The Disaster of Sacrifice as the Ultimate Moral Standard – Part 1
The following is part one of a four-part series.
Taken from John Immel’s first session at the 2016 Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny
~ Edited by Andy Young
Click here for part two • Click here for part three
(Links to the archived files are found below)
We get to talk about philosophy!
The Gospel According to John Immel, chapter 3:1-3
- All people act logically from their assumptions.
- It does not matter how inconsistent the ideas or insane the rationale. They will act until that logic is fulfilled.
- Therefore, when you see masses of people taking the same destructive actions, if you find the assumptions, you will find the cause.
Here is the fundamental premise that I’m trying to bring to light. People act consistently from their body of ideas. They will fulfill that logical conclusion. They cannot escape it because human beings are designed to integrate their concepts from the most basic premises all the way to the highest concepts.
This explanation is best captured in the diagram at the right. My claim to fame within TANC Ministries is to discuss the roots of tyranny. Where does tyranny come from, and why does it exist? This is my contribution to philosophy. I’ve identified five pillars which are the basis for all tyranny. I’ve arranged them into a spider web because I want you to understand that they are all inter-connected. These are not stand-alone events: universal guilt, incompetent masses, collective conformity, abolition of ambition, and dictated good.
In all tyrannies, you will find these fundamental doctrines (and I don’t care if the tyranny is communist, socialist, or Calvinist) behind the arguments that people use to sustain such tyranny.
Man organizes his ideas in a hierarchy. I laid this out consistently in both the 2012 and 2013 TANC conferences – find the assumption and you will find the cause. One of the most challenging things I think people have when they are evaluating the content of ideas is learning to see root principles; learning to see what is at the bottom of what everyone is thinking.
To do that you have to learn to think philosophically. All men organize their ideas into a cohesive whole, and that science is called philosophy. Now they might not be aware of it, it may not be explicit, but all men have an integration of their ideas. In the world of philosophy that process goes by these sub-divisions or disciplines:
Disciplines of Philosophy
– Metaphysics
– Epistemology
– Ethics
– Politics
– Aesthetics (art)
The nature of existence is metaphysics. How man knows what he knows is called epistemology. How we value what we know is ethics. (The bulk of this series will involve the discussion of ethics) How we interact with people is politics. And how man creatively reflects his existence back to himself is called aesthetics or art.
This series of discussions will focus on the central ethical assumption of the Western world, indeed, the whole world:
Gospel According to John Immel 7:17
”Sacrifice as the highest moral ideal is the lynch pin of the coming Protestant Dark Age.”
Ponder that for a minute.
You can see that I crossed out the word “Protestant”, and I did that, not to minimize Calvinist Christianity’s role in the coming Dark Age, but to emphasize that Western culture is heading towards a collapse. The Western world is committing ideological treason to the ideas that brought liberty and light to the whole world. The Western world’s central philosophical betrayal is the 
renewed embrace of the primary ethic of sacrifice. Twenty-first century man has decided to abandon the power of individualism a replace it with the primordial ethics of shamens, tribal warlords, and despots.
There is no small irony that in the Western slide into self-destruction, Christianity is paving the way with Augustinian and Calvinist doctrines from ages past that have already proved what they will create. They have already proved that the ideas taken to their logical conclusion will create death, poverty, suffering, and darkness.
It is ironic because Christians like to pretend they are ethical innovators. They love to talk about being separate from the world, and that being “worldly” is the same as being evil, that as Christians they have unique and transforming ideas. Christianity likes to pretend that it originated all the good ideas, and only the bad ideas exist in the world. Christians like to think that self-sacrifice is a wholly unique Christian concept that started when Jesus hung on the cross. They like to think that the world is committed to selfishness and ego, and individuals engaging in self-interest are “worldly.”
But like most myths, when studied beyond the surface it becomes clear that Christianity regularly steals its ideas from other sources. It becomes clear that Christianity repackages worldly ideas and presents them in its own name. For example: taking over Sunday as a day of divine service (it was originally a Greco-Roman holiday dedicated to Zeus); taking over a pagan winter festival and decorating trees and calling it “Christmas”; and probably amongst the most egregious rip-offs in history is the ex-appropriation of Jewish scriptures as the source of Christian authority all the while persecuting and killing the very people to whom the documents were written.
So here is the myth revealed: Christianity did not invent sacrifice for the “greater good”. Indeed, the oldest of all worldly ideas is sacrifice as the highest moral standard. The oldest moral standard known to man, practiced in all cultures and in all continents, is the foundational premise that man must sacrifice himself, must sacrifice his self-interest for the gods, for the tribe, for the people, for the king, for the nation, and the “greater good.”
For the whole of human history, it has been presumed that man is a sacrificial animal. Don’t be deceived that because we don’t see virgins tied to alters and priests holding bloody knives that we in the twenty-first century are more enlightened. We are not. Indeed, the nature of sacrifice today is more pervasive, more destructive, and more vicious. In ages past a sacrifice was done to receive a favor from the gods. It was expected that the destruction of one value would provide something of greater value. Today it is presumed that to receive any benefit from a sacrifice disqualifies the action. Today we sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice alone.
The result is the modern man is offered two existential options:
Sadism – sacrifice enforced as the hands of others
Masochism – self-inflicted sacrifice
Sacrifice is destroying America!
- Sacrifice is destroying a free society at the root
- Sacrifice corrupts government
- Sacrifice destroys achievement
- Sacrifice destroys the meaning of words
- Sacrifice destroys marriages
- Sacrifice gives Calvinist thugs the moral power to perpetrate their tyranny.
But before we trip too far down that path I want to give you a sense of history.
Sumerians – 3500 BCE
From the land of Ur, kings were gods, and the people were created to serve the gods. Fertility was the most sought-after boon from the gods. To acquire these boons people gave sacrifices. There were sacrifices of animals, and there were sacrifices of grain, and there were sacrifices of people. The belief was that the sacrifice of people made it possible to follow the king into the after-life. It was also a common practice for women to sacrifice themselves to follow their husbands into the after-life.
Hindu Vedas – 1700 BCE to 1100 BCE
The belief is that the Vedas are divinely inspired documents without human authors. Within these scriptures they detail human sacrifice. Some scholars say that human sacrifice was continued in Bengal in the ancient world through the 19th century. The Thuggee cult that was dramatized in the film, Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom was real. They followed Kali, the goddess of destruction, and it is believed they killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million people!
Shang Dynasty – 1523 BCE to 1050 BCE
The Chinese culture was dominated by ancestor worship. When a man died he passed into the “upper regions.” These ancestors had the power to impact the lives of descendants back down on earth. To inspire these ancestors to act on their behalf, people on earth gave sacrifices – animals, food, grain, wine, and other men. It was believed that man’s abasement before the spirits by offering these sacrifices would show the correct humility so that they might be worthy of good fortune. When the kings died, it was common practice to slaughter members of his elite guard and bury them in the tombs to guard the Shang kings in the after-life.
Abraham (Abram) – 1700 BCE
Now consider the geographical region of these first three civilizations: Mesopotamia (Middle East), India, and China. The Bible in the book of Genesis tells about a man named Abram who came from this very same general region, Ur of the Chaldeans.
“Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.” ~ Genesis 11:31
“After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.” ~ Genesis 22:1-3
There are two things I want you to see from these passages. First, notice where Abraham and his whole family is from; Ur, the land of the Sumerians. Second, notice that Abraham never considers the command to sacrifice Isaac to be something unusual. The chances are that he was not the first man to believe that some god somewhere told him to sacrifice his child.
This is very important. Abraham would have been amidst a pantheon of gods. In his culture, everywhere he looked there was a god. And he has this personal God of his own called “Yehowah” (Jehovah) who isn’t know to too many people, if anybody other than Abraham. His household knows Him simply because they have seen Abraham prosper because of Him. So this obscure God says to this man, “Go kill your kid,” – there’s nothing abnormal here to Abraham’s mind.
It is crucial that you understand that at no point in history is sacrifice as a concept unique. Let that sink in for a moment.
Pythagoreans – 570 BCE
I did a full analysis on the Pythagoreans and their impact on Western thought at the 2013 TANC Conference. But a brief review is in order. Their abiding and enduring impact begins with their contributions to music and mathematics. However their greater impact on Western culture is metaphysical. What they offer is profound and unique.
The Pythagoreans celebrate sunrise.
“Man has two parts, a high part and a low part. The low part is the body, the high part the soul. These two are in eternal conflict with each other. The soul is akin to God, to another dimension. Once, it was a god-like creature, inhabiting another, superior, spiritual world. But it sinned. And the result was it fell from grace. And as punishment was included in the body on this earth. The body is therefore the prison, the tomb of the soul. And we are destined, each of us, to go through a series of “reincarnations”. At the end of our earthly span, our soul goes back to the other world, and it gets the appropriate reward or punishment (depending upon its behavior), and then it comes around again, what they call the “wheel of birth.” Sometimes it comes up in another human body, sometimes in an animal body. It lives out its cycle…until…the soul can escape from this body and earth permanently, reunite once and for all with God, and thereby achieve true happiness and salvation…
“How do you [get to it]?…purification…you have to live a good life…an ascetic life…[but] the Pythagoreans at their most ascetic are frenzied hedonists in comparison to the Christians that are yet to come…”
“…to be free of the flesh is man’s highest ethical ideal.”
You can hear the echoes of later Christian doctrine all over this. Here is what the Pythagoreans did. For the first time there was formal concept of man divided against himself – that man was actually two things; spiritual and material. The spiritual was good and the material was functionally evil. They are the developers of human depravity in Western thought.
Most cultures prior to this accepted that the gods were to be revered and their domains were set apart, but it was assumed that man had a right to engage or interact with the gods on some level. The divine was not specifically hostile to man as such, and man by definition could beseech the gods and get boons from them. The Pythagorean premise begins the separation between the material and the spiritual.
Now to my knowledge the Pythagoreans do not participate in human sacrifice in the literal meaning, but they introduce what amounts to a “living death.” For the first time in philosophical history, the presumption is that this stuff (body, matter) that we inhabit is somehow functionally and morally wrong.
Plato to Plotinus to Augustine
Plotinus
I detailed the in a previous conference, but I never get tired of pointing this out. Augustine’s theological pedigree is rooted in Plato’s philosophy via the neo-platonist Plotinus. Plato’s The Republic basically says this: Lesser men are driven by their passions and not fit to rule themselves. Lesser men must subordinate themselves (a.k.a. sacrifice) their base nature to the Philosopher Kings. This is the appropriate order of the world.
Those intellectuals who have the ability to formulate a full philosophical statement, as Plato did, are the ones with the most intellectual power. It is very difficult for people to be philosophical and intellectual innovators. One percent of one percent of one percent of one percent of people in world history will every try to do such a thing. Most people uncritically adopt philosophical statements from whomever they are learning.
Plotinus picks up ideas from the Pythagoreans, the Cynics, and the Stoics who all believed in the soul/body dichotomy, a doctrine which metastasizes as it develops throughout history. While the Pythagoreans would have been considered raving hedonists by comparison, by the time we get to the Cynics, their commitment to the destruction of the body is transcendent. And this is what Plotinus picks up on. By the time we get to Plotinus, he is determined to philosophically eradicate the material world as such, and that specifically means the body.
Plotinus drops all vestiges of the humanist element in Plato’s philosophy. What I mean by that is while Platos’s ideas were wrong, he still held that humanity had virtue. He believed man had value and he still advocated for the betterment of man, but Plato’s was not a religious position even though it had religious elements. But by the time we get to Plotinus, the religious element of spirit-good/matter-evil had reached a peak.
Plotinus probably would have faded into oblivion had it not been for Augustine. Augustine uses Plotinus’ anti-material metaphysic and weaves the Pythagorean’s soul/body dichotomy into Christianity. Augustine said that the nature of man’s sacrifice is individual. This is important. Up until Augustine, men didn’t really consider themselves individuals. They might have identified that they were sole people, but they were always part of something larger. Their nationalities mattered, their participation in the tribe mattered, they conceptualized themselves in the collective mindset. Augustine is the first philosopher to introduce individuality and more importantly, a morbid introspection. Most of you are very keen on doing self-analysis and looking inside and then finding your flaws. This is Augustine’s heritage.
He metastasizes the Pythagorean concept of asceticism and turns it on human life as such. Life qua life is the greatest threat to define existence. The whole of this theology has a singular aim; to make man’s life unlivable and make death the moral ideal.
So now here is the problem. Augustine’s doctrine becomes the de facto standard of Christian orthodoxy for effectively the next thousand years. He stands intellectually unopposed. There is no legitimate intellectual resistance to Augustine’s doctrine until St. Thomas Aquinas. The reason he is so successful at this is because his doctrine is both heresy and treason to oppose. In other words, it is backed by government power.
The logical conclusion of a doctrine that condemns is called asceticism. Asceticism is the soul/body dichotomy – the intentional destruction of the evil material world put into practice. It is no longer a theory. The kind of asceticism the worked its way across Europe was the practice of trying to incrementally destroy the body. Consider the lengths to which they went to destroy the body: staring into the sun until blind so as not to lust after women, sitting on rocks until their legs wasted away, drinking dirty laundry water.
So Christian Europe basically decides that the apostle Paul’s metaphor to beat his body into submission is to be taken literally. Asceticism was the social ideal during the Dark Ages. The problem is, you can’t really practice asceticism because it will kill you, yet the cultural heroes were all ascetics. They are individually self-destructive but they are held up as a moral ideal. They are venerated even though you don’t really do what they do.
This is the mind set of the European Dark Ages. The Dark Ages are dark in principle because the ideas behind the societal action are dark in principle. If your metaphysics is dark, man can’t know anything because his epistemology, what he knows, his mind, is dark. If his mind is dark, by definition he seeks out darkness. He values darkness. He seeks to destroy. And that means his politics, how he interacts with people, is by definition destructive. Notice the progression. You start with the Augustinian premise of original sin and self-destruction, man is materially and fundamentally evil, it results in a logical conclusion.
Four hundred years after Jesus came preaching life in the covenants of promise, Christianity becomes a cult of death that rules the world with a nihilistic iron fist. But for all of the destruction that Augustine’s ideas created he had one flaw in his theology. He left one avenue of self-interest in his doctrine. That flaw left the world one last glimmer of hope, one last place for man to escape the destruction of human sacrifice. That flaw would remain in human thought for about a thousand years.
…To be continued
John Immel 2016 Session 1 Archive Video (YouTube) Audio Only (mp3)
The Reformation Counter-Reality
The Reformers claimed, sola scriptura (truth based on Scripture alone). But in every case of any claim made by the Reformers of old or new, what they mean by any given word must be clarified. How did the Reformers define Scripture?
Here we begin to examine the Reformation’s redefinition of almost every word imaginable while allowing the masses to assume the normative definitions during indoctrination. If the people assume “nine,” but you want to bring them to “five,” you only talk about the “two” and the “three.” The nine is out of sight and out of mind. But also, during the process of bringing them to five, you allow them to assume two really means “two” and three really means “three.” In Reformed reality, the two and three really mean something different than the normally excepted grammatical definitions of two and three. Otherwise, both together would not equal nine which really means five in their reality. The goal is to get the masses to agree that nine really means five.
That’s a crass simplification, yet, the general idea. It may also be stated from the onset that this is a classic cult indoctrination technique. The technique deliberately excludes facts detrimental to the thesis and redefines words to collaborate a contrary truth. Nevertheless, this is a staple mode of communication among Reformed academia. Words mean what the Reformed academics deem them to mean, and you are the last to know until you see the world their way and it no longer matters. Those who define the words control how reality is perceived, and perception determines behavior. People act according to their logic.
How do people normally interpret information? And how do people normally process the reality that they are experiencing? Most people find their way in the world through natural assumptions. Few of us are taught anything different. As we grow up and mature, we assume that the world we live in is really as we perceive it, and we accumulate conclusions about life accordingly. When we went to grade school and learned words, we assumed that “cat” really means “cat” according to what we perceive a cat to be. We learned sentences such as, “The cat walked across the street,” “See Johnny run!” etc. When we read a newspaper or magazine and see sentences, we assume reported events really took place whether we were there or not. If the writer is telling the truth, a cat really walked across the street. Perception or understanding of the event is increased with more words; the color of the cat, the breed of cat, the name of the street crossed by the cat, etc. Relevant knowledge is what we use to negotiate the world we live in. This also assumes cause and effect, ability to comprehend reality, and some degree of control over our environment. Some call this, “free will.”
If you are being taught by someone who rejects these normative assumptions in a church venue, it is safe to assume that you have little or no mutual agreement in regard to the words being communicated. The words “two” and “three” are being used, but you assume those words do not add up to nine. The someone is allowing you to assume that they interpret reality in the same way you do. And, this description is the commonplace occurrence in most present-day Protestant churches.
Without getting into the realm of metaphysical theory, the Reformed principle will be stated simply, and then it will be confirmed as the standard mode of operation widely practiced in our day. It will also be established that this mode of operation flows from the historic roots and traditions of the Protestant Reformation.
The Imperative Command is Grounded in the Indicative Event
The Reformed principle is sometimes expressed as, “The imperative command is grounded in the indicative event.” The question now following is… “What in the world does that mean!” It begins by understanding that the Reformed use words that mean things to teach that words don’t always mean things. Let’s parse the statement with words that mean things. “Imperative command” simply refers to commands found in the Bible.1 The “indicative event” refers to Christ’s life and death as a historical event.2 Few realize the gravity of the cute play on words with the definition of the word, “history” as “His-story.” This is, in fact, a thumbnail phrase that expresses a vast metaphysical/philosophical body of thought and theory. It suggests that ALL reality is interpreted through the life of Christ. It suggests, as the only objective presupposition, that all of history and reality are interpreted through the one historical event. It is history as reality, and the Christ event is the lynchpin of the story. History is a story, and the story is reality. This is NOT difficult to understand; the danger is letting the simplicity of it escape you because of presuppositions that assume complexity. What the Reformed have done is used thousands of different sub-concepts to teach this one, simple, primary concept.
The key to understanding this view of reality is a focus on perception. In the Reformed worldview, humans are only able to truly perform one function: they are able to perceive things, or see things. Everything else is mere experience. Again, just follow the meaning of the words used here and put them together for a logical conclusion, this is very simple to understand. Again, the danger is being confused by the simplicity of it due to presuppositions.
According to the Reformed worldview, reality is divided into two categories; active and passive. In other words, there is active reality and passive reality. Humans belong to the passive reality, or realm. The passive reality, or realm, includes things like water; until water is acted upon, it is dormant. Items in the passive realm only operate according to the actions of the active realm. In essence, we are dealing with two realms, and NOTHING happens in the passive realm unless it is acted upon by the active realm. Please note: according to this principle, those things in the passive realm that perceive that an action is being initiated in the passive realm are only experiencing the action, but are not performing it. Though the action is very much experienced as something initiated by the will of the being dwelling in the passive realm, it is an illusion—the action is only being experienced and not performed. Free will, and cause and effect within the passive realm are illusions. Cause and effect is split between the two realms: cause is only possible in the active realm, and all actions in the passive realm come from the active realm.
So, what is the purpose of this seemingly futile worldview? Answer: well-being. Simply, happiness. Isn’t that what we all want? To the degree that we properly perceive the reality of the passive realm, we have well-being; no circumstance can disturb our soul, all events are the will of the active realm which is always good and true regardless of how mankind perceives it. And this brings us to the Reformed/Protestant definition of saving faith: it is a true perception of reality apart from any free will, and the belief that nothing of the active realm exists within. It is like an eye that only perceives outwardly. The perception itself in no way enables anything within to act upon the passive realm, but only perceives and experiences what the active realm accomplishes in the passive realm. Faith alone is perception alone apart from any work. If water freezes, it didn’t decide to freeze itself, and did nothing to contribute to the freezing, it was acted upon by a change in temperature. Hence, as many Reformed teachers are fond of saying: “Sanctification is not done by you, it is done to you.”
Where the confusion exists in attempting to understand this worldview is demonstrated by a question such as this: “But when I am doing something, am I not really doing it?” Answer: no, the doing is also an experience. Let’s say that you are standing in the rain. You can feel the rain and experience the rain and everything that comes with standing in the rain and getting wet, but you have no control over the rain. You did not make yourself wet, you are passive; you are only now wet because you were acted upon by the active realm. However, let’s say that you decide to run from the pouring rain and into some sort of shelter. The assumption is that this act occurred because your own will decided to activate your body for purposes of using shelter. Not so, you are a purely passive being who must be acted upon. The active realm acted upon your thoughts and will. Even though you cannot experience the rain’s active motion, you can experience your own, but in either case, it no more you acting upon yourself than the rain is acting upon itself—in both cases the active realm is commanding the effects seen in the passive realm. A tree does not move itself; the active realm uses the wind to move the tree.
We are now one more simple step closer to understanding the imperative command is grounded in the indicative event. Let’s review the critical elements that make up our understanding: passive realm; active realm; history; story; faith; Bible. The active realm acts upon the passive realm to effect a story as expressed in history. Faith is the ability to see the story for what it is, and to understand that you are a passive character in the story. Of course, the story is predetermined by God, and your role is also predetermined. The Bible is a prototype of the story, or a general pattern of the story. It is a tool for helping your faith see your own life reflected in the gospel narrative. Some of the Bible narrative tells the story of other humans who dwelt in the passive realm as a way to understand your own existence in the passive realm, while other parts of the Bible tell the end of the story, what is referred to theologically as eschatology, or end-time prophecy. So, some of the Bible is history specific, and other parts are patterns of understanding exhibit reality and an understanding of it. It may be stated this way: reality is a motion picture exhibited and executed by the active realm and observed by us in the passive realm.
Now, let’s describe what the story is. It is the redemptive story of Christ, and its purpose is to glorify God. Hence, God decided to write this…what we may call a metaphysical narrative, and for the express purpose of His own glory and “self-love.” Also, EVERYTHING in the narrative glorifies God. And consequently, to the degree that we see ourselves as nothing more than characters penciled into the metaphysical narrative plot by God as either vessels of wrath or vessels for glory, we find peace and happiness. After all, reality is just a gospel narrative written by God. Why get uptight about things that we have no control over, or things that ultimately glorify God whether good or evil? And even if your prewritten destiny is eternal destruction, the Bible can help you get so lost in the splendor of God that you would, in fact, rejoice in the opportunity to suffer eternally if it glorifies God. The primary purpose of the Bible is to lift God up, and bring mankind “down to hell.” To the degree that “believers” use the Bible to do this aided by the Holy Spirit, well-being is experienced.
This brings us to a conclusion in understanding the imperative command is grounded in the indicative event. There are obviously many commands in the Bible. According to this way of understanding the Bible, ie., according to a redemptive interpretation, God presents many commands to men in order to demonstrate the futility of man obeying any command without fault and to the pleasure of God. According to this narrative prewritten by God in the active realm and displayed in the passive realm, Christ performed a passive obedience and an active obedience in what is known as the “Christ event” (His death and life). Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin, and lived a perfect life in obedience to the law for those preselected by God to receive the salvation supplied by Christ according to the narrative.
According to the narrative: the law, or the commands read in the Bible, are designed to show all people how evil they are. This shows them their need for Christ, but that need doesn’t cease with salvation. Remember, faith is merely a perception, and faith grows as the perception grows. The perception of what? Answer: the depths of, or an ever-increasing understanding of how much we need salvation. Therefore, the imperative commands are not meant for us to obey because we are not able to, but are rather designed to give us an ever-deepening understanding of how much we needed salvation. Said another way, “the law reveals our evil as set against God’s holiness.” Or…they are based on the indicative Christ event.
The imperative commands are NOT grounded in an expectation of man’s ability to obey them, or for some purpose of man’s co-laboring with God, or some means of people loving God and neighbor, but rather they are grounded in the Christ event for the express purpose of God’s glory. Using the Bible/law in this way supposedly increases understanding of our own evil leading to a gratitude for God’s infinite mercy, and subsequent happiness and well-being. This is what the Reformers really meant by sola scriptura. It is perhaps one of the most egregious misrepresentations ever perpetrated on mankind.
It is not surprising then that this use of Scripture is known as the historical-redemptive hermeneutic. Of course, presenting it as an interpretive method, or hermeneutic, when it is really a way of interpreting reality itself, is yet another flagrant deception. Consequently, what would normally be a contrasting hermeneutic, namely, the historical-grammatical hermeneutic, must now be recruited as a contending alternative to the historical-redemptive method of interpreting realty. What is this saying? It is saying that words mean what we normally understand them to mean. It means that the word “command” assumes that the person giving the command did not already obey the command for the person to whom the command is directed. It also assumes that the one giving the command assumes that the subject receiving the command has the ability to obey it. This is in contrast to the imperative command is grounded in the indicative event.
As we will see as we progress, these Reformed ideas are very ancient. They are actually grounded in ancient mythology. The imperative command is grounded in the indicative event is a more contemporary term that was borrowed from like views of secular metaphysics. For example:
It is often said that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”; that is to say, the imperative and the indicative deal with two radically different realms that do not intersect. The realms of fact and duty are like oil and water; they do not mix.3
This is also known as Hume’s law4 and slightly differs from the Reformed imperative/indicative in that the Reformed concur that good can be known in the passive realm, but is not able to be practiced in the material realm by passive beings. Really, it’s the same difference.
In this chapter, the principle elements of the indictment have been presented. In the next chapter, the proof will be presented that authentic Protestantism is guilty of this worldview and its fraudulent presentation. Protestant ideological cross-breeding and confusion can be measured by ignorance regarding the original worldview that the Protestant Reformation was founded on; usually expressed in various and sundry denominations. However, remnants of its ancient principles can be seen in things like let go and let God theology that are eerily similar to…
Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business (Swami Vivekananda (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902) was a teacher of Vedanta philosophy, and one of the most famous and influential spiritual leaders of Hinduism).
No significant understanding of our present-day church experience can be ascertained without understanding the ideology that produced Protestant orthodoxy. Any suggestion that Reformed tradition and thought was birthed by an exegetical interpretation of the Bible is absurd.
Moreover, it is an ideology that hates life, and will invariably lead to a culture of death, and apparently, happily so. True believers must grasp this, and as a result see what is really behind the lofty sounding theological doctrines it espouses.
3 The Void Within: An Inner Quest for Wholeness, By Arnold C. Harms, Ph.D.
The Interpretation of Reality and the Calvinist Swamis
Swami Albert Mohler at 2011 FBC Conference: pastors are “God-appointed agents to save God’s people from ignorance.”
The fact of the matter follows when you boil it down to the least common denominator: the Protestant Reformation was a quarrel about how one should interpret reality. In other words, sola scriptura is pure propaganda. Especially in our present day, preaching for the most part uses Scripture to promote a certain view of reality. The specific studies on this are the historical-redemptive hermeneutic and what is known as Biblical Theology. These terms are egregiously misleading. Instead of the Bible being used to develop a theology with a historical-grammatical view of reality assumed, the Bible is used as a mere tool for aiding one in interpreting reality as a story, or metaphysical narrative written by a god or plethora of gods.
The concept finds its roots in good old fashioned mythology. One should not think of mythology as rank superstition; to the contrary, mythological narratives are stories written by “gifted” spiritual leaders who understand spiritual truth that the populous at large are not able to understand. The gifted leaders package these truths in bedtime stories that the totally depraved masses can understand for purposes of life application. In Protestant context, we know it as orthodoxy and “subordinate truth.” One example would be the Westminster Confession which was penned by the “Westminster Divines.”1 Ponder that one for awhile if you think words mean things.
The foundation and historical progression is not hard to follow.2 It began in the garden when the serpent attempted to present himself as a mediator between people and God. The case presented to Eve follows: there are things about God that you can’t understand, but because I am a superior being, I can guide you in them to make you more like God. At issue from the very beginning was additional mediators between mankind and God. The serpent suggested that the direct relationship between God and mankind was lacking. This is the lie that forms the foundation of all false religions. Instead of mankind at large having initial and ongoing direct access to God at all times, false teachers make the case that they are the gateway to God or some kind of utopia.
Almost immediately after the garden, the religion of spiritual caste was off and running. More than likely, Hinduism was the first formal religion of spiritual hierarchy. True salvation is a body with one head—Christ. Because we are literally born of God into His literal family, we love God and are new creatures who think like Him, and have the same mind of His Son, Christ. Unity comes from having the same mind in Christ, and coming to agreement on such.3 If there is only one mind, and there is disagreement, obviously everybody must agree that someone is right and someone is wrong. However, Scripture instructs us to leave room for the members to be convinced in their own minds and according to the development of a biblical conscience.4 Of course, this would exclude the gospel of first order that cannot be compromised.5
In spiritual caste, an elite class understands reality while the masses are unable. This is usually divided between the material and the invisible as two different realities. Fundamentally, the material is evil and the invisible is good. One may suspect that the incarnation of Christ was a direct pushback to that idea. And of course, if the elite know what’s best for the great unwashed, for the best possible well-being of humanity in general, they must rule over those enslaved to interpreting reality through their five senses. This is where authority comes in; supposedly, for the sake of mankind. So, let’s review the primary tenets of most religions:
- Two realities divided by truth versus illusion.
- Mediators between truth and illusion.
- The mediators should have authority for the sake of humanity.
Usually, the invisible realm is represented by virtue or some sort of deity. Mediators are the elitists in the caste system. They can be visiting deities, or those specially gifted in the material realm. And because they are part of the material realm, they are subject to it, but not to the degree that the ungifted are so…do what they say, not what they do. It’s primarily a gift of perception; because they can see things that the common man cannot see. They create understandable teachings that will best serve man in the material realm.
In most of these caste religions, predeterminism is the centerpiece. This is because in the vast majority of these caste religions, reality is a story orchestrated by the truth realm, or invisible realm. And all stories have an author. If reality is a story, the story must have an author. And if reality has an author, of course everything is predetermined by the author—this is unavoidable. So if redemption is a story as academics of the Reformed tradition constantly state as if in a manner of speaking, of course every detail of reality is predetermined because reality is a story, and all stories have an author. In addition, it may be noted that determinism and fatalism are the historical norm in general, and Protestantism is just another player in the same old song and dance.
The progression of caste started in the garden, found its first formality in Hinduism, was passed on to Plato when he studied in India, became Gnosticism, and later dictated the basic principles of the Protestant Reformation. Augustine’s City of God is a remodeled version of Plato’s Republic and Martin Luther, as well as John Calvin, were rabid followers of Augustine. Luther was a friar in the Augustinian Order, and Calvin quotes Augustine more than 400 times in the Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion. In some translations of the Institutes, that’s an average of every 2.5 pages.
In the final analysis therefore, the Reformers, especially Martin Luther, made the gospel a metaphysical story that interprets all of reality. When you go to see a movie at your local theater, you are a character in the movie watching a movie. The movie you are in was prewritten by God like all movies are prewritten by an author. Therefore, in some sense, saving faith is seeing yourself in God’s plot which is totally out of your control and would exclude all freewill. If you have any freewill at all, you are trying to write your own reality; you are writing your own story; you are trying to be your own god. In fact, this is the very primary theses of the founding doctrinal statement of the Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation to the Augustinian Order. In that founding document presented to the Order six months after the 95 Theses, Luther presented reality in two parts: the cross story and the story of man. According to Luther a theologian is either a theologian of the cross, or a theologian of glory (the glory of man rather than God).
Presently in the Protestant evangelical church, the idea of Christianity being a story dominates church media. Consider the following citation by the contemporary father of historical-redemptive hermeneutics and Biblical Theology:
If the story is true, Jesus Christ is the interpretative key to every fact in the universe and, of course, the Bible is one such fact. He is thus the hermeneutic principle that applies first to the Bible as the ground for understanding, and also to the whole of reality.6
Similar quotations among evangelicals in our day are myriad. The Bible is merely a prototype of redemptive reality that describes generalities, or prisms of redemptive reality in which we see our own lives. Our own lives are part of the story, and we are to interpret our lives through the redemptive reality described in the Bible. The Bible describes the redemptive reality of the past (other lives as interpretive prisms/examples) and the future (how the story will end), and we are experiencing the present redemptive reality IF we have “entered into the plot”7 or entered the “Divine drama.”8 This is little less than the Hindu Lila.
The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God—”sacrifice” in the original sense of “making sacred”—whereby God becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has a strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and then performs this feat with his “magic creative power”, which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya. (…) In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, an important concept of Indian thought. Karma means “action”. It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life.9
And of course, if reality is a story with an author, hard determinism is the order of the day; stories do not write themselves, nor do the characters in the story have freewill to write the story. Consequently, the notion that Calvinists derive their theology from the Bible rather than metaphysics is a misnomer, and in many cases outright deceptive. The Reformed tradition is really the same worn out deterministic mythology that has always dominated world philosophy and wreaked havoc on historical experience from the very beginning. And invariably, converts to Protestantism in the Reformed tradition will mutate from freewill, to soft determinism, and finally hard determinism. Or from “Pelagianism,” to “Semi-Pelagianism,” to “orthodoxy.”
Karma is the infant stage of Hinduism where saints believe they are responsible for their own actions, but as growth moves forward, the mature saint…
“[…] becomes convinced that God has been doing everything by using his body, mind, energy and the senses. He feels that he is only an instrument in the hands of God, and whatever God has been doing to him is for his ultimate spiritual good. At this high level of spirituality the doctrine of predestination becomes the only valid doctrine to him. To him the doctrine of karma ceases to be a valid doctrine.
Therefore, these two doctrines, even though apparently contradictory to each other, are valid for people at different stages of spiritual growth.”10
In regard to practical application, the parallels become even more vivid. The trichotomy of soul and society in Hinduism and Platonism are identical, and the same principles are mirrored in Gnosticism and Calvinism as well. The soul of each person is threefold, and predetermined by God or some other force/deity. In each person, there is the spiritual, intellectual, and instinctive. However, each person will be dominated by one of these characteristics, and society benefits to the degree that each person lives according to the predetermined dominant aspect of their souls. This is the basis for caste systems, and usually coincides with lineage. In other words, you are expected to stay within the social strata determined by birth for the good of society at large. This is jumping ahead a little, but this idea had deep roots in Puritan beliefs who were theological descendants of Calvin. To not remain in the social strata you were born into was thought to be a violation of the 5th commandment according to the Puritans—it was dishonoring your parents.11
The theory also coincides with the two realities of material and invisible, the material being evil and the invisible being truth. The spiritual are the mediators who are able to see beyond the material while the intellectuals are wise enough to know that the mediators should be trusted. They have a special love for the truth, so they love the mediators as well. Those who have souls dominated by instinct are enslaved to the material world and their five senses. To insert another connection somewhat prematurely, the Puritan Jonathan Edwards believed that salvation required a sixth sense in order to see the kingdom of God. In other words, the five senses that evaluate the material world were all but useless for salvation.12 This sixth sense, according to Edwards, is experienced by “delightful conviction” and “inward, sweet delight in God and divine things.” Well known pastor and Puritan wannabe John Piper borrowed these ideas from Edwards to form his Christian Hedonism movement.
In regard to Plato and the aforementioned metaphysical trichotomy, this is the philosopher king, warrior, and producer classes. This coincides with the Hindu Bhramin, Kshatryia/Vaishya, and Sudra/Untouchables. And, John Calvin had his own construct communicated via his election doctrine with more of a Gnostic flavor. Unbeknownst to most people who actually call themselves “Calvinists,” John Calvin propagated three classes of elect: the elect of the elect (those who persevere, the “P” in TULIP), the temporary elect (the called who do not persevere), and the non-elect. This coincides with Gnosticism as follows:
Calvinism derived its 3 classes ultimately from the 3 classes in Valentinian Gnosticism (see Ireneaus’ five books Against Heresies):
1. Pneumatics (spirituals) – The elect of the elect.
2. Psuchics (soulys) – The average elect.
3. Hylics (carnals) – The non-elect.
Meaning, the Hylics have no chance. As for the Psuchics, they are (as you put it) “entered into the race” but not given “the gift of perseverance.” And the Pneumatics, of course, are elect to the uttermost, meaning nothing they do can damn them.
In Gnosticism, this is natural selection, or election by nature according to Clement of Alexandria in Stromata: 2. 3. More specific definitions follow:
In the gnostic view, hylics, also called Somatics (from Gk σώμα (sōma) “body”), were the lowest order of the three types of human. The other two were the psychics and the pneumatics (from Gk πνεύμα (pneuma) “spirit, breath”). So humanity comprised matter-bound beings, matter-dwelling spirits and the matter-free or immaterial, souls.
Somatics were deemed completely bound to matter. Matter, the material world, was seen as “evil” in the gnostic world view. The material world was created by a demiurge, in some instances a blind, mad God, in others an army of rebellious angels as a trap for the spiritual Ennoia. The duty of (spiritual) man was to escape the material world by the aid of the hidden knowledge (gnosis). *
The pneumatics (“spiritual”, from Greek πνεῦμα, “spirit”) were, in Gnosticism, the highest order of humans, the other two orders being psychics and hylics. A pneumatic saw itself as escaping the doom of the material world via the transcendent knowledge of Sophia’s Divine Spark within the soul.†
They conceive, then, of three kinds of men, spiritual, material, and animal . . . The material goes, as a matter of course, into corruption. The animal, if it make choice of the better part, finds repose in the intermediate place; but if the worse, it too shall pass into destruction. But they assert that the spiritual principles which have been sown by Achamoth, being disciplined and nourished here from that time until now in righteous souls (because when given forth by her they were yet but weak), at last attaining to perfection, shall be given as brides to the angels of the Saviour, while their animal souls of necessity rest for ever with the Demiurge in the intermediate place. And again subdividing the animal souls themselves, they say that some are by nature good, and others by nature evil. The good are those who become capable of receiving the [spiritual] seed [and becoming pneumatic]; the evil by nature are those who are never able to receive that seed [and become hylic].—Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I. 7, 513
Calvin held to these same three types of categories except the determinism is by God rather than nature. For Calvin, it is the non-elect, the elect, and those of the elect that are gifted with perseverance:
In fine, we are sufficiently taught by experience itself, that calling and faith are of little value without perseverance, which, however, is not the gift of all (CI 3.24.6)
The expression of our Savior, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” (Mt. 22:14), is also very improperly interpreted (see Book 3, chap. 2, sec. 11, 12). There will be no ambiguity in it, if we attend to what our former remarks ought to have made clear—viz. that there are two species of calling: for there is an universal call, by which God, through the external preaching of the word, invites all men alike, even those for whom he designs the call to be a savor of death, and the ground of a severer condemnation. Besides this there is a special call which, for the most part, God bestows on believers only, when by the internal illumination of the Spirit he causes the word preached to take deep root in their hearts. Sometimes, however, he communicates it also to those whom he enlightens only for a time, and whom afterwards, in just punishment for their ingratitude, he abandons and smites with greater blindness (CI 3.24.8).14
Calvinism is nothing new; it’s the same worn out ancient mythological song and dance foisted on the Bible. Many preaching in Protestant temples in our day think that it all comes from the Bible because Protestant academics told them such. We call that “orthodoxy.” It is mythology’s noble lie of metaphysical bedtime stories for serfs. Sunday church is hosted by two kinds of pastors: those who think orthodoxy actually came from the Bible and therefore think they are teaching the Bible, and those who know what’s really going on. The former is sad enough, but those who sit under the latter are paying good money to be perceived as useful idiots.
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1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Assembly
2 Historical progression will be documented in detail: TTANC volume 3
3 Phil 2:2, 2:5-8, 1Cor 1:10, 2:15
4 Romans 14
5 1Cor 15:1-4
6 Graeme Goldsworthy: Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics; p.48
7 Paul David Tripp: How People Change
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_(Hinduism) Frijof Capra, The Tao of Physics (1975)
10 Swami Bhaskarananda: Chapters 9-11 The Essentials of Hinduism; Predestination
11 https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2012/10/04/reformed-caste-system-the-puritans-saw-violation-of-caste-as-equal-to-violation-of-the-5th-commandment/
12 https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2015-tanc-conference-on-gospel-discernment-and-spiritual-tyranny/susan-dohse-sessions-1-3-jonathan-edwards-the-man-the-myth-the-message/
13 https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2014/01/30/predestination-and-the-gnostic-connection/
14 https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2014/01/30/predestination-and-the-gnostic-connection/
The Truth About Predeterminism: A Historical and Biblical Evaluation
Good evening and welcome to False Reformation blogtalk radio. I am your host, Paul M. Dohse Sr.
If you would like to join the discussion tonight and add to what we are learning, call 347-855-8317 and remember to mute the speakers on your laptop or PC. And by the way, the question or comment does not have to pertain to the subject at hand—it can be off-point.
I am very excited to share what my research has yielded since I began this ministry in 2006, working at it part time until April of 2010, and thereafter full time until now. Resources can also be found at tancpublishing.com.
Tonight we will be discussing the subject of predeterminism, otherwise known as God’s election or predestination. Now, I realize that election and predestination primarily speak to God preselecting who will be saved and not saved, while predeterminism deals with the wider spectrum of human events.
Let me set the table for tonight’s discussion. Starting out in Reformed beliefs can be simple enough. God preselected those who will be saved, and left the rest to their own devices. And, there seems to be Bible verses that state this plainly.
You might even believe that election and freewill are both 100% true. You might believe that this is a paradox. I heard Rick Warren tell John Piper that this is his position, since the Bible states both, both are equally true. You could also argue that paradoxes like this exist in science. Let me give you an example from Dr. Bo Grissom as stated in last year’s conference:
Consider, for example, the physics of light where two seemingly contradictory theories are used side-by-side to explain its different properties.
The wave theory is used to understand the oscillation aspects of light (e.g., Polaroid sunglasses), while at the same time the particle theory is employed to explain other applications (e.g., photoelectric solar panels). Although these two theories are totally incompatible, each provides useful information in certain technical applications.
To date, scientists simply use the appropriate theory as needed for a particular design problem. There is no worry about whether light actually exists as a wave, or as a particle, just because it is not yet fully understood. This same approach may be taken in the spiritual realm and is probably the best stance to take in dealing with the apparent contradiction between individual free will and God’s total sovereignty.
When we extend this God’s predeterminism from salvation to every aspect of life, we are not just talking about election and predestination, or whether one is a 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 point Calvinist, we are now talking about determinism or predeterminism. Hence, the word used in our title tonight. And this is where we must go because Protestantism was founded on hard determinism not soft determinism.
The Protestant tradition is based on Redemptive Historical hermeneutics. What’s that? It is the belief that every facet of human life is predetermined. It is the belief that reality and the state of being is a prewritten story or grand narrative written by God. This is known as metanarrative, or metaphysical narrative, or a grand metaphysical narrative. In regard to authentic Protestantism, all of history is a predetermined gospel, or redemptive narrative also known as the “divine drama.”
This is also the basis of mythology which is NOT superstition. Mythology is merely the most ancient and basic foundations of religion. It is the idea that a force, nature, cosmos, or personal God has prewritten history. The story, as it unfolds, is the state of being. The author of being is always an invisible force who manifests his/her being in the material realm.
Mythology in its various forms also has mediators between the invisible and material. These are elitist guides who have special insight into the invisible realm that cannot be understood by the general populous. Therefore, in order to guide the masses, priests, philosophers, or whatever you want to call them, explain truth to the masses in a way that they can understand it, namely, via a story.
For the most part, people in cultures don’t take the mythological stories literally, they understand that the guides are merely repackaging what they are unable to understand in a way that they can apply it to their lives. Ancient cultures were not stupid people driven by superstition; they understood the mythological narratives to be creeds and catechisms to live by that come from purer truths that only the guides can understand.
Superstition then, is an unreasonable understanding and application of the mythological narrative. That’s what superstition is. It may also include many personal quirks applied to the superstition as well.
So, from the cradle of society comes mythology, and its orthodoxy is metanarrative. This of course requires a spiritual and social caste system or a empirical pecking order. This is why Hinduism is the most ancient of religions—because mythology is the most ancient of religions.
In this ancient construct, everything is predetermined in the story written by the force or personal God, and life is ONLY experienced. It’s like standing in the rain. You feel the rain, you experience the rain, but you have no control over the rain—the rain is a story that you only experience—your part in the narrative is only experienced.
In Hinduism, which is the best example, the spiritual strata is Bhramin, Kshatryia, Vaishya, Sudra, and Untouchables. But listen very careful to what Karma is in Hinduism. THIS IS KEY. I am citing Swami Bhaskarananda: Chapters IX to XI from the book “The Essentials of Hinduism,” Heading; “Predestination”:
Karma is the infant stage of Hinduism where saints believe they are responsible for their own actions, but as growth moves forward, the mature saint…
He becomes convinced that God has been doing everything by using his body, mind, energy and the senses. He feels that he is only an instrument in the hands of God, and whatever God has been doing to him is for his ultimate spiritual good. At this high level of spirituality the doctrine of predestination becomes the only valid doctrine to him. To him the doctrine of karma ceases to be a valid doctrine.
Therefore, these two doctrines, even though apparently contradictory to each other, are valid for people at different stages of spiritual growth.
Hang on to all of this as we are going to plug it back in later. This will all come together for you as we progress.
At this juncture, I am going to inject another key term: the total inability of man. Can we state anything other than the obvious fact that Hinduism representing the foundation of ancient religion is one soul with the total inability of man? Absolutely not.
When I first became a Christian, I was, I guess what you would call Arminian. I only borrow the term to make a point because Christianity is not either Calvinism or Arminianism, that’s perhaps the biggest red herring of all time.
I was later persuaded into believing what is often referred to as sovereign grace. Or, election. I was never crazy about it though I believed it to be true. To me, there were certain Bible verses that made individual election unavoidable.
Fast forward to the TANC Research era. When my research found that Protestantism was founded on the false gospel of progressive justification, I pretty much deemed the election issue as a diversion from the real issue of the gospel, and pronounced the election issue irrelevant.
I then adopted the aforementioned paradox view and stuck it in my back pocket. I am not going to take the time tonight to discuss why I decided to revisit the issue, but I did. And here was my approach:
I found the issue of law and gospel to be very definitive in the Bible, what I call “theological math,” and assumed that a deeper and deeper objective understanding of law and gospel would lead to more understanding of the more subjective and mysterious biblical issues. What we know are building blocks to what we don’t know. If not, conclusions are merely leaps in logic.
Deuteronomy 29:29 makes it very clear that there are things we are responsible for knowing and doing, but to some degree we are not going to understand everything. BUT, we also need to milk the objective cow for all we can get out of it. You stick with what you know positively and see where it leads you.
And here is where I have been led: I believe freewill is a metaphysical pillar. I believe it is one of the major tenets of being. I also believe that it better answers the more difficult questions such as, “Why did God allow sin into the world?” That is, if He did in fact allow it—we must remember that is a presupposition. God is not limited in any way by perceived attributes. Example: God is omniscient, but does that mean God in unable to not know something because of His omniscience? What if God doesn’t want to know something? Is He UNABLE to not know?
I have come to believe God did not elect individuals, but rather elected the means of salvation which includes people groups and Christ Himself. I believe God is sovereign and intervenes in the freewill affairs of men to guarantee predetermined outcomes which DOES NOT include every detail of life and history.
The Bible says that God created hell for the Devil and not man; therefore, men go to hell because they choose to go there against God’s desired will. Though the fall caused man to be ashamed and hide from God—God seeks him out and reasons with him.
This brings us to some very important reasons to consider the truthfulness of predeterminism. First, the primary pundit of predeterminism is the Protestant tradition. As we discussed prior, Protestantism is the false gospel of progressive justification. Therefore, predeterminism is fruit from the poisonous tree.
Secondly, and most importantly, the Reformed tradition has made the sovereignty of God the gospel itself. Don’t miss this; note this term: “sovereign grace.” We must understand that sovereign grace is a specified gospel. It is a soteriology or doctrine of salvation—please don’t miss this. Individual election is not a separate issue from the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ according to the Reformed camp.
A key concept of sovereign grace is the total inability of man. In 2008, Calvinist John MacArthur stated the following at a conference:
The doctrine of human unwillingness and inability is perhaps the most attacked doctrine wittingly or unwittingly. The idea that sinners are completely helpless to redeem themselves or to make any contribution to that redemption from sin and divine judgment is the most attacked because in the big picture, it is the most despised doctrine.
Consequently, it is the most distinctively Christian doctrine, contrary to all non-Christian views of men. All religions in the world are some form of a works righteousness system. And at the foundation of all those religions other than the true faith in the true gospel is the idea that people can be good and good enough to contribute to their salvation, to somehow merit favor with deity and a happy after life.
Because this is the universal foundational doctrine of all false systems of religion, it is therefore the most – because, I should say, the opposite of it is the foundation of all these religions, it is therefore the most attacked Christian doctrine. It is distinctively Christian because it affirms the absolute inability of man to do anything to contribute to his salvation.
That’s a crock. What MacArthur said is the well-traveled narrative and historical motif, but the exact opposite is true. The carte blanche religiosity most prevalent in all of human history is determinism. This has always been true in the secular realm as well. In the secular realm it is known as freewill skepticism. Somebody sent me a great video on this a couple of days ago and I found it most fascinating.
But look, mankind has been so saturated with a propensity towards determinism that its philosophical truisms pepper our speech. Quote, “Don’t tempt fate.” “It’s our destiny.” In sports: this team or that team is a “team of destiny.” “Oh well, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” One of the biggest hits ever was Doris Day’s Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be). In 1964 you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing that song.
So, like the video I was sent the other day, MacArthur who I think represents the general mentality well is proffering the idea that freewill skepticism is counter intuitive—historically, the exact opposite is true. Calvinism is an extremely old shoe. It’s just a chip off the old block of ancient mythology—it follows that tradition.
So, freewill skeptic philosophers as well as Calvinists talk often about free will’s relationship to “American individualism.” And this is the next step to our discussion: determinism goes hand in hand with collectivism, and freewill goes hand in hand with individualism. Let me explain how this works.
If whatever rules the universe in the invisible realm has representatives or mediators in the material realm, that means the majority of humanity cannot know reality. The other alternative is what got Socrates executed. He taught that truth was intuitive to everybody and leveled the playing field which was a really bad idea because only 10% of the population made up the ruling class.
Therefore, his understudy Plato had to get out of Dodge and become a foreign exchange student for a while, but he studied in India and came back to Athens with a much better idea: the philosopher kings are able to obtain the gnosis and teach it to the masses, the warriors inforce the dictates of the philosopher kings, and the sole purpose of the masses is the collective good.
This was never more or less than Plato’s version of the Hindu caste system. The value of an individual is based on their ability to contribute to the common good as judged by the philosopher kings and enforced by the warriors if necessary.
Where did the crux of this system begin? In the garden with the serpent and Eve. The serpent, in essence said, “Eve, you aren’t able to correctly ascertain what God really said, you need me, a spiritually superior being, to properly interpret what God really said.” That’s where all of this starts. It worked well in the garden, why in the world would the construct ever change, right? This also makes mediators the obvious shoe-in for social engineering or societal wellbeing.
Now we have to figure out who the mediators are, right? How do we figure that out? Who is to say? That’s where predeterminism comes in as well. The mediators are always preordained by God before the foundation of the earth. This goes hand in hand with the social class strata.
Social classes determine who the rulers are, the warrior class, and the artisans. It becomes a matter of lineage or pedigree. And as you know, this has never changed in many, many cultures. In many cases upward mobility is forbidden.
Traditionally, collectivism, again, the idea that the worth of an individual is determined by ability to contribute to the common good, is the doctrine that is always associated with determinism and its spiritual caste. The preordained mediators keep the masses in tune with good karma. Immature citizens think they can actually control their fate, while the wiser artisans and producers know that whatever force they worship is completely sovereign. Hey, if the force didn’t want that philosopher king in power, he or she wouldn’t be in power. And of course, some cultures take it a step further and deem the rulers as the actual material manifestations of a god or several gods. Examples of this would be Japanese emperor worship during WWII and the Pope (the “Holy Father” of the Catholic Church).
I am going to pause here and mention how these ancient traditions show up in the contemporary Protestant church. The president of Southern Seminary, Al Mohler, stated at a conference in Florida that pastors are God’s appointed preordained ministers to save His people from ignorance. That’s what he said. In the Puritan tradition, upward mobility was considered a violation of the fifth commandment because it didn’t honor the social class you were born into. Folks, this is all the same stuff! A book written by Calvinist Paul David Tripp, How People Change, is a 200 + page treatise on how to become part of God’s metaphysical divine drama. You are not in control of anything, you just need to be able to see the world through eyes of faith; i.e., all of life is the unfolding of a preordained redemptive narrative (see endnote at end of transcript).
In addition, Calvin’s three-fold election construct that we discussed last week is identical to the election doctrine of Gnosticism, a later version of Neo-Platonism. The hylic coincide with Calvin’s non-elect, the psychic are the partially initiated, or temporarily illumined, and the pneumatic are the fully initiated or Calvin’s lot that persevere till the end. This is all the same stuff.
Now, we are getting ready to close the first segment so anyone wanting to call in can start ramping up while I finish the first segment with individualism which is mostly identified with freewill. Individualists commonly believe that they do not need a mediator to understand God or reality. Secondly, individualists would reject predeterminism out of hand. Thirdly, they would reject social caste out of hand and deem it as tyranny. Fourthly, they believe happiness is found in accomplishment and would reject anything that hinders upward mobility. Fifthly, they would reject total inability.
However, individualism is what is counter intuitive. Individualism is a unique American experiment which finally happened after man suffered unspeakable misery for 10,000 years at the hands of collectivism. EVERYONE agrees that there has never been a country like America in the history of the world. Well, why not? Why did it take so long? Because individualism is not our natural bent—collectivism is. No? After all of the mass graves and misery amassed by collectivism, why are politicians worldwide still hell-bent on implementing it?
Ever heard of the tower of babel? We wouldn’t even have the individualism that we have now unless God confused the languages. Man was continually commanded by God to spread out, fill the whole earth and subdue it. What did they do? They all gathered in a Hindu huddle at the tower of babel.
That’s the first segment. Conclusion: Calvinism is far from being unique. It’s just the same old warn-out collectivism that has been wreaking havoc on mankind since the garden. Determinism is nothing unique, the total inability of man is not unique—IT’S ALL THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN UNTILL AMERICA CAME ALONG. Status quo religious books like the Quran are saturated with the idea of predeterminism from the front cover to the back cover. I could go on and on with example after example.
Segment 2
What about the gospel of sovereign grace? This is a gospel that is defined by predeterminism. Apart from predeterminism, all gospels are deemed false—it must have the determinism element. Freewill is tantamount to a false gospel because it leaves room for man to have a role in the salvation “process” that supposedly starts with beginning justification which is experienced subjectively and ends with final justification. It’s a process of salvation instead of the finished work of salvation being applied to the specific point in time when a person believes the gospel. The life of the born again believer now becomes part of the salvation “process.”
Supposedly, saving faith can ONLY ASK to be part of the salvation process via John Calvin’s Sabbath rest where we must rest from our works because the same gospel that saved us also sanctifies us. We must rest from our works in the Christian life because it is now part of the process. Accordingly, no saint can know positively if they are the called class of elect, or the class that perseveres. Again, this is akin to the Gnostic election classes of hylic, psychic, and pneumatic. The called, like the psychic, are temporarily or partially illumined and have no way of knowing whether or not they will persevere until the end. Assurance is clearly ambiguous.
This is authentic Protestantism’s definition of saving faith. Ability to choose in any part of the salvation process is tantamount to the ability of man and therefore akin to works salvation. Not unlike spiritual maturity in Hinduism, as the good Protestant grows spiritually, he/she realizes more and more that they have no real role in the salvation process, but only experience God’s prewritten metaphysical narrative. Spiritual growth is defined by a progression from soft determinism to hard determinism.
In the Protestant “gospel of sovereign grace,” soft determinism is the minimal requirement because having freewill is tantamount to the ability to choose which is considered works salvation. Individuals then grow into their final salvation by evolving into hard determinism. This is by no means unique, but very prevalent among the world’s religions including movements like radical environmentalism.
Do Calvinists believe in total inability? Well, many environmentalists believe the very existence of man is detrimental to the earth!
Hard determinism is comfortable with the idea that there is no assurance of salvation which of course is a direct contradiction to the book of 1John. As far as the Reformed stating this in no uncertain terms, chapter 5 of It’s Not About Election is chock-full of citations from Calvin, Luther, and contemporary Calvinists like John Piper.
However, there is a get out of fate free card, right? What is it? The Reformed power of the keys. Simply stated, if you are a member of a Reformed church and you obey the elders and they like you, if you “humbly” put yourself under their authority with issues of error being beside the point—YOUR’RE IN because whatever they bind on earth is bound in heaven and whatever they loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Do you want to go to heaven? Well then, keep your mouth shut and put your money in the plate.
Now, back to this sovereign grace gospel and the next point about it—it makes God’s sovereignty paramount to the gospel and not God’s love. If man has a choice, or freewill which speaks to ability, this would violate God’s attribute of sovereignty. It would deny God is sovereign in all matters of life and being. In other words, God’s sovereignty and freewill are mutually exclusive. Beside the point that this again limits God because of an attribute assigned to Him, the stated biblical cause of God saving the world because of love is changed to God saving the world because of His sovereignty.
This also posits the idea that sin came into the world because of God’s sovereign will and not His permissive will. The unavoidable conclusion also posits the idea that sin coming into the world was God’s desired will. In contrast, God may have chosen not to know anything about what would come out of freewill as a creative principle. The Bible never states that God knew sin was going to come into the world and decided to permit it for some reason. The Bible states that sin was “found” in Satan at some point (Ezekiel 28:15).
Built-in inherent weaknesses or propensities are not part of God’s creation. Rather, God’s attribute of freewill assumes good results because all that God creates is good. Obviously, Lucifer and Adam were created with freewill, but nevertheless, freewill is not the problem. Reformed soteriology makes freewill synonymous with sin, and makes any kind of ability sin as well.
Many in the Reformed camp deny that they believe God’s sovereignty and freewill are mutually exclusive, but total inability assumes freewill is both impossible and sinful, so they cannot have it both ways. In their minds, man is only free to sin because freewill itself is sinful.
In reality, and according to the Bible, God is capable of being sovereign, but often chooses not to be. Again, he is not limited by any of His own attributes. God flexes His sovereignty in electing outcomes (sovereign will) and keeping promises through intervention, but at times chooses not to be sovereign. There are numerous examples of this throughout the Bible.
The Bible also documents cause and effect throughout. The Bible documents God’s intervention to prevent outcomes caused by the actions of men. The Bible also documents God’s active will, passive will, and permissive will. Cause and effect is also described in context of promises and incentive; if a person does this, God promises He will do that.
Hence, the gospel of God’s sovereign grace logically turns the Bible completely upside down if you interpret it grammatically, and that’s the point. Authentic Protestant tradition does not interpret the Bible literally, but according to a metaphysical redemptive story. Reality is a prewritten metaphysical narrative. This is nothing new—it’s the same old song and dance that’s been going on since the tower of Babel.
Really, what it does, if you really think about it—it makes the literal full counsel of God secondary, and the good news of Protestant authority primary. That’s one reason why incessant theological debate in evangelical circles is acceptable—it’s all theater—if you obey your elders and put your money in the plate you’re going to heaven anyway!
Why, for years, have you stood befuddled in regard to what evangelical elders can get away with saying and doing in the church? Because it’s really about the good news of Protestant authority and nothing more or less.
We are going to close tonight in the book of Genesis. I think we see what effect sin had on man; it made man ashamed and caused him to hide from God. Then we see God seeking man out and confronting Him. Shame does not equal total inability.
And this also affects evangelism. It is our role to seek others out on behalf of God. Why has evangelism always been so anemic among Protestants? This is why: Protestants have been taught that man is not only ashamed, but totally depraved with no ability to choose God once he/she is persuaded by the preaching of the word. The incentive to evangelize is not to see people saved, but to glorify God in both death and life. It is a mere proclamation that glorifies God either way, not an attempt to persuade. God is glorified when people are saved because he chose them, and God is also glorified when people reject the gospel because their greater damnation also glorifies God.
In the same aforementioned conference, John MacArthur referred to this idea of glorifying God in evangelism as a “savor of life to life and death to death.” Either way, it is a “savor” unto the Lord. This idea is not only a disincentive; it’s not biblically true and will therefore not find the Holy Spirt cooperative. MacArthur also stated in the same message that “total depravity or unwilling and unable [is]…a gospel theme.” Again, we see God’s sovereignty and man’s inability as foundational to the gospel, not God’s love.
In fact, many Calvinists argue that any gospel presentation that contains a reference to choice is a false gospel. The gospel is to be presented and the results left to God for His glory. If a person asks, “what shall we do?” they are to be told that they can only ask and hope for the best, but God will be glorified either way.
Also, in the same message, MacArthur stated:
The Spirit and the Son are in agreement that this work is a work of divine, sovereign power. And then, of course, we commented earlier, reading John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” John 8:36, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” It’s the work of the Son. It’s the work of the Spirit. It’s the work of the Father who draws. In none of these texts, by the way, did Jesus defend the sinner’s ability. In none of these texts did Jesus defend free will. Yes, the sinner has will, and his will is activated by the Spirit in the work of salvation, but his will is not free.
Problems with this view follow: Jesus also said that He would be lifted up in order to draw ALL men to Himself (Jn 12:32). The Spirit also convicts men of sin and the judgment to come (Jn 16:8)—the Spirit works with us in evangelism.
God sovereignly elects the means of salvation and the final outcome of world history, but he does not elect individuals. When saints are called elect, it refers to their identification with a group or purposes elected by God, not the individual per se.
God elected salvation for all men, and the plan of salvation clearly includes an invitation to all of mankind. God sends His Spirit to convict and warn all men while God’s people proclaim His gospel from the word. The goal of evangelism is to “persuade” men to believe the word of God. Faith comes to men through this joint effort between the Spirit and God’s people. The new birth, or regeneration, then comes by faith (Rom 10:17, Gal 3:5).
In contrast, proponents of the gospel of sovereign grace must implement tenets like limited atonement and total depravity to make their case. Many of these tenets are blatant contradictions to the plain sense of Scripture.
And, in regard to Hindus claiming that all religions really agree with them unawares, they just may have a point.
Endnotes
Examples abound. A placard published on Facebook read, “All of your days have been written in God’s book. When you go through disappointment, don’t stop on that page. Stay the course. Keep believing. You may be tired, discouraged and frustrated, but don’t give up on your future.”
Even the late conservative evangelical Adrian Rogers once stated in a sermon:
“When you are surrendered to the will of God, focused on the Word of God, then the Holy Spirit begins to pray in you and through you. He energizes, motivates, and guides your prayer. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned about prayer is this: the prayer that gets to Heaven is the prayer that starts in Heaven. Prayer is the Holy Spirit finding a desire in the heart of the Father, putting that desire in our heart, then sending it back to Heaven in the power of the cross. The prayer that gets to Heaven is the prayer that starts in Heaven. Our part is just to close the circuit” (online source: http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/love-worth-finding/read/articles/prayer-and-the-will-of-god-11630.html).
You can add to that a sermon by Dr. Devon Berry entitled, How to Listen to a Sermon in which he posits the idea that there is no such thing as edifying personal Bible study. The only thing that counts for receiving progressive grace is sitting under the preaching of elders because they get the word from God in the same kind of cycle described by Rogers. Berry is the chairman of the elders at Clear Creek Chapel in Springboro, Ohio which is a training center for the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation which controls at least 90% of the biblical counseling going on in the evangelical church.
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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