Best of Cerulean Sanctum

On the Brink of a Quantum Singularity with Calvin and Arminius

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Last year, the well-known physicist Stephen Hawking admitted he was wrong about one of his pet theories concerning black holes. In the rarefied academic air, this amounted to a near recanting of biblical proportions. But Hawking’s admitting that his formulas can’t accurately describe what takes place in the physics world within a black hole was no death knell for his career. The truth is, no one has been able to accurately describe what happens on the brink of a quantum singularity.

If you don’t already know, black holes form when very large stars die and collapse in upon themselves, creating an incredibly dense piece of matter—a quantum singularity—whose mass is so enormous that it warps the fabric of space itself into a giant, nearly bottomless well. If you’ve ever seen one of those parabolic coin games where you roll a coin along the edge and it progressively travels in tighter and tighter circles until finally falling into a hole at the end of the funnel, then you’ve seen the basics of a black hole at work. Once matter gets trapped beyond a certain point of the black hole’s tug of gravity (the “event horizon”), that matter, be it dust or even a massive star, can’t escape the gravity grip of the singularity, in the process possibly being totally destroyed even down to the subatomic level.

Physicists for years have tried to explain the physics behind black holes and their singularities with astonishingly little success. The problem is that all the physics we hold dear (from Einstein’s relativity theories to Maxwell’s equations) cease to work the closer one gets to a quantum singularity. Physicists see cracking the physics behind a black hole as one of the true Holy Grails in physics. Whoever manages to do it will join the pantheon of greats right up there with Albert E. himself.

This brings us to John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius.

You’ve probably heard those names tossed about if you’ve been a Christian longer than a year or two. Both of these men proffered different takes on the “quantum singularity” of Christian theology, how people technically come to (and stay with) Christ.

Let’s take a look at the basics of each:

Five Points of Arminianism

  • Conditional Election – Election is based on the faith or belief of men.
  • Universal Atonement – The atonement is for all, but only believers enjoy its benefits.
  • Saving Faith – Man, unaided by the Holy Spirit, is unable to come to God.
  • Resistible Grace – The drawing of the Holy Spirit can be resisted.
  • Uncertainty of Preservation – This doctrine was left open to inquiry.

Five Points of Calvinism

  • T = Total Depravity – Man is completely a sinner, without any hope of helping himself.
  • U = Unconditional Election – God elected saints to salvation when they had no merit at all. God did not look down upon the earth and see some sinners believing, therefore elected them to salvation, but He looked down upon the earth, and saw all were sinners, therefore elected some to salvation.
  • L = Limited Atonement – The atonement is limited to the elect.
  • I = Irresistible Grace – It is impossible for a sinner to resist salvation once the Holy Spirit begins drawing him.
  • P = Preservation – A saved person will be saved forever, and will live a holy and Godly life.

(Thanks to Pastor Wayne Reynolds for the quick overviews of Calvinism and Arminianism.)

These two streams of belief divide the Protestant world almost in half (there are other belief systems that don’t adhere perfectly to either stream, but they are not majority groups.) Most American denominations that arose out of the Second Great Awakening follow Arminianism and, technically at least, are the Evangelicals we hear so much about. Churches like The Assemblies of God or Methodists are representative. The “Old Line” Presbyterian or Reformed churches are Calvinist, but have muddied the water by occasionally assuming the title “Evangelical” in order to sound like they are up to date with the rest of the Protestant churches out there.

These two streams have slugged it out for a long time. Interestingly enough, the blogosphere is becoming a battleground for these two points of view, with blogrolls developing that highlight bloggers who ascribe to one view or another. I have read so many blog posts lately that can be condensed to “Only Calvinism is Truth” that I have lost count. Anyone who has stumbled into such a debate can attest to the viciousness that often results in defense of one position or another.

Now comes the point in this post where I alienate every single one of my readers.

A physicist like Stephen Hawking is brilliant enough to be able to describe the way virtually all of the universe works from a physics standpoint. He can tell you how it is possible to hit a kilometer-wide target on a moving planet, something NASA does effortlessly (most of the time). He can tell you how gravity works, and light, and the weak force, and electromagnetism…in short, virtually everything we know about how the universe works, he can explain. But he can’t explain what happens on the brink of a quantum singularity.

Likewise, I wonder if John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius are not in the same bind as Hawking when it comes to theology. I contend that perhaps what Calvin and Arminius are trying to describe are the edges of where Jesus wants His true followers to be. It is possible I think, that God never intended us to be hanging out at the brink of the theological quantum singularity Calvin and Arminius address.

Another way of looking at this: If you have teenagers or have ever worked with them, you know that on the issue of sex it is inevitable that you will get asked the question, “Well, how far is too far?” Wise people understand that this is actually the wrong question, but the kids don’t. I suspect that this may be the case in the Calvin/Arminius debate, too.

Take a look at the issue of Preservation of the Saints, for instance. Arminians typically believe it may be possible to wander away from God and lose one’s salvation. Calvinists would argue that this is impossible, contending that if such a thing were to happen the original nature of a person’s “conversion” would be suspect.

But isn’t this like the black hole issue? Jesus calls us to be His disciples and the point of being a disciple is to stay at the Master’s feet, not to toy around with “How far can I wander away and still be saved?” Nor is it a matter of saying, “I can get away with just about anything because He won’t cast me out.” Don’t we see how both of those are skirting the edges of where we need to be as disciples? Those are “brink of the quantum singularity” thoughts—not where the Lord wants us to focus. Sadly, a lot of people get sucked out of the rest of the Christian universe and get stuck at the event horizon of such ideas, forever trapped by the power of one stream or the other. This results in a great number of causalities out there in the pews.

We all know people who have been crushed by their struggles at the brink of this theological quantum singularity. But there is a whole universe of faith as a disciple where those forces don’t have to tug us down a hole. In truth, they may very well be moot points for a person who seeks only to please the Lord in all he or she does.

Ours is a love relationship with the Lord of the Universe. This is more important than the mechanisms that get us there and keep us there. Discipleship is like a marriage between Christ and the disciple—divorce is out of the question and the engagement is merely a formality once the marriage is consummated. We can’t live like the man who asked to bury to his parents, or the one who looks back over his shoulder at what is being left behind.We simply cannot live at the brink; true disciples want to be in the center of the Lord’s will. We do what the Lord asks and are content in doing so.

And maybe that is where the Lord would prefer we all be.

I know this is a contentious issue. R.C. Sproul is probably already scratching my name off his mailing list. So if you have comments, please feel free to leave them—with all humility and love for the brethren, of course. (In other words, take a deep breath and count to ten before you post!)

The Battle for Brokenness

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A few years ago, we were confronted with the twisting of our language by forces seeking to redefine everything we believe when the most powerful politician in the world said, “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”

We continue to fight for the vitality of our language because, for Christians at least, words have real meaning. Co-opting words and finagling definitions have brought us to the “Newspeak” days of George Orwell’s 1984. How else can quoting from the Bible be branded “hate speech” except that we have altered the very definition of love itself?

The Church is not immune to this. One of the current trends in many Christian circles is to confuse brokenness with, well…brokenness. The rise of inner healing ministries in the 1970s resulted in a modification of the definition of “brokenness.” What has occurred is that we now consider brokenness to be a reflection of all the painful events we’ve incurred in life rather than the traditional, Biblical meaning of brokenness.

The Lord speaks through the prophet Isaiah:

For thus says the
One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
For I will not contend forever,
nor will I always be angry;
for the spirit would grow faint before me,
and the breath of life that I made.
Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry,
I struck him; I hid my face and was angry,
but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart.
I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners,
creating the fruit of the lips.
Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the LORD,
“and I will heal him.
But the wicked are like the tossing sea;
for it cannot be quiet,
and its waters toss up mire and dirt.
There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”
—Isaiah 57:15-21

True spiritual brokenness is a reflection of a life given to humility, a contrite spirit, and an understanding that we are like brute beasts before God unless we allow Him to break us like the horseman breaks a stallion. Real brokenness is the man who acknowledges that he is no longer his own; he has been bought with a price. Such a man yields himself to God to be broken and formed into the image of Christ.

See how this plays out in the life of the prideful man who experiences true brokenness:

All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,
for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”
At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.
—Daniel 4:28-37 ESV

Here is the natural man broken by God. His pride is broken, his position is broken, his self-worship is broken. And in the place of all these comes praise to God for being broken by Him.

Contrast this with the “brokenness” we so often hear spoken of today in Christian circles. We are fragile not because they are being broken by God, but because we dwell in the pain of our circumstances. This is not to say that God does not use circumstance to break prideful people, but too often we who revel in our pain exhibit a pride in displaying just how broken we are! No one has been as hurt as badly as we have been. No one has endured the tragedies we have endured. In short, we become immune to the very brokenness God desires to instill in us so long as we make an idol of our pain.

Acolytes of this “new” brokenness must always talk about it, wear it as a badge of honor, and retreat into it whenever anyone questions the need to dwell in the pain. Worse yet, we can use our pain as a way to assuage our guilt before the Lord. We make ourselves appear downtrodden when we are anything but, refusing true brokenness and holding instead to the mire of our own making.

Such is not God’s brokenness, but a counterfeit that leads us away from real healing and growth in Christ. Dying to self means abandoning even our pain, no matter how great, to take on the image of the Savior. Only then can the scales drop from our eyes and we be raised up to stand in true brokenness before God.

That Hideous Strength

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I have news for every author of every book I have read recently on the subject of how to fix the American Church’s problems:

You are wrong. Every last one of you.

To your credit, though, your ability to note everything that is awry in churches across this country is astute and well-cataloged. It’s just that your solutions are no solutions at all.

Over the last year, I’ve been following much of what is being called “The Emerging Church” or “Emergent.” This is a new movement that is calling churches out from their country club mentalities into a vital first century NT church life. It caters to the postmodern crowd, is heavily invested in relationships, story, mystery, and being “organic.” It has a whole host of its own buzzwords, authorities, and conventions. And—to its credit—it loathes consumeristic, megachurch seeker-sensitivity.

But any random reading of authors like Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Len Sweet, Randy Frazee, and a growing legion of others finds the very core of the movement very much rooted in a sort of sentimental humanism. Buried beneath the buzzwords and angry polemics against the crusty institutional church is the real source of this trend’s power: what I like to call (with apologies to C.S. Lewis) “That Hideous Strength.”

That Hideous Strength has been behind much of what churches in America call progress in the last forty or fifty years. In recent years, the Church Growth Movement largely abandoned itself to that strength, and Emergent is taking it one step further—at least if a decent reading of the acolytes of Emergent is any indication.

What is That Hideous Strength? Well, for my purpose here it is not quite what Lewis defined in his novel as the power of the Eldils (fallen angels), but it is another monstrosity virtually on par with it: the power of Man.

Here is where we are going wrong. Here is why the Church in America is failing to live up to Her glorious potential. We have put all our faith in what we can do through our own strength. In almost every Ermegent book I have read, I have come away noting that to make the solutions they espouse a reality, we really don’t need the Holy Spirit at all. If we just love people and love God, reach out with a tender touch in a missional way to our communities and to the downtrodden, then all will be well.

Except we left the Lord out of the equation altogther. My heart breaks thinking about this.

Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit to His disciples in the upper room and then told them to await the Spirit coming in power at a later time. When the Spirit fell on the disciples, they went out and ministered in a power that was not their own.

Check out every occurance of the Spirit falling on believers in Acts. The result was that they went from being average people to being someone touched by the Divine. Everything they did after that point was extraordinary. No longer were they people who were satisfied with being loving neighbors or nice people, but they were energized and bold saints of God!

How is it that in a charismatic generation, we have entirely forgotten the Holy Spirit? Why do we think a model, no matter how wonderful it sounds, will make a difference in our churches if our people are not filled with the Holy Spirit?

Some will argue that the average person in the pew is filled with the Holy Spirit. My question then is, when was the last time that person’s shadow fell on the sick and they were healed? When was the last time he was caught up to the third heaven? When did she last prophesy? When did his testimony drive the lost to cry out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” or cause others to pick up rocks to stone him?

The major distinction between all of us in the Church and those of all other religions is the fact that the Spirit of the Living God dwells in us! All those advocates of Emergent are preaching a Gospel that is no different than what the average Buddhist or Shintoist preaches if there is no Holy Spirit involved. You can be missional all you want, you can have a love for other people around you who don’t know Jesus, but if nothing you do is flooded with power from on high, then it is doomed to failure in the long run.

Are we ever going to learn this lesson? The reason no one cares about our message anymore is largely because we Christians in America are no longer supernatural people. Our faith has become one largely of mental assent and Hallmark card sentimentality, devoid of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. We have shoved the Spirit out the doors of our churches and tried to do it all on our own strength.

And just who out there on the street is impressed with that? Our bankrupt results speak for themselves.