Mars Hill Pastor Mark Driscoll
I’ve had a number of interesting discussions with various people lately about the notions of hell, salvation and who goes where. It’s a rhetorical exercise for the most part, since no one really knows. But there are plenty of real-life implications, particularly in the sphere of religion. For some, the understanding of what happens to us after we die is the prime mover in their day-to-day faith.
I know that the times when I resonate with more hard-line evangelical theology are few and far between, but in this case, I tend to resonate more closely with them than with my brothers and sisters of the Calvinist (also called Reformed Church) movement. For some not familiar with the differences, common Evangelical belief would suggest that God’s saving grace is available to all who seek it, and that the only thing standing between us and eternal salvation is us and our unwillingness to accept God’s perfect gift. In the Reformed Church, however (represented most prominently today by pastors like Mark Driscoll and John Piper), salvation is reserved for an elect few. The rest of creation will suffer the eternal wrath of God, period.
So how do we know who will be saved? For that, Calvinists offer the idea of irresistible grace. Basically, this means that those already chosen to be saved will find their way in the world to obedience, faithfulness and righteousness in the way God intends. And of course, the Calvinists tend to believe that it is those who incline themselves to the teaching of the Reformed Church who are clearly on this path. So although they don’t claim to hold exclusive authority over the dispensation of salvation (like some churches have done and still do), Reformed Churches are merely the venue within which the elect congregate.
It’s a subtle difference for those less familiar with religious history, but an important one, particularly to those debating the fate of humanity.
So what does this have to do with racism? Basically, Calvinists believe in the depravity of man, or that we cannot possibly attain God’s grace on our own. Not through works, and not through a confession of faith. It seems, then, that free will itself takes too much away from the sovereignty of God in the Reformed Church to be viable. So sorry, free will, but you’re out. In order for God to be properly sovereign (all powerful), humanity cannot have so much control over their own destiny.
Second, there is the notion that some of us are favored or chosen by God, and others are not. Why or how is this determined? Calvinists say this is to seek to know the mind of God.
John Calvin
which is both impossible and blasphemous. It’s how it is, like it or not. Some Reformed Church leaders will even say (at least on public record) that they hope they’re wrong about this particular matter, but that their understanding of the Bible leads them inevitably to this conclusion.
There’s more to Calvinism than this, but these two ideas are at the heart of my point. If you believe humanity ultimately is depraved, and that only a preordained few are to receive God’s sovereign grace, this is fertile ground for seeing much of the world as “less than.”
And what’s more, Calvinists can divest themselves of the culpability for such supremacist thinking, because, after all, it’s God’s will! This isn’t how we want it, they say, but it just is how it is.
Sorry, but you’re depraved. You’re doomed. You have no hope, as evidenced by the fact that you’re not part of our tribe. Were you one of God’s chosen, you would find your way to our side of the line, because God would lead you there.
This is not to say that people of the Reformed Church inherently believe that white males are favored by God, but the very idea that some would be loved more than others by their creator sets up a kind of zionist thinking that would make Ayn Rand blush. It can be used to justify violence, even war, and the subjugation of the rights of many for the furtherance of God’s sovereign will.
Who decides what God’s will is? We can assume, based on the framework constructed by the Reformed Church that no one outside of their walls would have any credible authority on the matter.
John Piper
I know that we can look to scripture for support that God favors some over others. For some Christians, this is precisely why we must lend so much military support to Israel, given that they are God’s chosen (what?!?! two groups claiming to be God’s elect?). But the issue I take with this is that everyone places themselves at the center of such a God-and-humanity love story when they are the ones telling the story. Mormons believe they have God’s favor. Jehova’s Witnesses believe they do. Calvinists think they have the corner on the salvation market, and so on.
But show me the faith that looks outside of their own tradition to point to another group as the ones favored by God, and I’ll consider changing my position. Until then, it seems to be more of a “Daddy loves me best” argument than any legitimate basis for a religious movement.
And what’s more, it furthers the toxic, violent notion that some are more worthy than others, which in my understanding, is entirely counter to the notion of God’s kingdom, in which love is made complete, all brokenness is mended, and all of God’s creation is reconciled with one another and with our Creator. And until then, it’s our job to help realize the closest approximation of this perfect, all-encompassing love.
About Christian Piatt
Oh, come on, Christian, you can do better than this! If you are going to tar people for their associations with racism, one would expect you to produce evidence from their writings to back up your case, rather than just extrapolating from some theological principles (principles that you seem to lack a very clear grasp on, I might add – do you much firsthand knowledge of the major texts of Reformed theology?).
All sorts of ideological systems have principles that, if taken to an extreme without being checked or balanced out by others, could prove quite dangerous. People have (mis)used the theory of evolution to serve racist and evil ends, but that doesn’t make evolution intrinsically racist, nor does it render it false. It just illustrates how dangerous certain ideas can be in the hands of extremists or people looking for a justification for their evil or hatred.
Now, there is definitely an extremely important case to be made that Reformed theology has been involved in justifying racism in certain contexts (the antebellum South, apartheid South Africa, etc.). If you had made such a case, arguing that it may reveal underlying problems in the Reformed system through analysis of the theological justifications employed, I would be applauding you. However, such a case would involve attentive historical and theological engagement of a kind completely absent here. This is just petty, uninformed, and unengaged theological prejudice.
I never quite understood how the idea of predestination doesn’t just lead to fatalism. If everything is predestined to happen and free will is minimal, then why even try at all? In fact, really there would be no such thing as trying in the first place. What happens to you, and what you do, is already scripted, so just take life totally as it comes, right?
I don’t see how it doesn’t lead to a total disregard for all consequences whatsoever, total recklessness; for example, as my Southern grandma used to say, “drive like a Presbyterian.” I find it hard to reconcile the concept of predestination with the concept of individual responsibility.
It’s also hard to imagine any sort of activist whatsoever. It would be impossible to criticize anyone in any way, because everything happens exactly the way God wants it. Obama is president because God wanted him to be President, theoretically. Is that something that Driscoll and Piper would ever say? I also don’t see the point of preaching or teaching at all in that case. People will be saved or not regardless of what you try to tell them.
Something else to give white supremacists pause: the idea of divine racial status is not something unique to modern white evangelicals. In some of the more traditional Ethiopian churches, Jesus and the Apostles are all black. The Antonian movement in Africa centuries ago taught that Jesus and all the saints were African, Heaven was a place for black people and Hell was for whites. They turned their adopted Catholicism against the Portuguese they learned it from. I’m not sure how the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda sees racial difference, but I suspect they look down on whites. My point is that Christian-inspired racism can always cut more than one direction — keep it up long enough and you’ll become a victim of it yourself.
Within the next generation, “white” people will no longer be the majority of the world’s Christians, but a minority. That will probably make some of these racial ideas more intense in the short term.
P.S. Apropos of nothing, “John Calvin” was actually Jean Cauvin. He was Swiss, spoke French, and probably spoke almost no English. “John Calvin” was the name that the English/Scottish gave him. Are American Calvinists willing to say that their hero was a Frenchman, of all things?
Jesus was Jewish. You can’t get any more Jewish than Jesus was, which was sort of the point. Theoretically, anti-Semitism ought to be pretty incompatible with Christianity. Theoretically.
You know you are on thin ice when, in speaking about God, you put limits on how God can operate:
“In order for God to be properly sovereign (all powerful),…” {INSERT LIMITATION ON GOD HERE}
Sorry, but you can’t believe in God’s sovereignty while also placing limits on what is possible for God to do. You should write about something you don’t have to guess about.
The qualifier is there because omnipotence is paradoxical. There’s a logical contradiction in the concept itself, so the only way around it is to step lightly over it. The whole idea of omnipotence has some blind spots. It has thin ice built into it.
It’s the old paradox about an irresistible force vs. an immoveable object. Can God make something so big that he can’t move it? If he can, then He’s not all-powerful. If he can’t, then that also means He’s not all-powerful.
Also, if you believe in free will at all, then that’s another reason to put qualifiers on “if God is all-powerful.” God can’t have ALL the power in the universe if you have some power over your own life. That’s shared sovereignty.
What in the world did this article have to do with racism? Is it really fair to headline/title an article that had one, very assuming, stereotyping sentence while ignoring the real meat of your argument (debating free will vs God’s sovereignty)? Also people who can’t stand Piper nor agree with his theology would easily admit that he is one of the least racist “famous” Christians out there. Just look at his blogposts/articles after Obama won the presidency and the books that he wrote against racism (bloodline).
“Calvinists believe in the depravity of man.” And so do all who believe the Scripture. As Reinhold Niebuhr said, this is the only doctrine for which we have empirical evidence. Here is a video that helps us all understand Calvinism better, where a hyper-Calvinist takes a swipe at John Piper.
http://sdcougar.startlogic.com/blog/?p=179