What is the Gospel?

This seems to be a very simple, foundational question to the Christian faith that one would expect even the most infantile of Christians to be able to answer. But upon observation of the kinds of things that many close to me advocate for and against, I find myself unsure as to whether or not these persons actually understand the Gospel. "Of course I know what the Gospel is", they might answer. But when pressed for an answer, responses such as "The Gospel is that God has a plan for your life" or "That God wants you to be happy" are what I get. Friends, this is a poor representation (indeed, a false representation) of the Gospel. The Gospel is not that God wishes to increase your material wealth or that God wants you to have "your best life now". The Gospel is much more urgent and far more substantive than this.

The Problem

It is important, I think, to first understand the condition that humanity is in. There is problem that humanity as a whole faces. That problem is sin. Sin ought to be understood as that which "misses the mark" or better understood, moral violations of God's commandments and laws. The first sin committed by mankind was the sin of disobedience. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the Tree, and yet Adam and Eve did just that. Therefore, "just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned." Sin, because of Adam's initial transgression, has now covered the whole mass of humanity from the Fall until the end of human history. This presents a major problem. The problem of sin is that "none are righteous" before God. No one has the ability to please God. Because of sin, we are spiritually dead. What this means is that none can do good, none can stand blameless before God, and so now all are condemned before God. As sinful creatures, we stand condemned before God and subject to His wrath against sin. This should be alarming; because we are subject to God's wrath, we are subject to an eternity of torment and hellfire. What's more, God has promised to judge unrighteousness. We're given explicit imagery in the book of Revelation about God's coming wrath against sin.

The Solution

Thankfully, God, in His mercy, has provided a way out of that impending wrath. God sent His Son Jesus Christ, who is the Second Person of the Trinity, to instead bear the wrath of God for those that would instead believe in Christ's divinity and resurrection for the forgiveness of their sins. Christ came to Earth for this expressed purpose. And because Christ's mission is now complete, any that would repent of their sins--their actions that go against the commandments and laws of God, including unbelief--and would place their faith in Christ for the forgiveness of those sins, that same person would find themselves now safely removed from God's wrath and into His mercy and grace.

 Conclusion

As we've seen, then, the Gospel isn't a means for one to materially prosperous or to be in perfect health. The Gospel isn't merely, "God has a plan for your life". The Gospel is a light in a world that is marred and darkened by a rebellious people. It is the answer to the existential crisis that man faces at the end of human history. It is hope. And it is available to all that hear it, so that if anyone who does hear it believes, that person would be saved. 

God bless!

TULIP and Molinism: An Unlikely Pairing

This blog post is going to assume that one has an understanding of what the systems of Calvinism and Molinism are. Perhaps at a later time I'll will briefly go over the workings of both of these systems, but for now, if you wish to learn about both of these things, I recommend you check out the article on Molinism here and the article on Calvinism here.

The purpose of this entry is to see if Calvinism, or rather the Doctrines of Grace, are compatible with a Molinist understanding divine omniscience. I submit to you that they are compatible

Free Will and the Doctrines of Grace

The main hangup that I suspect Calvinists would have with Molinism is the notion of "free will". Historically, Calvinism has been deterministic, but does this actually mean that Calvinism, therefore, is deterministic? Obviously not. Just because persons have applied a divinely causal deterministic understanding to the Doctrines of Grace does not imply that it therefore presupposes divine causal determinism. Instead, we should feel free to interpret the Doctrines of Grace against our preferred anthropology. In this case, I will be presupposing the truth of libertarian free will (a later post will be defending the notion of free will) and presenting a model that, if successful, will allow for the conjunction Molinism and Calvinism. For now, we will assume that libertarian free will is the idea that some agent S is able to perform some action A so that A is not a result of S's being causally determined to do A by some factors outside of S's control.

The Calvinist understanding of salvation is as follows: man is naturally unable to assent to God's commands and laws due to the effects of sin. As such, man is hopelessly lost and so needs assistance in order to be able to assent to God's laws and commandments. This is where the work of regeneration, by the Holy Spirit, enables any elect person to salvation to actually respond favorably and voluntarily to God's calling. Furthermore, this response cannot fail to happen, since God does not fail to save those whom He has chosen. The Holy Spirit then preserves this person in the Faith and continually works in them so as to keep them from falling away.

What we want to focus on are the following: that God must be the one to enable a person to favorably and voluntarily respond to God's calling on their life to salvation, and that this person will not fail to be saved once they are enabled to respond. These are the Calvinist doctrines of Regenerative Grace and Irresistible Grace. More simply, we can say that God enables, or regenerates a person to be saved, and then this regenerated person will infallibly be saved. Herein lies the difficulty.

If libertarian free will is true, there appears to be a problem here. For if it is certain that a regenerate person will be saved, it would seem that the regenerate person really didn't really have a libertarian choice concerning it. But, is this necessarily the case on Molinism? As we will see, there is no reason to think so.

Molinism and Calvinism 

Molinism is often times confused with its Arminian application. What this means is that Molinism is confused as the understanding that "God wants the most amount of people to be saved" or "God actualizes the world where the greatest amount of people are freely saved." Whether or not this is true is irrelevant to this entry. Rather, Molinism simpliciter just is the doctrine of middle knowledge. So while this "Arminian-Molinism" relies on Molinism for its coherence, Molinism itself does not, in any way, imply that this is how Molinism ought to be understood. Molinism is a way to understand how God saves people, not why. This is an important distinction.

Molinism and Unconditional Election/Limited Atonement

With this in mind, we can now move forward. Because Molinism is just how God saves people and not why, we should therefore come to realize that there isn't any explicit or implicit contradiction between middle knowledge and the Doctrines of Grace. One is thus free to accept the doctrines of Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement, as these doctrines answer the important why question. One can easily say that God unconditionally elects a limited few, and we need not assume that God doesn't use His knowledge of who would freely accept Him as the basis of His election; just that whomever God elects will freely come to faith, and that how a person comes to faith is via these circumstances that God has placed them in so as to bring about their response to the Gospel.

Molinism and Total Depravity

At first glance, it seems that total depravity and Molinism are incompatible; after all, according to total depravity, man is completely unable to follow God and to choose the things of God due to the effects of sin. But Molinism affirms that man is entirely able to choose God. So how can these two things be reconciled? Simply put, total depravity and Molinism are incompatible insofar as one considers Pelagianism and Molinism. However, there are ways to escape this, as the Arminians have successfully done. One could affirm that God preveniently works in a person so as to enable them to follow Him. God must be the one to initiate faith, so that any person could freely respond to the command of the Gospel. In this way, we've successfully escaped the charge of Pelagianism, since there isn't anything in us that could please God without God's working in us first.
 

Molinism and Irresistible Grace

In fact, we can affirm that this "prevenient grace" is actually just regenerative grace, if God does in fact unconditionally elect a limited few people from the mass of humanity. This is the caveat; on this Calvinist-Molinist model, while this regenerative grace operates similarly to prevenient grace as it does on Arminian-Molinist models (so that this grace, though regenerative, is not effectual, merely enabling and so non-determinitive), this grace is bestowed upon only the Elect. But this presents a problem, namely, in what sense then is this grace "irresistible?" If this grace doesn't determine that a person would be saved, then how can it be irresistible? The answer to this is simple: on Molinism, God knows the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom whereby any creature would be saved if bestowed this grace. If God, then, bestows this grace on His elect, it follows that God knows that if He were to do so, this person would be saved! And because God is necessarily correct in His knowledge, it follows then that this person would not fail to be saved. 

Summarizing the Model

As we've seen, Molinism and Calvinism are in fact compatible. God has unconditionally elected a limited number of persons that are totally depraved and so cannot respond to Him favorably. In order to save them, He utilizes His middle knowledge and places them in circumstances that He knows would result in their repentance and belief in the Gospel if regenerated beforehand and enabled to respond favorably. This model seems entirely coherent and yet works with libertarian free will. Nothing is causally determined, and yet God's purposes are thoroughly accomplished according to the Calvinist. As we've set out to demonstrate, it seems then that TULIP and Molinism are in fact compatible.


Special thanks to my good friend Andrew Harland-Smith for his work in this area. It isn't an exaggeration to say that this entry is heavily influenced by his thoughts on the subject. I don't have any links of his work, but will add some as they become available. 

 

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! As the title suggests, I am of Guyanese origin and have a desire to know the things of God. In the way of introduction, it'd be best if I spoke briefly about myself:

When I was 11, I thought I had "accepted Jesus" into my heart. I remember distinctly believing with all of my heart that Christ was Lord and that He had died for my sins, and that I wanted to serve Him for the rest of my life. What followed shortly afterwards was a 5 year period of lashing out, disbelief, and confusion.

Growing up in a strictly religious household was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing behind it is obvious: I grew up knowing the things of God. The Bible, in all of it's authority and truth, was taught regularly and served as the basis for our lives. My father, being a pastor, made it a point to grow myself and my siblings up in the ways of God. But the curse, far from being associated with the blessing, is a testament to fallen human nature: in such a household, there was little to no room for shortcomings, failures, or freethinking. Therefore, it was difficult to express my doubts, concerns, and thoughts on various subjects concerning the Faith like, "Are Allah and Yahweh the same God, like the Muslims claim?" or "Does God really require us to believe in Jesus?" Couple doubt with the growing pains of life (puberty is not your friend) and one finds themselves in quite the predicament. Needless to say, I was a mess.

Fast forward to my junior year of high school, a particular unsavory event landed me in trouble with a teacher that I was on good terms with that almost lead to me getting expelled. Thankfully, that teacher showed me mercy and didn't alert any higher power to my wickedness. But something changed for me that weekend that really had me fed up with everything. I was tired of the way I was and I wanted something to be done about it. So in church that Sunday, I prayed something to the following effect: "God, I'm tired of this. I knew You way back when, but now I'm confused and lost. I need something from You right now, and if You'll answer me, I'll follow You forever." Well, God was faithful to that prayer. Less than 5 minutes, as a woman in our church was interceding on behalf of the church, says out loud for all the hear, "My son, why do you doubt me?"

This blog will eventually feature a discussion on continuationism and cessationism (spoiler: I'm a continuationist, though my particular view is a bit more nuanced than that), but whatever your stance on it is, I think we could all agree that this event wasn't mere coincidence. It is because of God's faithfulness to me that I in turn aim to comment on and deliver what I believe to be sound doctrine and exposition of the Word of God.

So, that's my testimony! Over the next several weeks, this blog will be an outlet for various topics. Soteriology and divine omniscience is one such topic that interests me greatly, and so I'll be doing several pieces to describe viewpoints pertaining to that to start this blog off. This will feature explanations of my personal viewpoint and why I hold to it over more popular viewpoints and some response pieces to articles that criticize my view.

With that said, stay tuned and God bless you!