Never Really Saved to Begin With

The Arminian Perspectives blog has a great post teasing out the implications of interpreting passages that seem to warn against apostasy as though they really indicated that the person who "fell away" in reality was never a true believer. Here's a sample, to whet your appetite:

“Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died” [thereby proving that Christ really never died for him, and that he was never really your brother]. Rom. 14:15

Good stuff. Check it out.

Augustine's Misunderstanding and Original Sin

Okay, I admit it. I've been drawn back in.

Peter Kirk writes an excellent post discussing the ramifications of Augustine's use of an inadequate translation in developing doctrine. (He is following Doug Chaplin's discussion of the subject.) Essentially, Augustine understood Romans 5:12 as "in whom all sinned," with the implication that we are all guilty, not merely of our own sins, but of Adam's; that we are born guilty of Adam's sin. This is the foundation of the doctrine of original sin, which is foundational to the doctrine of total depravity. However, all modern translations recognize that the Greek of Romans 5:12 is better rendered, "because all sinned"--Augustine was following an inadequate Latin translation at this point. Paul's point is not that we all sinned with Adam in the Garden of Eden, but that we have all sinned just as Adam sinned, and therefore we all need the gift of God's grace through the sacrifice of Jesus.

It is thought by some that denial of the extent to which Augustine pushed the doctrine of original sin (and thus total depravity) implies Pelagianism: that it would be possible for a person to justify himself without appeal to the sacrifice of Jesus, that we can and must work to merit God's favor, that we become co-participants in our own salvation. But this is not a necessary conclusion. Other scriptures make it clear that in fact we all have sinned, and that we cannot come to Jesus merely of our own accord. Nonetheless, the corollary to total depravity--that not only can we not come to God on our own, but we cannot even respond to the Gospel without God enabling us, and then we will unfailingly do so--is not taught in Scripture.

Not only does this bespeak of the dangers of using an inadequate translation; it bespeaks of the dangers of building doctrine on so narrow a foundation as a single interpretation of a single phrase.


Technorati Tags: translation, Romans 5:12, Peter Kirk, Doug Chaplin, Augustine, Original Sin, Total Depravity, Pelagianism

Does Your Theology Honor God?

Does your theology honor God? By asking this question, I do not mean, do you have The Right Theology, the one that objectively honors God by having all its "i"s dotted and its "t"s crossed and will at the Judgment be decreed The Final Truth about God. What I mean is, do you honor God by your interest in theology? Is your desire to read and write about it motivated by a love for God and a desire to honor Him?



This question has been prompted by my on-again, off-again conversations with Timotheos, a Reformed brother. He and I have gotten into some comment discussions on Peter Lumpkins's blog, as well as on this one and via email. During one of these discussions, I was quite moved by recognizing that Timotheos deeply cared about what he was writing about--that his theology was motivated, more than anything else, by his desire to honor God. I felt at that moment that even if I could have served up a definitive rebuttal to his position, I would not have desired to do so: it would have been robbing Timotheos of something that was precious to him and contributed to his appreciation for God. Timotheos was just as concerned to honor God by defending God's thorough and unasked-for transformation of His elect, as I was to honor God by defending His mercy and genuine offer of forgiveness to all of humanity. At that moment, the specifics that we were debating paled into insignificance compared with the desire we both had to honor God by what we believe about Him.



It is not always this way with theological debate. We are all too often motivated by the desire simply to Be Right--to be proven right, to show our superiority over the other person's argument, to defeat our opponent in verbal battle. Do we hold to a theological system because we truly believe that it honors God, or do we hold to it because it's the most logical, or the most experiential, or the most contemporary, or the most rooted in history and tradition, or the most evangelistic, or the most strongly opposed to the theological tradition we like the least? We can hold any theological position--even the correct one--for all kinds of wrong motivations. Ultimately, I think God cares more about why we believe what we believe than He does about the precise specifics of what we believe. It seems to me rather obvious that all of us are going to have some of our positions, er, adjusted in eternity. Probably much of what we squabble about will prove to be a false framing of the question. Meanwhile, the real issue will have been, were we honoring God with our theology?



It would be reasonable to wonder, at this point, why I bother taking theological positions at all. What does it matter exactly what we believe, as long as we have a heart that desires to honor God? Well, in a broad sense, content does matter: we can't be honoring God if we're honoring the wrong god. And in a narrower sense, Jesus did say that the Great Commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Especially for those of us who have that bent, loving God with our minds involves pondering these things, trying to make sense of what the Bible tells us about God. And it's inevitable that we should come to some conclusions, even if they're tentative, and end up in discussions with others who have come to differing conclusions.



But ultimately, the specifics of our conclusions matter less than our desire to honor God through them. One thing I know about my brother Timotheos: he loves God with all his heart, and his conception of God contributes to that love. My conception of God contributes to my love for Him. Maybe the real challenge is to love God, and to love one another, more than we love our conceptions.



Technorati Tags: Calvinism, Arminianism, Calvinist, Arminian, Theology, Theological, Debate, Reformed