Theology Matters: The Parable of the Farmer (Geisler)

The Background of *Chosen but Free* and the Response in *The Potter’s Freedom*

When I first read Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free, and I recognized that this was a book that was going to cause a great deal of confusion because of the attitude of Dr. Geisler, who seemed to believe he could redefine the historical parameters of the discussion and could identify synergistic Arminian theology as moderate Calvinism.

I could not have possibly known at that time that in desiring to provide a response for the edification of God's people, to clarify the issues, having attempted to correspond with Dr. Geisler, having attempted to address some of the issues that he was raising with his use of the terminology of extreme Calvinism to describe just Calvinism, I could not have possibly had any idea how wide an impact the response that I provided Dr. Geisler would have.

I was recently at a church that, in essence, I was informed by those at the church in leadership that that church began out of the Potter's Freedom and the influence that book had. I have been tremendously blessed to hear the stories of people and churches whose lives and whose ministries have been deeply impacted by that book.

And it certainly is a lesson that when you first see a book come out and you first hear someone, in essence, presenting error, it's so easy to become discouraged. But in many ways, Chosen but Free has produced more Calvinists than probably almost any other book could have, simply because so many people read it and went, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense.

The exegetical errors, the eisegesis, certainly those who already wanted to be confirmed in their synergism and their denial of the sovereignty of God and salvation, maybe they find that book to confirm themselves in that.

But to any person who seriously begins to examine the issues and asks, why isn't there any meaningful exegesis of the key texts in this entire book, that's really what allowed me, in the Potter's Freedom, to present a defense of the whole realm of Reformed theology and to do it in a context that made it much more effective and had much more impact.

I would love to do some debates with those who are the most strident in their denunciation of Reformed theology on the basis of the biblical text, but they won't do it. Norman Geisler has declined every opportunity.

Of course, we know Dave Hunt has likewise declined those things. And so it does seem that the one side wants to have a monologue while we on the Reformed side are confident of the teaching of the scriptures and therefore desire a dialogue that would demonstrate this.

And the few times I have gotten people to debate, I think the results have been pretty clear. That has been, I think, the viewpoint of most people. I was listening to a lecture delivered by Norman Geisler just this morning.

Not the lecture was delivered this morning, but it was delivered just over the past couple of years. It's certainly post the Potter's Freedom. And it raised a whole lot of issues. I don't know how much time I'm going to have to be able to address these things in light of the other studies that I'm doing right now and my writing responsibilities and debating and traveling and everything like that.

But I'm going to try to keep it in mind. I make a lot of promises sometimes, and it's difficult to keep up with everything. I don't have a staff to be doing these things for me. I do this on my own primarily.

The only other person who works in the ministry is plenty busy doing the things that keep us going. But I really would like to address the things that he says in this lecture, because there's just so many problems that it raises.

It would seem to me, in light of the fact his work has been so severely challenged, that his presentation would have to change. But what I've learned about many of these gentlemen is that when it comes to Reformed theology, they have little respect for those who hold it, very little respect.

I know that Dr. Geisler does not believe he can learn anything from anyone younger than him. He, in essence, told me that before I wrote the Potter's Freedom. He did not feel anyone who's less than 65 years of age, for example, could ever write a systematic theology.

They just don't know enough. And so I have a very strong feeling that, to this day, Dr. Geisler has never read all the Potter's Freedom. I firmly believe, and this is something I do want to get to fairly quickly, I do believe that the appendix that he included in the second edition of Chosen for Free was not written by Dr. Geisler, but was a compilation of undergraduate papers.

And I've got reasons for that. And maybe if I get a chance, I'll go into those. But in listening to this presentation, and I know it's post-Potter's Freedom, because he mentions me in passing, I listen once again to Dr. Geisler present an illustration that I specifically criticized in the Potter's Freedom.

And not only have I criticized it, but others have criticized it in print as well over the years. But he continues to use it. And I see no evidence that he has modified the presentation so that it in any way responds to criticism.

It just ignores the criticism, as if the criticism is completely off base and has no substance. And it is that kind of attitude that causes me great concern. It really does. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to play this particular parable, as he puts it, this illustration, as he presented it, in his lecture.

It is addressed in the 13th chapter of the Potter's Freedom, if you have that book. And I would like to respond to it as I did in the book, but do so here in a way that people maybe who have not read the Potter's Freedom will be able to see the importance, again, of why theology matters.

Because the only people who will find this parable, this presentation, to be useful are people who have a sub-biblical theology when it comes to the nature of man. Once again, we see the overarching power of tradition in Dr. Geisler's theology in regards to autonomous human free will, but especially a sub-biblical view of sin and of the sovereignty of God, so on and so forth, is what makes this illustration what it is.

The Farmer, the Fence, and the Drowning Boys

Here's Dr. Geisler's presentation.

Here's Dr. Geisler's presentation.

Way back in the field where no one could see it, there was a pond in the woods. And neighborhood boys liked to swim there, but he didn't want anyone to drown. He didn't want to be sued. So he put a fence around the pond, and he put a sign there, danger, do not swim.

One day, he was going back in the field with his tractor. He happened to come by the opening. He could see the pond, and there were three neighborhood boys in the pond drowning, just what he had feared.

He goes over to the pond, and he says to the boys who are drowning, didn't you see the fence? Didn't you see the sign? You disobeyed this, and you all deserve to drown. And the farmer turned his back up, down his tractor, and drove away.

Now, there's no one who has any ounce of sympathy or humanity who wouldn't say, that was a very unloving thing to do. But wasn't everything he said true? There was a fence. There was a sign, and they disobeyed.

And they were experiencing the consequences of their own disobedience?

Yes.

Everything he said was true, spiritual analogy. Isn't it true that Adam sinned, and we followed in his steps, and we all deserve to go to hell? Yes, absolutely true. Now, let's change the last part of the illustration.

The farmer, instead of saying to them, after he said, you're all deserving of drowning here, he looked at the one in the blue trunks, and he said, you in the blue trunks, and he threw a rope to him, and he pulled him in.

And the farmer folded his arms and looked at the other two and watched them drown. Now, what do you think of the farmer? Partially loving, right? He did a loving thing. He saved one of them. That's exactly what the extreme Calvinists believe about salvation.

Exactly.

They hate this illustration, because it's so powerful. They all deserve to die. They all disobeyed the law. And the farmer rightly said to them, you all are justly drowning. So it wasn't unjust not to rescue them.

That was the Arminian mistake, was not unjust to not try and rescue all. There's another attribute of God that you have to deal with called love. It was unloving not to try to rescue them. They were justly condemned.

The race is justly condemned. And the farmer had a obligation built on his nature as loving to reach out to them. God has an obligation built on his nature of love. Because you see, an all-loving God has to love all, or he wouldn't be all-loving.

That's why he said, I'm not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repent in 2 Peter 3 .9. He wants all men to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2. O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, I want all of you to come in the full.

Third illustration. Everything the same up to the farmer throwing the rope to one of them. The farmer threw out a rope to all three boys. One accepted it, and two rejected it. And one was rescued, and the other two said, no, thank you.

I'll do it myself and drown. Seems to me that that's the biblical picture that we get when we read all of Scripture. A God who loves all, tries to save everyone. Some respond, and some don't. You say, well, now, wait a minute.

Why do some respond and some not respond? It's a thing called free choice. It's a thing called free choice. We all have it. It's a gift of God.

Why the Parable Misrepresents Sin, Love, and Human Depravity

Now, right from the start, I want to make sure that you heard what Dr. Geisel said right toward the end there. A God who loves all, this idea of omnibenevolence that this allows to God, the ability to have different kinds of love.

He has to love everybody equally. You can't have special kinds of love. You can't have redemptive love. You just have to love everybody equally, even though we as creatures have a different kind of love for our wife than we have for any other woman.

God's not allowed to do that.

He has to be omnibenevolent in the vanilla sense. And he loves everyone and tries to save everyone. Tries to save everyone. I want to make sure you caught that, because that's the presentation that is being given to us, is that God is, he's given it his best, he's really trying, so we got to give him credit and praise for trying so hard.

That's really what's being said. But then did you also notice, extreme Calvinists, which means just regular Calvinists, hate this illustration because it's so powerful. Well, I'm not sure the term hate's the proper term, but we reject it because it is so grossly wrong.

It's not powerful. It's not powerful at all. In fact, what's powerful is reputation of it. It's extremely useful to look at something like this and go, here is sub-biblical theology. Here's what happens when you have a sub-biblical theology, when you do not allow the word of God to say what the word of God says.

When you insert libertarian free will, this is the result. Now, this illustration, this parable, is flawed at every level. It's the perfect example of man-centered theology trumping the clear biblical presentation.

First, it uses a mere creature, a sinful man, the farmer, to represent the holy God. The farmer would be one who has limited knowledge. Notice he didn't know that the boys were getting into the swimming hole.

He's just riding his tractor around. He's just a good old boy, you know? So he has limited knowledge. He probably, as a younger person, jumped into a few swimming holes himself, which is why he posted his own, because he probably had done that as a person himself, and so he'd have no grounds upon which to have any holy wrath at what these boys have done.

He would be one in need of mercy. His posting of a sign would not be reflective of his essential nature. He could have opened the swimming hole to everyone, had he so chosen. It was just a matter of convenience.

This isn't some transcendent holiness that has been violated here. And this, again, demonstrates the grossly sub-biblical view of man and his sin that is inherent in Arminianism, whether you want to falsely call it moderate Calvinism or not, doesn't change the reality of what we're actually talking about here.

There's nothing transcendent about the rule that the boys had broken. It was arbitrary. What they had done was a mere light offense that in no way represents in any meaningful fashion the rebellion and depravity of the heart of man.

Think about the horrific evil that has been expressed by man over the centuries. Child sacrifice, abortion, murder, homosexuality, genocide. And compare this with three good old boys swimming in a swimming hole.

Not exactly a close parallel to what we have in scripture regarding the sinfulness of man. Now, if the parable wished to be serious, and we'd have to change every element of it, instead of a farmer riding around on his tractor, and I suggested all this in The Potter's Freedom, the great king returns to his castle from doing good out amongst the people of the land, and he finds there a group of men robbing, raping, and murdering his family and friends.

They have intentionally set fire to the castle, and if they do not quickly leave the castle, they are actually going to perish within the castle itself. This would capture a little bit more of the biblical presentation of man as a rebel against the great king, against the one who has created pots in rebellion against the potter.

But let's add something more to that. These are subjects of the great king, and he has been tremendously merciful to them. He has provided them with material blessings, he's protected them in the past, they've sat at his table, they've enjoyed his hospitality, and yet they treat him in this fashion.

Unlike the parable, these rebels have sinned against the king personally. In the parable, they sin against a no-trespassing son. And it should be noted that this is not the first time they've done so.

They have a long track record of rebellion and hatred of the king, despite the fact that he has been merciful to them. Let's go even farther. These good old boys are not even described in Geisler's parable.

We are told nothing about them other than they're just drowning. Why they're drowning, or anything else. Notice that drowning is not so much the result of anything they've done as maybe the swimming hole's a dangerous place or something like that.

So again, make this at least, to try to fix it, to make it somewhat more biblical, not so sub-biblical. What we'd have to do is be informed that these men who are found by the king, engaging in heinous crimes against the king's family and the king's castle, they're not crying out for deliverance.

They're not trying to get anyone to help them to deliver them from the situation they're in. Despite the mounting flames and the heat, they continue in their violent behavior, destroying everything that reminds them of the king and his rule over them.

In fact, they're enjoying themselves. They like this. They love their rebellion. They love their sin. They even make excuses for it. And they get mad at anyone who tells them that they're doing wrong.

In fact, they try to encourage other people to come in and help them in trashing the castle while it's burning. That's Romans 1. That's Romans 1. That's Romans 3. That's a description of mankind in his sin.

But the truth is even farther removed from the parable that Dr. Geisler offers to us. If we ask how do these rebels respond to the attempt to deliver them from their rebellion, nothing in the parable.

You know, he throws the rope to the one. Obviously, the one responds. Evidently, in Geisler's world, if God's the one throwing the rope, then the guy can go, I don't want it. And God can try and try and try and fail and fail and fail.

So God can try to elect someone and fail in his election. There are so many problems, so many flat-out contradictions between this parable and the Bible that it's absolutely shocking when you really start unpacking it.

And I think that's why the rebuttal of Chosen but Free has been so useful in bringing people into Reformed theology because you can see so clearly once you really start looking at what the Word of God says how poor the argumentation is.

These rebels in the castle, should the king seek to open a way for them through the flames to save them, they would laugh at him, mock his actions. They'd throw debris in his face, run away into the smoke, cursing his name.

If they had the power, they'd pull the king to the castle so that he'd die with them. They would surely never cry out for deliverance or seek escape from the danger that surrounds them. That's another of the problems, another reason why theology matters.

You need to take seriously what the Bible says about the depravity of man. This is part of the error brought into the parable by Geisler's insistence that the unregenerate man can do what is pleasing to God in direct contradiction to Romans 8 -7 -8.

And one thing that is so painfully obvious about the presentations of people like Norm Geisler and Dave Hunt and others who oppose the doctrines of grace is that they only want to give their verses. They don't offer anything meaningful on the text that so clearly present God's freedom and salvation.

That's why one of the main questions I asked Dr. Geisler while I was writing The Potter's Freedom was why is there no exegesis of John 6 -37 following in Chosen But Free? And he wrote back and said, well, there's full exegesis.

And so I typed out every single comment on John 6 -37 in the entirety of Chosen But Free because the first edition did not have a scripture index in it. So I pulled them all out, sent it to him, and he sent a postcard, a little postcard back, said, if you publish, I'll respond.

Blessings, Norm, that's it. There is no exegesis of John 6 in Chosen But Free. There is no meaningful exegesis of the key text. And even when attempts are made, it's normally cut up into small pieces.

Errors are made in regards to basic fundamental things concerning the Greek language. Chosen But Free is just a really bad book. And that's why it's actually had the exact opposite effect of I think what was intended.

So going back to the parable, no rebel sinner is floundering around going, help me, help me. That's one of the, I know how common the illustration is, but where is that in scripture? Even if the proverbial life ring were cast into the pond or a squad of firemen made it to the rebels in the smoke, they would not cooperate with the rescue effort.

And even at this, we're missing an important element of biblical truth. They lack the capacity due to spiritual death to take advantage of any kind of assistance, even if they desire to do so. So again, on every level, the parable fails to respond to the reality of biblical teaching.

We also see a rather obvious swipe at the sovereignty of God and salvation in that the king looks and he says, ah, you in the blue trunks. For a farmer to just arbitrarily do that strikes us as being exceptionally, well, ridiculous.

But the fact of the matter is that God's unconditional election, and Dr. Geisser continues to completely misdefine this. Well, it's unconditional on the part of the one giving, but it's conditional on the part of the one receiving,.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Unconditional election, at least historically, if you want to take history and the theology of history seriously, means that God elects unconditionally without the fulfillment of conditions on the part of the one.

So elected, he just completely changes what the entire concept refers to so that he can call himself a moderate Calvinist. It's just not being honest with history. It's just redefining things to make it fit.

So here you have what the Bible describes as the kind intention of his will, which is the praise of his glorious grace, Ephesians 1, being turned into a farmer going, ah, I like the blue trunks. Again, theology matters, and this parable demonstrates it.

Finally, you can tell he's in front of a sympathetic audience. They chuckle at these things and laugh at these things. Of course, I've met a lot of people who used to chuckle and laugh at these things, and then they got challenged on it.

Once they really started digging into it, they realized what the truth was. But it seems obvious that from Geisler's perspective, it's far better to have a God who, in creating this universe, does not create with a sovereign decree that determines actions and time.

In The Potter's Freedom, I dealt with Geisler's odd, determinately foreknowing and foreknowingly determining concept, which really doesn't answer any of the meaningful questions that it needs to answer, and it's been criticized by many people as being somewhat of a, sort of a card trick, you know?

You, or the thing where you hide the little bean or the pebble or something like that, and you move the shells around. A bit of a shell game type of response. It doesn't actually do anything in answering the question, does God truly create in a sovereign fashion so that all the actions in time have a purpose?

It is very easy to criticize before him theology by saying, well, you're saying that, you know, God created all this evil. Unless you're an open theist, you believe that when God created, he knew what the future would involve.

And either he had a purpose for it or he didn't. All the rigmarole about, so, well, you know, he created the potentiality. If he knew it was going to take place, it's either purposeful or it's not. If there's no sovereign decree, then it's not purposeful.

God created all that, created all that evil, and has no purpose for it.

None whatsoever.

At least the reformed person can say God uses means. We can look at the compatibilism that's plainly presented in Genesis chapter 50, Isaiah 10, Acts 4. We can talk about the purity of God's motivations and the impurity of man's motivations.

We can go to all that. But if you don't have a sovereign decree of God, if you just got a farmer on his tractor, oh, look what's going on over there. How can you really begin to give serious answers to these bigger questions?

That really is the issue. And so this illustration has been criticized for years, but Dr. Geisler does not seem to hear the criticisms. And I doubt he'll hear this either. There's nothing I can do about that.

But given that this theology determines how you'll answer many of the biggest questions of faith, and it will determine how you defend the faith, then I have no option but to respond to these things and point out just how very poor this argumentation is, how sub-biblical it is, and call people to a higher standard, a higher view of biblical theology.

Don't just sweep under the rug the key texts that are so important on these particular issues. It really, really is very, very important that we understand the holiness of God and the depravity of man.

So if the gospel is not rendered something where God is just trying to save as many as possible, God is to be glorified in the gospel because the triune God saves perfectly. He does not fail. And it is that gospel that is worthy of the eternal praise of all of creation down through the millennia, down through the ages to come.

We will praise him, not for having tried real hard, but for having been perfect in the accomplishment of his will. Thanks for watching.