Response to Robert Reymond's Ten Lines of Evidence

Quite recently, I received a paper entitled, Ten Lines of Evidence for the Doctrine of Particular Redemption, by Robert Reymond. I have never heard of Reymond, but a quick trip to Google tells me he is a Ph D from Bob Jones University (is that a Calvinistic school??). He is a former prof at both Covenant Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary. He now preaches in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It is obvious from his article that Reymond is a Hyper-Calvinist. For a good article on what Hyper-Calvinism is, check out what Phil Johnson (a solid five point Calvinist) says.

Hopefully, in the next few posts, I will post a point by point response to his Ten Lines of Evidence. David, my helpful online brother has already provided me with a good response, and I will be posting his contributions as well. I will always identify who the speaker is.

So here we go with his first argument which he entitles, The Particularistic Vocabulary of Scripture .

What he is referring to, of course, is the fact that some Bible verses tell us that Christ died in particular for believers, who are described as the church, his sheep, the elect, etc. Here is an example.

21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins”(Mt 1:21).

In my presentation, I dealt with this category of verses using this particularistic language by pointing out the logical fallacy that is often committed here. Don Carson speaks about this fallacy in his book, Exegetical Fallacies. It is the fallacy referred to as the Negative Inference Fallacy. He puts it this way.

"It does not necessarily follow that if a proposition is true, a negatve inference from that proposition is also true. The negative inference MAY be true, but this cannot be assumed." (Exegetical Fallacies, p. 101)

Here is a plain example of a negative inference.

a. All Big and Tall people can shop at that store
b. Raymond is neither big or tall
c. Therefore Raymond cannot shop at that store.

My conclusion (c) is not valid, because my particularist vocabulary did not go far enough. It is not exclusive vocabulary. I did not say ONLY Big and Tall people can shop at that store.

This is by far the most common exegetical mistake that supporters of Limited Atonement are making. They take the particular vocabulary of the New Testament and make it exclusive.

Reymond sees this and he does not commit the negative inference fallacy. Here is what he says.

It is true, of course, that logically a statement of particularity in itself does not necessarily preclude universality.

But then he goes on to try to prove that this category of texts where believers are mentioned in particular is still evidence of a particular atonement.

Reymond says:But it should also be evident that one of these particularizing terms—the “elect”—clearly carries with it the
implication that some are excluded from the saving intention and salvific work of Christ.
David responds: the term elect only denotes specificity and emphasis, not particularity and in no way denotes exclusivity. So if we say, Christ died for all men generally, but for the elect especially, then his argument is incorporated into our paradigm and we can say thanks for the input. This argument would work against someone who said Christ died for all in the exact same way, with no differentiation at all.

Werner: Along the same line of argumentation Reymond then turns to the passage in John 10, where Jesus speaks about His sheep. And he says, incredibly:

...how does it come about that one is his sheep? By believing on him? Not at all. Jesus said to the Jews, not (as it is often represented): “You are not my sheep because you do not believe,” but: “You do not believe because [ὅτι, hoti] you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to [believe] my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:26–27).

This is very telling. He claims that we do not become his sheep by believing. This is classic hyper-calvinism. He wants to emphasize the sovereignty of God to the extent that he wipes all human responsibility off the board. There is certainly plenty of other clear texts making belief the condition necessary to become His sheep.

Granted, Jesus says plainly in this chapter that the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Without resorting to the Negative Inference, how does this demonstrate that Jesus did not die for the sin of the world? This passage does not preclude that whosoever will may become his sheep by faith. This text certainly delineates sheep that belong to Jesus (believers) from those that do not belong to Him. And clearly, belief is a hallmark of those who belong to Him. But to infer from this that it is impossible for these other sheep to become his sheep by believing in Him is reading 20th century theology back into a first century inspired text.

It is as if the atonement as a standalone component is what makes them his sheep. Let's hear what WGT Shedd has to say about the atonement"

It may be asked: If atonement naturally and necessarily cancels guilt, why does not the vicarious atonement of Christ save all men indiscriminately, as the universalist contends? The substituted suffering of Christ being infinite is equal in value to the personal suffering of all mankind; why then are not all men upon the same footing and in the class of the saved, by virtue of it? The answer is because it is a natural impossibility. Vicarious atonement without faith in it is powerless to save. It is not the making of this atonement, but the trusting in it, that saves the sinner: "By faith are you saved" (Eph. 2:8); "he that believes shall be saved" (Mark 16:16). The making of this atonement merely satisfies the legal claims, and this is all that it does. If it were made but never imputed and appropriated, it would result in no salvation.

Here is David's comment:
Lets grant that they do not believe because they are not his sheep. Lets convert the terms thus: you do not believe because you are not the children of Abraham. The point is, the “true” children of Abraham would have the faith of Abraham.

Next Reymond says:
Another example is Ephesians 5:25, where Paul teaches, first, that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. From this juxtaposition of these two verbs, it may be inferred both that the church enjoyed a special existence and a standing before Christ such that he “loved” her prior to his “giving” himself for it, and that his love for his church was the motivating power behind his “giving” himself for it. Second, Paul teaches that the husband is to love his wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. But if Christ does not love his church in a special way, different in kind from the way he loves all other people, and if the husband is to love his wife just as Christ loved the church, then the husband is to love all other women in the same way that he loves his wife—surely a grotesque ethic! For Paul’s comparison to have any meaning for his readers, Christ’s love for his church must be construed as a special particularizing, distinguishing love.

Werner: He seems to admit that Jesus Christ loves sinners who are not a part of the church(in a different sort of way, just like I ought to have a general love towards all other women. Not so grotesque after all!) Does Christ have a special love for the Church? Or course He does.
David:There is the point then. All this could preclude is the denial of the claim that Christ died in a special way for the elect. :-)

Stay tuned... more to come.

Pardon Me: You have a Petal Missing.

Well, one of my summer projects has come and gone.. but I will continue to work on it for months to come. Hopefully my blog will reflect the work I am doing on the topic of Unlimited Atonement.

Last night (July 24th) I met with about 20 people, some of whom are pastors and church planters who had raised the question with me several months ago, so I began to do some research and found some fascinating work being done by David who possibly has the most extensive collection of quotations from pre-reformers, first generation reformers and post-reformers that exist anywhere on the web or in print. He doesn't write much of his own stuff per se, but just categorizes these quotes according to topics such as "The Sincere Offer", "Double Jeopardy". He is breaking new ground, and I will be unashamedly riding his coat-tails, so to speak.

I 'met' David on the web years ago. He and I were members of a theology discussion email list. At the time he was a convinced High Calvinist. The action on that discussion list got pretty hot at times. John MacArthur's right hand man, Phil Johnson was a contributor at that time, and of course they are all convinced 'five pointers'. I think I held my own, but I tired of the endless discussions and arguments. I was told by one strict Calvinist that if I did not accept Limited Atonement, I was likely not even saved. To be fair, I should add that THAT particular participant was banned from the list. I stopped following the discussions at that time. That was years ago. There are some email list members who are able to disagree rigorously and yet be affirming as a brother. David was one of those types. There are others who cannot disagree without making use of the well known ad hominem.

Recently, I started tracking discussions there again, and there was David, once an ardent High Calvinist, now arguing for a form of unlimited atonement. He had changed his viewpoint. He has since started a blog where he almost daily puts up new material. So I have taken up correspondence with him again (now that we are on the same side).

A lot of those quotations on his blog are written centuries ago in language that may be difficult to decipher, so over time I would like to mine his blog for the jewels (or precious metals, if you will) and present them in a simpler style. He has said in am email to me,

The blog is meant to be a raw-materials ammo-dump for folk to come and use.

Some might ask, "Why focus on such a narrow issue? Aren't there more important issues to deal with?"

My answer:
1. It becomes an important issue once it affects the area of evangelism (is the offer of salvation a sincere offer if Christ did not die for all?)

2. It is a huge area of interest, but can also become a point of fellowship/division. I have an email from a pastor who extends a general kind of fellowship to me, but would withhold "church fellowship" because I do not believe in particular atonement. I suppose that means he would have a coffee with me at Tim Horton's as a brother in Christ, but I would not be able to break bread with him around the Lord's Table. Perhaps someone can clarify what "church fellowship" means. The so-called doctrines of Grace can be held so ungraciously at times.

3. The question has been a theological area of interest for me for a long time now. Since I first heard of the controversy, I have wanted to get to the bottom of it. So finally I would like to put it all down in a structured manner. Hopefully it will be of help to some of you.

4. I am not aware of any other Canadian Christian who is digging deeply into this issue. If you know of any work being done by a Canadian in this area, please let me know.

5. Lastly, my work is not a reflection of any official position taken by the Associated Gospel Churches of Canada, my involvement in the Doctrine and Credentials Committee notwithstanding. Our denomination takes no position on either side of this question.

Feel free to leave your comments as I get the topic fired up. We are going to be here for awhile.

Werner

Projects for this Summer

Looks like a busy summer shaping up.

1. Electric car project. I bought a used car, had the motor removed and through the summer and fall, I will be replacing the gas motor with an electric motor and a large bank of batteries. This will drain my other bank, but hopefully, you will see a grin on my face as I drive by those gas stations.

2. This next week, I will spend the entire week at the cottage. No, it's not a vacation. I will be working on drafting a constitution for our newly structured church.

3. I am developing a seminar that will present (hopefully) the biblical and historical reasons why I am only a four-pointer. A couple of internet acquaintances are helping me on the research for this. There is a huge amount of material to wade through. WHen the date for the seminar is set, I will post it here.

If it Sounds Too Good...

Whatever the motive, it seems that pastors and other Christian workers are easy marks for the promise of a quick return on the dollar. Is it because "love believes all things.. hopes all things" or because we are naive that we fall for these promises?

As of the beginning of June, news of the Banyan Tree Foundation was making the rounds (google it). The Banyan Tree Foundation (BTF) had been a registered charity and offered to give you a tax deductible receipt for an amount much greater than the actual donation. They did this by 'lending' the donor the balance of the amount. It would take an accountant to explain the scheme. I have read several newspaper articles, and listened to a radio feature describing the mechanics, and I still didn't quite get it.

The CRA, after allowing these deductions for several years, have now disallowed them, and are currently going after the donours for back taxes to the total tune of over 60 million dollars! What's worse, charities that were promised big money for years to come are having to seriously curtail their operations and personnel because money that was pledged to them by BTF is not coming through.

In the last few years, I have heard stories repeatedly of this Christian or that pastor who has lost his savings to investment plans that promised a high guaranteed return.

One would think that Christians, of all people, would recognize that there are no financial guarantees in this life, ever. And just because someone comes to see you and uses his Christian label to build credibility, by no means makes his plan a sound investment. Due diligence and the old adage, "If it sounds too good to be true... it is" still applies.

I am Baffled...

This just recently in the news: a psychic tells an EA that a girl in her class whose name begins with a "V" is being abused. The EA tells the school authorities who in turn call in the Children's Aid. Oh yes, the girl in question is autistic and non-verbal.

These are our educational leaders making these kinds of judgment calls. I can understand that we had better be safe than sorry when it comes to the topic of abuse of children. But I cannot understand anyone, never mind an educator, acting like this on the word of a psychic. The mother of the autistic child is withholding the child from school for the time being.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Canada/2008/06/18/5910691-sun.html

Reading for Nuggets

Following a Bible reading plan is a good thing. Recently I have re-discovered McCheyne's Bible Reading Schedule which is designed such that you will read the Bible through in a year, while reading the New Testament and the Psalms thorough twice in that same amount of time. The surprising thing about this schedule is that it only takes about 15-20 minutes per day.
Of course it does me no good if I am not paying attention to what I am reading. That's the part about routine reading that I don't like. So this morning I focused on finding something that has not occurred to be before in every section of my reading, to see if there was indeed, something new, or something that speaks to me in a new way.

Sure enough; there is. SO I will try to remember to blog those items, and if they are a blessing to you, then great! Maybe it will encourage you to read regularly as well.

In John 12, just before the week of Passion begins, Jesus says something that struck me forcefully. “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45 When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me."
NIV (Jn 12:44-45).

In one sense, Jesus said this because He and the father are One. In the ensuing days Jesus said to his disciples, "If you have seen me you have seen the Father." But in another sense, it would also be right to assume that we are to take on the character of the one who sent us. Didn't Jesus also say to his disciples, "As the Father has sent me, so send I you"?
And in that sense it made me wonder: Do others see the One who sent you?

On another note, recently I have quit contributing to a discussion forum called soonet.ca. It's a discussion forum for people who live in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario or are somehow connected with the city. I lived in that area for most of my adult years, so I was a regular participant and was responsible along with another Christian or two for getting a section in that discussion forum for religious threads.

One of the ironies of that move was that the non-believing crowd complained long and hard about religious discussions in the general area because they were always the most hard fought debates.
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But when we started our own religious column, many of the non believers followed us there and continued to harass and mock the Christians. (Funny how they never mocked the Buddhists, Pagans or Wiccans or New Agers. Never. It's also odd how in the general area, the discussions were quite heavily moderated. Whenever insults and mockery occurred, moderators stepped in and deleted or edited posts. But in the religious forum, the mockery and insults went on and on and on with little to no moderation. My requests to moderate the place myself went unheeded.)

Be that as it may, aside from the time commitment it was I have come to the realization that more damage was being done that good. It seemed that God's honour was being dragged through the mud more often than not, so I left, still wondering whether it was the right decision to make. And this morning I read:

“Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
8 Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you.
(Pr 9:7-8).

Those verses characterise perfectly the tenor of most public discussions about matters of faith.

Morgenthaler and the Order of Canada

First a housekeepig detail. As soon as possible, I will cease advertising for Google. I was astonished to see an ad from them with the copy, "Why the rapture is a lie". I don't want to encourage my readers in the wrong direction. Enough said about that.

What moves me to write today is simply to point out that if Morgenthaler gets the Order of Canada, it would be another sign that we are living in the last days. The last verse in Romans 1 talks about those who encourage others to live without moral restraint. ANd we would be cheering on the worst kind of evil; the murder of thousands upon thousands of unborn children.

I don't know what difference polls make, but please take part in this poll anyway if this issue matters to you.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/v5/content/poll/static/nationalPoll.htm.

Catching Up!

Well, I am back at it. Back at school, that is. I'm still nibbling away at a Master's degree, and it feels like a race against time. I say that because the more 'mature' I become, the greater the struggle to focus on the topic, or to organize a topic. I prefer to think that this happens because I have too many things going on in my head, rather than call it an age thing. At the same time I feel like it is getting more and more important for me to learn. I'm 57, but I still feel like I am just getting started. (Does that feeling ever go away?)

I am driven to learn for several reasons. I think meeting the Lord someday might have something to do with it. I want to discover what is really true and I want to be at rest for the right reasons. I hate the thought of resting on an illusion. Illusory hope works temporarily but it does me no good in the valley. It really isn't about the need for certainty. It goes deeper than that, I think. It almost feels like something organic. To discover those reasons, I feel the need to, at least mentally, extricate myself from my evangelical culture and reach back into history. I'm reading a lot of the Church Fathers, and I am actually reading Roman Catholic Catechism. After all, if I call myself a Protestant, I need to be correctly informed just what it is I am protesting.

I discovered that my former criticisms of the Catholic church were rather shallow, and some of them were straw men. I am just as convinced an evangelical as I always was, but I feel like I can discuss the issues with a bit more credibility now and a bit more irenically.

From October to December I took a theology course that looked at the Evangelicals and Catholics Together movement started by men like Charles Colson, J. I. Packer, John Neuhaus and other well know leaders in both denominations. It was very enlightening to read the documents and discuss them together in class. Perhaps I will post some of that work on the blog if there are any requests.

One clear impression was made by all that reading. The scholars involved sure try hard to find language that will accommodate both sides, and one would almost have to be a lawyer to pick up what IS being said, and what IS NOT being said. After all is said and done, the movement does not seem to be turning into anything official. And the unofficial word is that at least one of the major movers on the Catholic side of the discussion admits that a lot less was achieved than what might appear on all that paper.

Having taken that course, my one take-away is this: I still want to know how I can meaningfully connect with churches in our area with whom I do NOT disagree doctrinally or practically. Shouldn't it AT LEAST begin there? Jesus' prayer in John 17 for the unity of his disciples was not meant to remain a mysterious unity that is not to be manifested until we are changed into His likeness. He told us that our unity (which is to be patterned after the unity of the Father and Son) will have tremendous apologetic value.. “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

This haunts me. We reject the throne of Rome but we elevate and exalt individualism instead of Jesus. And I feel alone in these thoughts. Ecumenism is such a dirty word in evangelical circles. The evangelical church is plagued with protectionism. No one talks about it because most of our churches call transfers from one church to another growth. It is one of those elephants in the living room. We rejoice to see new faces at our worship services, but few people ask, “Are the lost and hurting being reached with the message of hope?” (I say this, recognizing that other churches have benefited from people transferring OUT of our congregations into theirs. It's all zero-gain or loss for the body of Christ).

Yet, what would this unity that Christ had in mind look like? Surely it means more than getting together for a joint Good Friday service. And it cannot mean the kind of unity that is often attempted with ministerial associations where meetings are prefaced with “Let's ignore what divides us.” Okay, it isn't stated quite that bluntly. But that is essentially what is meant.

I think one place to start would be to find churches who want to be missional for the sake of the kingdom rather than for their own survival. The thought already makes me weak in the knees. It is a daunting task. I know about board meetings, committee meetings and congregational meetings. I know how difficult it is to share a vision that requires a kind of big gulp faith. And to persuade a group of leaders to take that big gulp step of faith with you is not easy.

That's why it has to start with prayer. What would God have us to as a group of churches that cannot be done unless we do it together? What “big, hairy, audacious goals” would He have undertake, not for the sake of being audacious, but for the sake of the big God whom we serve? What needs doing in our city that would both meet a practical need and at the same time cause people to say, “There is a God after all!”

An Incomprehensible Event

While watching the news today, the commentator was reporting on a tragic event in the U.S. A fire had claimed the lives of 9 firefighters. These firemen had wives, children, siblings, parents and other loved ones. The loss and the grief that surrounds this event is immeasurable.

The news commentator said something interesting and telling. She referred to the event as something incomprehensible. My ears perked up. Incomprehensible? Why incomprehensible? The fire was sad, tragic, heart-rending, but it is totally comprehensible. It’s pure physics. Everything about the fire and the deaths of these men is indeed comprehensible.

“Ahh, but wait a minute,” you say. She is not talking about physics. She is talking about the ‘why’ question. Why did this have to happen? The assumption behind it is that there is some purpose to the lives of these men, the fulfillment of which lies in some transcendent being’s control.

We cannot escape it, can we? No matter how hard we purge our secular institutions of religion, we smuggle the terms in anyway. An event like this can ONLY be incomprehensible if there is a transcendent purpose to life. If life is nothing more than a long chain of genetic accidents and only the strong survive, and if that belief comes naturally, then the last thing you might say about this horrific accident is that it is incomprehensible.

It is very telling that it’s incomprehensibility is one of the first things that naturally occurs to us. Dawkins would say it’s the result of a meme; a kind of virus of the mind. I say that if it’s genetic, God created it. Who knows? Maybe atheism is the meme?

My Vegetable Oil Days and My Flirt with Postmodern Journalism

My Flirt with Postmodernism

My experiment with a vegetable-oil powered diesel car was a one-year adventure. I had bought a VW Passat diesel, and installed the necessary equipment to enable it to actually run on used (but filtered) vegetable oil. I was getting my used oil from places like The Mandarin Restaraunt.

Interested people would stop and ask me questions about my renewable (and recycled) fuel. A friend of mine (a ministry colleague) heard about the vegetable oil process and actually used the filtration process as an illustration in a talk he was giving to his congregation. Before we take communion, he said, we need to ensure that “the dirt is filtered out”, and he used my process of filtering out used vegetable oil through a pair of denim blue jeans as an analogy.

One of the people listening to him that day was a student of journalism at Ryerson. The story piqued her interest and she got my contact information from him, and gave me a call.

“Do you mind if I come over and do an interview with you,” she asked?

“Not at all,” I responded. Before the week was out, she showed up with another classmate and professional camera equipment. It took a couple of hours, but I showed her how it was done, and she plied me with many questions. It was my 15 minutes of fame, I thought.

A few weeks later, I got a call from CBC Radio. They had heard of my greasy ways, and wanted to interview me for some Saturday morning entertainment program. Once again, I agreed to be interviewed, but this would not be a student who is learning to do interviews. This would now be the real thing. I was going to be heard by 500,000 people, she told me. “Wonderful,” I thought. Maybe I could even slip in the location of our church or something similarly surreptitious and get some free advertising.

“We’ll call you back,” she said. She did, within a week.

“We have it all ready,” She said. “The dialogue is written out. Now, you have to understand that we’ve spiced it up a little. And we have fictionalized it in order to make it more entertaining.”

“Wait a minute,” I was still trying to process the phrase ‘the dialogue is all written out’ and when she used the word ‘fictionalized’ I started getting dizzy. I saw my second 15 minutes of fame slipping through my grasping fingers.

“I don’t understand, you’ve scripted a dialogue? You’ve written out what I am going to say,” I ask incredulously?

Without skipping a beat, as if they do this every day, she said, “Yep.” (Implied, “Did this plebe actually think we were going to let him speak his own mind on national radio! How naïve!”)

Another question, because it finally occurred to me what she meant by ‘fictionalized’. “Umm, excuse me, but are you saying that I will have to say things that are actually not true about myself?”

“Yes.” She was on the phone, but I could hear her blank stare. And I am thinking to myself, “I can’t believe this. She knows I am a preacher, and she wants me to go on the airwaves to tell things about myself that are untrue.”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t think I can do this. Thank you for thinking of me though.” I had to say something to bring closure to this embarrassing affair while I hung up the phone.

Being totally unnerved, I emailed a journalist acquaintance of mine, and explained what happened to me. “Is this normal operating procedure in your industry?”

He assured me that it was unethical and no, it was not normal.

My experience has left me doubtful though. Now, every time I turn on the radio, I wonder….. can I believe what I hear?