The Good News of God's Foreknowledge

This is the fifth and final article in my series on man's free will and God's foreknowledge.
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God’s foreknowledge is at the root of our election. (1 Pet. 1:2) But the question remains: what does that mean? We saw in the last article that God’s foreknowledge is not merely something He sees, but something He does. Yet that still doesn't tell us exactly what it is. In this final article in the series, I want to lay out a thorough definition of God’s foreknowledge from Scripture itself so we can see why it is such good news.

How “foreknowledge” is used in Scripture

The word is only used twice as a noun (prognosis - foreknowledge) and five times as a verb (proginosko - to foreknow) in the New Testament. These occurrences are, generally speaking, fairly spread out. But interestingly, two of the seven uses are found in chapter one of 1 Peter. The first mention of the term there is in the verse referenced at the beginning of this article, which says that we are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God.” (1 Pet. 1:2) The other use is in 1 Pet. 1:20, “[Christ] indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you…” Did you catch it? Peter is speaking of Christ and using the same word in the original text (prognosis) that is used of our election. But here it’s translated as “foreordained”—and with good reason. (ESV is consistent in translating it “He was foreknown…”) This verse obviously does not just mean that the Father “knew Christ’s autonomous decisions ahead of time.” Rather, it is speaking about the fact that Christ was “known” and ordained—appointed from eternity past in God’s redemptive plan as the Savior of all. This use of the term already shows clearly that God’s “foreknowledge” (prognosis) is more than His passive observation of the future. 

Another important passage for understanding the concept of “foreknowledge” in the New Testament is Acts 2:23, in which Peter says of Christ, “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death…” (emph. mine) Let me rephrase that so we catch the importance and full impact of this statement. Peter says, “God’s set plan and foreknowledge delivered Jesus over to you, and you took Him and killed and crucified Him with lawless hands.” God’s foreknowledge and “set plan” were something that ordained and led to the crucifixion of Christ, though it was indeed the hands of lawless men who carried this out and bear the guilt for it. 

Now, to be fair, there are two places in the New Testament where the word prognosis is used in the sense of simply knowing something ahead of time or from the beginning. However, these two uses concern man’s “knowing from the beginning”, not God’s. When it is used of God, foreknowledge implies not simply a passive observation of future events, but rather some activity on the part of God that leads to the accomplishment of His will. In the apocryphal book of Judith the word “foreknowledge” is also used in this way. Praying to God, there is a line where Judith says, “You have designed the things that are now and those that are to come. Yea, the things you intended came to pass, and the things you decided presented themselves and said, ‘Lo, we are here'; for all your ways are prepared in advance, and your judgment is with foreknowledge.” That is, God’s foreknowledge is here again tied with God’s determined plan. They are nearly synonyms. While this book is not part of Scripture, it does give us further insight into the way they word was used and understood at that time.

In Rom. 8:29, concerning God’s election of Christians, Paul says, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” This “foreknowing” is not merely to “know in advance”. We can see that clearly because Paul uses this term again about God's election of Israel in Rom. 11:2, saying, “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew…” God “foreknew” His people Israel. The context emphasizes that His foreknowledge and sovereign election of Israel is the grounds of His continued faithfulness to them. If foreknowledge was merely seeing the future in advance, surely God would’ve seen that Israel as a whole would turn away from Him and reject Christ. If it were only about foreseeing, God would likely not have elected them! God's election of Israel was not based on “future faith” since, as a whole, that faith in Christ was lacking on the part of Israel. The context again clearly shows that foreknowledge is more than just knowing the future.

Why call it “foreknowledge”?

If “foreknowledge” is not simply knowledge about the future, why call it “foreknowledge”? Here it is important also to understand what “know” means in this case. There are actually a number of Greek words that are translated “know” in our English Bibles, though each has its own unique emphasis. The word “foreknowledge” (prognosis), comes from the Greek word gnosis, or “to know”. This particular Greek word primarily speaks of an experiential and personal knowledge, not just theory or information. Gnosis is the same word that is used of when a man “knew” his wife and they bore a child. Obviously this does not mean he just passively obtained information about her! To say you “know” (ginosko) someone implies a relationship, not just knowledge about someone.

In fact, we even retain this difference in English to some extent. It’s one thing to know about a person, and another to know that person. When referring to people, to say you “know” someone implies relationship with them. So when we read that God “elected us according to foreknowledge”, we must understand that it’s not merely speaking of information that God obtained by passive observance of some future choice. Rather, it speaks of God’s choice to enter into loving relationship—to love us from before the foundation of the world. It is important also to see that Scripture never speaks of unbelievers as being “foreknown”. Think about this: if God’s foreknowledge only means His seeing the future, it would be equally proper to say He “foreknew” unbelievers just as He does believers. But the word is never used like that in Scripture. It is always exclusively the elect who are “foreknown” by God. In fact, it is not even said that our decisions are foreknown—as if foreknowledge were informational—but rather that we ourselves are foreknown.

This understanding of knowledge as personal relationship is clear in the OT as well. God says to Jeremiah in Jer. 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” In other words, God had known, chosen and loved Jeremiah before he was even born. In Amos 3:2 God says of Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth…” Now, does that mean God lacks information about other nations? Of course not. The knowledge God speaks of here is a personal, intimate knowledge—a choice on God’s part to enter into covenant relationship with His elect people Israel. In the New Testament in similar fashion, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount tells of those who come to Him at the last day and say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do all these good deeds in your name?” Jesus answers, “I never knew you.” (Mt. 7:23) Does that mean that Christ did not see them or have information about them? No, it means these people were busy being religious, but never received Christ’s love, never had a personal relationship.

So, let’s summarize the definition of foreknowledge in the Bible. That God has “foreknown” the elect does not mean that He merely looked down the corridor of time to see the future, libertarian choice of those who will respond in faith to the Gospel and elected those. God’s foreknowledge is not just a passive observation of future decisions, and we are not the source of our election. As we saw, there are many problems with that view. Rather, God’s foreknowledge is His gracious choice to love His people, His elect—to “know” them before the foundation of the world and enter into covenant with them. It is not that we chose Him and then He elected us in response. Rather, as John says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 Jn. 4:19) God’s foreknowledge is His active love—His will to enter into covenant relationship with us. And here we can already begin to understand why God’s foreknowledge is such good news.

The good news of God’s foreknowledge

The good news of God’s foreknowledge is that He has chosen to love us from eternity past. He has chosen to bring us into relationship with Himself and He is the one who draws us. The rest of 1 Peter 1:2 hashes out what exactly this election leads to, “…elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.” We are chosen by God because He has loved us from all eternity. He foreknew us, and desired to enter into relationship with us as His own people. The Father is the source of our election. The second phrase speaks of the outworking of our election: by the sanctification of the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who works in our hearts to bring us to God. It is He who convicts, draws and regenerates us and makes us holy by the grace of God. But how does He do this? By bringing us “to obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Christ.” It is the blood of Christ that washes us from sin and makes us holy. The Spirit applies the sacrifice of Christ to us. The Father initiates our acceptance of that sacrifice by His electing love. The whole triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—have collaborated together to make us His own people! How glorious! The obedience that it speaks of here is the obedience of faith in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit, sent by the Father who foreknew us, draws us to Christ and reveals the Gospel to us that we may obey and submit to it.

Make no mistake; this is real obedience and submission. Man’s natural tendency is to rely on his own strength, to try and prove himself, to make himself good enough. It was Martin Luther who taught that self-righteousness is the default mode of the human heart. Therefore, we must indeed submit to the Gospel and not resist God’s grace. We must let go of our self-confidence and place all our confidence in Christ. We must not look to any of our own works for salvation, but only to His work for us on the cross. We must obey the message of grace that He has done it all, that it is finished, and all we must do is receive. 

At this point it's likely someone would argue that I am implying something I'm not. While I do believe that God’s election is unconditional, based on His own choice to love us, I do not believe this means that the grace of God is “irresistible”. One might ask, “But how can that be if our election is from God?” I have no idea! But as I mentioned in my previous article on logic vs. Scripture, it is not our job to reconcile all points of Scripture with our fallen reasoning. Our job is to assert what Scripture does and Scripture asserts the good news of God’s foreknowledge, as well as the danger of resisting His call. In God’s election of us, in the Father’s foreknowledge of us as His children, in the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts to make us His own, and in being washed by the blood of Christ and submitting to the good news of the Gospel—we are filled with grace and peace. They are multiplied and spill over as we grasp more and more this wonderful salvation which is all of grace—and that is truly good news! Let us rejoice then in God’s foreknowledge, by which he has chosen to love us and make us His own and give all the glory to God alone.

The Basis of God's Election

This article is the fourth in a series on man's free will and God's foreknowledge.
If you missed them, check out part 1, part 2 and part 3.
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You are not the basis for your election. And it's a good thing—because if you were, you'd never have been elected in the first place. In the last article, we saw that God’s perfect knowledge of the future implies that the future is determined. But I left this question unanswered: on what basis is the future determined? Or, to give it a more blatantly soteriological flavor: what is the basis for your election as God's child? Answer: NOT YOU. Yet some Christians would explain it this way: “God looks down the corridor of time with His perfect knowledge of the future, sees those who will respond with faith to the Gospel, and elects them.” A more modern analogy is that God has “watched a movie of the future” and based His election on what He sees. In other words, they think that our being “elect according to the foreknowledge of God” (1 Pet. 1:2) means nothing more than that God knows the future perfectly and bases His election of us on our own future decisions. To put it in theological categories, this is an Arminian understanding of God’s election known as “conditional election”. They contend that God’s election of believers is based on His seeing in advance who will have faith when presented with the Gospel and then He elects those. Besides the fact that the real, biblical meaning of "foreknowledge" is more than just knowledge of the future (which we'll get to in the next article), there are a couple big problems with this understanding.

First, it makes man the fountainhead and foundation of his own election. It essentially implies that those who are just a little more spiritually open, more spiritually insightful or sensitive, etc.—these are the ones whom God chooses. But the Bible says that God elected us “according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:4-5), not “according to His ability to see our future choice and spiritual openness on a celestial movie screen.” God also said to Israel through Moses in Deut 7:7-8, “The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you…” In other words: "You are elect not because of anything in yourselves. If that were the case, you wouldn't be elect because... well, you're not that great! But you have been chosen because God has loved you. God loves you because He loves you." The same goes for us as Christians. God says that His own love is the source of our election, not anything in us. His goodness, not ours, is the basis of our identity as His children. 

Second, this theory of conditional election is really an attempt to leave some semblance of man's libertarian freedom in tact. It's as though God at some point before creation looked into a (non-existent) hypothetical future where men have libertarian freedom to choose God in their own power and then God chose the elect on the basis of this fiction. A person who upholds conditional election may very well agree that at the present time the future is set and cannot be changed. But their concept of God's election implies that it was based on a libertarian future which God supposedly saw in eternity past. The claim is that at least this way the “responsibility” is on man for his election, even if it is now determined.

But there’s a problem: The reality where man's will is not fallen and has libertarian freedom does not exist. If God's election were based on viewing some such hypothetical world, then He would be electing fictional characters instead of real people. But if God knows the actual future perfectly and precisely, then He also knew that we would NOT choose Him apart from His own, gracious drawing. As I laid out in my previous article on free will, man’s will is unable to desire God and, moreover, to believe in the Gospel unless God should initiate a work in his heart by grace. So, if God deals in reality rather than fiction (which I believe He does), there would be nothing positive in the elect to foresee that He Himself didn't graciously bring about. And if He merely foresees a person's "free choice"—the unrestricted expression of their fallen will—then there is nothing to foresee except sin and rebellion against the Gospel. And hence, no one would be elect. This is why the idea that our election flows from ourselves while God is a passive observer cannot hold up under scrutiny. 

The Bible clearly says that man is not the source of his own election. He cannot even desire to be elect without God’s supernatural work on his heart. Man’s will is not “free” in the sense that he could, in his own power, want God. Nevertheless, man does bear responsibility for his own sin. Why? Because he chooses it without any influence from God. That is, as I mentioned before, man does have a limited kind of “freedom”. We are free to choose what we want, and so we bear responsibility for our choice. The problem is, in our fallen will, we want sin. And because sin is what we want, we are responsible for it. While the Bible clearly points to God as the source of our gracious election, it just as clearly points to man as the source of his own sin and consequent damnation. Some might try to argue that, “logically”, if God predestines the elect for salvation, He must predestine the reprobate for damnation. While we might tend to reason in this way, the Bible knows of no such doctrine. Again, we must follow Scripture over our natural reasoning. We are in need of God’s gracious intervention to be saved. We don’t need any help in damning ourselves—we can manage that one on our own. It was Charles Spurgeon who wrote: "Damnation is all of man, from top to bottom, and salvation is all of grace, from first to last. He that perishes chooses to perish; but he that is saved is saved because God has chosen to save him."

So what does all this mean for the fact that God elects us “according to His foreknowledge”? It implies that God’s “foreknowledge” must be something more than simple, passive observation of our choice in advance. Our choice, by itself, is always wrong. Foreknowledge must imply not merely something that God sees, but something that God does to overcome the natural inclination of our fallen will. So what is God’s foreknowledge? This is what I’ll look at in the next and final article in this series.

If God Knows the Future...

This article is the third in a series on man's free will and God's foreknowledge.
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“…elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…” 1 Peter 1:2

It’s no coincidence that Peter begins his first epistle to the suffering church with God’s election. He does so because God’s benevolent sovereignty towards us as believers should be a source of great joy and comfort, particularly in times of serious trial. How tragic it is that (apparently for some Christians) God’s gracious election of us as His children should be more a cause for argument and contention than it is for worship and joy. Nevertheless, the question of how God’s election works has haunted the church for centuries and cannot be sidestepped. A large part of the debate centers around the word “foreknowledge”, which I will be looking at in-depth in this and the next couple of posts. The greatest difficulty in understanding the Bible’s teaching on foreknowledge is in developing an accurate definition of the term. But before we come to a full-fledged, biblical definition, we need to deal with some of our assumptions about the word.

We read the English word “foreknowledge” and probably just assume that it means to know something before it happens. In other words, we think foreknowledge is a kind of synonym for prophecy. We talk as though God’s foreknowledge is just part of His omniscience. That is, because He knows everything, He must know the future as well. The Greek word used in the New Testament for “foreknowledge” is prognosis, from which we get the modern English word. But in English, a prognosis is really more of an educated guess, a forecast about the future, rather than any kind of sure knowledge. Doctors give prognoses of a disease—but sometimes they're correct, and sometimes they're not. I will show in a following article that the biblical concept of foreknowledge, or prognosis in the NT, does not refer merely God’s knowledge of the future. Nevertheless, we can at least start from the fact that God does know the future. The Bible states this clearly and there are some important consequences of God's knowledge of the future which relate to the question at hand.

First, the Bible plainly declares that God does not just guess about the future. We read in Isa. 46:9-10, “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.’” God is unequivocal about His exact knowledge of future events. God does not just offer “prognoses” about the future, but knows the future with certainty. If He did not, prophecy of any kind would be impossible. In fact, God knows the future with such detail, that David writes in Ps. 139:4,16, “There is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether… in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” God’s knows the future “altogether” as the Psalmist says. He knows the future without error and completely—and not just the big events, but in minute detail. The future which God knows meticulously is guaranteed to take place. Every day of your life, David says, is written in God’s book even before you are born. Let this blow your mind for a second: God already knows and already knew from eternity every thought you will think, every word you will say, every decision you will make, every breath you will breathe until the day you die! There is nothing hidden before Him, “but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Heb. 4:13)

Open Theism: Right Problem, Wrong Conclusion

Most orthodox Christians agree on the fact that God knows the future. But there are a few Christians out there who believe in what is called “open theism”. Basically, open theism says that God does not know the future because it is contingent on our decisions which haven’t been made yet and is therefore unknowable in principle. The future, they say, is “open” for any number of alternate possibilities—hence the name “open theism”. Of course, this directly contradicts Scripture which says, for example, in 1 Jn. 3, “God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.”  “All things” would include the future as well.

So why does the open theist affirm that God doesn’t know the future? Because they correctly realize the dilemma: if God does know the future perfectly and with absolute certainty, then the future cannot be other than what God knows it to be. That implies that the future is “closed”, rather than “open”. There are no other “possible futures” than the one God knows to exist. Further, they argue that then there would be no “real free will”. If God knows the future, that means we cannot actually choose anything that would be contrary to that future which God knows will take place. Confused yet?

If you’ve seen The Matrix trilogy, perhaps this illustration will help. There is a character called “the Oracle” who can see the future. In one scene, she asks Neo (the hero of the story) if he wants some candy. Neo asks her in return, “Do you already know if I'm going to take it?” She answers, “I wouldn’t be much of an oracle if I didn’t.” And he replies, “But if you already know, how can I make a choice?” That’s exactly the problem that open theism realizes. What they are saying is, “God’s perfect knowledge of future events would destroy human libertarian free will. Things could not be other than He knows them to be. You cannot choose other than He knows you will.”

The implications of God’s perfect knowledge of the future are rightly understood by the open theists. God’s perfect knowledge of the future does destroy what is called “libertarian free will”—the possibility of a future other than the one God knows. The problem with open theism is not that they realize the contradiction of libertarian free will and God’s perfect knowledge of the future, but that they make the wrong conclusion. They would rather cling to free will and deny that God perfectly and precisely knows the future, even though “He wouldn’t be much of a God if He didn’t.” They are happy to sacrifice God's omniscience on the altar of their autonomy. This is sad, but not surprising. Man has wanted to be in the place of God ever since the Garden of Eden. We want to be the ones to determine the future. We want to put God on our level—or rather, put ourselves on His level. Despite their erroneous conclusion, open theism correctly understands what God’s perfect knowledge of the future implies.

So, before we go further in the discussion of God’s “foreknowledge”, we need to understand this: If God knows the future precisely and perfectly, then that future must take place. It cannot be other than it is. It is determined. Otherwise, God couldn’t actually know the future or at least may be mistaken about it. Therefore, God’s perfect knowledge of the future and the foreordination of that future are inextricably linked. They are two sides of the same theological coin. If God knows the future, then it must be determined.  And if it is not determined, then God cannot know it.  Of course, it’s one thing to say that the future is determined. But that does not answer the question of the basis on which it is determined. This is the question I will look at in the next post as we work towards a biblical definition of God's foreknowledge.

Lines in the Doctrinal Sand: Logic vs. Scripture

This article is the second in a series on man's free will and God's foreknowledge.  Read part 1 here.
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“The five points of Calvinism stand or fall together!”  You may have heard that polarizing statement before (as have I) from both those who would reject all five points as well as from those who accept all five points.  But I'm going to have to cry foul for a very simple reason: I accept some points, but not others.  And there is an ever-increasing number of four-point Calvinists out there, as well as Lutherans who accept at least two of the points. Even classical Arminians accept one of the five.  So the facts show that many believers do not hold the five together.  This question has important implications for how we relate logic and Scripture to each other.  

When a person argues that the five points of Calvinism stand or fall together, what they most likely mean is that the five points of Calvinism are a whole, logical set.  One can at least see how the points do work together logically, but that doesn’t mean it’s all or none.  Why not?  To understand, we have to push a bit further.  One might continue the line of reasoning and say that the five points of Calvinism also logically imply the lack of necessity to evangelize, or the supralapsarian position (a minority position among Reformed believers that the logical order of God’s decrees first chose the non-elect for damnation and then ordained the fall to accomplish this, thereby implicating God in a sort of “cookies-made-to-burn” theology.)  These are positions more often associated with what might be called hyper-Calvinism.  They are also positions which an overwhelming majority of Reformed believers would reject.  We would do well to remember that, in engaging with believers of other persuasions, we must learn to interact with what they actually claim to believe, not with what we think their position implies.  Anything less is dishonest and only leads to division and accusation, rather than healthy discussion.

If you wanted to press this logical progression, you might argue like this: “Well, IF, as the Calvinist says, God’s grace is irresistible, then it is impossible that any of the elect should fail to receive Christ.  Therefore, it is unnecessary to evangelize.”  Now, we might say that this is a solid, logical progression.  But it is obviously not biblical, as Christ called us to preach the Gospel to the whole world (Mk. 16:15).  At the end of the day, our goal is to be ruled by Scripture, not human logic.  This is true for the Reformed believer as well as the non-Reformed.  Aside from the rare hyper-Calvinist (who traditional Calvinists usually have little patience for), you will not find a Reformed believer who thinks that evangelism is futile and unnecessary.  The Reformed believer also draws his line in the doctrinal sand at some point and says, “I can see how it might be considered logical, but it is not biblical and that settles it.”  The difference between the Reformed and non-Reformed believer is where we think that line ought to be drawn, not the basis on which it should be drawn—Scripture.  

For example, one can see how the Calvinist doctrine of limited atonement is a logical consequence of the other four points.  It is claimed, “If Christ’s death truly did pay for the sins of all those for whom He died, then He must have died only for the elect, since God would be unjust to punish those sins for which Christ already bore the penalty.”  Is that a logical argument?  Sure. The problem is, in my evaluation, it is not biblical.  Clear passages like 1 Jn. 2:2 say that, “And He [Christ] Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”  Our job is not to find a logical reconciliation for everything taught in Scripture, but rather to hold everything that Scripture teaches in faith, whether we can exhaustively explain it or not.  Sure, we try to make the best sense of it we can, but ultimately we have to humble ourselves and admit with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33)

We have generally learned to practice this kind of biblically faithful humility when it comes to the being of God Himself.  For example, we might concede that there is a certain humanly-logical consistency to the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ view of God.  Their reasoning would go, “The Bible says clearly that there is one God.  God is a personal being, not an impersonal force.  The essence of a personal being is his personality.  And if there is one God only, then it stands to reason that God is uni-personal.  To state that God has multiple personalities is to state that there are multiple gods, which is heresy.”  Is their argument logical?  Sure, to a degree (we won’t get into the incorrect assumptions this argument makes here).  But is it biblical?  Absolutely not!  The Bible states that there is One God, eternally existent in three distinct persons.  Is that “logical”?  Well, I haven’t yet met a person who has fully wrapped their head around that one.  But is it biblical?  Absolutely.  At the end of the day, we need to draw our lines in the doctrinal sand not according to the dictates of supposed human logic, but in submission to the inspired and infallible text of the Bible.  We tend to have more of a humility about this when it comes to the ineffable being of God, realizing that we finite mortals shouldn’t actually be able to fully comprehend Him.  But we ought to also realize that the principle is the same when it comes to salvation.  After all, if “salvation is of the Lord” (Jon. 2:9) as Scripture says, why would we assume that we should be able to completely figure it out any more than we could figure out the being of God?

Does this mean that God is not logical?  No, it simply means that our logic, along with the rest of our being, was distorted and broken at the Fall.  Theologians speak of the noetic effects of the Fall—that our thoughts and reason are also impaired as a result of sin.  If we cannot square the truths of Scripture with our understanding of logic, surely the problem is with our own sin-broken mind, not the Word of God.  But that means that we will likely run into Scriptural truths that defy our deficient human logic.

Returning to the original question of why the logical consistency of the five points of Calvinism doesn’t mean that they “must stand of fall together”, the answer is this: logic is not the final authority; Scripture is.  I, for one, hold that man is entirely fallen and unable of himself to come to Christ “unless the Father draws him.” (Jn. 6:44)  I also hold that we ourselves are not the cause of God’s election, but rather His own love and good will towards us is the source of His election (more on this in the next article). (Eph. 1:4-5)  But I would also say that doctrines like limited atonement or irresistible grace (the L and I of Calvinism’s TULIP), while perhaps having a measure of logical consistency, are not consistent with the biblical text. (I Tim. 4:10, Lk. 7:30 respectively.) Can I exhaustively harmonize all this?  No.  Fortunately, that's not my job.  My task—and the task of every Christian—is to hold what Scripture teaches as best I am able.  My own soteriological middle-road position (and that of many others) is proof that the five points do not have to stand or fall together. Whatever stands must stand on Scripture, not mere logic.  

So, if you are guilty of trying to caricaturize Reformed believers (or Arminians for that matter), claiming that they must believe what we think are the logical implications of their position, stop.  It is neither honest nor gracious nor productive.  Plus, it actually just makes us look ignorant of the other person's position.  We must realize that Reformed and non-Reformed Christians alike are drawing a line in the doctrinal sand where they believe the Bible to draw that line.  Granted, we draw the lines in somewhat different places, but we all hopefully acknowledge that we must be ruled by the Scriptural text, not our own understanding of logic.  This gracious acknowledgement will leave room for discussion between Reformed and non-Reformed brothers and sisters on the common foundation of Scripture.  And hopefully it will help us to stop wrongfully ascribing extreme positions to those who do not hold them.

Second, we must beware of the trap of our own fallen logic.  The Scripture is our guide to truth, not our reasoning and implications from it.  Any one doctrinal position pushed ad absurdum to its logical end will lead to imbalance and even heresy (as in the example of God’s oneness noted above.)  We must be willing to be honest with ourselves and ask if some of our doctrines aren’t built more on logic than on Scripture.  The truth is that as soon as we think we have the mysteries of the divine boxed into our own broken logic, it’s probably a good sign that we’ve got something wrong.