Where Everybody's Crazy

I have just received an email, out of the blue and with no explanation, which consists of a list of Scripture verses to demonstrate that Arminianism is bad and wrong and we don't actually have free will. Several thoughts on this bizarre occurrence:

• "To list Scripture verses" is another one of those irregular verbs of which I am so fond. It conjugates like this: "I demonstrate the whole tenor of Scripture"; "you are taking verses out of context"; "he is proof-texting".
• In the fight between Calvin and Arminius, back Jesus. He was not a systematic theologian, and I consider this to be a feature, not a bug.
• Theology without missiology is dead. Free will or lack thereof is one of those doctrines that doesn't make a blind bit of difference to the way we do mission, and so fighting over it is pointless. I tend to say that such doctrines have "no cash value" because you can't actually do anything with them.
• Last time Calvinism came up on this blog, I made a throwaway comment about total depravity being obviously rubbish, but despite it being "obvious", I forgot why I thought that. Now I remember. You just apply it to itself. The idea of total depravity came from Calvin's brain. Calvin's brain is, according to Calvin, in a state of total depravity. Why, then, should I trust Calvin's brain on matters of doctrine?
• And the kicker? The person who sent me this list proving that we don't have free choice is from an institution which calls itself "Liberty University". Well, it made me laugh anyway.

Hello! I've left Gerrards Cross and am now in Oxford, having just gone to Stafford, and being about to go to Reading, and then London, Wales and Gerrards Cross again. The lovely man at the train station spent a very long time playing around with different routings on my itinerary and saved me an awful lot of money.

A couple of people have recently asked me what I think about predestination. One of them followed up by saying this was a big trend now, towards hypercalvinism, in Evangelical churches. I have not noticed this. But on the other hand, I have noticed a couple of people out of the blue asking me what I think about predestination. So maybe it's true.

If it is true, I wonder why it is happening at this point. Generally doctrines try to achieve something. They generally have a purpose. Contrary to popular belief, and with the possible exception of those crazy systematicists, theologians don't theologize in a vacuum. Theology is reasoned and spiritual reflection on events in the life of the church. So something will have prompted this shift. I would appreciate any tips as to what.

Some bits of Calvinism really annoy me, and in particular the strange tendency to place Calvin's (and his successors) peculiar and innovative theological views on the same level as, say, the Bible:

I got a stormy reply, with a raised voice and anger, and finally, this man, very angrily and loudly, exclaimed "After all, Calvin is the truth!" Well, I thought I knew somebody else who was the truth, and I thought that was actually close to idolatry.

- Martin Goldsmith, Theologies in context

Total depravity, for instance, is clearly rubbish, and pretty damned bad for the self-esteem of those made in the image of God.

But predestination... I think it's one of those things that may well be true but if true is entirely pointless. I honestly don't see a practical application of it. And, as I said before, theologians generally theologise for a purpose; if your doctrine has no practical application, then as far as I am concerned you can take it or leave it.

Arguing against predestination is pretty hard, because you have to argue that God doesn't know everything. And I wouldn't like to make an argument in favour of humans having free will. Now when I pointed out to one of the friends who asked that the Bible does not say that we have free will, he quite correctly pointed out that this was an argument from silence and that the Bible doesn't say there is a Triniy. Fair enough. So what that means is that we need to scrutinize any verse that appear to imply that we have a free choice and not begin with the assumption that we do.

But hey, that's still splitting hairs; let's go back to the practicalities. I suspect, but I have no evidence, that the recent resurgence of hypercalvinism is intended to rationalise an unwillingness to evangelise. Now, let's get this the right way around; there is a tendency to assume that behaviour follows doctrine. If, for instance, you believe in predestination, you don't see a need to evangelise. Or, say, your view on hell will affect your motivation for mission:

When informed of my favouring the doctrine of annihilationism, rather than the doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell, they asked me how this affected my motivation for mission. A common view is that if you don't believe in the traditional doctrine of hell, your motivation must be adversely affected.

- Alex McCann, The doctrine of hell as a motive for mission

This again is rubbish. There are so many different motivations for mission, and they come and go in fashions and trends. Dick recently took me to task, quite rightly, and reminded me about Revelation 7:9 as a motive for mission. And it is one, and one that seems to be the current fashion. (Bosch calls them paradigms, but I'm a bit more populist than he is.) But there's many. Doctrine doesn't necessarily drive behaviour.

But behaviour can drive doctrine. If you're not evangelising anyway, you'd probably want a theological justification for not doing so. So maybe, and again I have no evidence here, people are picking up hypercalvinism as a handy excuse.

The story goes that some people, no matter how much you talk to them or pray for them, will not become Christians because they are not part of the Elect. Fine. I have no problem with that. But you don't know whether any particular individual is or is not part of the Elect. So you can't, or at least shouldn't, make any changes to your behaviour based on this doctrine. It could be that you discuss with someone for years and they won't become a Christian. But it equally could be that you discuss it with them for years and then a few days later they do. You don't know. Hypercalvinism does not, actually, relieve us of the "ministry of reconciliation" that God has committed to us.

I have no problem with doctrines that tell us that God knows everything. But I will draw the line when they require that Man knows everything too.