Category Archives: Theology

Biblicism: a failed project?

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In the course of a review of Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, Robert H. Gundry summarises, first, what Smith means by the word ‘biblicism’:

‘Biblicism means an emphasis on the Bible’s “exclusive authority, infallibility [or ‘inerrancy’], perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability,” though not every version of biblicism contains all these ingredients—at least not all in equal measure.’

Then, according to Gundry, Smith notes that this set of emphasis produces ‘pervasive interpretative pluralism’, with the result that:

‘Evangelical Christians differ widely on what they should believe and how they should behave; and their differences include important as well as unimportant matters.

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Can we say, ‘Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away’?

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Job 1:21 – “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

Not everyone thinks this famous confession, uttered by Job after all his sons and daughters had perished, is good theology.

Ben Witherington, whose daughter tragically died in 2012, wrote this:-

‘According to Job 1, it was not God but the Devil who took away Job’s children, health, and wealth. God allowed it to happen, but when Job said these words, as the rest of the story shows, he was not yet enlightened about the true nature of the source of his calamity and God’s actual will for his life.

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Arminianism and Calvinism – what’s the difference?

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J.I. Packer writes:

‘The basic difference between the two positions is not, as is sometimes thought, that

  • Arminanism follows Scripture while Calvinism follows logic, nor that
  • Arminianism knows the love of God while Calvinism knows only his power, nor that
  • Arminianism affirms a connection between believing and obeying as a means and eternal life as an end which Calvinism denies, nor that
  • Arminianism discerns a bona fide “free offer” of Christ in the gospel which Calvinism does not discern, nor that
  • Arminianism acknowledtes human responsibility before God and requires endeavour in the Christian life while Calvinism does not.
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Free will – a short bibliography

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A short bibliography focussing particularly on works dealing with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (Article X of which is entitled, ‘Of Free Will’)

Boice, James Montgomery, Foundations of the Christian Faith, IVP, 1986.

Calvin, John, Institutes

Davie, Martin, Our Inheritance of Faith A Commentary on the Thirty Nine Articles, Gilead Books, 2013.

Demarest, Bruce, The Cross and Salvation

Edwards, Jonathan, On the Freedom of the Will

Gatiss, Lee, The Manifesto of the Reformation — Luther vs.…

Compatibilism

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‘Compatibilism’ refers to the view that divine sovereignty and human responsibility, being both taught in Scripture, must be compatible with each other, even if we cannot see exactly how.

A key conviction of semi-Pelagian and Arminian thinking is that the will must be free, otherwise we could not be held responsible for our actions:

‘Unless man is really free, he cannot be justly held responsible for his actions, any more than for the date of his birth or the color of his eyes.

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What is meant by ‘free will’?

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Do we have free will?

An answer to this question should not be attempted until we have defined the term.

J.I. Packer maintains that discussion of free will requires that certain distinctions be made:

1. If the phrase ‘free will’ be taken morally and psychologically, as meaning the power of unconstrained, spontaneous, voluntary, and therefore responsible, choice, the Bible everywhere assumes that all men, as such, possess it, unregenerate and regenerate alike.
2. If the phrase be taken metaphysically, as implying that men’s future actions are indeterminate and therefore in principle unpredictable, the Bible seems neither to assert nor to deny an indeterminacy of future action relative to the agent’s own moral or physical constitution, but it does seem to imply that no future event is indeterminate relative to God, for he foreknows and in some sense foreordains all things.…

Article X – On Free Will

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According to Article X of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England:

‘The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.’

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Free will – a spectrum of views

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What different accounts has the Christian tradition given of the human ability to love, please and serve God?

(a) I am able to choose what is right without anyone’s help (Pelagianism)

‘My effort, from beginning to end.’

A simple moralism, pre-dating Pelagius, is in works such as the Shepherd of Hermas:

‘Believe in [God], therefore, and fear him, and fearing him, be self-controlled. Keep these things, and you will cast off all evil from yourself and will put on every virtue of righteousness and will live to God, if you keep this commandment’ (Cited by Peterson)

This view has come to be associated with the name of the British monk Pelagius, who died in 419. …

Is freedom of choice a delusion?

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In The Christian View of Man, J. Gresham Machen deals with one of the objections often made against the reformed doctrine of divine sovereignty.  The objection comes in two forms.  In the first, Machen anticipates one of the tenets of Open Theism.  In the second, he discussion the objected is it is often conceptualised by Arminians.

Machen writes:

Is not man’s freedom of choice a delusion if all is fixed in God’s eternal plan?

There are those who have been impressed by this objection and have actually regarded the personal choices of persons, especially man, as lying outside the range of the things fixed in God’s eternal purpose.

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