Tag Archives: Bible

Podcasts

MUST-HEAR: James White debates Michael Brown on Calvinism vs Foreknowledge

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This is the first of a two-debate series. (Part two is here)

The MP3 file is here.

Participants:

Format: (from James White’s blog)

For those interested, we will be covering three texts of Scripture on Thursday: John 6, Romans 8/9, and Ephesians 1. Each will have 8 minutes to provide their exegesis of the text; then we will have four minutes of cross-ex each, then three minute conclusions before moving on to the next text. I know, not a lot of time, but that still covers 90 full minutes (we will not be taking any breaks at all).

The following Thursday we will repeat the process, but this time covering Michael’s chosen texts, Luke 13:34-35 (Deuteronomy 5:28-29) Ezekiel 18:21-32 (Jeremiah 3:19-20; Ezekiel 22:30-31) I John 2:1-2 (2 Pet 2:1).

Michael Brown basically represents my view on these issues. This is a perfect debate – it’s 100% time well spent.

I blogged about their previous debate here. I highly, highly recommend this debate.

My thoughts

My own reservation about Calvinism is that it requires that God create people who go to Hell. They go to Hell only because God chooses not to draw them to him. So there are people pre-destined to Hell for eternity who are not responsible since it’s God’s choice where they are saved or not. Basically Calvinism has God creating some creatures, say, sheep, who have a predisposition to wander into lakes. These sheep then wander into a lake. He then picks some of them out who are no different than the others, and lets the rest drown. Then God turns to the ones he saved and says “aren’t I great for having saved you and not them?”, when he could have saved all of them. That’s not love.

I think a much better view, a more Biblical view, is that although all the sheep are initially rebelling against God, he still foreknows which will respond to his rescuing efforts. The sheep all want to try swimming to safety by themselves – none of them wants God’s help. So they are all doomed to death, unless God acts to save them. God can see which sheep will respond to his rescuing activities, so he reaches out to those sheep and they respond and they are saved. The rest die swimming away from him. That’s love. Love respects the free will of the beloved to resist, even if it means letting them choose their own destruction. And this view is different from Calvinism, because in this view God is all-loving and all-merciful. He is not willing that any sheep should perish, but that all the sheep would be saved. If all are not saved, then it is not God’s fault. He allows the sheep to choose to resist him.

I totally agree with Romans 9, where it says that God creates some people for destruction, and that those people cannot resist God’s will that they be created for destruction. But on my view, those people are people who would resist him in any time, in any place, even if he tried to save them. They cannot demand to be saved even though they resist God. They cannot say to their maker that they should not be created only to be damned, either, because being damned is their own fault. They don’t have a right to demand that they be saved because they would freely choose not to respond to God in any set of circumstances that God might try to place them in in order to save them. So God is permitted to create vessels of wrath for his own glory – but it’s their fault, not God’s.

I agree with Brown that vessels of wrath are free to repent and become part of the elect if they choose to respond to God’s drawing them towards him. Where does it say in the text that the vessels cannot change their destination by repentance? It doesn’t. People choose to respond to God or not, and that determines what kind of vessel they are going to be. God knows in advance what kind they are going to be and creates the vessels of wrath anyway.

My specific views are spelled out more here: What are the differences between Wesleyan Arminianism and Calvinism?

Commentary

What does the Bible say about sex before marriage and homosexuality?

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CARM writes about what the Bible says about sex.

Excerpt:

Any type of sexual union, contact, intimacy is for the marriage only between a husband and wife.  If a man and woman who are not married go to bed together naked and do not have sexual intercourse, this is still sinful.  If they fondle each other without having sexual intercourse it is sinful.  If they go to bed together naked and just hold each other, it is sinful.  The whole point is that the nakedness, viewing the nakedness, the touching of the private areas, fondling, etc., are all reserved for the marriage bed between a husband and a wife.

Now before we see verses, I have to define the term “fornication”. Fornication is sex before marriage.

And here are some specific verses:

1 Cor. 6:12-20:

12“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

13“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

14By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.

15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!

16Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

17But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.

19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Ephesians 5:3-7:

3But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

4Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.

5For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.

7Therefore do not be partners with them.

Colossians 3:1-6:

1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

4When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

6Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8:

1Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.

2For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

3It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;

4that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable,

5not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;

6and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.

7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.

8Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

The Bible doesn’t go into scientific details about the effects of fornication. So what harm does fornication cause?

Well, consider oxytocin, a chemical released by women’s brains during sex that causes women to bond to men after sex. Basically, when a women has premarital sex with a man she isn’t married to, the odds are very good that he is not going to commit to her for life, and that he will leave and that she will be hurt. But if she marries the man first, then the bonding that occurs is a good thing, because he isn’t going anywhere and she is free to have those feelings of being bonded to him.

When a woman gets hurt by breaking away from a man that she has bonded with sexually, she loses her ability to trust and depend on men, which she needs to do in order to marry at all. The more she deals with the pain of breaking the bonds over and over, the more she learns to separate her emotions from sexual touching. She needs to have sex in order to make men like her, but she also has to not feel anything, in order to avoid being hurt. This destroys her ability to love and trust if she ever gets married.

Men are hurt from pre-marital sex in a different way. They become cold and cynical about women, unable to trust them, unable to serve them, unable to love them, and unable to commit to one woman for life. In my view, a man who has sex before marriage is not loving women, and he will love them less afterward. If a man loves a woman then he needs to commit to her. Premarital sex ruins a man’s ability to do the things he was designed to do with women. He loses the ability to love unselfishly.

CARM also has an article about the Bible and homosexuality here.

Related posts

Polemics

Does the Bible say thou shalt not kill or thou shalt not murder?

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Here is an article on it by a prominent Jewish professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary.

His qualifications are here. He is an expert in Hebrew language.

Excerpt:

Those of us who are familiar with the original Hebrew text of the Bible find frequent occasion to whine about inaccuracies and misleading expressions in the translations that are in use among non-Jews. Many of these discrepancies arose out of patently theological motives, as Christian interpreters rewrote passages in the “Old Testament” so as to turn them into predictions or prefigurations of the life of Jesus. Some of the mistranslations, though, are harder to account for.

For me, one of the most irksome cases has always been the rendering of the sixth commandment as “Thou shalt not kill.” In this form, the quote has been conscripted into the service of diverse causes, including those of pacifism, animal rights, the opposition to capital punishment, and the anti-abortion movement.

Indeed, “kill” in English is an all-encompassing verb that covers the taking of life in all forms and for all classes of victims. That kind of generalization is expressed in Hebrew through the verb “harag.” However, the verb that appears in the Torah’s prohibition is a completely different one, ” ratsah” which, it would seem, should be rendered “murder.” This root refers only to criminal acts of killing.

It is, of course, not just a question of etymology. Those ideologies that adduce the commandment in support of their gentle-hearted causes are compelled to feign ignorance of all those other places in the Bible that condone or command warfare, the slaughter of sacrificial animals, and an assortment of methods for inflicting capital punishment.

Not that I don’t agree with this guy about his comments on abortion. I think abortion IS murder, and that Jews always considered it murder. Consider this post at Reason to Stand.

Excerpt:

“The law enjoins us to bring up all our offspring, and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing humankind.” -Josephus, 1st century Jewish historian

Regarding the KJV and its translation of the text as “Thou shalt not kill”. The KJV is a poor translation of the Bible. If you know the history of Erasmus and the Textus Receptus, you’ll know it was a rush job done in 1611, and that newer and more manuscripts have emerged since 1611.

Get an NASB. That’s the most literal translation available, except for the original Koine Greek itself. Here’s the relevant verse from Exodus 20 in the NASB. If you want something readable, go for an NIV or and ESV. But to make your case, use an NASB.