer because he is love and cannot but suffer with them. This still leaves some questions unanswered. But I believe it relieves much of the stress of believing in an all good, all powerful God in face of innocent suffering in God’s world. God is not a distant, unaffected deity “watching from a distance,” but a God intimately involved in suffering with those who suffer and for them.

But how does God’s suffering with the suffering help them? It helps his reputation, but how does it help those who suffer? God’s suffering presence with gives comfort and hope. Comfort in knowing that one is not alone in suffering. Without God’s fellow suffering one is alone. Only God can be “in” one’s suffering suffering with. And God’s suffering with gives hope that God can and will heal that suffering if not in this life in the next. God is eternal and infinite and will not suffer forever.

In sum, then, there is no totally satisfying intellectual solution to the problem of suffering. Suffering without God is meaningless. Suffering with a God who cannot really help is useless. Innocent suffering for God’s glory is unjust. Suffering because others have rejected God and defected from his will hardly seems just unless we shift from individualism to a more corporate, solidaristic view of humanity: “We’re all in this mess together.” Even then, however, the question lingers of why God does not stop innocent suffering now rather than later. All we can say is that God has his reasons even if we cannot fathom what they are. In the meantime, until innocent suffering ceases forever in creation’s redemption (Romans 8), we can take comfort in the fact that the God of the universe is present with those who suffer suffering with them and that he has gone to the cross in the person of Jesus Christ to take away the guilt of all who suffer guiltily and make possible their final liberation and reconciliation.

I want to end with this word of exhortation. The people of God need to know from their pastors, priests, bishops and theologians what they are supposed to believe, based on revelation, tradition, reason and experience, about God and that includes about God and innocent suffering. If we Christian leaders do not step up and teach them a view of God’s providence we cannot be surprised when they cry out to us “Where is God?” when suffering strikes. We abdicate our pastoral duty when we avoid the subject. And when we offer trite or heretical solutions that cannot stand up to the people’s need to believe and hope.

I offer these final summarizing thoughts:

1) Innocent suffering is not God’s antecedent will; it is only God’s will insofar as humanity insists on keeping God at a distance and defecting from his fellowship and will.

2) God does not foreordain or cause innocent suffering; it does not glorify him. To believe that is to detract from God’s goodness and love.

3) God can and will abolish innocent suffering; we are living in an interim period before that day of liberation. Why God waits is not revealed to us. We must learn to wait in hope.

4) God suffers with those who suffer innocently and for those who suffer guiltily.

5) When we suffer we should realize that God may have something good to bring out of it if we hand it over to him and seek his will for that. And we should take comfort and hope in God’s suffering with us when there is no possible purpose for our suffering which is often the case. It is simply part of the human condition because of the defection from God.

I gave this talk at this week’s Missio Alliance gathering in Alexandria, Virginia. For those who are watching me carefully (from the Arminian camp) I must say I make no claim for this being “the” Arminian view. It is simply my view and I’m an Arminian.

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.