Why I am Not a Calvinist - Part 2: Are Critics of Calvinism Fair?

Before I go any further on this topic, two points.

First, this issue is a very personal one for me. Calvinism calls into question, in my mind, the very character of God. As much as I have tried over the years to leave this question in the realm of "mystery", one of those unanswerable questions we'll understand someday in the sweet bye and bye, I find I cannot. I keep finding myself confronted with Calvinist assumptions that most evangelicals don't think much about and don't follow through to their conclusions. Most lay evangelicals accept Calvinist ideas regarding eternal security and total depravity and at the same time argue that evil exists because of the free-will of man. They are Cal-minian, even though that is, according to many Calvinists, not logically permissible.

Second, I want to be fair. I have Calvinist friends. (Maybe not many after this series of ramblings). It is my impression that most serious folks in the Reformed tradition find themselves there because they believe the Scripures require them to be. And they are not insensitive to the objections critics raise. So the question comes up as to whether critics of Calvinism misrepresent what Calvinists actually believe. Primarily, this falls into the area of whether God is responsible for evil and whether God arbitrarily creates some expressly to be condemned for all eternity.

So before I go further, I need to document why I believe Calvinism opens itself up to criticism, not on the basis of Arminian characatures, but from particular statements of faith in the Reformed tradition.

Why I am not a Calvinist - Part 1

Jesus wept.

Those two words in John 11:35, aside from being the famous shortest verse in the Bible, are one of the primary reasons I am not a Calvinist. The fact the Jesus wept at the tomb of a friend is to me one of the most powerful images in all of scripture and speaks volumes about the way Jesus viewed death and human suffering. And the more I think about this event, the more I see that I can’t fit it into a deterministic-Calvinist framework. Let me explain.

(My understanding of Calvinism, by the way, comes from several seminary level courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Most notably, it was stressed that it is not logically consistent to be a Cal-minian, to believe in absolute sovereignty and free will without redefining free will to mean "willingly doing only what God decreed we would do before the foundation of the world". It was stressed in that context, that a free-will defense of the existence of evil cannot be squared with Calvinism, meaning that the existence of evil in the world cannot be attributed to the free-choice of man without threatening the absolute sovereignty of God. If God is sovereign, all events are part of his plan from before the foundation of the world, without exception.)

The passage in question deals with the raising of Lazarus. Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus and weeps. What does his weeping imply? To get at that question we have to take a step back into the context of the chapter.

Evangelical Catholicity - Simon Chan

I heard Simon Chan on the radio a few weeks ago. He is Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, and has written a new book called Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community. There is an intriguing article in Christianity Today, Stopping Cultural Drift, with and accompanying interview with Chan, More Than Saving Souls

His key points, that Evangelicals have no overaching ecclesiology, rather a view of the church as a utilitarian and voluntary association of people who unite to pursue a purpose, such as evangelism, and that as a result, evangelical worship and practice are too easily accommodated to the trends of culture. On the one hand these are not new observations, but Chan's foundational assumptions are different from most, very "paleo-orthodox".

The article and interview by Mark Galli points out Chan's view that "...the church cannot be understood as the creation of the devout, something that is merely the most efficient and effective way to organize ourselves to do mission."

Legitimacy Part 2

Since I raised the question, I’ll make an attempt at an answer.

Even though many independent denominations have roots in the view point that Christians should have “no book but the Bible” and “no Creed but Christ”, it is clear that virtually all denominations feel it necessary to compose a statement of faith. It becomes a requirement very quickly that the doctrinal ideas that led to the formation of the individual denomination be written as a standard of how the Scriptures are to be understood within that subgroup and to prevent individuals from getting sidetracked from the original vision and mission of the group.

These doctrinal statements usually tend to at least be Trinitarian. They tend to emphasize the authority of scripture over tradition and tend to highlight certain distinctives that separate that group from other groups, such as pre-millennial eschatology, eternal security, or the independence of the local church. In other words, while tipping the hat to historic orthodoxy, these statements of faith serve to emphasize not the unity of the faith, but the differences between groups, even though on the central issues of the Nicene Creed, the groups may all tend to agree.

So we find the curious situation that denominations unwittingly identify themselves first and foremost by what separates them.

Legitimacy

This will almost certainly not come out the way I intend it. I am a believer, a committed Christian who is convinced of the truth of Christianity and the scriptures. But I want to ask a question, not about the faith, but about the legitimacy of the faith in the eyes of a pluralistic and post-Christian culture.

Some Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped by today and dropped off a pamphlet. It loudly proclaimed, “The End of False Religion is Near!” It went on to define false religions as those that meddle in war and politics, which spread false doctrine and which tolerate immoral sex. It identified true religion as the practice of love across cultural barriers; trust in God’s inspired Word; and the upholding of the family and of high moral standards. It even had an eschatological section about the great harlot of the book of Revelation, eerily similar to the popular end times scenarios I read as a teenager.

What strikes me is how similar this all sounds.