Calvinism

In Sunday school, we are studying reformed theology, specifically the five points of Calvinism represented by the acronym TULIP.  My conversion to Calvinism began the summer before my junior year of college and was complete by the end of the following summer, with limited atonement being the last and most difficult pill to swallow; that was six years ago.  Now as I’m teaching my class about Calvinism and defending its five points, I find some of the things coming out of my mouth not sitting well with me anymore.  Maybe I swallowed the pills too quickly.  Let me make an aside.  I am still a five point Calvinist.  As a philosophical and theological system, it’s basically right.  However, on a more biblical and historical level, some nuance is required.  Here’s what I mean.  The problem I have is with how we understand covenant and election.  Who does the Bible include under the label “elect”?  Traditionally, the elect are those unconditionally chosen by God, for whom Christ died, to whom life is given by the Spirit, and whom God will preserve to the end.  Calvinism is a theological system that is rigid and makes a lot of sense.  My contention, though, is that the Bible is less rigid and more historical when it speaks concerning “the elect”.  That is, the church is the elect; this entity which exists in time and space, made up of baptized people.  This historical community is what the Bible calls the body of Christ, for whom Christ died, who received a measure of grace from the Spirit, and ultimately made up of some who will not persevere to the end.  This, I believe, is a more biblical view of the church.  Rather than ignoring the covenant community for the sake of “the elect”, it defines the elect in terms of the covenant.  This is just a brief summary of my thinking.  A lot more could be said.  I will try to post other relevant materials in the future.

Is the Bible Unique?

As a Christian, I believe that the Bible is the word of God. But what does it mean for the Bible to be the word of God? To many people, this status given to the Bible entails a couple of misguided assumptions, one of which I would like to deal with in this brief article. This first assumption concerns the uniqueness of the Bible. Some would say that the Bible’s uniqueness is a sign of its authenticity as God’s word. It is assumed that being God’s word, it is unlike any other book in its class. It’s set apart from all other human writings. There is nothing in the world like it. But what if the Bible is not as unique as some assume? What if the Bible was not that different from other literary works of its own time? Would it lose its status as God’s word, or rather, would it confirm that this is truly what one would expect God’s word to be like? I affirm the latter. What I want to point out in this article is that the Bible is not as unique as many have thought ,and that Christians shouldn’t be afraid to say so. Within the last 150 years, archeology has discovered ancient texts dating back to the second millennia B.C that contain stories and customs which find similiarities with the biblical accounts. Amongst these stories are an ancient Babylonian creation story and a flood story. How do we as Bible believing christians understand the Bible in light of these findings? Should it baffle us that these other stories predate the writing of scripture? Do we forfeit Scripture’s claim to be the word of God? Were the liberals right in saying that the Bible is just another book? To these questions, I give an emphatic “No”. For this is precisely what I should expect the Bible to look like. It should be written in the popular styles and genres of its day so that the people can understand it. This is how God reveals himself.