Once upon a time, before anything was created, when God in three persons dwelt happily in and of themselves, God the Father said, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. We’re going to create a universe by and through you, God the Son, and I am, before you create anything at all, going to determine how every single bit of it, from start to finish, from the beginning to the end, from the least quark to the biggest bang, is going to go."
"We will create an entire human race from an original male and female whom I will cause to be tempted and sin and, because of that, subject the rest of the human race to untold millennia of misery and suffering and death (all for my greater glory because it seemed good to me), all the while promising them a means of salvation from that misery I’ve imposed on them as a result of their sin against me that I will have preordained."
"And a really cool thing is that we will tell them that if they listen to what they are told and follow it faithfully, we will hear them and answer them and heal their land but they won’t know that in actuality they won’t be able even to try unless we make a few of them do it and the vast majority we will keep in the bondage of sin and degradation and then hold them responsible for not doing what we created them to be unable to do."
"And the best thing of all, God the Son, is that because I will say that the sin that I will ordain and set into motion (to the very degree and extent that is my good pleasure according to the unfathomable counsel of my will) cannot be forgiven without a sacrifice and since no human will be capable or even willing to provide that sacrifice, because I will have made them incapable and unwilling, YOU are going to have lay aside your glory and the fellowship we currently enjoy to enter the human race and grow up among those (but for the few I will have made to act to the contrary) who won’t listen because I will have made them unable to hear, who won’t see because I will have blinded them to the truth, and who won’t ask for forgiveness for something they were hopeless to avoid doing because I will have made them incapable of doing so and then have the ever-loving crap beaten out of you, scourged to within an inch of your life, before being made to carry the instrument of your torture and death before jeering crowds, because I will have made them do that, to the place where others, because of my decree before the foundations of the earth according to my own good counsel, will drive spikes through your wrists and hoist you up to hang between criminals—and the best part of all, at that moment you are about to die, I’ll turn my back on you!"
"But it will all be okay, right, because in three days, I’ll raise you from the dead so that we can say that this proves you are who we already know you are without ever the necessity of our creating a universe or even a human race to begin with and can then declare faith in that as the ostensible means by which we confer saving grace on the humans but without telling them, until John Calvin comes along, that what they think is turning to us in faith to freely receive the gift of forgiveness and salvation is every bit as programmed and inevitable as the fate of the majority of the human race on their way to burn and suffer eternally in the lake of fire for refusing to believe that which I will have made them unable to believe since before I will have ever created anything at all, and this all for my praise and glory. How does that sound?”
And does God the Son say, “Wait a second, you’re going to create a universe with a world of conscious beings made in our image, screw them over in the most horrendous ways imaginable, hold them responsible for what you’re going to compel them to do, and then, near the end of the whole shebang, make ME suffer for every sin they ever committed without their ever having had the capacity to decide otherwise and die so that those who don’t even have the capacity to make anything but a faux choice will be “saved”? And that will make the relationship that you and I and the Holy Spirit are sharing right now better how?”
Or does he say, “Hey, that sounds great and we’ll call it the GOOD NEWS!”
I agree.
Calvin wrote his systematic theology text in his 20s, and expanded it but never changed it with time. It reflects the view of a 27 year old lawyer who could get away with cherry-picking verses. Calvin’s Commentaries are often better, because then he had to deal with the text on hand. He still sometimes did gymnastics trying to avoid the text, but his commentaries, on the whole, are much better than his systematic theology.
Yet your point remains completely valid. The Jews already had the Old Testament.
God in Genesis warning Cain. Wisdom in Proverbs calling out, “If you turn at my reproof,behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.”
They had the prophets, calling them to repent and love the Lord: “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
They had the Psalms, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.”
Now, suppose Jesus had come proclaiming:
“You are all DEAD in sin, and cannot repent - but I will cause those on my list of life to come to life and make it possible for them to believe, and they will believe irresistibly to my secret call! And all those whose names didn’t win on the Lottery of Life held before creation, I will destroy, for I will prevent them from repenting! Oh...and I say hundreds of times it is believing God that saves you, but in reality it is all about which list your name is on...SUCKER!”
What Jew, comparing what he had with what Jesus was preaching, would call THAT “Good News”?
Instead, Jesus quoted:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
“And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” - Luke 4
And if God has not just known in advance what I would do, but actively forces me to do it, then why all the exhortations against sin? If Calvin was right, and everything we do has been determined by God before time, and God irresistibly makes it happen, then my lust for a woman or greed for money is something God decided, before time, that I MUST do at that moment.
The Bible has thousands of passages where we are told to DO something, or else. Yet if God chose before time what we would do, and then makes us do it, those passages are a lie, and God is a Liar!
“But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous ( that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” - Ephesians 5, taken at random
There is no HINT of passivity there! No suggestion that we are a watch, designed by God and ticking away because God forces us to tick that way. No one, reading that passage or hundreds like it, can say it teaches we have no choice in our actions and deeds.
And if Jesus had come, teaching the determinism of Calvin, not a single Jew would have called it “Good News”! They would have threatened to stone him, not for claiming to be God, but for rejecting everything God had revealed to them.
bookmark — aruanan’s post 156 is excellently written