Calvinism v Arminianism, Divine Election v Human Responsibility - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 6

GotQuestions.org

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:26

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On the show today, we're going to be covering a theological issue that in our 20 -year history, we've probably been asked more than any other theological issue.

00:38

It's Calvinism versus Arminianism, or God's sovereignty versus humanity's free will, or divine election versus human responsibility, however you want to call it.

00:50

And today I've got with us a good friend of mine, Dr. Christopher Cohn, and he is the only person

00:56

I know who has three doctorate degrees. So what better person to have on the show to help us finally put this issue to rest.

01:05

I'm kidding, by the way. But Dr. Dr. Dr. Cohn, thank you for coming on the show today.

01:13

Shea, it's an absolute privilege to be here with you. So thankful for your ministry, for all that you do, and we can at least advance the question, but we won't settle the issue, of course.

01:25

Of course. So you told me about a book you've written recently, so The Sofa Rule, and we'll include a link to this in the comments field on YouTube and also on our podcast page.

01:38

But tell me, tell our audience, how you've wrestled with this issue and the conclusions that you've come to.

01:46

Well, of course, as in many theological debates or controversies, there's typically two sides, right?

01:57

Two different views, and they're opposing. And it creates, you know, it can actually create animosity, and it can cause people to go in some really different directions.

02:10

And as I have tried to seek to find answers biblically, which is one of the reasons

02:20

I'm so thankful for GotQuestions, because of that commitment to looking at things through that biblical lens, as I've sought to do that, what

02:30

I've realized is that the two sides, and this is true in many theological controversies and even sociopolitical controversies, that many of these debates and disagreements are so polarized.

02:46

And when you look at the biblical perspective, generally the biblical approach is door number three.

02:53

And so as I was doing more exegesis and working in the text, I'm realizing, you know, there's some problems with this particular side of the argument over here.

03:03

And then I can see on the other side, well, there's problems here. It doesn't align with what the scriptures are saying.

03:10

And I felt like in looking at this issue over time, the

03:16

Bible is really clear, and it makes statements that when we acknowledge that God can deal with tensions and things that are maybe apparent conflicts, that He can do that.

03:33

And when we can be okay with that, then I think things resolve pretty well.

03:38

So I see it door number three in that. So in the study of this issue, where do you find yourself falling on the spectrum between Calvinism and Arminianism on these various issues?

03:54

And do you find that no matter where you land, people on both sides of the issue tend to be dissatisfied with the conclusions you come to?

04:04

Well, it's a great question, Shay. And you might expect an answer like this.

04:10

On one side, you have red. On the other side, you have blue. And somewhere in the middle in that spectrum, we all want to be balanced.

04:18

So we'd want to be purple in that discussion. But this question is really more like, do you like the color blue, or do you like asparagus?

04:34

The idea is it's not two colors. It's not a spectrum of colors where you just kind of pick.

04:43

It's two totally different concepts that have historically set themselves against one another and presented themselves as different colors on a spectrum.

04:56

But when you dig into them, they're really dealing with issues that are unrelated.

05:02

And I think because of that, the biblical approach isn't, we have point

05:08

A and point Z, and the Bible is somewhere in here. It's more like you have a philosophical discussion here that's undergirding

05:20

Calvinism. And you have another separate philosophical discussion here that's undergirding Arminianism and Arminian thinking.

05:27

And the biblical approach is different than both. It's not in the middle. It's just different than what they're both doing.

05:34

And so generally, some would consider themselves, for example, a four -point

05:44

Calvinist, one who would hold to four points of Calvinism. And so they would say they're kind of a moderate

05:49

Calvinist. The problem with that is the points of Calvinism are logically written in such a way that if you accept one, you have to accept all five.

05:58

It's illogical and inconsistent to do anything other. So I would personally reject all five points of Calvinism as written.

06:08

And by the way, so would John Calvin. These are written by his followers later who are responding to the remonstrance.

06:17

And Calvin, in his writings, isn't a five -point Calvinist. So there's that inconsistency idea.

06:23

The Arminian argument is working from a different perspective. And of course, I would reject all five of those as well.

06:31

And so I would see these not as within a spectrum as much as they're making affirmations of how

06:40

God is working. And the Bible is making a different affirmation about how God is working. And I think we kind of have to choose the

06:47

Calvinistic God, the Arminian God, or the biblical God, because these are kind of three different entities if you get right down to it.

06:55

And most don't want to think of it in those terms. Well, for sure. Most of the questions we receive are, how can you reconcile these two doctrines that appear to be irreconcilable?

07:09

Or how do you, if you believe this, well, then clearly you also believe this.

07:15

And so expect that just because you got questions, we land closer to Calvinism than we do to Arminianism.

07:23

And I'm fully aware, like you said, that the position we take may not be perfectly logical, but it's our best attempt at trying to reconcile what

07:32

Scripture says and understand what Scripture says about how God is sovereign in election. And yet we are also responsible to believe.

07:39

So it's a frustrating place to be. People say we have our feet planted firmly in midair.

07:46

Why don't we just take a stronger stance? It's because I see flaws in both full Calvinism and full

07:51

Arminianism, as you said. So trying to come to a biblically -based compromise, or even just say, here's what the

07:59

Bible says about these issues, doesn't seem to satisfy anyone. So I'm curious with you,

08:04

I know you wrote an entire book on this, but can you summarize the SOFR rule for our listeners?

08:11

Sure. Sure. Well, first of all, Shay, what you just said, I think absolutely epitomizes the biblical approach.

08:19

You talked about God's sovereignty in election and human responsibility. And that's it.

08:26

You find both of those so clearly communicated in Scripture. Let's just take

08:31

Ephesians 1 and 2, for example. Ephesians 1 makes it very clear that God chose and called that He did that work.

08:41

And it's inarguable. He's talking about individuals there. We can't get away from it. But then in Ephesians 2,

08:48

He makes it so clear that this salvation is by grace. So it's a gift, but through faith.

08:56

And faith is the act of me believing in Him. So I am responsible to believe in Him.

09:05

And He exercises His grace through that. So He is 100 % sovereign.

09:11

I'm 100 % responsible. And Calvinism is arguing that because He's 100 % sovereign, your responsibility is kind of irrelevant.

09:21

It doesn't matter what you do or don't do. You're elected and He's going to see all that through. It tries to have a high view of God, which

09:28

I appreciate, but it ends up not having quite a high enough view of God because it doesn't recognize that He can set up these two things and they are not in conflict.

09:39

In the Armenian approach, the desire is to protect human choice.

09:47

And in order to do that, instead of recognizing the Bible presents both ideas, it reduces

09:53

God's sovereignty. And the full Calvinist approach, full Armenian approach are not biblically compatible.

10:01

So in the SOFR rule, all I'm trying to do is look at biblical instances where God is interacting with humanity.

10:12

And the first half of the book is focused on just biblical episode after biblical episode, where God is working with humanity and He makes it clear that He's sovereign and that humanity has responsibility.

10:25

With Pharaoh, for example, before all that starts, God tells Moses, I'm going to harden

10:30

Pharaoh's heart. God actively is going to do that to Pharaoh. And then as we see it play out, 10 times you have

10:38

Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and then five times his heart is hardened in the passive sense.

10:44

So you see both, Pharaoh's held accountable for his heart being hardened. He's judged for that, but at the same time,

10:51

God is pre -announcing. So in the SOFR rule, I'm trying to lay out in the first half of it, here are the biblical instances, forget theology, just look at what the

11:00

Bible says. And then in the second half, we're trying to unpack it and look at what are the implications. And the concept of the

11:07

SOFR rule is that, you know, so we had a SOFR. Okay.

11:12

So my family had a SOFR and I remember distinctly, you know, my two lovely young daughters were eating on the

11:18

SOFR and, you know, spilling crumbs and all this. And so we made a rule for a little while, you can't eat on the SOFR. But then

11:26

Kat, my wife and I, we'd eat on the SOFR. And our daughters one day wondered, well, how is it that you have a rule that you can violate this rule, but we can't.

11:39

And it kind of, I made these connections that God has all these rules in place for us.

11:45

We're not sovereign. We don't own the SOFR. We can't make the rules. So we have to submit to the owner's system.

11:54

But God has the freedom to do that. It's his SOFR. He made it so he can do whatever he wants to, right? And so when he is sovereign and in control of all things, he can set the rules to the game.

12:05

If he wants to give us responsibility, hold us accountable, he absolutely has the right to do that.

12:11

So that's kind of the idea of the SOFR rule, which is a goofy name for a book. No, it totally makes sense.

12:18

And I enjoyed that illustration as I read the book. And it's something I've, it's fascinating for me to think about.

12:25

It's something I really enjoy thinking about, trying to figure out. But one of the struggles I've found is that while many

12:32

Christians are willing to, in a sense, embrace the mystery when it comes to the Trinity, they'll admit,

12:38

I'm never going to be able to perfectly understand the Trinity or the humanity and deity of Christ, the hypostatic union.

12:46

They'll admit, I don't fully understand how that works. So they're willing to embrace a certain amount of mystery on those two issues.

12:52

But when it comes to this one, for whatever reason, people want to figure it out.

12:58

And once they think they figure it out, they tend to become very dogmatic. So why do you think it is that,

13:05

I mean, I understand why this issue is so fascinating because it's very important to think about, but why are so many people so unwilling to embrace the fact that maybe this is something we cannot perfectly or fully understand.

13:19

So rather than trying to do that, why don't we just focus on what the Bible says and what our responsibility is, which is to share the gospel with every human being on the planet?

13:31

It's a great question. I think part of our functioning in the image of God is embracing and loving, learning about him, right?

13:41

It's a wonderful thing. And in so far as God has revealed himself, we can know him.

13:48

He's not a mystery. He's unveiled a lot about himself and we can know with great confidence who he is in all that he's revealed.

13:57

At the same time, there's a lot about him that he has not revealed. And Isaiah tells us that he is so far above us, right?

14:06

As the heavens are from the earth, he's so far above us. And so he reveals to us what he wants us to know and he reveals it clearly in his word.

14:15

But then there's much that we can't understand because he's just beyond us. And so it's good for us to investigate and to pursue and to look for answers.

14:26

But when he has not revealed those, especially in scripture, those answers about himself, we have to say,

14:33

I trust you. There are certain things that I'm not going to be able to be dogmatic about.

14:41

And if he doesn't reveal it, there's no other source for me to go to to arrive at that conclusion.

14:47

So we have to learn how to humbly say, I don't know, not because we haven't studied or examined, but because he hasn't shared that part of himself with us.

15:00

And so I think it's in our good intention of trying to pursue truth, we simply go too far by going beyond what is written.

15:08

Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, he says, I urge you not to exceed what is written because that makes you arrogant against each other.

15:16

We come up with these systems, theological systems and ideas out of nothing, out of thin air.

15:23

And then we argue against people because they disagree. Well, it creates strife. Instead, we should be saying scripture tells us this, it takes us this far.

15:32

And beyond that, you know, in the physical realm, we have science and we can do all this fun investigation and that's wonderful.

15:38

But in the realm of God's character and his identity, we have no means to arrive at those conclusions.

15:46

So we must simply trust him and not go beyond what's written. So I think it's a good thing that we just try to go too far with sometimes.

15:56

Does that make sense? No, it totally does. And that's been my experience in trying to help people to think through these issues.

16:04

And at some point, the answer has to be, you know, you need to reach a point and humbly admit to yourself and to God that I'm never going to perfectly understand everything about you.

16:17

Be willing to accept that, trusting everything the Bible does clearly say about God, but be willing to accept, you know, he's infinite,

16:26

I'm finite, I'm therefore never going to be able to perfectly understand everything about him.

16:31

So arriving to the point that you understand and recognize and accept that, to me, is an important aspect of spiritual growth that I struggle to get to.

16:43

And I'm not saying I'm entirely there, but I'm always trying to figure things out. But let me ask you a couple of common questions, frequently asked questions we get that are closely related to this, is to see how you approach those.

16:56

Because based on reading your book, I think I know how you're going to get there, but I'm just very curious for your insight.

17:03

How would you respond to someone who struggles with, well, if God elects, chooses who's going to be saved, how can

17:12

I know if I'm one of the elect? Or what if I'm not one of the elect, therefore, I'm never going to be able to believe to begin with?

17:20

How do you, how would you respond to someone with that sort of mindset? That's a magnificent question.

17:28

And I think that's at the heart of the issue. The Arminian perspective is trying to protect the individual from having a sovereign ogre making that choice for them.

17:41

And the Calvinist is trying to respect that God is sovereign and doesn't much care about humanity's choice.

17:47

Well, we see that election and predestination are ideas revealed in Scripture to demonstrate

17:54

God's grace. Paul says in Romans 12, verse 1, as he's just finished this whole discussion, especially chapters 9, 10, and 11, where he did talk about election and predestination.

18:09

And he says, I urge you based on the mercies of God. So this idea of election and predestination, they're elements of God's mercy,

18:17

His love, His compassion, His grace. They're wonderful things. And so they are not revealed to us to show us a portrait of a

18:30

God who's wrathful. Now, God is wrathful and there's jealousy and there's justice and all those things.

18:37

But I'm saying in those contexts, when these doctrines are revealed, the whole point of these explanations being given are to show us how incredibly gracious and merciful

18:48

God is. So the idea of election is not a bad thing. It's not a, boy,

18:54

I sure hope you have it because if you don't have election, I'm wasting my time. Some who hold to this idea, by the way, will say that in your counseling, when you're counseling someone, if you're counseling an unbeliever, you can't even tell them that Jesus died for them because in this particular system, the third point of Calvinism is that Jesus only died for the elect.

19:15

And if you're not the elect, He didn't die for you. So I can't really proclaim the good news that Jesus died for you.

19:21

Well, that doesn't align with scripture at all in any way. So predestination and election are revealed to us as a means of showing us

19:30

God's grace and mercy. Now, I have no idea. I have nothing to say whether or not

19:40

I was predestined or elected, except scripture. If I have believed in Him, I know I was predestined and elected and all that.

19:48

And this is one of the challenges. We make the recipe for salvation so complex.

19:54

We're in the gospel of John, it's believe. The believing one has eternal life. If you believed in Christ, you have eternal life, which means reverse engineer that you were predestined before the foundation of the earth.

20:05

This is incredible. So rather than having a person wonder about that and giving them a recipe for how to be saved that's so complex, they don't know if they can ever do it, asking them, do you believe in this

20:20

Jesus Christ? Who is and what He did for you? You put your trust in Him. Well, yes. Well, then boom, you're an elect.

20:27

Well, what if I wasn't? Then maybe I can't really believe. Do you believe? Yes. Well, then you were.

20:34

It seems like a really simple thing. We're trying to focus on the mysterious part that we can't touch taste or feel when what

20:43

He tells us to interact with is, no, this is true. Believe in me and you have all of this.

20:50

Yeah. Now, when we get that question, it's trying to point people back to scripture. Look, nowhere in scripture does anyone express any concern about whether they are one of the elect.

21:02

Nowhere in scripture does it say that is something we need to be worried about. No, our responsibility is to receive

21:08

Jesus Christ, the Savior, to believe in Him, to trust in Him alone is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

21:15

So this struggle with questioning whether one is elect is completely foreign to scripture.

21:23

So I love how you explain that. Question number two, you probably guess what the next one is because it's probably one of the most important factors in the

21:33

Calvinism versus Arminianism debate, and that's of eternal security. So if you're Calvinist, you go with perseverance of the saints that anyone who is elect will persevere to the end.

21:44

They will never lose faith, deny that Christ, anything like that. They will persevere to the end. Arminianism, there's multiple variations.

21:52

There are some who believe that salvation can be lost and regained multiple times. There are Arminians who believe in once saved, always saved.

21:59

So with the biblical perspective, how do you approach the eternal security issue?

22:06

And why this is so important is because when people doubt both whether they are saved and whether they always will be, it creates all sorts of problems theologically, personally, practically, spiritually, and it causes people to doubt the love of God when they think, oh, if I sin, if I mess up, my salvation is gone, and I don't know if I can get it back.

22:26

So how do you approach the eternal security issue? I love to start with the words of Jesus.

22:33

Just really simple. Of course, in John 3 and John 6 especially, looking at John 6, 47, for example,

22:40

Jesus says, the believing one, and he uses that participle, the believing one, it doesn't show up like that in English, but it's the believing one, has, present tense, eternal life.

22:54

That's the formula. And he explained that to Nicodemus back in John 3, laying it out that, again, the participle, the believing one, right, has eternal life in John 3, 16.

23:08

So when you look at these passages together, and then all of what he is explaining to Nicodemus about, you know, you must be born again.

23:15

Some people say you must be born again, misunderstanding that, right? But you must be born again.

23:21

There's this renewal that happens, and I would say it like this. When you believe, if you are a believing one, at eight o 'clock in the morning, you become a believing one.

23:31

You've been born again. You have this new birth. You have this new life. Now, a person can commit suicide, right?

23:39

A person can end their life, but did their committing suicide unborn them?

23:47

Is there anything they could do to be unborn? No, they can end their life, but they can't be unborn.

23:52

When we're born again, we are born again the moment we become a believing one. So at eight o 'clock in the morning,

23:59

I become a believing one. Jesus says in John 6, 47, I have at eight o 'clock in the morning, eternal life, life that by definition cannot end.

24:09

And so at nine o 'clock in the morning, in my immaturity, I commit some awful sin.

24:15

And somebody says, well, you must have lost salvation because you committed this mortal sin. Well, what did

24:21

Jesus say? You are a believing one at eight o 'clock in the morning. You have eternal life at eight o 'clock in the morning.

24:27

That means that at nine o 'clock in the morning, you still have eternal life. Now you need to grow because you're acting like an infant, and we've got a discipline process, but you are in Christ.

24:38

And it's just that simple. In the Calvinistic system, it's trying to make it very complex.

24:44

We have to have these believers being saved, but it has to be some additional ongoing continuous work of God.

24:54

Whereas in the Arminian system, if God wasn't sovereign in a person's being saved, then

25:00

God isn't sovereign in a person's keeping that salvation so a person can lose it. Where Jesus' approach,

25:06

John 6, 47, John 3, 16, so crystal clear. And then John writes at the end of his gospel, 20, 30, 31, he writes the whole purpose in his writing this gospel is so that you will believe in his name and have life.

25:24

And then John writes later in first John, he writes this idea that you can know you have eternal life.

25:32

So we're supposed to be able to have certainty. And the simplicity of what

25:38

Jesus says kind of just sweeps away all the theological arguments, I think. That's excellent.

25:46

I love the unborn analogy that nothing we can do can cause us to be unborn either physically and the same truth applies spiritually that once we're born again, once we're born from above, once we are the new creation in Christ, nothing we can do can undo that.

26:03

So that's a powerful reminder. And I think a good biblical perspective on how we should be approaching the loss of salvation question.

26:12

So Dr. Cohn, thank you for helping us think through these issues a little bit.

26:17

I know you've got, in addition to this book and some other books, what are some of the things that are keeping you busy at these days?

26:28

Well, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to serve with Agathon EDU and VERSITY, Colorado Biblical University.

26:37

I'm just excited about what God is doing there. I'm excited about what God is doing. We've got questions and really thankful for the ministry going on there and being able to be connected in some way, which

26:50

I won't. I get to write. I love to write. And I'm so thankful for the opportunity to write with God questions.

26:58

So that's keeping me busy as well. So we certainly need a lot of prayer as we're trying to build these educational institutions and just be faithful with all the stewardships that God has provided.

27:12

So thank you for sharing that. And we will include a link to both the book and then some whatever other resources you would like for our listeners to have access to.

27:23

Thank you for being on the show, and I look forward to having you on again sometime. So I hope this conversation has been encouraging to you.