Arminians, Calvinists, and Limited Atonement

Here’s a great insight from a great book: What’s So Great About The Doctrines of Grace? by Richard Phillips.

“…It is helpful to note that both Arminians and Calvinists believe in limited atonement.  The question is with regard to what is limited.  Arminians believe that the atonement is limited in terms of its efficacy.  Calvinists believe the atonement is limited in the scope of people for whom it was intended.  Arminians believe the atonement is unlimited in scope but limited in effect: it offers everyone the chance of salvation.  Calvinists believe the atonement is limited in scope but unlimited in effect: it effectually saves the elect.” 

“If we think of the atonement as a bridge spanning a great river, Arminians see it as infinitely wide, but not reaching all the way to the far bank; Calvinists hold that the atonement is a narrow bridge, wide enough only for the elect, but reaching all the way to the other side.  We [Calvinists] believe that Christ’s death actually saves those for whom He died” (p. 56).

Richard Phillips, What’s So Great About The Doctrines of Grace?

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Instead of Complaining…

From a letter by John Newton on May 31, 1775:

“My experience is made up of enigmas, but the sum and solution of all is, that I am a vile creature, but I have a good Lord.  He has chosen me; and I through his rich grace have chosen him.  I trust there is an engagement between him and my soul, which shall never be broken, because he has undertaken for both parts, that he will never forsake me, and that I shall never forsake him.”

“Oh, I like those royal, sovereign words “I will” and “You shall.”  How sweetly are they suited to the sense and long experience he has given me of my own weakness, and the power and subtlety of Satan.  If my conflicts terminate in victory, it must be owing to his arm, and for his own name’s sake, for I in myself have neither strength nor plea.  If I were not so poor, so sick, so foolish, the power, skill, riches, wisdom, and mercy of my Physician, Shepherd, and Savior would not be so signally illustrated in my own case.”

“Upon this account, instead of complaining, we may glory in our infirmities.  Oh, it is pleasant to be deeply indebted to him, to find him, and own him, all in all: ‘Our Husband, Shepherd, Brother, Friend / Our Guide, and Guard, our Way, and End!’”

The Works of John Newton, VI, page 275-276.

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Disabilities, the Gospel, and the Church

We live in a culture that worships beauty, brawn, and body.  From American Idol to Survivor to political races, appearance is front and center.  (The reason why an ugly person won’t win American Idol is the same reason why an ugly person will never win the presidency.)  Young women starve themselves aiming for a “thigh gap,” fifty-year-old women dress like teenagers, and men wear makeup and buy designer clothes to attract the eyes of other people.  It’s a tough world to live in if you are less than perfect, if you are very old, or if you have a disability.

The thing is, most of us know someone with a disability or suffer a disability ourselves.  As Christians, we ask questions: What does the gospel have to do with my cousin who is a paraplegic?  What does the Bible say about your son who has a severe case of Tourette’s syndrome?  What about Christians who are confined to wheelchairs or the beds of the nursing home?  Michael Beates tackles these tough questions in this outstanding book: Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace.  This book is a biblical, practical, and challenging resource for Christians who are struggling with the fact of disability (their own or others’).

In the first part of the book, Beates summarizes some key Bible texts on brokenness, disability, and God’s love.  The second part of the book is a short trek through church history on what it means that humans are image bearers of God.  The third part of the book summarizes the modern non-Christian view of human life and compares/contrasts it to the Christian view of human life.  The final part of this book is where Beates gives pastoral advice to Christians and churches on how to gracefully and lovingly handle disabilities in the church.  There are two appendices.  The first is a discussion of God’s sovereignty and genetic anomalies.  The second is a sermon called, “God’s love for the broken.”

The main emphasis of the book was really a highlighting of the fact that God shows grace to the needy.  The gospel is not for nice, whole, and righteous people but for sick sinners who know they are in desperate need.  The point is that it isn’t just the disabled person who needs God’s grace – we all do!  We’re in the same boat whether healthy, old, young, unhealthy, ugly or attractive, ill or well.  Beates says it well: “The Christian community needs a worldview founded upon helplessness rather than upon power.  Only in this way can the transforming power of the gospel begin to be displayed in our weakness” (p. 130).

“Our culture says, ‘Avoid the broken and the disabled.  Hide your weakness and blemishes.  Act as if they simply aren’t there.’  But the Scriptures give story after story and proposition after proposition saying instead, ‘Understand that you – all of you in some sense or another – are broken.  Stop avoiding the truth and embrace it.’  For in that embrace we begin to grasp the power of God through his grace made manifest in human weakness” (p. 72).

This is one book I’d recommend for pastors and their elders to discuss.  Also, if you have a disability or know someone with one, please get this book.  This book doesn’t give tons of  insights on how to effectively help the disabled.  It goes deeper.  Disability and the Gospel levels the playing field and reminds us that we all are broken and in need of God’s redeeming grace.  When we worship Christ, whether we can walk or not, whether we can talk or not, all of us sigh the same humble prayers: “Lord, I’m sinful, broken, needy.  Please help, forgive me, and save.”  In that light, not only can we help disabled people, but they can help us.  It’s called the fellowship of the saints and it’s grounded in the cross and resurrection of Christ – the one who not only forgives sins but will also some day make our bodies like his glorious body (Phil 3:21).

Michael S. Beates, Disabilities and the Gospel (Crossway: Wheaton, 2012).

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Only the Gospel…

In a sermon on Proverbs 11:30, in 1787, John Newton explained the power of the gospel – the good news that Jesus died and rose to save sinners.  While the law commands, the gospel comforts:

“The Gospel removes difficulties insuperable to human power.  It causes the blind to see, the deaf to hear; it softens the heart of stone and raises the dead in trespasses and sins to a life of righteousness.  No force but that of the Gospel is sufficient to remove the mountainous load of guilt from an awakened conscience, to calm the violence of tumultuous passions, to raise an earthly soul from groveling in the mire of sensuality or greed, to a spiritual and divine life, a life of communion with God.”

“No system but the Gospel can communicate motives, encouragements, and prospects, sufficient to withstand and counteract all the snares and temptations with which the spirit of this world, by its frowns or its smiles, will endeavor either to intimidate or to bribe us from the path of duty.  But the Gospel, rightly understood and cordially embraced, will inspire the slothful with energy and the fearful with courage.  It will make the miser generous, melt the churl [rude person] into kindness, tame the raging tiger in the breast, and, in a word, expand the narrow selfish heart and fill it with a spirit of love to God, a cheerful and unreserved obedience to his will, and benevolence to mankind.”

“…The Gospel, then, is a message from God.  It stains the pride of human glory, and, without regarding the petty distinctions which obtain among men, with respect to character or ranks, it treats them all as sinners in the sight of God, and under the power of depravity strengthened by habit.  As such, it points them to a Savior; it invites and enjoins them to apply to him, to submit to him, and to put their whole trust in him, to renounce all pleas of their own, and to plead his name and his atonement for their pardon and acceptance.  It promises to all who thus plead, that the Holy Spirit of God will visit them, dwell in them, and abide with them, to enable them, by his gracious influence, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure.”

Therefore, we should never be ashamed of the gospel, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16).

The above quotes are found on pages 198-199 & 202 of volume 5 in Newton’s Works.

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The Painful Practice of Piety

 

 

Here’s #924 of Pascal’s Pensees followed by fascinating comments from Peter Kreeft. 

Pascal:

“It is true that there is something painful in beginning to practice piety, but this pain does not arise from the beginnings of piety within us, but from the impiety that is still there….  We only suffer in so far as our natural vice resists supernatural grace, but it would be very wrong to impute this violence to God, who draws us to him, instead of attributing it to the world which holds us back.  It is like a child snatched by its mother from the arms of robbers….  The cruellest war that God can wage on men in this life is to leave them without the war he came to bring.  ‘I came not to send peace but a sword,’ he said.  …Before his coming the world lived in false peace.”

Kreeft:

“The paints of piety are like the withdrawal symptoms when an addict goes clean and sober.  God does not cause pain; sin causes pain.  But the juxtaposition of God and sin also causes pain.”

“The surgeon who does not cut out the cancer is not kind but cruel.  The God of mere kindness whom we long for, the Grandfather God who leaves us alone to enjoy ourselves rather than the Father God who constantly interrupts us and interferes with our lives is really not kind but cruel.  (He is also non-existent!)  The ‘cruel’ God of the Bible is a God of battles.  He fights a spiritual war for us against the demons of sin in us.  This God is not cruel but kind, as kind as he can possibly be.  The sword he comes to us with (Mt. 10:34) is a surgeon’s scalpel, and this Surgeon’s hands are covered with his own blood.”

Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 332-333.

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