Back to Chapter 11 – Examples of Calvinist Interpretive Incoherence
Calvinist John Piper clearly believes that God has unconditionally chosen certain persons to be saved, and only those persons will be saved. None will be lost of those God has predestined to eternal life, and all others will not and cannot be saved.
Yet in his book, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself, Piper gives the following illustration of the gospel message defined and proclaimed as a universal “gift” containing the dynamic of promise, potential, and the possibility that all who hear this proclamation may receive this “gift.” He writes,
“And the gospel means good news. Good news is for proclaiming – for heralding the way an old fashioned town crier would do.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All rebels, insurgent, dissident, and protesters against the King! Hear the royal decree! A great day of reckoning is coming, a day of justice and vengeance. But now hear this, all inhabitants of the King’s realm! Amnesty is herewith published by the mercy of your Sovereign. A price has been paid. All debts may be forgiven. All rebellion absolved. All dishonor pardoned. None is excluded from this offer. Lay down the weapons of rebellion, kneel in submission, receive the royal amnesty as a gift of imperial love, swear fealty to your sovereign, and rise a free and happy subject of your King.”[1]
This, of course, is inconsistent with what Piper believes regarding how one can be “forgiven” and “absolved” of their rebellion against “the King.” To be consistent with his Calvinist soteriology, we would think that Piper would pick an illustration that would reflect his “doctrines of grace” – the eternal divine decree, deterministic sovereignty, predestination, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. But he does not. He says, “Amnesty is herewith published by the mercy of your Sovereign. A price has been paid. All debts may be forgiven. All rebellion absolved. All dishonor pardoned.” Non-Calvinists will agree with these statements. But the use of the word “all” here by Piper is inconsistent with his doctrines of unconditional election and limited atonement. “Amnesty” for whom? For all? Not on Calvinism! “A price has been paid.” For whom? For all? Not on Calvinism (at least the 5-point kind)! I take it that Piper means “all” when he says “all” because he explicitly states, “All debts may be forgiven. All rebellion absolved. All dishonor pardoned.” But we are suspicious of Piper’s intent here. Does he mean that “All debts may be forgiven” using the word “may” in the sense of “depending upon whether one is among the elect or not”? To be consistent with his Calvinism, this is precisely what he must mean. According to the plain reading of his words here, we take the word “all” to mean everyone or everybody. Therefore, Piper is being inconsistent with his deterministic doctrine of unconditional election, in which God himself has excluded a multitude of people from salvation simply by not electing or choosing them to be saved. These are the non-elect or reprobates as taught in Calvinist determinism.
Piper then goes on to say, “None is excluded from this offer” of amnesty. Taking these words at face value, we non-Calvinists are glad Piper is proclaiming the biblical “good news” of salvation for all. But now, note that on Piper’s Calvinism, that statement is, of course, not true. Many are excluded from this offer by God himself. Those who are not among the elect are excluded. God has made it so that they cannot “receive the royal amnesty as a gift of imperial love.”
Now, if Piper is playing word games with us and, in his own mind, interpreting his own words to mean “None is excluded from this offer, that is, the offer must be given to all because we don’t know who the elect are,” then that would be disingenuous. Hence, the “offer” only serves to call the elect to salvation. The “offer” doesn’t apply to all who hear it. It applies only to the elect. According to Piper, some are excluded from the salvation that the offer speaks about. Calvinists say there is a general call that goes out to all and an effectual call that brings about salvation only in the elect. This is really disingenuous. So is Piper using more verbal legerdemain here? It would seem so. Taking his Calvinism into consideration, when he says, “None is excluded from this offer,” he must mean something like, “The offer should, of course, go out to all individuals. It should go out to all without exception, but it is only an ‘offer.’ We know that the salvation it does offer will only apply to the elect.” If this is what he means, and as a Calvinist, it must be what he means, then three problems result.
One involves the definition of “offer.” “Offer” implies the ability of the hearer to accept or reject it. But that is a contingency that is excluded on Calvinist “total inability” and “sovereignty” defined as theistic determinism.
The second problem, as mentioned above, involves the disingenuousness and dishonesty of the “offer” as spoken to all when the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election makes it clear that it is not intended for all.
This leads to the third and most serious problem. The above duplicity is associated with the very nature of God or “the King,” according to Piper’s analogy. In the gospel message, it is God himself who is speaking. It is God himself who is making this offer of salvation. Therefore, according to Calvinist soteriology, God speaks a word or makes an offer as if it were true for all, which includes all non-elect persons, when it is not true for them. And since God knows who the non-elect are, it makes God out to be a liar.
Piper then continues with an exhortation to act, implying the ability of all who hear to do so. He says, “Lay down the weapons of rebellion, kneel in submission, and receive the royal amnesty…” But as a Calvinist, Piper believes in “total inability.” No one can do what Piper portrays as a possibility for all who hear unless they are first regenerated by God. “The King” would have to somehow produce the desire and actions in his subjects for them to do what he commands and for them to receive what he offers. Only then can they perform the list of exhortations. And although the King makes it seem like all can “receive the royal amnesty as a gift of imperial love,” only the elect will do so because the King will cause them to do so. So the King’s “royal decree,” which in language and tone certainly includes and applies to all his subjects, actually only applies to a limited number of particular subjects chosen beforehand by the King. As King, he controls every thought, desire, belief, and action of every one of his subjects. No one else other than whom he has chosen will “swear fealty to [their] sovereign, and rise a free and happy subject of [their] King.” So “The King” is acting deceitfully.
In contrast to what Piper’s Calvinism requires that he must mean by these words, the plain sense of the words “None is excluded from the offer” must mean that the offer applies to all who hear, meaning that all may be partakers of this “amnesty’ that springs from “the mercy of [their] Sovereign.” Note then, we are left either struggling to understand how Piper’s words and analogy here could be consistent with his Calvinism, that is, how Piper could be employing language to make his words fit with his Calvinist determinism, or, we simply take what Piper has written as consistent with non-Calvinist doctrine, that is, that the King’s subjects are called to and can respond in surrender and submission to the King’s mercy. There is no “total inability” at work or in perceiving the submission or reception of royal amnesty as a “meritorious contribution” to their amnesty. Nor is there any unconditional election at work behind the scenes. For a subject of the King to acknowledge that they cannot merit the King’s mercy but must cast themselves upon his grace in humility and submission, believing his decree, cannot logically be considered as meriting the King’s mercy. That would be to misconceive the humility and submission of faith. And we take the King’s offer to be genuine, just as it should be taken. “All inhabitants of the King’s realm” are being offered “amnesty.” Therefore, “all the inhabitants of the King’s realm” may be “pardoned” if they do what the King has told them to do. The whole scenario presupposes that all the subjects can do so if they will to do so.
Note also that Piper describes this amnesty as “a gift of imperial love.” The word “gift” implies an ability to accept or reject the “love” being offered. This is a ‘gift’ to be received by the subjects of this sovereign out of their loving response for his merciful amnesty and for paying the price they could not pay, and for being forgiven, absolved, and pardoned.” It is not a ‘gift’ to be given only to those the King has chosen to give it to, as in Calvinism. Piper believes the latter but does not accurately state this in this analogy. In the analogy, he states the former. Therefore, in the analogy, we have Piper communicating concepts that are incoherent with his Calvinist soteriology.
In the end, this analogy is contrary to Piper’s Calvinist soteriology. What we have here is simply the “good news” that the King has accomplished pardon for the people and is extending this mercy to all. And given the command and exhortation to surrender and submit, this plainly implies it is up to the individual subjects to accept this amnesty or reject it, and that they may do either. The King will still remain sovereign either way. And this is an important point to grasp. Sovereignty is not theistic determinism, let alone a universal divine causal determinism. Sovereignty functions within and over subjects who have free will. Their freedom is not a threat to the Sovereign, especially when the Sovereign is good and just. Sovereignty involves ruling or reigning, not predetermining all things. The analogy makes no sense in terms of a definition of sovereignty as theistic determinism.
I’ll make four observations from this examination of Piper’s text.
First, what this demonstrates is the Calvinists’ inability to get “good news” from their Calvinist soteriology. Although many Calvinists will claim Calvinism is the gospel, when they are writing or speaking about the gospel as “good news,” they do not expound it in terms of their soteriological “doctrines of grace.” Indeed, they don’t even mention these doctrines. This shows that their “doctrines of grace” cannot be put into the service of evangelism as truly good news.
Second, this text exemplifies the linguistic perplexity that readers of Calvinist literature experience. The reader knows what Calvinists believe, but Piper’s words do not reflect those beliefs. In fact, they are inconsistent or contradictory to their Calvinist beliefs. Reading Calvinists can be an intellectually and spiritually torturous experience, and highlights the disingenuousness of Calvinists in these matters.
Thirdly, since Calvinists demonstrate that they do not value consistency between what they say and what they believe soteriologically, I conclude that this incoherence is inherent in their exegesis and is indicative of a flawed hermeneutic. They believe the Scriptures teach their Calvinist soteriological doctrines. Yet, they find themselves speaking inconsistently with those doctrines. Therefore, instead of returning to the relevant texts to see if there is an exegetically responsible and coherent interpretation of them, they simply ignore their incoherence and accept it as if it is part of a legitimate hermeneutic. But the fact is, they function under a hermeneutic of incoherence. I find this perplexing and intellectually unacceptable as an evangelical hermeneutic.
Fourthly, Calvinists are simply given a pass by non-Calvinist evangelicals to indulge in theological and conceptual incoherence in their writing and speaking. The logical and moral problems I have identified above are simply ignored by most Christian readers and the evangelical church in general. There is a troubling indifference to the Calvinists’ incoherence. The degree to which Calvinists and most evangelical Christians have come to ignore and accept the incoherence and inconsistency in Calvinist writing and speaking on the gospel is very troubling. It is indicative of a forfeiture of the life of the mind in evangelicalism and the embracing of theological relativism.
It’s unfortunate we must be so suspicious of Piper’s meanings, but we are just trying to read his gospel analogy in a manner consistent with his stated soteriology. But that can’t be done. He can’t fault us for observing that the plain meaning of his words in the analogy makes it inconsistent with his Calvinist soteriological doctrines, which again are the full and final explanation of how and why a person is either saved or not saved. Therefore, obviously, these doctrines have direct reference to ‘the gospel.’ They are doctrines about salvation. The trouble is that Piper speaks inconsistent with those doctrines because those doctrines provide no “good news” for sinners. And Piper began by telling us “…the gospel means good news.” Therefore, we are forced to conclude that Piper is soteriologically confused and disingenuous, because surely he knows he is speaking inconsistent with his own Calvinist doctrines. Now, Piper could solve this problem by writing and speaking coherently, that is, according to what he believes as a Calvinist, but he does not. Therefore, the thesis I am submitting to you is that an integral part of the Calvinist hermeneutic is this acceptance of incoherence in their exegesis, writing, and speaking. This passage from Piper is a prime example of Calvinist inconsistency and their wilful rejection that such inconsistency is indicative of invalid interpretations of the text, which is also to say that Calvinists have constructed and embraced a hermeneutic of incoherence. The Evangelical church should declare such a hermeneutic as irresponsible and illegitimate.
Go to Example 22 – Os Guinness: Both Are True, Use Them As Needed
Back to Chapter 11 – Examples of Calvinist Interpretive Incoherence
Footnotes
[1] John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2005), 19.
The Truth of the Gospel 