Calvinism, God's Goodness, and Alternate Interpretations

A couple days ago, I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine. The topic, as often is with this friend, was Calvinism. This same friend was the topic of an earlier post of mine, right here.

It started off as an observation on Dr. Who, explained in more detail here. I knew that this friend of mine was a fellow Dr. Who fan, and I asked them if they had ever drawn a connection between the state of The Master of Dr. Who (again, see the link) and the reprobate in the Calvinist system. They rewatched the episode, exclaiming how sad it was and that they completely agreed with me. Surprised, I asked "I can't imagine that you're agreeing with my comparison...just with the sadness of the episode?"

"The entirety of it," was the reply.

Then I asked if that mean that they were moving away from Calvinism...or if they still held to it but were just incredibly saddened by it.

"The latter", was the reply.

That broke my heart. To hold to a theological system that makes you sad the more you think about it, that distresses you when you dwell on the nature of God...that seems awful. I told them that, and their response was simple: Even though they personally couldn't make sense of it, other people seemed to be able to. Other people seemed to be able to hold to unconditional election and reprobation and still see God as loving and gracious, so the fault must not be with the system, but with them.

This theme continued throughout our discussion. This friend was thrown into distress and conflict because they were trying to reconcile the Calvinist reading of certain passages with the overall tone of the Gospel and New Testament. They were trying to reconcile the loving and graceful God that Jesus revealed to people with the picture of God that Calvinism presents, who creates billions of people just so he can showcase his own glory by damning them to an eternity of torment. They were worried about witnessing to people, and not knowing if they could actually say "God loves you" without fearing they were lying. They worried about having children, because this person knew they would constantly be worrying about their kids: "Are they chosen, are they going to be saved?"

And then came the worst bit: After thinking these thoughts, after feeling the distress and conflict and trying to figure it out, this person would feel guilty, because they felt like they were questioning God's goodness.

Again, that was heartbreaking to me. And segueing into CS Lewis' discussion on God's Goodness and how it relates to our conception of goodness, we discussed whether we could even mean anything by saying "God is good" if "goodness" could be reinterpreted so radically. This, they said, was "depressing", and if not depressing, then it's feeling guilty for feeling angry about it, or questioning it.

So I told them that they weren't questioning God's goodness. And that in my opinion, their distress came from a very simple thing: They were trying to hold to two completely contradictory opinions:

1: God is good and loving towards humanity, and he desires to save all people from their sins (see John 3:16, 2 Peter 3:9, and 1 Timothy 2:4, for starters).

2: God is good and loving towards a very small portion of humanity, and desires to damn the vast majority of the human race to showcase his own glory.

So I gave them a bunch of resources to explore on their own, in the hopes that it would give them a better understanding of "the other side", in their words. I wanted to show them how smart, faithful, orthodox Christians had interpreted the typical Calvinist verses in a distinctly non-Calvinist way, without sacrificing the integrity of Scripture.

And then they said something very interesting: They said that they had tried learning other viewpoints before, but their former youth pastor, who had introduced them to Calvinism, had always had an answer and been able to re-show the Calvinist side of the passages. And that's when I made what I think to be a very crucial distinction:

"I'm not trying to make you believe that Arminianism is the ONLY option," I said. "I'm just trying to show you that it IS an actual option, and not some second-rate option that you can only get to by sacrificing Scripture."

I'm not trying to "disprove" Calvinism by saying that certain verses, taken in isolation, CANNOT be read in a Calvinist interpretation. Obviously, there are verses that can be read that way. However, those verses can also be read in a way that is not Calvinist, and it can be done in a way that doesn't sacrifice scriptural integrity or good interpretive principles.

And when you have two options - two REAL options - in interpreting certain verses when taken in isolation, the rest is a little more intuitive. You just take those two interpretations and you see which one better fits into the larger overall narrative of Scripture.

Is Scripture about a God who, from the very beginning of the world, irresistibly decrees that his creation will fall? Is Scripture about a God who rages at his creation, when that creation is only ever doing the thing that God himself made the creation to do? Finally, is Scripture about a God who so loved the elect that, after irresistibly casting them into sin, he irresistibly caused them to believe in his son, while leaving the others to perish in their divinely-ordained sin?

Or is Scripture telling a different story altogether, about a God who created free creatures who sinned, but who loved those creatures so much that he gave grace to them anyway? Is Scripture about a God who means what he says when he claims to hate evil? Is Scripture about the God who weeps over his creation when they are not willing to come back to him? Is Scripture about a God who really did so love the world that, despite their sin, he sent his Son to save them and offer them salvation?

That's the choice. What is the overall trajectory of Scripture, and which interpretation of particular verses fit better into that trajectory? I don't know which one my friend will choose. But I know this: I know they have a choice. And now, I know that they're legitimately invested in exploring alternate interpretations, and I have great hope that they will be set free by the truth that God loves them, and will love their children, and loves their neighbors and anyone they witness to, and that they have a choice to follow God...and that if they take that choice, God will not reject them.

A (Hopefully) Simple Explanation of Simple Foreknowledge

"If God knew that mankind would sin, why did he still create us? Why didn't he prevent it? Doesn't that mean that he wanted the sin to happen?"

Those are some of the questions I've heard concerning the origin of sin and God's role in it: The much-discussed Problem of Evil. Why did God still create us, when he knew we were going to sin?

There are a lot of different answers to that, of course...but one that I'd never heard of before a few months ago (and I'm guessing you never have either) is Simple Foreknowledge.

Here's SF in a nutshell: God only knew that humanity would sin, after he made the decision to create humanity.* Speaking of God knowing what humanity would do, before he decided to create humanity, is nonsensical...because before he decided to create us, there was nothing for him to know about us. We didn't exist in any way, not even potentially, and God doesn't have knowledge of non-existent things.

Let me put it another way: Asking if God knew we would sin, before he decided to create us, is like asking if God knows where the leprechaun's gold is. It's like asking if God knows the color of next Friday. It's a nonsense question: There's simply nothing for him to know.

God only knew what humanity would do after he decided to create us. And if that's a viable option (and it is), then it becomes a very useful idea. We no longer have to wonder if the mere fact of the fall means that God wanted it to happen all along; We no longer have to wonder if God chose to create us even knowing that we would all fall short of his glory. It means that God decided to create us, and then had foreknowledge of the Fall and everything else that comes with it.

There are a lot of places we could go from here, one of the most interesting being how this allows for a really cool picture of God looking through human history and preparing his amazing plan: Taking the history of a doomed race and turning it into a story of glory and love and redemption. But I wanted this to be a short and quick post, so I'll just say one more thing.

This post came into being because I was thinking about the role of sin in God's plan, and whether the Fall and Cross was, as I've heard asserted by some Christians, God's "Plan A." And there are a lot of ways to answer the question of whether God knew mankind would sin before he created us, and the order of all that, and the role that his foreknowledge plays in it, and a whole lot more. But if your answer ends up asserting that the Fall was Plan A, then you have answered it wrongly.

If you end up asserting that God never had a plan for unfallen humanity, and that everything that has happened thus far - from the Fall, to the Flood, to systematized slavery and genocide, to the World Wars and the Holocaust - is all going exactly according to God's original Plan A, then you have taken a wrong turn, and you need to try again. It's fine if your answer is "I don't know." It's fine if you can't fully articulate it (although I think it's one of those things where you should look into some possible answers). But there is at least one answer that I feel to be so wrong as to taint literally every other area of your knowledge of God, and that is it.

This is not Plan A. God wanted something so much better for us, and I think that it should be impossible to read through Genesis - to read the glories of Eden, the curses in Genesis 3, and God's grief and regret in Genesis 6 - and come to any other conclusion.

"Is [God] a beast that we can stop His path, or a leaf that we can twist His shape? Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed Him. That is lost for ever. The first King and first Mother of our world did the forbidden thing, and He brought good of it in the end. But what they did was not good, and what they lost we have not seen. And there were some to whom no good came nor ever will come.”

CS Lewis, Perelandra


*Note that the language of "before" and "after" is very tricky to apply to an eternal God existing in eternity: This is best understood as a logical order, not a temporal order.

Addendum: I struggled for a while to overcome my immediate Devil's Advocate response to this: "Why couldn't God just perform some sort of divine thought experiment and arrive at a hypothetical universe identical to our own?"

But the answer is actually pretty simple: Because free will doesn't work like that. If free will were the type of thing that could be exactly predicted like that, it wouldn't be free will anymore. That would mean that it was 100% dictated by the cause-and-effect of history and environment, and that everything we do is the inevitable reaction to something else that happened to us. But if free will is really free, then it most definitely is not the kind of thing that can be predicted in a thought experiment. No: It has to be done for reals.

Arminianism and related resources

tldr: If you don't believe in Calvinism, but don't know why you don't believe in Calvinism, there are really cool links below. If you're waffling on it, then the links below are even more important. Also, if you don't know what Arminianism is, click here.

Some time ago, I saw this post, titled "Needed: Robust Arminian Theology for Lay People (Especially Youth)," writted by Roger Olson. In it, Olson describes the recent rise of the "New Calvinism" movement (or "Young, Restless, Reformed"), and how it's especially noticeable in younger Christians (late teens and twenties) especially. More people are becoming Calvinist.

And he attributes this rise to a "doctrinal vacuum" in evangelical churches: A vacuum that occurs when churches hold to doctrines of free will and meaningful choice (aka not irresistible grace and predestination), but take those doctrines for granted. They hold those doctrines, but don't talk about them, don't defend them, don't explain them.

I know that's how I grew up: Assuming that humanity had free will, that God called us and that we could answer that call - or not, if we chose. But I can't recall a single time before college that anyone had told me why that was, or explained to me what "Calvinism" was and why we didn't believe that instead. And that's problematic, because Calvinists have that down. And so when someone from that tradition that assumes but doesn't really teach about free will runs into a Calvinist, they're suddenly going to hear legitimate arguments and reasoning from the Bible for Calvinism, and they won't have anything to balance that out. And so they often come away from those encounters believing that Calvinism is the only biblical doctrine.

This bothers me. But it's not until recently that I really realized the resources that exist, right now, to alleviate this.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago: My good friend Danny M. links me this post, titled "John Piper Asks, "Where's the Arminian?" and Receives an Answer." John Piper (the leading figure in Calvinism) takes some pot-shots at Arminianism, and Credendum (the author of the blog) lays down the freaking law. And in the process, he links to some extremely helpful resources. Here are my two favorite sites so far:

Arminian Theology: What makes this blog awesome is the bar of popular topics right at the top, which provide a fantastic intro to Arminianism. Right off the bat, you get:

• FACTS vs. TULIP: TULIP, as some of you know, is the popular acronym that sums up Calvinist doctrine. But this page will introduce you to FACTS, Arminianism's answer. 

             AND

• Arminianism 101, which is exactly what it sounds like. This is itself a collection of links, which covers all the basics, like...
• Do Arminians Believe in the Sovereignty of God? (Spoiler: They do. Obviously.). 
• Do Arminians Believe in Total Depravity? (Yes, but not in the way you're thinking)

                       And, of course, the killer:

• If God’s Grace Can Be Resisted, Isn’t the Decisive Factor in Salvation Man’s Choice Instead of God’s? (A very meaningful and important "Yes in one sense, and no in another." READ THIS ONE.)
• That's only three of the 9 posts linked, so check out the rest!
• And on top of that, you get horrifying posts from  Calvinists that simply take it to its logical conclusion. Like the fact that if Calvinism is true, obviously there's no sincere offer of the Good News to the vast majority of the human race, and the damned are commanded to accept something that was never offered to them in the first place. Or the fact that if Calvinism is true, no amount of double-talk can get around the fact that God is the undeniable and sole author of all evil and sin.

Arminian Perspectives: This blog has a lot more stuff on it, and it seems to update more frequently. You got all kinds of stuff on here:

• High-level refutations of Calvinist Election in Romans 11
• Humorous memes that spark a 90-comment conversation, or that uses Calvinist argument to conclusively prove that Paul is the only person who is saved.
• An exhaustive list of the comforts that Calvinism can provide to parents worried that their children might not be Elect (it's not a particularly long list). 
• And of course, Why You Should Be an Arminian.

There are dozens (hundreds?) of posts here, and those are just two of the resources here. I went on an enormous binge over the Fourth of July weekend, and I learned so much...how election can be corporate, how context really helps...See, before this, I only had "common sense" objections to Calvinism. Now, I have something more. And I think you - yes, you - should have that as well. Click some of these links. Give them a read. Let me know what you think.

Also: I guess I'm pretty much Arminian? I mean, there are some funny distinctions, like the way they insist that salvation is monergistic rather than synergistic, which seems to be solely for the purpose of dialogue with Calvinists. But still, it is neat to see certain things that I've personally thought through over the years, all codified and official, with biblical support and everything.