God Loves… Himself

One obvious question is how Luther found his way out of the egocentric thinking of the world and of the professing Church at the time. The quote from below shows how this happened and it also informs us of the basic nature of the driving questions people have today. Jonathan Edwards spoke of how evangelism starts with recognition of the selfishness of human beings. That cannot be bypassed, and it can even be useful in talking to people in their fallen condition. No person that is interested in the absence of pain and the presence of the greatest good will want to go to hell. That is the place we start because that is the only place an unregenerate person can start. But the answer to the egocentric question must become, as it did with Luther, theocentric as indeed the Gospel is. We cannot stay with the egocentric question but move the issue to God.

“He himself began with an egocentric conception in his quest for a ‘gracious God.’ His problem was: ‘How can I attain such conformity with the Law of God that I may be sure of acceptance with Him and secure peace for my troubled mind and conscience? He found a gracious God, as we have seen, but not by the way he had sought, not by becoming worthy of God’s approval. Indeed, it was rather the gracious God who found him and took him to Himself, despite his unworthiness and sin. Luther did not win God’s favor by his merits, but God’s unmerited grace overmastered Luther and became the compelling force in his life. To his egocentric question, we might say, Luther received a theocentric answer, which became thenceforward his dominant and all-absorbing theme. We can certainly speak of a Copernican revolution here.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

This is the cry of the penitent Publican in Luke 18:13. “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'” The tax collector saw his sin and that drove him to God asking for grace. This was the issue with Luther. He was a brilliant man who was trained in the legal field. He became a monk and was severe on his body with the whip and sleeping on cold floors in an effort to attain righteousness. It is said that he confessed sin to his confessor for hours. His brilliant mind had been opened by God to see to some degree the extent of the Law and he saw that the number of his sins were more numerous than he could imagine. But in seeking God to save him in the way of his own efforts, honesty and biblical training forced him to see that this was not possible. He was driven to a Gospel of grace alone. What we see, then, though for Luther this agony of soul lasted for years, was that his egocentric drive to obtain salvation drove him to the point where God opened his eyes to true grace. From then on Luther grew in his God-centeredness.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of God and the Gospel of the glory of God. This Gospel is fully centered upon God and His glory. It is a Gospel of the cross of Christ where the glory of God shines forth through Jesus Christ. It is the Gospel of a resurrected Savior because now He lives in the souls of His people. The God-centered Savior that saves sinners will save them from their self-centeredness and be the life of God and God-centeredness in their souls. The Lord Jesus Christ who is the life of those He saves is thoroughly and perfectly God-centered. He is perfect in His love for the Father and His God-centeredness. He also has perfect love for His people and out of His love for the Father and for His people He will only do what is the very best for them. He will work a love for God in them which is to say that they will become God-centered.

We can see the awful nature of pride in the souls of human beings. Pride is so hideous that it will take a human soul and blind it to the truth of God and of self. It blinds souls to think that God must be gracious to them. It blinds souls to thinking that God loves them in a human-centered way and that His love will leave them in their self-centeredness and humanistic way of thinking. We would do well to focus on Isaiah 48:11 which says this: “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.” That leads us to the prayer of the saints: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, But to Your name give glory Because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth” (Psa 115:1). The cry of Luther’s life and writings echoed the cry and prayer of the psalmist. It was that no glory would be theirs but instead would be God’s. While the Pharisees sought the honor of others in their self-made religion, true Christianity flees from glory for self in order that it may all be God’s. After all, all true glory is His anyway.

It seems quite a stretch to make the claim, as the quote does below, that the history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between man-centeredness and God-centeredness. I have been making the claim that the heart of doctrine is that same issue. While people hold to the same external teaching and the same words, there is no real common ground between a man-centered and a God-centered view of doctrine. From a man-centered view of things there is not a lot of difference between Arminianism and Reformed thinking, but from a God-centered view the difference can be quite enormous. The difference between what a proud person says and what a humble person says can also be enormous. While many think that Luther was very proud in standing up to the ecclesiastical and governmental powers of his day, I think that it was done in utter humility. There is also a difference in what a man-centered view says of pride and humility and what a God-centered view says of pride and humility. A man-centered view thinks of humility as being unable to state things with certainty and that humility is primarily shown to men. A God-centered view thinks of humility as the emptiness of self and is primarily before God. A man-centered view of humility is really pride and a man-centered view of pride is really humility. Luther stood before God first and so he stood for the glory of God before men. His humility was seen as pride. The so-called humility of man-centeredness is nothing but pride because it will not stand for God first.

“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

When God brought Luther on the scene, He brought a man that He had prepared both intellectually and spiritually. It must be added that Luther also grew in this. Other than Paul and the apostles, he was the epitome of a man that feared God so much that he had no fear of man. This is, after all, true humility. God had trained this man to be God-centered in his thinking and his living. This was why he began to see through the man-centeredness at the heart of Roman Catholicism. God stripped this man of his pride and this man’s sight of the man-centeredness of Roman Catholicism became sharper and sharper. He could see that though Rome used the name of God in what it said it was not truly centered upon God and His glory. It had started off on the Roman road by holding on to something for man to do and it followed that road for centuries. It was at that point little more than human-centered in what it did with a covering of religious language. It was, to put it plainly, a religion built on pride and man-centeredness. It was a religion opposed to the glory of God offering salvation apart from a God-centered grace.

Since the time of the Reformation the battle has continued to be with men who in their pride want to allow the foot of man-centeredness in the door. Instead of a true and whole-hearted “to God alone be the glory,” they want to use those words while in reality allow some of the glory to be taken away from God. The words “grace alone” and “faith alone” are used a lot, but in reality they are used to mean something a lot different than the Reformers had. Even more importantly, they are used a lot differently than Scripture uses them. We live in a day where man-centeredness and pride rules both in the nation and in the “Church.” We live in a day where there is still a lot of religion going on but man-centeredness has rotted the core of it so that it is in reality nothing more than idolatry. The same pride and man-centeredness that took Roman Catholicism down its path is now taking much if not most of Protestantism down a path as well. It is interesting to note that both Rome (in its history) and modern Protestants began down the road with pride and man-centeredness and what Rome was at the time of the Reformation much of modern Protestantism is now though with different rituals. Both had man having part of the salvation process. Both had rituals for men to go through. Both were filled with immorality and claimed that grace would cover that. Both used biblical language. But both came from pride. We badly need a Copernican revolution of God-centeredness now. If we do not have that, the vestiges of truth in America will be gone along with the nation.

It may seem like a stretch to some, but reality tells a different story. We are looking at the history of Christianity and of the world in a sense by looking at it through the lenses of God-centeredness and man-centeredness. This is simply to say that each even in Church History can be interpreted according to the pride of man or the glory of God. The pride of man may even use God and a form of God-centeredness, but it is not the same thorough God-centeredness that Luther and the Reformers had. The pride of man will speak highly of a God that is good to him (as he thinks) and think of the goodness and greatness of that God in man-centered terms. Thus the pride of man will deceive man into thinking that he is God-centered. But the real God-centeredness is of a God that is God-centered and all of His dealings with man flow from His love for Himself and His own glory.

“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

In the last BLOG I gave a quote that said Arminianism was really a return to Rome in principle. This would likely raise howls of protest in many circles, even of some so-called Reformed circles, if they read it. However, the question is not who howls about it but if it is true or not. The essential problem with Arminianism, at least with the older Reformed thinking, was that the core of it was man-centered rather than God-centered. If you simply looked at a chart with the doctrines of Arminian thinking and Reformed thinking lined up side by side, you may not notice a whole lot of difference. After all, on paper a lot of the same language is used. Both sides agree with justification by faith alone. Both sides agree with salvation by grace alone. However, if we begin to look at these things in terms of whether God is the very core and substance of the theology, the view of these things will begin to change.

Roman Catholicism did not appear fully developed. Instead it started with a “small” deviation. That deviation was that it began to see theology in terms of man-centeredness and the freedom of man’s will. The core deviation was over man-centeredness versus God-centeredness. Man-centeredness is the flow of pride expressed in the desire to see things from man’s view and to cast out the total need of God. The heart of Roman Catholicism is that God has made a provision and has turned these things over to men to apply them. That is also the very essence of Arminian thinking. It sees God as having provided salvation and all that is needed is for man to exercise His will in order to be saved. However, Ephesians 2 says this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (vv. 8-9). Romans 11:6 gives an emphasis on this: “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.”

The pride of man will always leave something for self to do. The pride of man cannot bear to give up all rights and power to another and will refuse to give up all hope concerning his eternal destiny to another. But this is what must happen if salvation is truly to be by grace alone. Despite the clarity with which Scripture speaks on this issue the pride of man wants to retain some little something for himself to do. The doctrine of grace in Scripture teaches us that God finds nothing in man to move Him to give salvation. This means that God must find something in Himself to move Him to give man salvation. But man wants to reserve some little act of the will that God will respond to and save man. This little something is not thought to be all that important by many, but in fact it is nothing but the pride of man in his man-centeredness and is an overthrow of salvation by grace alone. That so-called little something takes salvation out of the hands of God and puts it into the hands of men which makes salvation out to be less than all grace and therefore not all to the glory of God. Once the pride of man takes that apparently little step on the road of leaving man something to do, that road leads to Roman Catholicism. It may not seem like much at the start, but pride is the hateful thing in the heart that opposes true grace and God-centeredness in all things.

In the last BLOG we looked at Martin Luther’s God-centeredness in all things. The real motivation for Luther was God Himself. Luther fought Catholicism in its externals, but the real battle was the essence of it which was man-centeredness. The real battle over Scripture was the author of Scripture. The real battle over the perspicuity of Scripture was God’s ability to reveal Himself to human beings. The real battle over the Gospel was whether God saved man by Himself. The battle over the will was over the Gospel and grace alone. Luther fought the battle on each front with the focus on God. The men that Luther debated may not have understood the real issue. Perhaps they debated with Luther over theological issues at an intellectual level without understanding that he was defending all things with the glory of God at heart. Perhaps this is the real reason they disagreed at the main points.

“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

If the core issue for Luther was God-centeredness in all things, then the modern age can hardly be said to follow Luther in his thinking unless that becomes its focus in all things as well. It is certainly possible, as many have done, to adhere to the theology of Luther (or Calvin) without holding to that theology with the same reasons that Luther did. Unless we have the God-centered view of things that Luther did we will not hold to the same teachings Luther did. Our self-centered approach guts the theology of the Reformation. The pride of human beings has taken the teachings of the Bible which were recovered during the time of the Reformation and have gutted them by making man the center of them. We can have the same outward husk of the teachings the Reformers did and be without the same core or substance which changes everything. The pride of the heart must be humbled and broken so that God is at the very center of all that it thinks and does. Pride in the heart will always rule the heart unless it is broken. This pride will rule the core of theology and it will spoil it altogether.

The battle over the will is not just a small issue because it is at the heart of the denial of the pride of man fighting against God Himself. Is salvation wholly of God or does it depend partially on something man does? This is why Luther fought against the freedom of the will. He saw it as being against the glory of free grace. After Luther Reformed theologians condemned Arminianism as being in principle a return to Rome and a betrayal of the Reformation. “Arminianism was, indeed, in Reformed eyes a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favor of New Testament Judaism; for to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other.”

This is strong, but we need to hear it. “With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets out before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism to-day become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? Or do we now, with Erasmus, rate a deceptive appearance of unity as of more importance than truth?” (Bondage of the Will, Introduction, p. 59). Our pride will lie to us by giving us good reasons not to be God-centered in all things. We are told that we are to be like Christ in being nice. But being nice is not the same thing as love and it certainly is not always God-centered. Our pride shows that the battle between God-centeredness and man-centeredness still goes on. The state of the professing Church demonstrates that the battle still goes on. We must be broken and humbled if we want God.

Historians give a lot of time and thought to why and how wars start, are engaged, and then the circumstances of the end. But rarely if ever do they ever get to the underlying story of all wars which is the brutal conflict over the glory of God that has been carried out throughout the history of human beings. This brutal war is still going on and will continue until God Himself steps down and ends it. It seems as if the Christian Church is like the waves of the sea that advance and then fall back only to advance again. As the Scripture teaches, the gates of hell will not overpower the Church (Mat 16:18). While it seems as if the Church has almost been conquered or even subjugated, that is not the case. Scripture cannot fail. While it is true that humanism has seemingly engulfed the Church with its man-centered teachings, and even those with orthodox theology seem to have been engulfed with a man-centered God, the living God will not share His glory with another. Right now the glory of His wrath is being demonstrated day after day (Rom 1:18) as men seek themselves while trying to use His name to do it.

“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

The modern Church finds itself at a crucial point in its history. Liberalism eroded a lot of the thinking and teaching for sometime but it is really quite irrelevant to conservatives in many ways. The real issue that gets at the heart of the problem within the Church today has to do with the focus of the living God and therefore the focus of human beings. We must realize that conservative theology is not enough and conservative morality is not enough. We can hold both of those things while we are full of ourselves and of our pride God is opposed to the proud whether they are conservative or not. God is opposed to the proud even if they hold to all the fundamentals of the faith. As Martin Luther began to awaken to the fact that Roman Catholicism was man-centered and had been removed from the biblical teaching on God and the Gospel he saw the central issues. In his book The Bondage of the Will he repeatedly went to the central issue, which was God Himself.

Why did Luther stress Scripture so much? In speaking to Erasmus, he said this: “For your teaching is designed to induce us, out of consideration for Popes, princes and peace, to abandon and yield up for the present the sure Word of God. But when we abandon that, we abandon God, faith salvation, and all Christianity” (p. 91). At the core of Luther’s thinking on Scripture, then, was a fidelity to God Himself. It was God speaking in His Word. How audacious are human beings in their pride when they prefer themselves to the wisdom of God in the Scriptures. We either listen to ourselves or to the Word of God. His thoughts on other subjects pointed to or were judged by Go as well. “Your thoughts of God are too human…but such please neither God nor men, even by affirming that God is in the heaven of heavens” (p. 87). “Our aim is, simply, to investigate what ability ‘free-will’ has, in what respect it is the subject of Divine action and how it stands related to the grace of God” (p. 78).

Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will to defend the grace of God in salvation and therefore the glory of God in salvation. Apart from grace alone in salvation there is no salvation through faith alone and it is not to the glory of God alone. In the more modern “Historical and Theological Introduction” to Luther’s Bondage of the Will the editors said this: “God-centered thinking is out of fashion to-day, and its recovery will involve something of a Copernican revolution in our outlook on many matters. But ought we to shrink from this? Do we not stand in urgent need of such teaching as Luther here gives us-teaching which humbles man, strengthens faith, and glorifies God-and is not the contemporary Church weak for the lack of it?” They then went on to say that if God and the Gospel are the same, then “is any other position than Luther’s possible?” Our pride and self-preservation will not want to suffer mocking and persecution, but God-centeredness in all things will require it.

In the context of the thought of a God that is God-centered and that all true religion is to be centered upon a God-centered God, we begin to see something of the nature of pride. Pride is the self-centered nature of man that wants to be focused on self. However, when the human soul is focused on self as the center it is then seen to be in direct opposition to the God that is God-centered. In one very great sense the fall occurred when Adam and Eve turned from God-centeredness to self-centeredness and pride. The promise of God in judgment on Satan was that the seed of the woman would crush his (Satan’s) head. Throughout history there would be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The seed of the woman (true believers) have been and will be centered on the God who is God-centered (theocentric). The seed of the woman have been man centered or ethnocentric. This is the true battle that has been in history and is the true battle that we fight today.

“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

The quote that is directly above gives great insight into the nature of the Reformation and to what really happened in the heart and thinking of Martin Luther. It also gives great insight into what happened to the Church from the time of Christ and His apostles until the Reformation. The Church was God-centered in the times of Christ and His apostles. God was the focus and the goal of all things. The greatness and glory of God was the center of all that they preached. But as time went on the fallen nature of human beings brought the teaching of Christianity down to a man-centered level. In this we can once again see the hideous and despicable nature of pride. What an ugly pride to take what belongs to God and give it to filthy human beings. Pride takes what is meant to be that which glorifies God and it uses it for self-centered ends. It was pride that brought the Church and the world into the Dark Ages. It was pride that (in a manner of speaking) cast God out of the Church. It was pride that exchanged God-centered ways that required Him to work for man-centered ways that were within the strength of fallen man. It was pride that exchanged the Gospel of the glory of God for a gospel that helps man at man’s own choosing.

Martin Luther came into a world that was steeped in the pride of man expressed in false religious ways. It is true that there were still some vestiges of the truth left, but those vestiges were wrapped in man-centered ways. When Luther began to study Scripture, however, he began to see a God in Scripture that Roman Catholicism knew nothing about and did not teach. The Reformation was truly a period in which God used a brash German monk who was brutally honest to restore a God-centered Christianity in at least one part of the world. It was a time when God raised up several men who refused to interpret Scripture according to man-centeredness or even a God that was man-centered, but instead it looked at God as God-centered and as man as self-centered unless God broke into the hearts and minds of man and converted them to being God-centered. It was true Christianity being unleashed.

The New Testament in one sense is about the true God’s God-centeredness being put on display in Jesus Christ and rescuing humanity from man-centered approaches. The New Testament time gave way to the pride of the human heart and the world was cast into the Dark Ages. God brought Martin Luther into a very dark period and used Him to declare the glory of a God that is God-centered. Luther thundered forth the teachings of justification by grace alone through faith alone. He taught that all things were to be done to the glory of God alone. This is simply to say that God was shining His light through the Scripture that Luther taught to show what the darkness of man’s pride and self-centeredness had done and yet what the truth of His glory really was. Roman Catholicism was essentially man-centered and Luther brought the light of God-centeredness to bear. It was the light of eternal glory. “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images” (Isaiah 42:8).

As we move on to see just how far the teaching of a true theocentric God as opposed to an egocentric view will take us, we can immediately see the continual problem that the sin of pride brings. If the purest view of Christianity is that which has a God-centered God at its very core and the branches from that core are from the same God-centered God, then we can see how the slightest deviation from that will have an effect on the core and all the branches. Pride always looks to self first and foremost rather than God. Pride always decides based on how things influence what appears to be good for self. Pride is the inflated view of self that blinds the human soul to sin and makes it hate the truth of the God-centered God. In other words, pride is what opposes the true God and the truth about Him. It is pride that is at enmity with the true God and His God-centeredness. Human beings in their fallen state of self-exaltation and self-centeredness want God to be all about them. Human beings will love God as long as they think He loves them since sinners love those who love them.

“There is no single aspect of religion which may not bear the marks of egocentricity or theocentricity, according as the one or the other of these constitutes the fundamental character of the religious relationship…The two types of religion we have described, it is clear, stand in the sharpest opposition to one another. In their purest forms they would be mutually exclusive. But in actual practice they rarely appear in their purity. As we have already said, all religions show at least some traces of the theocentric motif; and we may add that even the most theocentric of all religions has been unable, in the course of its history, to escape the influence of man’s natural tendency to adapt everything to his own point of view. The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

It is interesting to reflect on how different two Arminians and then two Calvinists can be from each other, even thought they have the same theological slant, depending on their deepest belief of God. Even though two people have the same theological system in a sense they will be miles apart from each other if their underlying belief about God is different. The greatest difference between two people is if one is man-centered and the other worships a God that is God-centered. The difference is still great when one has what s/he thinks is a high view of God and yet thinks of that God as being great because of what that God does for man and the other person thinks of the greatness and glory of God in awe and wonder because God is God-centered.

It was because of a defective view of God that many men had that drove men like John Owen and Christopher Ness to fight Arminianism tooth and nail. Jonathan Edwards wrote that even the unconverted people in his church dreaded to hear of Arminianism making inroads because they saw it as the hand of God being removed. The real issue, however, was not sectarianism or theological prejudice as such, but instead it was over the nature of God. This was the driving issue that was underneath many of the older Calvinists. B.B. Warfield said that a Calvinist was a man that had seen God. He did not say that it was a man that believed a confession or espoused certain points but that it was a man that had seen God.

The point that I am driving at is that the real issue of Christianity and Calvinism is located in the heart. It is a drive that comes from the living God that gives man a love for Him and His glory. The opposite of that drive is the heart that is full of pride and self. That is where the battle is. As the quote above says, “even the most theocentric of all religions has been unable, in the course of its history, to escape the influence of man’s natural tendency to adapt everything to his own point of view.” While Calvinism has its history in a thorough God-centeredness, it has not always been the case since the Reformation and it is not the case today. The versions of Calvinism that seem to be rampant are split in differing versions. There is the academic Calvinism which wants everything to fit the academic model. Then there is the watered down Calvinism in which the adherents want to be Calvinists but still hang on to their traditions. Then there is the version that loves to be part of something different and shock people. But at the heart of those three versions, and there are assuredly others, is pride. The academic Calvinist is proud of his or her learning. Knowledge makes arrogant (I Cor 8:1). The watered down version is the person that wants to hang on to some tradition or practice with the veneer of Calvinistic doctrine in order to still fit in with others. This is pride in what amounts to the love of applause or the love of man. The third version that wants to shock others is really pride that wants the attention or honor of others. These are all aspects of pride that takes the heart out of Calvinism or a true love for the God that is God-centered. It is all still centered on self. That is pride.

In the last BLOG I compared theological and moral differences with two icebergs colliding. That parts that collide are not the tips of the iceberg, but the massive sheets of ice that cannot be seen from the top. I then used that to show how differing systems of thought and theology actually collide way below where the differences are actually expressed. The point of collision can always be traced back to a God-centered view of God or a man-centered view of man and God. Whenever the view is a man-centered view of man or of a God that is man-centered, it is pride in the hearts of man that is a real problem. Pride exalts man and wants to think of each discussion with man as the center even though the talk of God might be brought in. I then started a discussion on Arminianism and Calvinism.

“There is no single aspect of religion which may not bear the marks of egocentricity or theocentricity, according as the one or the other of these constitutes the fundamental character of the religious relationship…The two types of religion we have described, it is clear, stand in the sharpest opposition to one another. In their purest forms they would be mutually exclusive. But in actual practice they rarely appear in their purity. As we have already said, all religions show at least some traces of the theocentric motif; and we may add that even the most theocentric of all religions has been unable, in the course of its history, to escape the influence of man’s natural tendency to adapt everything to his own point of view. The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

The real problem with Arminianism is that it does not start with and breathe with a God-centered God at each point. Instead, it focuses on human ability and has a man-centered God. This may sound obnoxious to some, but let us be fair. Calvinism is a system of doctrine that has been developed from the God-centered view of God (my opinion). It was not developed by John Calvin, but is a system of thinking that is built on the solidity of a God-centered God. However, when someone claims to be a Calvinist because s/he believes the stated doctrines of Calvinism, clearly that is not enough to make the person a true Calvinist apart from the view of a God-centered God. It is also true that an Arminian in some way can argue for his doctrine from a God-centered view of God. Most likely the professing Arminian who argues for his doctrine from a God-centered view of God will not be a consistent Arminian. It is also true that those who claim to be Calvinists and yet have a man-centered view of God or a God that is man-centered will not be consistent Calvinists if we use the historical doctrines as our guideline.

If the real issue, then, is neither Arminianism as stated nor Calvinism as stated, how are we doing to get to the bottom of these issues? It will not be by continuing to shoot at each other from the tip of the iceberg toward the tip of the other iceberg. Agreement will not and cannot happen as long as the underlying issue of God is not settled. When people try to say that they can agree on these issues without going to the very root of the issues, then those people agree more than they realize on the issue of God which is below the surface. Most likely there are professing Arminians who love God and hate what is really Arminianism while there are most likely professing Calvinists who hate God and hate what is true Calvinism. These things are simply not as simple as the systems. The real battle is over a God-centered view of God or a God that is man-centered. The issue of pride is obvious.

When we think of the five-points of Calvinism versus the five-points of Arminianism, the real issue is not the five-points but the God of all points. Calvinism teaches unconditional election and Arminianism denies that. Where can we go to settle the debate? We can go to Scripture and both will find verses to prove their position. We can go to the nature of God and both sides will say that their view of God aligns with their view of election. So we say that we must agree to disagree. But there is another step in the matter. The next step is to ask ourselves how a God that is God-centered aligns with these things and then how a God that is man-centered aligns with these things. The real issue is over the real God. If we make the issue over man, then it is pride that inserts man as the supreme being.

We can take election as the example. Psa 115:3 says that God is in the heavens and does as He pleases. Do we believe that? Do we believe that God exists in love for Himself as triune and all good things given to man comes from His love for Himself which is grace to us? A God-centered God can’t be moved to act by a human being, but instead is moved to act because of His love for Himself and His own glory. Now we can ask which view of election is consistent with a God like that. The Arminian view has God being moved because a man chooses Him. Do we need to ask any more questions? Pride will always want to be the center, but that is the prerogative of God.