 |
| The French Alps-trekearth |
John Sanders (1998) writes that in incompatibilism it is believed genetic or environmental factors are not ignored in the process of human actions,[1] but it is thought a human being could always have done otherwise in any given situation.[2] Sanders explains that general sovereignty is a concept in contrast to a Calvinistic specific sovereignty[3] that has God allowing general structures to be set up by which human significant freedom and resulting choices allows persons to input on how things turn out.[4] With general sovereignty, God takes risks in governing the world,[5] but he does not take risks with the concept of specific sovereignty.[6] Sanders deduces here that when God wants to bring about human acts within the general sovereignty framework he persuades people, whereas Sanders views specific sovereignty as using hard determinism to force people to commit acts.[7]
Bruce Reichenbach (1986) explains that the sovereign cannot compel his subjects to freely follow him.[8] This understanding would be held by Feinberg,[9] and in general terms, accepted by most scholars that hold to theistic compatibilism within a Reformed tradition.
This would
philosophically contrast soft determinism from hard determinism; compatibilism not
allowing for force or coercion in regard to significantly free thoughts, acts
and actions including human chose in regard to everlasting destiny as secondary
causes, as God is primary cause.
FEINBERG,
JOHN.S. (1986) Predestination and Free
Will, in David Basinger and Randall Basinger (eds.), Downers Grove,
Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
FEINBERG,
JOHN.S. (1994) The Many Faces of Evil,
Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing
House.
FEINBERG,
JOHN.S. (2001) No One Like Him, John
S. Feinberg (gen.ed.), Wheaton, Illinois, Crossway Books.
REICHENBACH,
BRUCE (1986) Predestination and Free Will,
Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
SANDERS, JOHN
(1998) The God Who Risks, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
SANDERS, JOHN
(2003) ‘Open Theism: A Radical Revision or Minuscule Modification of
Arminianism?’, in Wesleyan Theological Journal, Volume 38, Number 2, Fall, pp.
69-102. Wilmore, Kentucky, Asbury
College.
[2] Sanders (1998: 221). That would be significant freedom for
incompatibilism.
[3] Sanders (1998: 212).
[4] Sanders (1998: 213).
[6] Sanders (1998: 213-214).
[7] Sanders (1998: 214).
[8] Reichenbach (1986: 105).
[9] Feinberg, would
deny that God would force persons to commit acts, instead it is God’s sovereign
plan that certain unconstrained actions should occur. Feinberg (2001: 637).
 |
| England:Goring Gap-trekearth |
Let me encourage you to work through Jack Klumpenhower, Show Them Jesus. While it’s from the POV of a teacher of small children, it helps us all as we tell the gospel to each other and to ourselves. Jack Miller’s Sonship and Paul Kooistra’s Living in Grace have meant so much to me, building on Ed Clowney and Bryan Chapell’s Christ-centered preaching, but this makes that even sharper and clearer. As our church ages and tries to hang in there, this is just what we all need.
ReplyDeleteD. Clair Davis
ReplyDeleteWorship brings all kinds of responses, as I observed in church recently. An elderly woman was standing with eyes closed and hands raised in prayer and praise. The three-year-old standing in the pew in front of her turned around and gave her a high-five!
…..Doc’s Daily Chuckle (docsdailychuckle@associate.com) by way of “Christian Voices” (ChristianVoices@att.net)
CANADIAN JOKE
ReplyDeleteAn American, a Scot and a Canadian were in a terrible car accident. They were all brought to the same emergency room, but all three of them died before they arrived.. Just as they were about to put the toe tag on the American, he stirred and opened his eyes. Astonished, the doctors and nurses present asked him what happened.
'Well,' said the American, 'I remember the crash, and then there was a beautiful light, and then the Canadian and the Scot and I were standing at the gates of heaven. St.Peter approached us and said that we were all too young to die, and said that for a donation of $50, we could return to earth. So of course I pulled out my wallet and gave him the $50, and the next thing I knew I was back here'
'That's amazing!' said the one of the doctors, 'But what happened to the other two?'
'Last I saw them,' replied the American, 'the Scot was haggling over the price and the Canadian was waiting for the government to pay his.'
Show Them Jesus
ReplyDeleteI've just read Jack Klumpenhower's Show Them Jesus. It covers how you teach Bible stories to children, but it seems to me to be really about how to get the gospel through to all of us grownups, who keep on misunderstanding what the Lord is saying to us. We keep on thinking, God is good but why is he always pestering us to do so many hard things? But we have to try anyway, since he'll be mad at us if we don't, and make our lives even harder. The gospel of Jesus, that God loves us and gives us even his Beloved Son and all we'll ever need, just gets lost in the shuffle. We know it's gone since we're not feeling great about doing anything for his glory, and we've gotten used to thinking that's normal.
We read revival stories about when it was different from today, when it was a time of enthusiastic joy, but that was then, a time without our distractions. As I think of my teen years, when church was boring me stiff until I finally heard the gospel, I've sometimes thought, maybe my first preacher didn't know what it was? But with Klumpenhower telling me so much, right now I'm thinking about that this way: of course we'd all heard about Jesus Christ dying for our sins and being raised for our lives, but it just didn't mean much. That was because we moved on from there much too quickly, leaving the Good News behind as we went on to our unhappy obedient lives.
ReplyDeleteWhen in doubt, why not blame it on some preachers? Why do they tell us week after week what we need to do and leave out the Good News? They're about the same as those kids' teachers, aren't they? Could we all do it better? For years I've been fascinated and helped by those people who do "biblical theology," the way to look at the Bible and see Jesus everywhere. That's a grand beginning—but often it seems to me to be just descriptive, pointing us to a biblical tidbit we hadn't seen before, but leaving out the focus on how amazing and loving our Father is to us. I've also been deeply helped by the people who do biblical counseling, working hard to show us God's answers to our problems. They are down to earth practical—but I don't always see Jesus in what they encourage. The sermons I hear, and I preach, aren't really much help. Too often they just describe without enough Jesus in the story.
ReplyDeleteI taught church history, and often it came out flat. There was that Protestant Reformation, and Jesus became front and center—but Catholics and others could only see the missing consciousness of deep guilt, and how in the world could you ever expect people to be obedient to God without that? It was the same story when the Church of England rejected the Puritans who wanted to tell the world about how you could be joyfully confident that you were in God's family. The Scots had their Marrowmen who showed us our assurance, but they were rejected too for the same reason. Today there's deep uneasiness about "Sonship" and "Living in Grace." It all comes out like this, don't talk or think so much about God's love, that's bound to produce nothing but laziness with fuzzy emotion on top.
ReplyDeleteWhy does that keep happening? Why do we keep missing the point of God's love, of Jesus going to the cross because of his love for us? I think the answer is, our pride, our delight in being better than others so not really needing Jesus. As he said, if you're not sick why would you waste your time at the doctor's office? We don't believe that the Pharisees were right, but we can act their way.
ReplyDeleteThe old answer to this confusion was just, do a lot more with God's law, look harder at yourself till you see your sin—then you'll be ready to appreciate the gospel and want a lot more than a description. There's a lot to that. After Romans 6 and 7, with its "die to yourself and find life in Christ," the conclusion seems inevitable: "wretched man that I am," I do everything wrong. But then comes "thanks be to God," followed by Romans 9 unpacking all the ways God's love to us endures forever, when we mess up again, and again. But sometimes people took that to mean, think about hell a lot more and how you would feel there, but I doubt it would be easy to fit that part in with the "love that endures forever." This needs work, especially to learn how not just the law, but the gospel itself shows us our deep need. Why would the Lord give up his Beloved Son if our sin was just trivial? Why should we ever think of God's love and holiness apart from each other? Read again Hosea 11:9, the reason God doesn't give up on us is because he's holy, not like all the others who would. Of course God's love and his holiness belong together, but maybe his holiness doesn't have to come first?
One reason that we want to tune out God's love is what those Liberals did with it. What about the infants who never grew up to believe, do they go to hell, they demanded? Then they went on to, what about the adults all over the world who've never heard? What about a church that doesn't talk about loving and caring for the poor? Liberal chatter on "the love of God" became for us an indicator of theological weakness! To them love meant, of course God wouldn't condemn anyone because of the "imputation of Adam's sin," or wouldn't forgive you because of the "imputation of Christ's righteousness." The Liberal love of God came to mean the opposite of what the Bible says, especially about the gospel. Evangelicals know that God loves us just because he does, not at all because we're "worthy." We have to get over that liberal attack, not by tolerating unbiblical teaching, but by understanding how close to each other God's love and his grace really are, as we reject Liberalism and our feeble thinking at the same time.
ReplyDeleteFor me the top fascinating thing about Klumpenhower is that he thinks his lesson plan doesn't need to distinguish between what an unbeliever and a weak believer need to see in God's word. Everybody needs to see the same thing, right away! For both the thing to ask is just, "what can we learn about life with God from this story?" Now I can remember when there were two Sunday services, the morning for believers (who didn't party all Saturday night) and the evening for unbelievers (before TV reruns?). Were there two different ways of looking at the text, or even two different kinds of Bible stories? What if all of us need life with God, wherever we are in our journey? Can't we all follow along everywhere in the word, spotting the unexpected ways the Lord works with people? Now that is progress, we can talk about Jesus together without needing to know just where others are!
ReplyDeleteHere is Klumpenhower's challenge, one we all need to consider deeply and thoroughly: our young people are leaving us, what shall we do? Should we look harder at our covenant theology and assure each other that they'll come back? Or shouldn't we rather consider how we have talked with them before about Jesus and how to live for him? Or even how we have talked to ourselves? I'm thinking of our need for Awakening, Great or smaller. We've given too much attention to what happens in the Awakening, not to what came before. Yes, then even the worst preacher preached one grand sermon, showing Jesus Christ in all his glory and love, and many, many believed. But what came before that? Prayer, of course. What about? Yes, that God's church would be again empowered by the Holy Spirit, that many would turn from darkness to light, that God's people would show the way. But there was repentance too, and it especially meant, that we stop being so shallow in our faith, that we call on the Lord to open our hearts to see all that Jesus has done for us. The Lord heard that prayer, so well. Why are others are slow to turn to Christ? Both because of the weak way we model joy in who our Lord is—but also in the puny way we tell the world about it.
ReplyDeleteIt's elementary but profound. Our lives and our witness are weak, at least partly because we don't know how to think about the Lord and his love to us. We jump way too hurriedly to ask, is there anything else we should be doing, instead of just pausing and meditating as we look at his promises in the word, seeing that the Lord's kind compassion comes first, before what we're supposed to do. Do we resemble those little kids, who keep thinking that being a Christian is mostly about getting your life together—without asking at all, "what can we learn about life with God from this story?" We're starting to see it now: we begin with the Lord and we thank him for his love. Pause a minute, and praise him for it this time. Ask him to show you his love in the word, and in your life. He will.
ReplyDeleteD. Clair Davis
Answering machine message,
ReplyDelete"I am not available right now,
But thank you for caring enough to call.
I am making some changes in my life.
Please leave a message after the beep.
If I do not return your call,
you are one of the changes."
My wife and I had words,
ReplyDeletebut I didn't get to use mine.
Frustration is trying to find your glasses
ReplyDeletewithout your glasses.
Blessed are those who can
ReplyDeletegive without remembering
and take without forgetting.
The irony of life is that,
ReplyDeleteby the time you're old enough
to know your way around,
you're not going anywhere.
God made man before woman
ReplyDeleteso as to give him time
to think of an answer
for her first question.
I was always taught to respect my elders,
ReplyDeletebut it keeps getting harder to find one.
Every morning is the dawn of a new error.
ReplyDelete