Dave Owen's obituary

http://www.malibutimes.com/articles/2008/12/17/obituaries/obit2.txt

Life: Imagine the Potential

He learned church discipline from Johnny Mac

Last month I mentioned the fallout from the Florida church discipline fiasco and subsequent Nine Marks commentary in a post called "Church Discipline called 'extortion' by Fox News".  Tonight on my way home from work I was listening to a recent message from John MacArthur on church discipline in which he mentioned that the pastor of that church was actually a graduate of The Master's Seminary and a personal friend.  He was discussing how rare it is or churches to practice church discipline these days, even though it is so clearly taught in Scripture.

Grace Community Church in southern California is approaching John MacArthur's 40th anniversary as their pastor, and in recent weeks he has been discussing the biblical foundations that were laid all those years ago.  I recommend subscribing to their sermon podcast.

Required Reading

John Piper uses Matthew 10:29 and Daniel 2:21 to reflect on how the wondrous works God is performing in our land were ordained to demonstrate his mercy and longsuffering.  Here's an excerpt:

If God guides geese so precisely, he also guides the captain’s hands. God knew that when he took the plane down, he would also give a spectacular deliverance. So why would he do that? If he means for all to live, why not just skip the crash?

Because he meant to give our nation a parable of his power and mercy the week before a new President takes office. God can take down a plane any time he pleases—and if he does, he wrongs no one. Apart from Christ, none of us deserves anything from God but judgment. We have belittled him so consistently that he would be perfectly just to take any of us any time in any way he chooses.

But God is longsuffering. He is slow to anger. He withholds wrath every day. This is what we saw in the parable. The crash of Flight 1549 illustrates God’s right and power to judge. The landing of the plane represents God’s mercy. It was God’s call to all the passengers and all their families and all who heard the story to repent and turn to God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and receive forgiveness for sin.

I strongly encourage you to read this article and pass it along.

Ava Marie Lord

Born January 12, in the year of our Lord 2009 at 8:35 PM
18 inches (1 cubit) in length
6 lbs. 6 oz. (don't know what that is in shekels)

Happy Anniversary!

The love of my life,

More than I could ever have dreamed

You have been faithful through so much

(Patient in affliction)

Thank you for loving me

We are now old

Order of Elective Decrees, Part 3

I promised last month to post some articles on the Order of Elective Decrees, and here's the final entry, dealing with the topics of Amyraldism and Improved Amyraldism, or Baxterianism. The doctrine of Amyraldism, was formulated by Moise Amyraut, a French theologian who taught at the University of Saumur. A version of it was also held to by English Puritan Richard Baxter, who actually developed the theological framework separately from Amyraut, before he had ever read any of his works (see Timothy Beougher, Richard Baxter and Conversion: A Study of Puritan Concept of Becoming Christian).

Amyraldism can also be described as Four-Point Calvinism, or “hypothetical universalism.” Those who hold to this view hold to traditional reformed views regarding original sin, election, grace, and preservation. The atonement of Christ is only hypothetically universal, since it is efficacious for the elect alone. This is not the same as universal redemption, because Amyraldians know only the elect will be atoned for in the end. Amyraut believed God loved all men in general, but he gave a special, effectual grace to the elect to counteract their moral inability to believe. Amyraldism differs from the statements of most four-point Calvinists in that it is rooted firmly in God’s sovereign, unconditional election. Many people who deny the limited atonement are not so firmly founded in sovereign grace of God, so not everyone who claims to be a “four pointer” should be lumped into this category.

In the argument between Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism, the distinction is not chronological, but logical, in the mind of God in eternity past. If Baxter and Amyraut are truly conceiving of hypothetical universalism in the order of decrees rather than in the mind of Christ while he died, then we have no issue. But Amyraldism is not just concerned with something logical in eternity past, but with the nature of the Atonement in its execution. This means that when we discuss Amyraldism vs. Infralapsarianism, the setting of the argument moves from eternity past in the mind of God, to ca. 33 A.D. in the mind of Christ on the cross.

The esteemed Puritan pastor Richard Baxter offers a modified form of Amyraldism, which has been called “Baxterianism”, or “Improved Amyraldism.” Unlike Amyraut, Baxter formulated most of his thoughts in terms of governmental or political method. Christ’s death on the cross not only atoned for the sins of the elect as their Savior, but it also purchased for him the right to reign over all mankind as their Lord. Timothy Beougher writes that his view is “in contrast to the strict Reformed understanding that God’s decree to give faith to the elect precedes his decree to send Christ to redeem them, and that therefore the atonement is limited to the elect.”

Again we see Baxter’s policical theory at work. In Baxter’s system it was critical that one maintain a universal atonement, for it was at the very cornerstone of God’s new design of Government: ‘He [Christ] hat laid the Foundation of his new right of Rectorship…God being minded to change the Government of the World, did lay the whole Foundation of the New Government in Christs Universal Redemption, even as he laid the Foundation of the Old Government, in the Creation of Man after his Image.’ …

Because Christ died for all, if any perish it is only because they did not take the remedy offered in Christ. (51)

So for Baxter, the incarnation and death of Christ was very much like the parable of the evil Tenants with Christ being the son who came to set things in order on behalf of his father, like a prince coming back to a kingdom left under the rule of a viceroy. (In this illustration, you may picture the Vineyard is the whole world, but consider that Calvin in his “Harmony of the Gospels” interprets the parable with the Vineyard as the church and the tenants as evil priests. My use of it here is for illustrative purposes only.)

The Helvetic Consensus was written to fight the Amyraldian teachings. Canon 6 states,

Wherefore, we can not agree with the opinion of those who teach: l) that God, moved by philanthropy, or a kind of special love for the fallen of the human race, did, in a kind of conditioned willing, first moving of pity, as they call it, or inefficacious desire, determine the salvation of all, conditionally, i.e., if they would believe, 2) that he appointed Christ Mediator for all and each of the fallen; and 3) that, at length, certain ones whom he regarded, not simply as sinners in the first Adam, but as redeemed in the second Adam, he elected, that is, he determined graciously to bestow on these, in time, the saving gift of faith; and in this sole act election properly so called is complete. For these and all other similar teachings are in no way insignificant deviations from the proper teaching concerning divine election; because the Scriptures do not extend unto all and each God's purpose of showing mercy to man, but restrict it to the elect alone, the reprobate being excluded even by name, as Esau, whom God hated with an eternal hatred (Rom. 9:11). The same Holy Scriptures testify that the counsel and will of God do not change, but stand immovable, and God in the heavens does whatsoever he will (Ps. 115:3; Isa. 47:10); for God is infinitely removed from all that human imperfection which characterizes inefficacious affections and desires, rashness, repentance and change of purpose. The appointment, also, of Christ, as Mediator, equally with the salvation of those who were given to him for a possession and an inheritance that can not be taken away, proceeds from one and the same election, and does not form the basis of election.

God wills that things be as they are for his glory. He is infinitely free, and any sense of him binding himself to us, or making him perplexed or concerned about what we might do, we must avoid.

The reason I reject Amyraldism is that I believe the atonement was an actual paying of the penalty for those who were its objects. Think of it in judicial terms: once the debt for a crime has been satisfied, you cannot make someone pay for it again. Scripture tells us that the non-elect go to hell for all eternity as the wages of their sins. This means that their sins were not already paid for. Therefore, the atonement was not for them; Jesus did not pay the penalty for their sins or they would not be in hell.

B.B. Warfield's Plan of Salvation:

It is impossible to contend that God intends the gift of his Son for all men alike and equally and at the same time intends that it shall not actually save all but only a select body which he himself provides for it. The schematization of the order of decrees presented by the Amyraldians, in a word, necessarily implies a chronological relation of precedence and subsequence among the decrees, the assumption of which abolishes God, and this can be escaped only by altering the nature of the atonement.

Salvation is monergistic. Everything God does in the Plan of Salvation, he does according to his purpose, with ultimate, supreme sovereignty, and His purpose will stand. The sending of Christ to atone, and the sending of the Spirit to apply saving grace, and the keeping of his own hand to hold us firmly and preserve us forever, all proceed “from one and the same election.” The objects of each of these are all the same: the sheep of which the Good Shepherd will lose none.

• The Order of God's Eternal Elective Decrees, Part 1
• B.B. Warfield on the Supralapsarian Controversy
• The Order of God's Eternal Elective Decrees, Part 2

Ghana's President sworn in with ESV

This is the finest English-language Bible yet produced.  The translation's own Preface tells the story of the tradition in which the Church of Scotland's moderator hands a Bible to the new monarch in the British coronation service, saying, "This Book is the most valuable thing that this world affords.  Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God."  It is now very exciting to see this translation used in an actual "coronation service" of sorts.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16-17, ESV)

UPDATE: The new president is a "staunch member of the Christian faith", and the language of Covenant is being used regarding his new term in office.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity:

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Saint Paul of Tarsus, the Apostle:

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory? (Romans 9:16-23, ESV)

From John Frame, The Doctrine of God, pp.146:

What if it turns out that we are robots after all—clay fashioned into marvelous robots, rather than being left as mere clay? Should we complain to God about that? Or should we rather feel honored that our bodies and minds are fashioned so completely to fulfill our assigned roles in God's great drama? Some creatures are born as rabbits, some as cockroaches, and some as bacteria. By comparison, would it not be a privilege to be born as an intelligent robot?

Indeed, what remarkable robots we would be—capable of love and intimacy with God, and assigned to rule over all the creatures. Is it not a wonderful blessing of grace that, when we sinned in Adam, God did not simply discard us, as a potter might very well do with his clay, and as a robot operator might well do with his malfunctioning machine, but sent his only Son to die for us? Risen with him to new life, believers enjoy unimaginably wonderful fellowship with him forever.

As we meditate upon these dignities and blessings, the image of the robot becomes less and less appropriate, not because God's control over us appears less complete, but because one doesn't treat robots with such love and honor.

Tim Challies blogged today about Augustine's Four States of Man:

Before the Fall	After the Fall	Regenerated	Glorified
able to sin	able to sin	able to sin	unable to sin
able to not sin	unable to not sin	able to not sin	able to not sin

In the first stage of man, we say Adam was "able to sin" and "able not to sin". However, he was not truly free. This is what bugs me about the 1689 Confession's (and WCF) statement about the "liberty of mutable will"... (Thankfully the next chapter says God "directed it all to his glory.")

Edwards' The Freedom of the Will (and Concerning the Divine Decrees, etc.) helped me move beyond the notion that Adam was truly "free". Edwards says that knowledge after-the-fact (if it is not a hallucination), makes an event necessary, that it actually happened. So it is with God's foreknowledge: his knowledge that something will happen makes an event just as necessary as if it were after-known by us. So, if it is a necessity that it could not happen any other way, in what sense was the will truly free to do any other than what was foreknown?

The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world (or in other translations, before the foundation of the world, the names of the elect were written in the book of the Lamb who was slain). Therefore, it had to happen the way it did.  The sovereignty of God governed Adam's mutable will just as much as his sovereignty governed those who were gathered together against Jesus (Acts 4), and just as much as his sovereignty governs everything today. If Adam was truly free, then Jesus was a Plan B rescue mission. But no, the covenant of Grace was Plan A all along.

When Lewis wrote Mere Christianity, he was doing it as an apologetic work to reason with unbelievers (e.g. it could be that his free will thing was merely milk and not meat to him, but I could be wrong). So Christians who use the "robots can't love" argument are playing with mudpies when they could take the offer of a holiday at the beach.

I love C.S. Lewis, but Edwards would have none of that free-will talk. Just the same, Calvinists out there would do well to be respectful to Lewis, one of the 20th century's greatest theologians, who, like the Law in Galatians 3:24, was a schoolteacher to many of us.

My new hero

"We have gone back to the old school..."

It is often said that the doctrines we believe have a tendency to lead us to sin. I have heard it asserted most positively, that those high doctrines which we love, and which we find in the Scriptures, are licentious ones. I do not know who will have the hardihood to make that assertion, when they consider that the holiest of men have been believers in them. I ask the man who dares to say that Calvinism is a licentious religion, what he thinks of the character of Augustine, or Calvin, or Whitefield, who in successive ages were the great exponents of the system of grace; or what will he say of the Puritans, whose works are full of them? Had a man been an Arminian in those days, he would have been accounted the vilest heretic breathing; but now we are looked upon as the heretics, and they as the orthodox. We have gone back to the old school; we can trace our descent from the apostles. It is that vein of free-grace, running through the sermonizing of Baptists, which has saved us as a denomination. Were it not for that, we should not stand where we are to-day. We can run a golden line up to Jesus Christ Himself, through a holy succession of mighty fathers, who all held these glorious truths; and we can ask concerning them, "Where will you find holier and better men in the world?" No doctrine is so calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the grace of God. Those who have called it "a licentious doctrine" did not know anything at all about it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that their own vile stuff was the most licentious doctrine under Heaven. If they knew the grace of God in truth, they would soon see that there was no preservative from lying like a knowledge that we are elect of God from the foundation of the world. There is nothing like a belief in my eternal perseverance, and the immutability of my Father's affection, which can keep me near to Him from a motive of simple gratitude. Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other. Of all men, those have the most disinterested piety, the sublimest reverence, the most ardent devotion, who believe that they are saved by grace, without works, through faith, and that not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Christians should take heed, and see that it always is so, lest by any means Christ should be crucified afresh, and put to an open shame.

-- From The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon (Google books / Amazon)