Please click one of the attachments* to view Bruce Hollenbach, "Lest They Should Turn and Be Forgiven: Irony", Bible Translator 34.3 (July 1983) 312-21.

The ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials provides the following abstract of this article:

"An exegesis of this phrase [i.e. "lest they should turn and be forgiven"] in Isaiah, Mark, and John, which treats it as irony, shows that it never expresses a reluctance on the part of God or Jesus to see anyone turn and be forgiven. It expresses rather reluctance on the part of the addressees of the divine message. Irony as a figure is described and illustrated. The notes list other occurances of irony in the Scriptures, discuss the question of "hardening", and summarize earlier commentary on this phrase in the NT."

For the Calvinist, the "doctrines of grace" is a synonym for TULIP theology. So, do the Biblical Doctrines of Grace of Arminianism also follow a system, such as TULIP? Arminianism proper has not historically employed an acronym as the one used for nearly four centuries by Calvinists.

Let it be stated, however, that if it had not been for the followers of Arminius (the Remonstrants) presenting their five arguments to the state to be approved as orthodox consent, then the TULIP would have never been constructed. And the original order of the Remonstrants was Conditional Election (to those in Christ), Unlimited Atonement, Total Depravity, Resistible Grace, and Conditional Perseverance.

If the Calvinists had strictly followed the Arminian system, it would have spelled ULTIP, which is a bad acronym, considering Ultip is not a word. Worse off, the Arminian acronym would have been CUTRC. The best sense which we could make out of that construct is TRUCC, also not a word.

Please click on the attachment to view Nicholas Liguori, "Divine election and predestination in Ephesians 1".

The Tale of the Great King

There once was the Great King who ruled his land with strength and confidence. Throughout all the land, he maintained peace with an iron hand and a calculating mind. The people feared him. He made war on many lands, and no one could withstand his might.

Then, out of the north, came another king, a Glorious King, that the Great King did not formerly know of. This king rode on a white horse, and held a power that the Great King had never seen before. The Glorious King outwitted and overpowered the Great King at every turn, until finally the Great King was defeated.

In awe, the Great King fell on his knees before the Glorious King. He said, "You are far greater than I have ever been, and ever shall be. I humble myself before you, willing to be your servant for whatever you ask of me."

On the heels of my recent post, I am still vying for the universality of the love of God for all people. Again, Fritz Guy writes, "If the preeminent characteristic of God is love, and if God is the source of all reality, there can be little doubt about the universal scope of God's love. It is unthinkable that the divine love is restricted to a fortunate part of creation and that another (perhaps even larger) part is excluded."1

We believe this because (1) God is love (1 John 4:8). The Bible teaches that God's nature is love, not that He merely possesses love. And (2) God does not show favoritism (Acts 10:34). The Calvinists' view of election is partial, particular, and based not on union with Christ, but on a decree founded in the vault of eternity. And while this portrait of election expresses God's love for some, it excludes God's love for others, since electing a person to hell falls short of any viable definition of "love."

The third verse of the hymn The Love of God reads as follows:

Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.

I seriously doubt that any Christian could overstate the love of God for His creatures. While some Calvinists, such as James White, tend to focus on God's love solely for His elect (a notion contradicted by Jesus at Mark 10:21), most Arminians tend to laud Him for His love for all people. And why not? We believe that He loved the world in such a manner as that which motivated Him to send His only Son into the world to die for their sins, so that whoever would trust Him would be saved from sin and hell. Is that not, after all, what the Bible teaches? Oh, what a Savior!

On the benefits and promises of God, and principally of election to grace, or calling to faith.

"1. But that man may not just perform the commandments of God thus far explained, but also willingly want to perform them from the mind, God willed for his part to do everything necessary for effecting both in man(a), that is, he determined to confer such grace to sinful man by which he might be suitable and apt to render everything which is required of him in the gospel, and even more, to promise such good things to him, whose excellence and beauty might far exceed the capacity of human understanding, and that the desire and certain hope of this might kindle and inflame the will of man to render obedience in acts to him.

"Indeed, God habitually both makes known and bestows all these benefits to us by his Holy Spirit(b) (about which we have declared more fully above).

John Goodwin, An Exposition of the Ninth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans with the Banner of Justification Displayed (London: Baynes and Son, 1835)

Where in the bible is it stated that one's election is based on an eternal decree? That question led Arminius as well as subsequent Arminians to question the Calvinistic theory of election. McGonigie stated,

Our election is in Christ, not in God's so-called 'hidden' purposes or in secret prelapsarian decrees. God loves the world of sinners in His Son and all His plans for our salvation, Arminius never tired of emphasizing, are in the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and intercession of his beloved Son . . . God is known to us in the revelation of His Son Jesus Christ, and all our salvation is grounded, guaranteed and offered to us, and to all mankind, in the finished and still ongoing work, of our blessed Redeemer. Evangelical theology needs to give far more attention than it has previously done to James Arminius' theology of grace . . .1

Among such biblical texts as Romans 8 and 9 and Ephesians 1, Calvinists are convinced that John 6 secures the notion that Jesus taught a Calvinistic soteriology. I am convinced, however, that Calvinists tend to see Calvinism in every text. I know. I used to be one.

My zeal for Calvinism clouded my interpretation of Scripture. Whatever scriptures I encountered which contradicted Calvinism, I had to find a way to make it mean something other than its simplistic meaning. I am not saying that all Calvinists are necessarily guilty of this very thing. But I will admit that I was immersed in the writings of John Calvin, John Piper, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Iain Murray, John Owen, Martin Luther, Loraine Boettner, John Murray, and others, and was raised, spiritually speaking, on a strict Calvinistic hermeneutic of Classical Reformed theology.

What decree is that? The "dreadful" decree I am referring to today is the decree of Reprobation, its consequence being Unconditional Election (for how could there be one without the other?). Now, calling it "dreadful," while I would agree, actually comes not from me or any other Arminian today, but from John Calvin himself!

Calvin wrote, "The human mind, when it hears this doctrine, cannot restrain its petulance, but boils and rages as if aroused by the sound of a trumpet. Many professing a desire to defend the Deity from an invidious charge admit the doctrine of election, but deny that any one is reprobated (Bernard, in Die Ascensionis, Serm. 2).

So, to sum up, according to the Augustinian/Calvinist interpretation, which assumes faith in Christ for salvation and arises in opposition to Pelagianism and later the medieval Catholic church:

• Paul begins by agonizing over the failure of Israel to come to salvation through faith in Christ (9:1-5).
• Paul’s solution is that not all of Israel is Israel; i.e., not all of Israel is elect (v. 6).
• Paul demonstrates God’s prerogative to elect whomever he wills by having elected Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau (vv. 7-13).
• God has mercy only on those whom he chooses to have mercy, and hardens the rest, as exemplified by Pharaoh (vv. 14-18).
• At this point, Paul hypothesizes a questioner who articulates the Arminian contention: if God has chosen to harden someone like Pharaoh, how can God then judge him for what he was predestined to do (v. 19)? Paul rebukes the questioner for impiety, and uses the potter-clay illustration to reiterate that God has the right to elect some and reprobate some as he deems fit (vv. 20-21).
• Paul then adds, as a supporting argument, the fact that when God chooses to reprobate someone like Pharaoh, he has to bear patiently their sin and arrogance, but does so, in order to demonstrate his glory to his elect, which turn out to be among the Gentiles as well as among the Jews (vv. 22-24).
• He thus brings the discussion back to the issue of Jewish unbelief in Christ, from which his discussion of election has been an excursus.

From that point, the rest of the chapter is interpreted with regard to the Jew-Gentile question and salvation by faith, as opposed to works, without explicit reference to election (vv. 25-33).

Up to this point in this series on Romans 9, I have argued the following points:

Up to this point, I have argued that the passages dealing with election in Romans 9 must be interpreted in the context of Paul's overall theme in chapters 9-11 of the implications of the Gospel for ethnic Israelites, and that Paul's use of the examples of Isaac and Jacob refer not to each as an individual and election to salvation, but rather to the nation of Israel that descended from them and election to membership among the covenant people.

Paul buttresses his contention that his doctrine does not in fact imply injustice with God by citing Exodus 33:19, where in reference to Moses, God states

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. (Rom. 9:18)

In verse 7 of Romans 9, Paul quotes Genesis 21:12 to explain that, even before Isaac was born, God had determined that Abraham’s offspring would be “reckoned” through Isaac—in other words, that the covenant people would pass through the line of Isaac rather than that of Ishmael. The original context of this passage, incidentally, makes it clear not only that Isaac is to be chosen, but that Ishmael is to be rejected in favor of Isaac. Yet God makes it clear that Ishmael is to be rejected by Abraham, so that the covenant line is clearly through Isaac; nevertheless, He reassures Abraham in the very next verse