This seems to be the “go to” view of those trying to straddle the line between an Arminian perspective and a Reformed one. It is, however, firmly on the Arminian side of the divide. To its credit it at least acknowledges that words like election and predestination are in our Bibles, even as it, however unintentionally, guts those words of their meanings.
There are at least three things wrong with this view. It fails to understand who we are, who God is, and how we relate. That’s all. First, how does it misunderstand who we are? Because the truth is if God were to peer down the corridor of time to see who would choose Him the answer would be none of us. We are by nature children of wrath. We are His enemies, unless or until HE puts enmity in our hearts against the serpent (Genesis 3:15). We who believe in God’s sovereign election believe so in large part because we understand that none of us have the power to even repent and believe unless He first changes us.
Second, this view misunderstands who God is. It presents a God who is omniscient, but by no means omnipotent. For God to look down the corridor of time to see what would happen then history is something different from what He planned. History would receive His imprimatur, His seal of approval, but would not be His. It is as if history is a movie that God watched, approved of, but did not write, direct, produce or act in. It makes Him into an observer, rather than the sovereign Lord over all things. There is no movie to look at apart from the movie He is bringing to pass.
Third, this view misunderstands how we relate to God. The Bible tells us that we are the clay and He is the potter, that He reserves the right to make some vessels fit for destruction and some for honor (Romans 9). It tells us that once there was God, and nothing else (Genesis 1:1). Everything that comes after, when tracing its roots, will always come back to that same moment. We are dependent, contingent, derived. We are, in short, creatures. One need not tussle over Paul’s letters or parse John 3:16 to find the truth. It’s all there in the first verse. There is no being, no power, no change, no one coming to faith apart from His sovereign, efficacious will. God can no more share ultimate causality than He can share His glory. For the two are one.
Doesn’t Romans 8:29 say “Those whom He foreknew?” Indeed it does. Trouble is, “foreknew” doesn’t mean “knew ahead of time” for two good reasons. First, that’s not how the Greek word is used. To foreknow is to love in advance. To know here functions like the euphemism we find in Genesis, “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.” Second, the list, each category all inclusive of the next, in Romans 8:29 and 30 covers all who are saved. All that God knew in advance would include both believers and unbelievers. Which would mean all would end up glorified. No, to foreknow is to love in advance, something reserved for the elect, those He predestined to life.
Revivalism is marked by a commitment to technique. It is an essentially man-made phenomena, driven by the wisdom of men. We are a people bent on bending the will of others to our own liking. Advertising is the medium of our age. What determines who will be our nation’s leaders, when it is not one of those rare occasions in which the courts decide, is marketing. Money is raised by political candidates for one fundamental purpose, advertising. Even the more high-brow approach of political debate has devolved into a charade, where candidates are concerned not with a carefully reasoned defense of the policies they are committed to, but instead labor to project a particular image, where a history of smirks are overcome with charm, and a history of wonkism is undone by appearing as an “alpha-male.”
We have reduced the gospel to the level of toothpaste, just another product looking for another batch of consumers. Consider revivalism. It is technique masquerading as passion. We must not to fall for the huckster’s hustle. But in trying to keep us from the fallacy of revivalism, I mustn’t succumb to technique, lest I be hoisted on my own petard. I cannot give you “Three Easy Steps to Recognize the Folly of Three Easy Steps to Revival.” I cannot provide a technique to help you eschew technique.
The antidote to revivalism is not a counter technique, but the plain, straightforward preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t make for great fundraising. But it is our calling. The first preacher of revival was perhaps John the Baptist. He was certainly a sight to behold, practicing the peculiarities of the prophet. He did not come equipped with power point. He was not an attractive messenger, “Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1: 6). This was not the kind of man you would invite to a businessman’s lunch where some athlete affirms the blessings of depending on “the Man Upstairs.” This was no tent crusade.
Neither did the message come with a spoonful of that wild honey. His message was one of a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. He came to a people convinced of their right standing with God. They believed they were safe, that God’s wrath was directed at others and not them. And John told them to repent, to confess and turn from their wickedness. He did not offer a series of benefits for embracing the message. He did not promise the repentant fulfilling lives. He told them to flee from the wrath that was to come. And we are told, “And all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins” (Mark 1:5).
John was an important man. He was recognized as the first prophet sent from God in four hundred years. His disciples were many. His fame grew to such a height that the very ruler of the land was in fear of him. But John, the preacher of revival, knew his role. The crowds that flocked to him, that hung on his every word, that sought out his counsel were left with this message, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”(1:7-8). The great evangelist understood that the greatness was not in the evangelist, but in the evangel.
John preached to the Jews. But when Paul was commissioned to bring the evangel to the Gentiles, neither the message, nor the approach changed. Paul did not reason that while Jews were used to prophetic challenges, and direct discourse, that the Gentiles were a sensuous people, a people who would need the message recast for their temperament. To the Corinthians he expressed his purpose, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (I Corinthians 2: 1-2). Paul preached Christ because he wanted people to be converted to Christ. They were to embrace His life and death, not the methods of the messenger, as he tells them, “I was with you in weakness, in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (2: 3-5).
To avoid the trap of revivalism we need only follow the Biblical model of the proclamation of the gospel, and to do so for the very reasons that the Bible gives. We need to believe the gospel enough to know that it is about what Christ has done and what the Spirit is doing, and is not about our own efforts. We cannot, in short, proclaim the gospel of the power of God in our own power. If we believe in the power of gospel to effect our salvation, we must believe in the power of the gospel preached to bring in His elect. If we deny our own power to earn the favor of God for ourselves, we must deny our own power to bring others into that same peace. This is no technique, but the refusal of all techniques. We must with John be direct, and call for the fruit of repentance. And we must affirm with Paul, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16).
Last night my wife and I started streaming a show new to us, Victoria. It is a Masterpiece Theater production, many of which we have already enjoyed, as well as a look at the life of a British queen, many of which we have already enjoyed. The series begins with Victoria’s rise to the throne at age 18 and the machinations that accompanied such. Should she have a regency? Whom would be her advisors? Could she trust anyone? Could she trust herself?
I woke today to yet another story of a man who recently ascended to power, the President of the United States. One of the key questions during the campaign and since has been his mental competency. Wildly distanced and meticulously choreographed press conferences since his inauguration, and sundry malapropisms at the recent G7 meetings keep raising the question- is the President quite alright? Is he all there?
This may be a perfect example of confirmation bias as those on the left will tend to see no evidence as evidence of his impairment and those on the right will tend to see all evidence as evidence of his impairment. The most compelling evidence, however, tends to come from the President’s own lips, ironically when he’s actually making sense. That is, more compelling than the sundry gaffes that have been a part of his life for decades, are the open admissions that he is fearful he will “get in trouble” with his staff.
At least twice during a brief appearance before the press during the G7 Summit the president remarked about his need to follow the instructions of others in what he answered and how he answered. While this has received a modicum of coverage, along with his calling Syria Libya three times and mistakenly rebuking British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for failing to introduce the South African Prime Minister, it doesn’t seem the mainstream media is taking any of this too seriously.
Queen Victoria, some thought, was too young to be trusted. President Biden, it seems, is too old to be trusted. The lack of trust comes not from his political enemies, but from his presidential handlers. Queen Victoria, at age 18, demonstrated her pluck and resolve by not only choosing her own counselors but by insisting that her reign was just that, a reign. She would not answer to anyone. President Biden, sixty years past being 18, on the other hand, not only admits to receiving instruction from those technically under him in authority, but fearing their reprisals/judgment should he not toe the line.
Queen Victoria ruled the British empire for 64 years, setting an example of strength followed well by Queen Elizabeth II, Victoria’s great-great granddaughter. President Biden’s future remains to be seen. Were I a betting man, I’d wager a scandal will erupt during Biden’s administration that will make Watergate look like a picnic. A scandal rooted in who knew what about his deficiencies, and who sought to take advantage. An ill wind blows for those who’ve had their hands in handling the President.
Cage-stage describes an all too common phenomenon wherein a believer comes to embrace the doctrines of grace, and for a time becomes an obnoxious lout in defending the doctrines to all comers, whether they are interested or not. It suggests that such a newbie should spend some time in a cage until they calm down. If you are a Calvinist you likely have been through this stage. If you are not, you surely have encountered those who were infected.
What causes Cage-Stage Calvinism is a failure to believe Calvinism. Now I don’t mean to rattle any cages here, but I believe it’s true. It begins with a failure to believe in total depravity. The Cage Stager is frustrated, bent out of shape, often angry at the failure of others to embrace these biblical doctrines. But this biblical doctrine acknowledges that we all have difficulty embracing biblical doctrines. The Cage Stager seems to forget the battle with sin he not only continues to have but the battle he only recently won in, by God’s grace, coming to embrace the doctrines of grace. He seems to reason, “What is wrong with those terrible, awful, good-for-nothing sinners that they refuse to see what I only recently came to see?”
Cage-stage Calvinism is likewise an implicit denial of unconditional election. That is, in our hearts we tend to see ourselves, as Calvinists, as peculiarly worthy recipients of God’s grace, as if He looked down the corridor of time, saw that we would in our wisdom come to embrace Calvinism and on that basis, chose us. Calvinists are not the elite soldiers of the kingdom. We were instead dead before the battle began, just like everyone else.
Do you see what these have in common? Cage-Stage Calvinism, in the end, is the fruit of pride. We think too highly of ourselves, looking down our noses at others, and pat ourselves on the back for figuring it all out. Real Calvinism acknowledges our sin, our dependence on the grace of God not only to be redeemed, but to have any understanding of how we came to be redeemed. It recognizes and honors the grace and providence of God, affirming that the same sovereign God who brought us to saving faith revealed to us His sovereignty.
Real Calvinism likewise recognizes that the sovereign God who redeemed us redeems many who understand less than we do the sovereignty of God. We don’t panic over the existence of non-Calvinists in the church, understanding that this too is part of His sovereign plan. It’s a good thing to be excited about learning more about the grace of God, the work of Christ, the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. And it is in fact a good thing to seek to help others understand as well. It is a bad thing, however, to lose sight of our need for grace and for graciousness.
Awakening to the sovereignty of God, truly, is a humbling experience, that bears the fruit of deeper repentance, deeper humility, deeper compassion. It bears the fruit of beauty, not ugliness, joy not anger. It releases us from the cage of pride, and equips us to serve the brethren. Cage-stage Calvinism has been and may yet be the sovereign plan of God. His revealed will, however, is that we would become more like Christ, who sets us free.
I was a boy when I came up with what I believed to be a brilliant idea. It was the height of the Steeler’s dynasty. I loved the Steelers, (and still do) and loved Jesus (and still do.) So I figured out a plan to serve them both. “Lord,” I prayed, “if you will make me an all-pro wide receiver for the Steelers, I will be able to do great things for the kingdom. When I catch the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl I will point heavenward to you. When the reporters ask me if I’m going to Disney World I’ll tell them I’m going to church. In the locker room I’ll give all glory to you.” Great plan huh? But God didn’t bless me with any of the physical gifts I would need.
So I came up with another plan. “Lord, if you would make me a rock star, I could write subtle lyrics about you, shape people’s worldviews without them even knowing it. I call it ‘pre-evangelism.'” Alas again He didn’t give me the gifts necessary. So I prayed that He would help me write the great American novel. Eventually I noticed a pattern- my plans all involved me being incredibly wealthy and universally loved. Because, you know, the kingdom.
One need not, however, have such grand plans to fall into this same trap. We Christians are quick to seek out approval, standing, a place at the table, all in the name of influence. If we can get the world to love us, we seem to think, it’s just a matter of time until they come to love Jesus. So we wheedle our way into the broader world, you know, for the kingdom. We succumb to the “wisdom” of Screwtape who encouraged his young devil apprentice this way, “Persuade your patient that he is making his way in the world, while all the while the world is making its way into him.”
I am not, of course, opposed to influence. I’m just slow to learn from where it comes. Moses threw away the advantages he had in Pharaoh’s court, but found influence as a dusty desert prophet. Daniel came to Babylon a war prisoner. John the Baptist changed the world not in the halls of power but in the Jordan river. Jesus died. Paul preached to kings, while in chains. It’s a good thing, a great thing, to preach truth to power. It’s, given the deceitfulness of our own hearts, a bad thing to seek out power in order to do so.
It is the gospel we are so eager to preach that, according to God’s Word, is the offense. Remove the gospel to get close to power and we have lost our reason for being there. We have given up the only power we have. The power is not in our maneuverings, our stratagems. It’s not in our unspotted reputations, nor our worldly bona fides. The power is not at their table, but at His. Spilled blood, and a broken body.
