CalvinDude.com

The title of the post is about me. I’ve seen better days than today. The thing is that today’s not really that bad in and of itself. Instead, it’s a chronic thing.

See, Saturday afternoon I noticed a slight pain. It was right on my tailbone. As I went to bed that night, I found I couldn’t lay on my back because it hurt too much. In the morning I discovered I had a lovely boil there.

Well, maybe not a real boil. I don’t know. It’s either a boil, a big zit, an ingrown hair, or maybe a spider bit me. But Sunday it got worse, to the point that last night I didn’t get any sleep at all because I had to keep finding positions that would take the pressure off of it, which doesn’t work too well when those positions cause pressure on the rest of your body!

In any case, this morning we had a great deal of Global Warming fall on the ground so work was delayed. But I ended up calling in sick anyway since I’ve had no sleep at all :-( Furthermore, this stupid thing is at just the wrong position that I can’t even sit very long (I have to prop myself up with a pillow and such).

The pain itself isn’t that bad–I’ve had worse. But it doesn’t go away. I think the sheer fact that it doesn’t go away is, itself, worse after all.

Oh well. I can empathize with Job a little more now…

Since these comments have fallen into the purgatory that is Non-Main-Page, and since I think it’s important for Christians to have a grounding in the ordo salutis I’ve decided to respond with a new post, giving the appropriate background here.

Dan (GodIsMyJudge) originally wrote to Gene:

Regarding the “new covenant” and Isaiah 54:13 (cross ref Jer 33, Mathew 26, Hebrews 8, Hebrews 10, …) One of the blessings of the new covenant is regeneration, but another is forgiveness of sins. Do you believe people are forgiven before they come to Christ? Doesn’t this view contradict much of the NT? But you seem to be arguing that teaching, hearing & learning are part of the new covenant and precede coming to Christ.

I responded:

First of all, the temperal speed at which everything happens can vary. Many of the steps of salvation occur simultaneous to one another. There remains, however, a logical order. Ignoring the logical order of the decree of God and focusing only on what happens to the sinner during salvation, what you have is:

1. A sinner begins spiritually dead.

2. God regenerates that sinner. The ordinary means by which this occurs is through the proclamation of the Gospel. Sometimes the temporal moment between the proclamation of the Gospel and God’s regeneration of the sinner is instantaneous; sometimes it can take years and the sinner is reminded of the previously heard proclamation at a later date. In both cases, however, God must regenerate the sinner so that he is no longer spiritually dead so that he can respond to the message he has heard.

3. That response–the response of the regenerated man–is faith in what was proclaimed by the Gospel.

4. On the basis of that faith, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to the sinner and imputes the sins of the sinner to Christ. The sinner is justified before God.

5. The regenerated man produces fruit and continues along the path of sanctification.

Because this chain is certain (that is, once God regenerates an individual that individual will, inevitably, proceed to step 5), Scripture talks about salvation as step 2 (regeneration, not bare proclamation), 3, 4, 5 and all steps combined. We know that if somoene is at step 3, he is saved because steps 4 and 5 must follow. Likewise if he is at step 4, step 5 must follow.

Of course, as humans we do not have the omniscience that God has. We can only make our best judgment as to whether someone is a genuine believer or not based on the fruits we see in that person’s life.

So, with that in mind, the question was asked:
—
Do you believe people are forgiven before they come to Christ?
—

“Before” is the wrong term here. “Before” implies we look at this temporally; but these events could happen instantaneously and simultaneously.

In any case, logically the claim would be: Regeneration -> Faith -> Justification -> Sanctification. Justification entails the forgiveness of sins, sins our sins are imputed at that point.

In the logical order, therefore, faith preceeds justification; but regeneration preceeds faith. If you define faith as “coming to Jesus” and forgiveness as “justification” then yes, one “comes to Jesus” before one is “forgiven.” But this is still after one is made a new spiritual creation that is able to come to Christ.

Finally it was said:
—
But you seem to be arguing that teaching, hearing & learning are part of the new covenant and precede coming to Christ.
—

Teaching, hearing, and learning do come before faith. How does one have faith in what one has not heard, and how can one hear unless someone has preached it? (I’m pretty sure someone asked that question once….) The fallacy with the question is thinking that knowing about Christ is equivalent to having faith in Christ. Yet we know from James that the demons believe plenty of truthful propositions about Christ, and that doesn’t help them at all. One can know every fact about Christ that is possible for humans to know and still be spiritually dead.

However, one cannot have faith in Christ unless one knows who He is. And God has chosen the proclamation of the Gospel as His first means of bringing about salvation.

Now God could still save someone in a different manner if He so chose to do so; but we have no Scriptural warrant to believe He ever does otherwise. He has only revealed to us that this is the method He uses.

I hope that helps clarify it a bit.

Dan responded by stating:

Thanks for your comments. Your thoughts about “dead faith” are interesting. I took your comments to mean, you interpret the phrase “they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father” as speaking of knowledge of Christ without trust in Him.

No, that’s not how I would have taken it (and I don’t think that’s how Gene meant it either, although he can respond for sure). In any case, that aspect of knowledge is not what is being taught by Isaiah or Jeremiah. These passages do not refer to the bare knowledge of Christ at all, as part of the New Covenant; instead, it is the promise of redemptive faith. Salvation is pictured as something God does. He is the active party, ensuring that those who are saved know Him. In this context, the knowledge of God isn’t “brute” knowledge or “bare facts” but rather the intimate knowledge of the personal relationship with God.

Therefore, the passage isn’t really speaking in terms of knowledge qua knowledge, but rather in terms of how God will ensure the salvation of His people by being proactive. In other words, in this passage the knowledge being talked about is redemptive knowledge in His elect.

This is slightly different from what I understood your first question to be.

And to clarify, I wasn’t speaking so much of “dead faith” (at least not in the way that James uses the term, which is a faith without works) but instead I was speaking of having no faith despite having knowledge. This is something that does happen quite frequently. There are people who know many facts about Christ, and who may even believe those facts to be true, yet who do not have faith in Christ Himself. While I cannot go into detail, I know one person who would actually evangelize nonbelievers while remaining convinced that Christ could not forgive the sins in her own life. She did not have faith in Christ despite knowing enough about Him to try to convince others to put their faith in Him. But even if this individual is an extreme example (I don’t really think that’s the case), there are many self-proclaimed atheists who know more about Christ than some believers.

Dan said:

I agree that knowledge is the foundation of saving faith, and shouldn’t be confused with saving faith. This viewpoint seems to fit the passage well. Knowledge comes before faith and the passage says hearing and learning precedes coming to Christ. Also, the quotation from Isaiah does seem be talking about the spread of the Gospel.

Again, I do think at this point we had a little cross-communication, wherein I misunderstood your first question and you misunderstood my response since it wasn’t referring specifically to what you had asked originally. I would maintain, as I mentioned in my first response, that it is still a mistake to think of this temporally. Knowledge and faith can both occur simultaneously, though they can also occur distinct from one another. But the passages regarding the New Covenant are not speaking so much of how one gets into the covenant as they are speaking of what happens to those already in that covenant. These passages do more to assure us that A) salvation in the New Covenant cannot be lost, for God is the proactive party rather than man; and B) sanctification must follow after justification, for God is proactive in teaching and shaping His people.

Dan said:

But the idea that people could have dead faith seems to favor an Arminian viewpoint on the passage. Unless I miss my guess, the Calvinist viewpoint depends on God’s teaching as being effectual. If some that He teaches don’t come to Christ, then the Calvinist viewpoint fails.

Again, this is probably indicative of the misunderstanding of your first question and my first response. If we are speaking of teaching in general terms, then it is quite consistent within Calvinism to argue that those who are Elect will be effectively taught while those who are reprobate will be hardened by that teaching. The teaching then serves two purposes: to bring the believer closer to God and to heap judgment upon the non-believer. This second kind is seen in the atheists who know facts about Christ yet disbelieve, etc.

However, this is not the same kind of teaching being referred to by Isaiah & Jeremiah, wherein those who are already the people of God are taught by God. In that case, they are those who, as God spoke through Jeremiah: “shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Jer. 32:38). They are those whom God says: “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me” (Jer. 32:39-40). This is all stated just 18 verses before the portion you referenced in Jer. 33, too.

This same thought is expressed in Isaiah, since before he talks of the children being taught by God, he states: “‘For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ says the LORD, who has compassion on you” (Is. 54:10). Again, those who are taught are those who are already in the covenant. As such, these passages are not referring to how one gets into the covenant, but instead are the promises given to those in the covenant.

They said on the radio that it’s supposed to get up to 50 degrees today. It is Colorado, so that is a possibility.

But coming in to work today was like walking through a snow cone. Actually, it’s not snowing so much as it’s giant chunks of slush falling from the sky.

I did my laundry last night…woulda been nice to know that I didn’t need to bother actually drying it. Save a bit of electricity and all, ya know.

Oh well. We’ll see what happens.

This morning when I got up, the air was nice and crisp. It was also humid outside (well, humid for Colorado). It reminded me of….

Camping.

Yup. Getting up in the morning when the air is still chilly, up in the mountains, by the side of a lake. It was pretty cool.

Of course this really means that I have a raging case of Spring Fever going on. Oh well. There are worse things to have :-)

How is it possible for someone to suddenly scream, “LAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” in a high-pitched opera voice and think it’s anything other than annoying?

Yet a certain person does it all the time here at work. Grrrr.

Mike Straka, where are you?

FALSE HOPE, NY – The effects of global warming are far worse than originally feared, according to a new report released Monday by the University of False Hope. Dr. Phil Raup conducted the research that showed, among other things, that the low temperatures for each day occur an hour later today than they did even as recently as last week.

“Low temperatures in the morning now occur, on average, an entire hour later in the day,” Raup explained. “This means that the day stays warmer for a longer period of time, thus putting our entire polar bear population at risk of falling through melting ice.”

Unlike other climate problems, this one can be unambiguously attributed to President Bush, Raup said. “This is a direct result of President Bush’s policies. If he hadn’t signed certain bills into effect, this aspect of Global Warming would have been delayed for at least three weeks.”

Raup says his research indicates that Global Warming caused a shift in the spacetime continuum early Sunday morning. In essence, an entire hour was deleted from existence. “The only explanation we found that is consistent with all research is that the extreme heat energy created by Global Warming caused a miniature black hole to appear, just for a moment. This black hole was powerful enough to suck time itself into its vortex.”

Raup credits ALGORE, a cyborg designed March 31, 1948 which later took the initiative in creating the internet, with keeping the black hole from causing more widespread damage. “The entire state of Arizona was spared thanks to ALGORE’s quick actions. Other than that, it was pretty much universal.”

Wow, Daylight Saving Time came out of nowhere this year. I really do wish they’d just pick a time and stick with it. Seriously.

And I do have to wonder why “Standard” time is the time we get for all of 33% of the year. Shouldn’t the “Standard” be the one that’s 67%?

But there I go, trying to think logically again… :-P

Well….

I was supposed to be in Denver right now watching the Avs (currently they’re down 1-0; I checked before begining this blog). Instead, I just finished watching Bhool Bhuliya.

I see your blank expressions (this is hyperbole, for the hyper-literalists).

See, my supervisor where I work is from India. One day I was talking with him and another coworker about the Indian movies that my parents get to watch in Ukraine. (Long story there too, but for another time.) In any case, my supervisor said, “I’ve got some Indian movies if you want to watch one of them.” So he gave Bhool Bhuliya to my coworker who watched it a couple of weeks ago, and then he gave it to me.

All in all, a very interesting movie. But I’d rather have been watching the Avs. Anyway, I’m not sure what exactly happened with everything yet, but I figure it has something to do with the fact that I was involved in the planning stages of it.

Whenever I plan something, it never happens. This is about as certain as dropping a cannon ball off the roof of the Empire State Building will cause lawsuits. In fact, I can’t really think of the last time I actually planned for something and had it gone through. This time I was quite certain I’d have a win-win situation; but somehow I still found a way to end up losing.

I blame Bush. And I’m sure Global Warming is involved somehow too. Oh well. C’est la vie; que serra serra; and all that.

At least there’s always Guitar Hero.

FALSE HOPE, NY – In an unprecedented legal move today, Judge Ben Kryin-Lotts ordered his entire jury hanged over “a simple disagreement.”

“We should treat each other as Christians,” Judge Ben stated. “Not like those salacious, disrespectful, slanderous, ignorant, discordant, reprobate fools on Triablogue who substitute insult for substantial responses. But what do you expect from trash?”

After executing the jury, Judge Ben went on to ban Triabloguers from his courtroom forever, even while saying he would continue to respond to them for those who “still like to follow trash around.” Experts agree this probably refers to Arminians in general.

“I hereby decree all Triabloguers are Satan incarnate,” Ben stated, adding only: “Respectfully, of course.”

When asked for comment, one Triablogger responded with: “Isn’t Ben the ice cream guy? I wasn’t even aware he had a website.”

In unrelated news, Judge Ben Kryin-Lotts checked into Mount Sinai Rehab Clinic today after reports that he kicked sand in the face of a four-year-old on a playground were backed up by video evidence taken from his own cell phone camera. Additionally, the eviction notice his mother placed on his basement room door was found to be legally binding, and the judge in that case also ruled that Ben’s Nintendo system does in fact belong to his brother after all.

One of Ben’s spokesmen said Ben had suffered a “nervous breakdown brought on by lack of intestinal fortitude” but a source in the hospital said, “Ben read through Paul Manata’s last post and short circuited a few synapses.” The source asked to remain anonymous since Ben had not given J.C. Thibodaux permission to speak in public after his disastrous performance at last night’s Grammy Awards ceremony, where Thibodaux appeared wearing a skimpy outfit and a placard that said, “Britney Was Framed!”