Nathan White of Strange Baptist Fire  [UPDATE: My apolgies to Nathan, as this article was written by Jim Bublitz of "Old Truth", which explains the gross error contained within], a site which seems to be steeped in Calvinist apologetics (though I could be wrong), has taken issue with my article from back in August on the nature of God and the probability that we humans create contradictions where none may exist for God – specifically with systematic theologies and the weighing of free will vs. predestination. In doing so, he’s reminded me of a conversation I had the other day about labels and how they are basically short-hand attempts to either build credit or discredit apart from any actual merit in the discussion.

To this point, White’s thesis fails from the get-go.

Groups like the Emerging Church would often rather place matters of controversy beyond human reach, and I fear – treat revealed truth as though it were not revealed. I think another example of this postmodern tendency can be seen in this post by Chris Lyons, who is a vocal critic of Calvinism as well as pretty much any kind of Systematic Theology.

While he did get the last part right (my criticism of systematic theologies), connecting my thesis to the ECM and postmodernism are a) an attempt to discredit via ad homenim argument, and b) factually incorrect.

My church background is with the Restoration Movement churches of Christ, which has taken an anti-systematic theology stance for going on two centuries now.

Additionally, I wonder if White understands the difference between postmodern thought and modernist thought. As an engineer/scientist, I tend to approach most issues from a modernist perspective, but both the Christian faith and the ever-increasingly revealed limitations of scientific understanding have led me to believe that even though there is an absolute truth behind everything, we, as humans, may very well not be able to fully understand this truth because of our very nature.

Additionally, the view I espoused in the article is not something ‘new’ or ‘postmodern’, but one that has existed for centuries in both Christian and Jewish tradition, even going so far as to reference secular allegorical work from 1884 (Flatland), which was used to explain this position, as well.

Interestingly, though, he takes issue at my referencing the real and actual roots of Calvinism in Greek Fatalism, studied by St. Augustine and included in his writings, and further incorporated in Calvin’s understanding of predestination…

Next, White quotes my article, where I point out that the basis of many of these systemactic views may be correct, even if their application is not:

“I would posit that the most accurate view possible for us to attain is in accepting that the basis of each of these views […] are all correct and not in contradiction to one another.”

He comments:

The fact that it has always been understood throughout church history that there are obvious contradictions and incompatibilities between each of these views is something that Chris expects us to overlook.

Actually, no I do not. The arguments of free will vs. predestination were never considered all that important by Hebrew scholars prior to Jesus, nor within the church for the first many centuries of its existence. What forced these viewes against one another was primarily the fuel of the Age of Reason, which pitted apparently conflicting scientific views against one another. If we’re going to use Church history as an argument, then one has to wonder how it got along for the fifteen centuries before Calvin wandered along.

There are numerous examples of Christian and Jewish scholars who have reconciled the notion of free will and God’s omniscience over the centuries. For example, from wikipedia:

Jewish philosophy stresses that free will is a product of the intrinsic human soul, using the word neshama (from the Hebrew root n.sh.m. or .× .ש.מ meaning “breath”), but the ability to make a free choice is through Yechida (from Hebrew word “yachid”, יחיד, singular), the part of the soul which is united with God, the only being that is not hindered by or dependent on cause and effect (thus, freedom of will does not belong to the realm of the physical reality, and inability of natural philosophy to account for it is expected).

White writes next:

Supposedly, they are all different angles on the holistic truth which can’t be known; there are no contradictions, and we are asked to simply take his word for it that this is a mystery that we should not try to explain. On the surface, this thinking (which is common in postmodernism) seems very tolerant, but it’s actually very intolerant towards anyone who dares to declare that any one of these views are the truth while the other views are contradictory and false.

Where should I begin?

To begin with, I am not asking anyone to “take my word for it” – I am asking the reader to examine the scientific truth (our inability to understand how time works beyond our own dimension of time – one way, one dimension) and our trying to reconcile this with religious truth (that God has preordained certain events, that God has granted man the ability to choose to obey Him). When we pit free will versus predestination, we end up deciding that our limited scientific understanding of time has rendered an aspect of religious truth to be false or misunderstood. I, on the other hand, am suggesting that we KNOW that our human, scientific understanding of time beyond our own dimension is (and always will be) insufficient because of our own physical limitations – limitations not ascribed to God (with evidence in Genesis 1:1 and elsewhere). Because we KNOW that we can’t fully understand the scientific truth, why on earth should we discount religious truth, based on our limited scientific knowledge?

The second part of White’s statement (on tolerance/intolerance) has nothing to do with my position, and trying to bring in the boogeyman of postmodernism only clouds the issue (because it is a codeword for ‘heretic’ in many Reformed/Evangelical circles). I don’t really care if the position is tolerant or not, all I care about is if it is more encompassing of the truth than any one reductionist view.

Continuing, Nathan writes:

Later on the page Chris Lyons explains that to accept any one of these views as being the true teaching that is revealed in the Word of God is equivalent to putting God in a box.

From another article, he quotes that:

God should be in a box. What’s the alternative? God has no limitations on what He can be like or act like? That is frightening. God Himself is limited by His own nature. He can’t lie. He can’t sin. He can’t go out of existence. God’s box – the definition of what He is like – is what makes Him God and a Person we can love and trust and glorify. If God isn’t in some kind of a box, He would be arbitrary.

Unfortunately, he is making a complete apples to oranges comparison here, and building a straw man. In my article, the “box” these systems try to force God into is not a “box” made up of religious/philosophical truth (i.e. “God can’t sin”). Rather, the “box” these systems try to force God into is a scientific one made up of time and space, specifically time, which we do not (and can not) understand beyond our own sphere.

While I suspect that White would agree that God exists beyond His own creation, I would just point out that in Genesis 1:1, God already exists (i.e. “before the beginning”), and that when God gives His name (”I AM”), he also gives us a glimpse into His nature. If physicists are correct that there are dimensions of time and space beyond our own (for which there is ample evidence), then it is not putting God in a box to suggest that He is in any and all dimensions which exist beyond our own. It is, however, putting God in a box to suggest that He sees and interacts with time in the same way that we do. In fact, it is much easier to argue that God purposely put himself “in the box” in the form of Jesus, and that Jesus’ limitations to our dimensions would explain many of the differences in aspects between Father and Son, and to why Jesus couldn’t know “the day or the hour” of his return.

Oddly, White goes on (once again incorrectly trying to paint me as postmodern and Emergent) to quote Calvin on why we should accept a degree of mystery in predestination, and then pretty much does what I see many Calvinists do – to claim in theory to accept mystery, but to outright reject it in practice.

He then goes on to attempt to portray the systematization of predestination into the same sphere as that of the concept of Trinity.

But really, it’s no different than another systematized concept that was once the subject of much debate, and yet is embraced by many postmodernists such as Chris Lyons, and that is the Trinity. There’s mystery in it – to be sure, but we are still able to systematically define it within the bounds of scripture, and we believe it is true – because that’s what the bible teaches about our triune and sovereign God.

This is like saying that Cold Fusion must be true because the Law of Gravity is true. Again dealing with apples, oranges and men made of straw.
With the concept of Trinity, there are systematized understandings which go beyond scripture, but the concept of Trinity within scripture is pretty clear, though indeed not fully understood. Genesis 1:1-3 identifies the three parts of the Trinity and John 1 identifies Jesus as the Word in Genesis. There’s no trying to bring scientific constraints into the picture to force a choice between two true aspects of religious truth.

The sad thing with these theological systems (like Calvinism, Arminianism, Open Theism, etc.) is not in what lies at their core: A desire to understand important aspects of God. What is sad is that they are each only aspects of the truth, not the entire truth. The tragic thing occurs when White, Mike Ratliff (”There are two views concerning the Gospel of Jesus Christ. First, there is what we call Calvinism. Then, there are varying degrees of unbelief”), Spurgeon (”Calvinism is the gospel”) and others raise their systematic theologies to the level of scripture.

It is at this point that Calvinism (or any -ism) truly is “another gospel” all together.