Think Wink.

This is my final post on Greg Boyd’s response to the Reformed reading of Romans 9, which sees God determining who will receive mercy and who will be hardened so that those who receive mercy from God will be part of those whom Jesus will vindicate at the eschatological judgment. In this post I will take up Boyd’s sixth argument and his concluding paragraphs.

First is his sixth argument which is very short,

This leads to my sixth and final point. When Paul responds to the charge of injustice by asking, “who… are you, a human being, to argue with God?” (vs. 20), he is not thereby appealing to the sheer power of the potter over the clay. He is rather appealing to the sovereign wisdom of the potter in refashioning clay in a manner that fits the kind of clay he has to work with. When “clay” yields to his influence and has faith, he fashions a vessel of honor. When “clay” becomes “spoiled” (Jere 18:4) and resists his will, he fashions a “vessel of ordinary use” that is being prepared for destruction.

Again, this fashioning looks arbitrary to Jews who believed that they were the “vessel of honor” by virtue of their national identity or good works – Jews who did not “strive for [God’s righteousness] on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works” (Rom 9:32). It is to these people, expressing this sentiment, that Paul sarcastically asks, “Who are you…?” In truth, God’s fashioning is not arbitrary at all. It is based on whether or not one is willing “to seek” after the righteousness of God that comes by faith, not works (9:30–32; 10:3–5, 12–13; 11:22–23).

Boyd argues that Romans 9:19-23 is about God demonstrating wisdom and not sheer power. Now the first problem I have with argument #6 is that Boyd does not really do a good job of showing from Romans 9 that it is wisdom that is the key and not right/power (ἐξουσίαν) when wisdom is not explicitly used and power is. Now I agree that how God determines whether a pot is for honored use versus dishonorable use is, in part, his divine wisdom. But the explicit text of Romans 9 says that God desires and purposes to show both wrath and mercy, and that it is God’s right to chose whom he shows wrath and whom he shows glorious riches. Boyd is going to have to do better and be much more persuasive than he is if he is going to argue against the explicit in favor of the implicit.

And that has been much of the core of his arguments so far. He reads the chapter, out of order as I have repeatedly stated, in such a way that he promotes what he finds to be (seemingly) implicit in the language. He skips over Romans 9:1-5 almost entirely. He doesn’t deal with Romans 9:16 and 9:18, which are Paul’s implications of Exodus 33:19 and Exodus 9:16, respectively. God shows mercy apart from human willing and running, God shows mercy and hardens whom he desires to mercy and harden. That is what is explicit. But Boyd is saying that a libertarian form of free will is implicit in the text (argument #4). Boyd doesn’t make any kind of case from these explicit statements to commend his implicit theology to the reader of Paul. Again, Boyd sounds impressive but is not impressing.

Boyd concludes thus,

On the basis of these six considerations I conclude that the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 is as misguided as it is unfortunate. It is misguided not only because it misinterprets Paul, but because it fundamentally clashes with the supremacy of God’s self-revelation in Christ. And it is unfortunate because it tragically replaces the unsurpassably glorious picture of God as Jesus Christ dying on the cross for undeserving sinners with a picture of a deity who defies all moral sensibilities by arbitrarily fashioning certain people to be vessels fit for eternal destruction — and then punishing them for being that way. It exchanges the picture of a beautiful God who reigns supreme with self-sacrificial love and flexible wisdom for a picture of a God who reigns by the arbitrary exercise of sheer power.

I unequivocally affirm that the sovereign God “has mercy on whomever he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whomever he wants to harden.” I would simply add that the “whomever” he has mercy on refers to “all who choose to believe” while the “whomever” he hardens refers to “all who refuse to believe.” The passage demonstrates the wisdom of God’s loving flexibility, not the sheer determinism of God’s power.

A question that Boyd has to answer if he is going to make the claim that the Calvinistic God “defies all moral sensibilities,” who determines what is morally sensible? He is arguing that it the Calvinistic reading makes God “a deity who defies all moral sensibilities,” but who or what defines what is morally sensible if not God? I really have a problem with this argument because those who make it never show what defines God’s actions–if the Reformed reading to be correct–as immoral. This argument seems to assume there is something else out there that tells God what is right to do with his creation. The only answer I can come up with to my question of who or what this person or thing is is our 21st century ideas of morality that defines right and wrong and force God, and Paul, into that system. God is not being allowed to define what is right and wrong for himself as God, as well as his creation. That is not to say that the Calvinist reading is correct by any means, don’t misinterpret me here. My concern is that who we are calling “God” doesn’t seem to be God in Boyd’s concluding remarks.

To conclude the whole series of posts on Boyd’s counter-argument, I find Boyd’s arguments to be inconsistent and incoherent, assume too much while proves too little, and leaving questions unasked but are begging to be asked because of his arguments. I applaud Boyd for making the effort and trying to further the discussion. But in the end, I don’t think Boyd will convince anyone of anything unless they already agree with him on this topic. Too bad that’s really how this conversation goes. No side will really convince the other side of anything. If it weren’t so important to debate, as it impacts one’s views of the gospel and salvation and really entire worldview, I wouldn’t want to debate. I hope that I have been gracious and fair to Boyd. I have striven to be fair, but only those who read these posts can decide that. I pray that my review and response has been helpful to those who have read them and to the conversation as a whole.

Objections to Calvinism Part 1 of 5

Objections to Calvinism Part 7 of 5

My Comfort in Romans 9