Back to Chapter 6 – What’s At Stake? The Character of God and the Truth of the Gospel
Now, here we have the fundamental problem between Calvinists and non-Calvinists. At its deepest level, this controversy is rooted in a hermeneutical divide. It is precisely because of this hermeneutical divide that a theological and soteriological controversy exists between Calvinists and non-Calvinists. Indeed, the theological and soteriological differences have their source in the hermeneutical divide. The essence of this hermeneutical divide is as follows.
Non-Calvinists maintain that coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction should be present in one’s interpretations. They are essential evidence that one is correctly exegeting and interpreting the text. These are necessary conditions for claiming that one’s exegesis and interpretation are valid. Proper textual interpretation will result in coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction within that text’s immediate context and in relation to the interpretive conclusions the exegete comes to regarding the meanings of other texts throughout Scripture.
For the Calvinist, this is not so. The Calvinists’ hermeneutic allows for their interpretations of certain texts to exhibit incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction with the clear meaning of other texts in Scripture. I contend that the Calvinist theological and soteriological “doctrines of grace” (i.e., TULIP) cannot provide the logical, moral, epistemological, or biblical coherence that is essential to sound, biblical hermeneutics and indicative of valid interpretation. The Calvinist is willing to accept logical, moral, epistemological, and biblical incoherence, inconsistency, and contradictions in their interpretive results.
These logical and moral difficulties are well demonstrated and documented by non-Calvinists in their critiques of Calvinism. I refer you to the bibliography on this site. For the non-Calvinist, having identified incoherencies, inconsistencies, and contradictions within Calvinism is sufficient evidence that the Calvinist has misinterpreted Scripture. For non-Calvinists, interpretations that produce incoherence, inconsistency, or contradiction are considered to be inaccurate. This is not the conclusion the Calvinist comes to when their interpretations are critiqued on these criteria of logical reasoning and moral intuition. The Calvinist will not accept coherent exegetical alternatives. Their problem lies in their unyielding doctrine of God’s sovereignty, defined as universal divine causal determinism. At some point, Calvinists ignore their logical and moral difficulties to maintain their deterministic exegesis and interpretations of the controversial texts (i.e., Jn. 6, Eph. 1, Rom. 9-11, et al.). Rather than return to the text to investigate whether there are exegetically responsible alternative interpretations that do not lead us into logical and moral difficulties with the clear teachings of other texts in Scripture, the Calvinist ignores these difficulties to maintain their deterministic interpretation of divine sovereignty. For the Calvinist, the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and contradictions generated by their interpretations do not have hermeneutical significance, that is, they do not inform or direct their exegetical or interpretive processes or conclusions. These problems do not compel the Calvinist to return to the text with an open mind to see if there are other exegetically responsible interpretations and understandings of these controversial passages that do not lead us into incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction. The non-Calvinist attends to interpretive coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction as indicators of interpretive validity, while the Calvinist does not. This is the hermeneutical divide.
Therefore, we need to understand why Calvinists take the hermeneutical position they do. This is somewhat different than why the Calvinist takes the theological or soteriological position that they do. To that question, they will of course answer that the Bible teaches it. And I do not suggest we continue proof-texting back and forth, which has been our habit, but gets us nowhere. And this, I want you to see, leads us to a deeper issue. That is, how we can know that we know what the Bible teaches us on these matters. That is what hermeneutics is all about. It leads us to ask what principles guide us as we approach a text, and what principles we need to apply to our interpretation of a text so we can be assured of what the biblical author intended to communicate to his readers and to us by principled extension. This leads us to ask, What interpretive philosophy and methodology must be used so we can be sure that anyone’s interpretive claims reflect the true meaning of the text?
I have discussed hermeneutics and elaborated on its principles in Chapter 12. What we need here is for Calvinists to respond at the hermeneutical level to the problems identified in their theology. That is, to ask them whether or not the incoherence, inconsistencies, and contradictions that plague their theology and soteriology have any bearing on the validity of those interpretations. And if not, why not? The question is whether interpretations that are incoherent, inconsistent, or contradictory with the clear meanings of other scriptures are valid? Are incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction sure signs of misinterpretation? Are coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction necessary conditions for an interpretation to be rendered valid? We need to hear the Calvinist’s answer to these questions. These are questions regarding what constitutes an intellectually and morally credible, biblical, evangelical hermeneutic.
We need to move the discussion off the deficient and subjective response of “I just believe the Bible teaches it” to “what are the interpretive criteria by which you say the Bible teaches it?” We need to move Bible ‘study’ from the unquestioning acceptance of a teacher’s interpretation of a text, to how we can know that the teacher’s interpretation is justified and valid.” Are coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction among those criteria? These are not merely exegetical questions. They are the hermeneutical questions that dictate how we are to evaluate the validity of one’s exegesis and the interpretations that rest upon those exegeses. Now, when we do delve into the issues of interpretive justification and validity, we find that the Calvinist operates on a hermeneutic of incoherence. They do not accept that their interpretations are necessarily subject to logical reasoning and moral intuition as criteria by which they can know whether their interpretation is justified and valid. Is such a hermeneutic legitimate? Is coherence a necessary hermeneutical principle for determining valid from invalid interpretations? The issue of whether coherence is deemed essential to a sound, biblical, evangelical hermeneutic is one of the most important questions that evangelical philosophers, apologists, and theologians need to address. I do not think Calvinists are pressed sufficiently on this hermeneutical point. The matter of what constitutes a proper hermeneutic needs to be resolved because the differing hermeneutics lead to differing soteriologies. And with these differing soteriologies, the gospel is at stake. I submit to you that the Calvinists’ hermeneutic, being seriously flawed, has allowed them to develop and accept a seriously flawed theology and soteriology. As a result, the biblical gospel as ‘good news’ has been distorted, indeed, annihilated by the TULIP soteriological doctrines.
Now, Calvinists are wont to point out that ultimately God’s glory is at stake in this matter. This is true, but not in the way Calvinists think. God has chosen to glorify himself in Christ, who is the very image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). God’s purpose was to reconcile us to God through his death on the cross (Rom. 5:6-11; 2 Cor. 5:17-20; Col. 1:19-23). Therefore, the true gospel of Christ reflects back upon God for his glory. And because the gospel is at stake in this controversy, God’s glory is also at stake. This is why we must get the gospel right. Everything God does brings glory to himself, and we ought to take care not to presume he needs us to secure his glory by devising theological hedges that allow no place for a response of the human will to God’s revelation “in Christ.” God is not glorified by safeguarding him from human free will, as the Calvinist theologian believes would constitute a threat to his ‘sovereignty.’ Theistic determinism does not glorify God. It is not a matter of “the less of man, the more of God’s glory.” The gospel as “good news,” as God’s ultimate message, reflects who he is in himself, reveals his nature and ways, discloses who he is to us, and establishes our practical relationship to him. In this, God is glorified. It is incumbent upon us to take care not to devise a scheme of salvation based upon speculations about what it means for God to be sovereign and thereby supposedly “glorified” and yet end up with a theistic determinism. That sounds very much like the pattern of the Pharisees, who were so intent on protecting God and what they perceived contributed to his glory, they couldn’t see the real truth about who God is and what he was doing in and for the world. We should think carefully about what it means to glorify God without circumventing the way God has chosen to glorify himself. It’s incumbent upon us to take care not to devise a theology of theistic determinism that generates logical and moral contradictions and incoherencies that run roughshod over other biblical truths. It is incumbent upon us to acknowledge that when this does happen, we have adopted a flawed hermeneutic because it ultimately fosters intellectual confusion, ministerial disingenuousness, theological relativism, and a distortion of the gospel.
God’s gracious provision of salvation in Christ by faith for a sinful world is the primary focus of the Bible. One’s hope, meaning, purpose for living, and eternal future are all wrapped up in these soteriological and hermeneutical issues. A correct understanding of the precise content of the gospel message seems to me to be of utmost importance because it bears upon the ultimate issues of our eternal destiny and the spread of the gospel as “good news” throughout the world in our time, which is the essence of what it means to give God all the glory in salvation.
Read the next and last section in this chapter – Critical Hermeneutical Concerns for Reformed Calvinists
Back to Chapter 6 – What’s At Stake? The Character of God and the Truth of the Gospel
The Truth of the Gospel 