On the Meaning of Exegesis, and How it Applies to Free Will and Determinism, and the Conceptual Problem It Presents for Christianity--My Reply to a Commenter on This Blog

The only way to adequately respond to a recent comment by Randy on this blog, was to write a post explaining the meaning of exegesis, and how I presented my exegesis in the post. Note, that when one  is NOT applying Humpty Dumpty Semantics to the text, the exegesis need not be all that complicated; and if one is in opposition to a particular explanation or interpretation, they can offer an alternate exegesis, and I will respond in kind.

The original post was a critique of Christian blogger, JW Wartick's  book review on Paul Helm's “Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time,”  I hope it will help Randy and others better understand the argument, and the issues at hand. I look forward to any opposing exegesis of the passages in question.  I will respond in kind.  Note, for the argument to work, it needs only one free will and one deterministic passage which cannot be reconciled.

Below, is Randy's latest comment on my post:

I'm sorry, that's not exegesis. Simply quoting a verse and then proclaiming the verse means what you say it means--when that is precisely the question--is not exegesis. It's question begging. Similarly, appealing to authority won't work--especially because it is neither the orthodox nor majority view of Christianity, nor has it ever been. I'm sorry if you found some of my words too big. I'll answer your argument when you answer my two-part request: first, you have to make an argument (not just an assertion).

Let me remind you of the original argument I presented. According to Wartick, "... the idea of responsibility simply does not make sense on determinism, particularly when it is theistic determinism." 

This is exactly right, and as a result, WARTICK HAS ILLUSTRATED THAT THE BIBLE MAKES NO SENSE. First, let me set this out as an argument so that you can see how it works. Secondly, I will show that the bible does espouse responsibility and determinism. Here is the argument:

P1. If there are parts of the bible that espouse the idea of responsibility and determinism then the Bible makes no sense.

P2. The Bible espouses the idea of responsibility and determinism.

C. Therefore, the Bible makes no sense.

Note, P1 is supported by Wartick's claim that "... the idea of responsibility simply does not make sense on determinism, particularly when it is theistic determinism."

Exegesis is the systematic process by which a person arrives at a reasonable and coherent sense of the meaning and message of a biblical passage. Definition of exegesis: exposition, explanation; especially : an explanation or critical interpretation of a text. The goal of Biblical exegesis is to explore the meaning of the text which then leads to discovering its significance or relevance. I have set forth the meaning of and explained the meaning of certain Biblical passages both deterministic and free will passages. I gave my interpretation of these passages. My exposition, explanation, and critical interpretation of the passages are based on a reasonable and coherent sense of the meaning and message of the biblical passages--thus, it is not just a mere proclamation, it is based on the actual text!

For example, as I stated in my previous blog post: (I will put in bold face and underline my exegesis for you.)

"According to the bible, redemption can come only through the offering of Yahweh of himself, and if a believer is saved, it is ONLY through Yahweh's grace, and it is NOT of themselves. (Ephesians 2:8) On the other hand, the bible also claims that humans chose to sin in the first place, and are FREE to make their own choices, and it must be their own choice to accept Yahweh's salvation, as the bible is also full of admonitions to repent and believe (Acts 3:19)"

and,

The bible espouses the idea of responsibility and determinism via the passages mentioned above, as well as my favorite passage from (Proverbs 16:33),  "...EVERY decision is from the Lord." These, and other passages such as Ephesians 1:11; Lamentations 3:37-38; James 4:13-15; Psalm 139:16 and Matt 10:29-30 support the case for determinism.

and,

"Now, let us consider an OT passage, and a NT passage. First, the OT passage:

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. Proverbs 16:33

If its every decision is from the Lord, then the Lord determines everything about the decision.

Now the NT passage:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God," Ephesians 2:8

So, with regards to ones' salvation, this is determined by your god Yahweh--it is not of your own doing."

and,

"On the other hand, the bible also claims that humans chose to sin in the first place, and are FREE to make their own choices, and it must be their own choice to accept Yahweh's salvation, as the bible is also full of admonitions to repent and believe (Acts 3:19)"

This is my exposition, explanation, and critical interpretation of the Biblical passages that I offered as either having a deterministic meaning or a free will meaning. I further supported my exposition, explanation, and critical interpretation of the Biblical passages by providing the historical exegesis and arguments from Christian scholars and theologians. I feel no need to reinvent the wheel, and thus provided links to the relevant information in my blog post. I leave it open to the reader to decide for themselves whether to accept my exposition, explanation, and critical interpretation of the Biblical passages that I presented as ether deterministic or free will. If someone opposes my exposition, explanation, and critical interpretation of the Biblical passages that I offered as either having a deterministic meaning or a free will meaning--then let them DO THE WORK AND PROVIDE OPPOSING EXPOSITIONS, EXPLANATIONS, AND CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE BIBICAL PASSAGES AND SHOW THAT, either there are no deterministic passages, or that there are no free will passages, or that somehow you can have deterministic passages and free will passages that espouses the idea of responsibility and determinism, particularly when it is theistic determinism. For example: "Wesley insisted on prevenient grace as a solution to two great problems in Christianity: the belief of original sin and the Protestant doctrine of salvation by grace alone. Developing the idea based upon the witness of Scripture, Wesley thought that prevenient grace enabled the doctrines of original sin and salvation by grace to co-exist while still maintaining God's sovereignty and holy character as well as human freedom."(Wikipedia) BUT DO NOT FORGET THAT MY ARGUMENT IS BASED ON WARTICK'S CLAIM THAT: "... the idea of responsibility simply does not make sense on determinism, particularly when it is theistic determinism."

The Calvinists have a reply to Wesley's conception of prevenient grace as dissolving the problem of the Bible having both deterministic and free will passages. I think that the Calvinists are correct:

"Calvinists have their own doctrine of prevenient grace, arguably closer to the original Augustinian conception, which they identify with the act of regeneration and which is immediately and necessarily followed by faith. Because of the necessity of salvation following this dispensation of prevenient grace, it is called irresistible grace. Wesleyan prevenient grace also contrasts with the Calvinist understanding of common grace by which God shows general mercy to everyone (Matt. 5:43-48), restrains sin, and gives humankind a knowledge of God and of their sinfulness and need of rescue from sin. Common grace is thus said to leave people without excuse. Arminians object that Calvinist common grace leaves people absolutely incapable of coming to God (a point on which Calvinists agree) and thus do not believe it leaves them without excuse.

"Calvinists further maintain that when the Bible speaks of humanity's condition of total depravity, of spiritual death, it speaks of it as an actuality, not a hypothetical condition that prevenient grace resolves for everyone, as they believe the Wesleyan doctrine teaches. Calvinists see all people as either dead in their sins or alive in Christ (Eph. 2:1-5), and they see the Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace as creating a third state, neither dead nor alive.[9] Calvinists understand "dead in sin" to mean absolutely incapable of all good, whereas Arminians understand it to mean the state of being separated from God by sin, but capable of choosing God when enabled to by grace."(Wikipedia)

I agree with the Calvinists because according to the bible, redemption can come ONLY through the offering of Yahweh of himself, and if a believer is saved, it is ONLY through Yahweh's grace, and it is NOT of themselves. (Ephesians 2:8) The person has no say in it, as the passages says it is not of themselves.--it is determined by Yahweh. Wesley's conception of prevenient grace does not dissolve the problem. Again, if you disagree, DO THE WORK AND PROVIDE OPPOSING EXPOSITIONS, EXPLANATIONS, AND CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE BIBICAL PASSAGES AND SHOW THAT I am wrong. I will respond in kind.

As I said, I feel no need to reinvent the wheel, the following is from the links that I provided from Wikipedia:

"According to Arminius, there is such a thing as prevenient grace, which is divine grace that precedes human decision. It exists prior to and without reference to anything humans may have done. As humans are corrupted by the effects of sin, prevenient grace allows persons to engage their God-given free will to choose the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ or to reject that salvific offer. Whereas Augustine held that prevenient grace cannot be resisted, and if it cannot be resisted, then the person has no free will on this matter.  Wesleyan Arminians believe that it enables, but does not ensure, personal acceptance of the gift of salvation.

Scriptures used to support the doctrine of prevenient grace include the following:

Jeremiah 1:5 (ESV): "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you..."

Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV): "...I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."

Ezekiel 34:11, 16 (ESV): "For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out...I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak..."

Luke 19:10: "For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

John 6:44: "No man can come unto me, unless the Father who hath sent me, draw him..."

John 12:32: "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”

Romans 2:4: "...the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance..."

Philippians 2:12-13: "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you according to his good pleasure, both to will and to do."

1 John 4:19: "We love him, because he first loved us."

Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."(Wikipedia)

According to John Calvin, humans are in a state of total depravity, and there is no free will at all due to Divine Sovereignty.

Again, no need for me to reinvent the wheel.

"Biblical support for the doctrine of total depravity:

A number of passages in the Bible are used to support the doctrine, including (quotations are from the English Standard Version except where noted):

• Genesis 6:5: "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
• Genesis 8:21: "And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
• Job 15:14: What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?
• Job 15:15: Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water!
• Job 25:4-6: How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure? 5 Behold, even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes; 6 how much less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!"
• Psalms 51:5: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me."
• Psalms 58:3: "The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies."
• Ecclesiastes 7:20: "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."
• Ecclesiastes 9:3: "This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead."
• Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"
• Jeremiah 13:23: (NIV): "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil."
• Isaiah 64:6 "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away"
• Isaiah 64:7 "There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities."
• Isaiah 64:8 "But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand."
• Mark 7:21-23: "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
• John 3:19: "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil."
• John 6:44: "[Jesus said,] 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.'"
• John 6:64-65: "[Jesus said,] 'But there are some of you who do not believe.' (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, 'This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.'"
• John 8:34: "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.'"
• Romans 3:10-11: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God."
• Romans 8:7-8: "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
• 1 Corinthians 2:14: "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned."
• Ephesians 2:1-3: "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." (our depravity being emphasized in the concept of being "dead"; only something external -i.e. God- can give a dead man life)
• Titus 3:3: "For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another." (Wikipedia)
  

"According to Calvinism, those who obtain salvation do so, not by their own "free" will, but because of the sovereign grace of God. That is, men yield to grace, not finally because their consciences were more tender or their faith more tenacious than that of other men. Rather, the willingness and ability to do God's will, are evidence of God's own faithfulness to save men from the power and the penalty of sin, and since man is so corrupt that he will not decide and cannot be wooed to follow after God, God must powerfully intervene. In short, Calvinism argues that regeneration must precede faith. "(Wikipedia)

Biblical support for the doctrine Divine Sovereignty and Irresistible Grace:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God," Ephesians 2:8

John 6:37,39: "All that the Father gives me will come to me.... And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day."[ESV]

John 6:44–45: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.... Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me."[ESV]

John 6:65: "(N)o one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father."

"Proponents of Arminianism argue that the word "draw" (Greek: ἕλκω, helkô)[12] as used in John 6:44 does not require the sense of "drag", though they admit this is the word's usual meaning (as in Jn. 18:10; 21:6; 21:11; Acts 16:19; 21:30; Jas. 2:6). They point to John 12:32 as an example: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." Arminians interpret this to mean that Jesus draws all people to Himself but some are able resist this drawing since, if the call is truly irresistible, then all must come to Christ and be saved. They may also note that in the Septuagint version of Jeremiah 38:13, when Jeremiah is lifted out of the pit where he was left to die, this Greek verb is used for the action which his rescuers performed after he voluntarily secured the ropes under his armpits, and that this rescue was certainly performed in cooperation with Jeremiah's wishes. Therefore, they may argue, even if the semantics of "draw" are understood in the usual sense, this should only be taken to indicate the source of the power, not the question of whether the person being drawn independently desires the drawing, or to indicate that the drawing is done irrespective of their wishes.

Calvinists argue that (1) the word "draw" should be understood according to its usual semantics in both John 6:44 and 12:32; (2) the word "all" (translated "all people" in v. 12:32) should be taken in the sense of "all kinds of people" rather than "every individual"; and thus (3) the former verse refers to an irresistible internal call to salvation and the latter to the opening of the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles, not a universal, resistible internal call. Some have asserted on this basis that the text of John 6:44 can entail either universalism or Calvinism, but not Arminianism.[13]
Arminian William Barclay argues that "man's resistance can defeat the pull of God" mentioned in John 6:44, but commentator Leon Morris contends that "(n)ot one of (Barclay's) examples of the verb ('draw') shows the resistance as successful. Indeed we can go further. There is not one example in the New Testament of the use of this verb where the resistance is successful. Always the drawing power is triumphant, as here.""(Wikipedia)

External links:

Pro

• "Of Effectual Calling" from John Gill's Body of Doctrinal Divinity
• "Concerning Efficacious Grace" by Jonathan Edwards
• "Efficacious Grace", section 3.14.4 from Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology
• "On Regeneration", a sermon by Charles Spurgeon
• "Irresistible Grace" by John Murray
• "Efficacious Grace", chapter 13 from Loraine Boettner's The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination
• "Regeneration Precedes Faith" by R. C. Sproul
• "Irresistible Grace" by John Piper
• Many articles on irresistible grace by various authors
  

Con

• Sermon #58: "On Predestination" by John Wesley

• Sermon #128: "Free Grace" by John Wesley

• Irresistible Grace

• Prevenient Grace by Gregory Neal

• Calvinism and John 6: An Exegetical Response by Steve Witzki

• Free Grace or Forced Grace? by Steve Witski "

So again, as Wartick pointed out: "... the idea of responsibility simply does not make sense on determinism, particularly when it is theistic determinism." If there are parts of the bible that espouse the idea of responsibility and determinism then the Bible makes no sense. As I have shown, that is exactly what the Bible espouses--the Bible espouses the idea of responsibility and determinism. THEREFORE, THE BIBLE MAKES NO SENSE!! There may be one way out of this. Perhaps Yahweh is not able to express himself clearly to the Biblical writers, or the Biblical writers have trouble expressing themselves in a clear and distinct fashion which has led so many passages to being mistaken for either deterministic passages which actually are free will passages; or free will passages which are actually deterministic passages. Ah, but then the Bible would still make no sense!!