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Erwählung und freier Wille …

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In Vorbereitung einer Veranstaltung am kommenden Wochenende kam ich bei meinen Recherchen auf die Webseite von David Rieke, dessen ‘Benutzerhandbuch‘ in einem Privatverlag auf deutsch rausgekommen ist.














http://davidrieke.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html





Since my son has been majoring in biblical  studies at the nearby Christian university, it was inevitable that he  should run into the perennial election-predestination (Calvinism vs.  Arminianism) debate with his teachers and classmates. At his particular  school he hears both sides of the controversy, which is a good thing.  Still, debaters tend to be so certain of their own positions, and each  considers the other’s position to be so very off-putting, or even  heretical. With my son, I guess we all wonder why equally devoted and  intelligent Christians can’t come to a consensus on this issue.





The Two Sides of the Debate





The Calvinist says: God Himself already chose (in eternity past) who would be saved and who would not be saved, and human beings only seem
 to choose salvation for themselves. Predestined individuals may feel 
like they are making independent choices but, in reality, their fates 
are (as the ‘i’ in the TULIP acronym indicates) “irresistible.”

The problem with this, of course, is that 
the normal, natural reading of the Bible becomes incoherent if we don’t 
acknowledge the reality of legitimate human choices. “And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17).
The Arminian says: Human beings choose for themselves whether or not they will be saved, and God only seems
 to choose them. God simply sees ahead of time which individuals will 
choose to trust the gospel, and then follows their lead and “elects” 
them accordingly (i.e. after they have dictated their own choices to 
God). 

The problem with the 
Arminian view is that the Bible specifically says that God does indeed 
take the initiative in choosing His children. “I will have mercy on 
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have 
compassion.  So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that 
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:15-16). 

And thus the line is drawn in the sand. The
 majority of Bible-readers in the world take the Arminian side and 
stumble all over themselves trying to explain the election and 
predestination passages in Scripture. But a carefully educated (read 
“coached”) and strong minority of believers take the Calvinist side and 
stumble at every text that involves human free will.





Thoughtless Arguments That Are Easily Countered





Then, to make matters worse, both sides enlist their straw-man armies to scare off their opponents.





  1. “Really,”
      say the hard-core Calvinists, “there’s no such thing as human free
 will.”      But doesn’t the passage explicitly say, “whoever wills to do so,      let him take the water freely”?
  2. “The      belief in predestination,” says the 
Arminian, “completely undermines all      motivation for evangelism and 
prayer.” But aren’t we forced to admit that      a great many Calvinists have been our premier models of Christian      evangelism and prayer?
  3. “No      one can come to Christ unless the Father draws
 him to do      so—irresistible grace. Period. Case closed,” says the 
Calvinist (John      6:44). But didn’t Jesus Himself promise that if He 
were crucified He would      “draw all people,” not just the elect, to Himself (John      12:32)?
  4. “All      things cannot possibly be 
predestinated. That would defy all      reason,” says the Arminian. But 
didn’t the apostle teach us that God      predestinates and “works all things after counsel of his own will”      (Eph. 1:11)?
  5. “Total      depravity makes us all completely unable
 to respond correctly to      God’s voice,” says the Calvinist, “and God
 alone can awaken the hearts of      the elect.” But doesn’t the 
Scripture say that every heart is      impacted by the grace of Christ “who sheds light upon every person      who comes into the world,” not just the elect (John 1:9)?





An Impossible Possibility?





It is 
evident, I think, that an unprejudiced reading of Scripture (or as close
 to unprejudiced as it seems any man is able to come) is going to yield 
two conclusions: God really chooses man for salvation and doesn’t just seem to choose him; and man really chooses Christ for salvation and doesn’t just seem to choose Him. 

This may seem impossible and hopelessly 
contradictory, but it does fit very nicely with the testimony of “the 
whole counsel of God.”





A Proposed Solution





Perhaps the  disequilibrium caused by the election-predestination passages in  Scripture is largely attributable to the “difficulty” of marrying time  and eternity in God’s dealings with humankind. 
 God “inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), and  is the creator of time. We perceive time by the movements of the earth  relative to the sun, as though the universe were one great timepiece.  But there was a “time” when the earth and sun did not exist at all, when  they were not yet created. 
 Our Lord apparently doesn’t need time, and  He exists outside of time. We are like people walking along a timeline  with a very definite past, present and future. God doesn’t walk on our  timeline. He apparently lives right now in all our “tomorrows” and in  all our “yesterdays”—a mind-boggling prospect.
 A glimpse of the problem we humans run into  when trying to wed our time with God’s eternity may be found in Jesus’  words to the Pharisees, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). This  sentence doesn’t make sense to us because it lacks tense agreement  (mixing up the past and present). We want it to read, “Before Abraham  was, I was.”  Instead, it apparently says, “Before 2000 B.C., I am there right now.”
 Now, what if these considerations are  factored into our election-predestination questions? What if our  conversion experience (or any other experience) actually involves a  collision of time and eternity—our time and God’s eternity? How exactly  could human language describe the choosing that God does and the  choosing that man does in that process? 
 If God is in our past right now (“Before  Abraham was, I am”), is He just now arriving at the moment when we once  responded to His gospel—perhaps at some gospel service in our past, or  at some quiet moment with a friend who told us the gospel? Is He right now experiencing what is in the past to us? 
 Of course, an eternal God should also be  experiencing at this same moment what we call the future, our tomorrows.  And He should be experiencing our present moment as well, all at the  same “time.” 
 How then can we speak dogmatically about  whether God hardened Pharaoh’s heart first, or whether Pharaoh hardened  his own heart first? Or whether God chose us first, or we chose God  first? What, after all, does “first” mean if there is no sequence of  time with God? What does “first” mean to a God who is living in this  present moment as well as in a time before Abraham existed?






 My proposed solution for the  Calvinism-Arminianism debate is that we all become a lot more humble,  and that we believe what seems to be an impossibility—that God truly  elects people according to His own preferences, and that humans truly  choose to accept or reject the gospel without being “irresistibly drawn”  into doing so. Perhaps it is because these two choosings—divine and  human—are happening on two different plains—temporal and eternal, that  they can both be truly independent and truly authentic.






 And if the ways of a God who “inhabits  eternity,” and yet meets us in time, seem impossible for us to imagine,  we may comfort ourselves in knowing that our God is not so small as to  be understood by silly humans who still require calendars to know what  day we are in. 


	


	






		

			
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