Starting off this morning we want to do a little house-keeping from last week.
First, a word on vocabulary.
Last week I think it was Wendy who said that she is keeping a notebook of new words she is hearing. I was exuberant when I heard that.
This is a good idea. We should not be surprised to hear vocabulary in Church that we may not be familiar with. This is so because the Church and the Christian faith has its own language much like any other discipline.
If one is a philosopher one is going to have to have his philosopher lingo. He will need to learn what dasein, geist, and noumena mean to successfully navigate philosophy. If one is a historian one is going to have his historian lingo. He will need to learn what Geschicte, Heilgeschicte, and historigraphy mean. Similarly, if one is a Christian one will need to learn a vocabulary that allows them to successfully navigate the Christian faith. For too long the Church has dumbed down both our ministers and our congregations so that the Church has lost a vocabulary that should be uniquely hers. As such, we all should together try to learn the Church’s language.
Now, we said this week that we wanted to try and preach Unconditional Election from a Worldviewish point of view. That is we desire to tease out the doctrine of Unconditional Election from a perspective that demonstrates the Impact of the doctrine in areas we may not associate it with.
Let us first start with an idea that one can find somewhat commonly in older theologians but which has largely been eclipsed in the last 70 years or so. And that is the idea that
I.) Unconditional Election also applies to Nations.
We see this screamed in Matthew 25
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another,as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
Here we see the Nations being separated out. Clearly what is going on here is that Elect Nations are being divided out from Reprobated Nations. Herein we see a covenantal – corporate aspect of the Gospel. Christianity is not solely an individualistic faith. It is covenantal and takes in the idea of Nations. Here we see that it is Nations that are divided out. Similarly we see the elect Nations all over the book of Revelation.
We are so used to thinking about Christianty only in terms of the individual but even here we get a sense that Christianity remains covenantal and corporate. Jesus commissions His men to go and disciple the nations. Here the Nations are divided out and separated according to Elect and Reprobate status. There in the book of Revelation we see that “leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.”
Now, in order to demonstrate that this is not some novel idea arrived at on my part allow me to quote a couple of my theological betters to demonstrate that this idea has a good pedigree. First we pause to consider Lorraine Boettner. Boettner belonged to my grandparents generation. In his book “The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination,” Boettner could write,
“Apart from this election of individuals to life, there has been what we may call a national election, or a divine predestination of nations and communities to a knowledge of true religion and to the external privileges of the Gospel. God undoubtedly does choose some nations to receive much greater spiritual and temporal blessings than others. This form of election has been well illustrated in the Jewish nation, in certain European nations and communities, and in America. The contrast is very striking when we compare these with other nations such as China, Japan, India, etc.”
~ Loraine Boettner,
“The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination” (1932)
There we see this idea of National Election which, in turn, requires the idea of National Reprobation. God, for His own Glory, pours out grace on some peoples while actively hardening others and does this for reasons all His own.
Now, when we speak of National Election we should not be heard to say that every single person in a people group whom God has elected will themselves be individually elected. Just as Israel in the OT was God’s Elect Nation there were many who though of Israel were not of Israel (Romans 9:6-7). They were tares in the Elect nation wheat field, but their presence as tares did not negate that Israel was God’s Elect Nation.
Just so today, much of the West, even as yet in my lifetime, was comprised of Elect Nations. Nations who, in the words of Boettner, received much greater spiritual and temporal knowledge than others. Indeed that is why the West was once known as Christendom. It was known as Christendom because God’s National Election was heavy upon the Nations of the West. Like Israel of old the Elect Nations were not occupied by every man an Elect individual but like Israel of old were Elect Nations in the the Boettnerian sense of receiving much greater spiritual and temporal knowledge.
Come Come my friends … who can deny that for generations the West were comprised of Elect Nations while the Middle East, Far East, the Indian Subcontinent, Africa, and others have been reporbated nations?
But it is not only Boettner, following Scripture, who teaches this idea of Elect nations, it is also the case that the great Geerhardus Vos likewise explicitly taught this idea found in Scripture.
Romans 11:17, 19, with its “branches broken off” metaphor has frequently been viewed as proof of the relativity and changeability of election, and it is pointed out that at the end of vs. 23, the Gentile Christians are threatened with being cut off in case they do not continue in the kindness of God. But wrongly. Already this image of engrafting should have restrained such an explanation. This image is nowhere and never used of the implanting of an individual Christian, into the mystical body of Christ by regeneration. Rather, it signifies the reception of a racial line or national line into the dispensation of the covenant or their exclusion from it. This reception of course occurs by faith in the preached word, and to that extent, with this engrafting of a race or a nation, there is also connected the implanting of individuals into the body of Christ. The cutting off, of course, occurs by unbelief; not, however, by the unbelief of person who first believed, but solely by the remaining in unbelief of those who, by virtue of their belonging to the racial line, should have believed and were reckoned as believers. So, a rejection ( = multiple rejections) of an elect race is possible, without it being connected to a reprobation of elect believers. Certainly, however, the rejection of a race or nation involves at the same time the personal reprobation of a sequence of people. Nearly all the Israelites who are born and die between the rejection of Israel as a nation and the reception of Israel at the end times appear to belong to those reprobated. And the thread of Romans 11:22 (of being broken off) is not directed to the Gentile Christians as individual believers but to them considered racially.”
Geerhardus Vos
What Vos is telling us here is that though Israel was an Elect Nation there remained in Israel non-elect individuals. Not all of Israel was of Israel. The breaking off of the Branch of Israel from the olive Tree did not mean the elect individuals were cut off but rather that Israel as having the status of Election Nation wherein God’s grace was poured on the people (nation) as a whole is over… at least for a season. When this breaking off … this reprobating occurs the season for finding God in that nation is over for the lion’s share of individuals in the nation.
This affirmation of National Election by Vos, as he follows Scripture, reinforces again the fact that God deals with people not only or even primarily on a individual basis. God deals with people covenantally and corporately – yes even in Unconditional Election. God deals with families, peoples and Nations. Our loss of this thread in our theology has moved us as Reformed people from being covenantal to being Baptistic and so indvidualistic.
And who would deny that we men of the West were, at one time, those who were blessed to belong to Elect Nations and peoples? We were branches grafted into the Olive tree. How greatly did God shower upon us His grace and goodness. The aroma of Christ is everywhere present in our History, in our founding documents, in our established law orders, in the family Bibles which once were easily at hand to show the generational records of those baptized and married in the Church passed on from generation to generation. The aroma of Christ was present in our Blue Laws which found businesses closed in order to honor the Lord’s Day. The aroma of Christ was present when on Good Friday for years and years all businesses shut down at 12Noon so people could attend Good Friday Services. The aroma of Christ was present upon us as an Elect Nation when women were kept out of Pulpits because the clear teaching of Scripture was owned.
How the gold has dimmed and who can say whether or not we remain Elect Nations? Much evidence suggests that we are now a Reprobated Nation. A nation that instead of being a wheat field with tares, is a tare field with wheat.
So, this idea of National Election is offered to you as one Worldviewish way to see the doctrine of Unconditional Election. Unconditional Election not only applies to individuals but it also applies to Nations and where a Nation is the elect of God that Unconditional Election reality ripples through all their Institutions, Laws, and way of life. The Elect Nation status leavens everything so that even reprobate individuals in those Elect Nations are held in check in terms of the depravity they might otherwise pursue had they lived in Reprobated nations.
When we consider National Reprobation the opposite would be true of what we have suggested about National Election. Where a Nation is Reprobated that Nation demonstrates that Reprobation status in a million ways. It kills the unborn. It celebrates the Union of Ron and John, and Mary and Sherry, it ordains the queer but celibate.
So, the first way to understand Unconditional Election in a Worldviewish kind of manner is to realize that Unconditional Election is corporate as well as individual.
All of us should give heaven no rest that God might Unconditionally elect this Nation once again…. that he would graft us again into the Olive tree of Romans 11. Repentance is the needed theme for Americans today.
A second Worldviewish way to view Unconditional Election is to realize that the embrace of Unconditional Election in and of itself is at warfare with the idea of Democracy.
Indeed, this doctrine of Unconditional Election rightly understood is the death-knell of Democracy.
Democracy, when gone to seed, posits the equality of all men. It is a leveler mechanism. Calvinism, when it is the real stuff, has always been at war with Democracy and that precisely because of this doctrine of Unconditional Election.
The famous American Educator John Dewey understood the conflict here between standard Christianity with its doctrine of Election and the Democratic spirit. Dewy once revealingly offered,
“It is impossible to ignore the fact that historic Christianity has been committed to a separation of sheep and goats; the saved and the lost; the elect and the mass. Spiritual aristocracy as well as laissez faire with respect to natural and human intervention, is deeply embedded in its traditions. Lip service—often more than lip service—has been given to the idea of the common brotherhood of all men. But those outside the fold of the church and those who do not rely upon belief in the supernatural have been regarded as only potential brothers, still requiring adoption into the family. I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed. Whether or no we are, save in some metaphorical sense, all brothers, we are at least all in the same boat traversing the same turbulent ocean. The potential religious significance of this fact is infinite.”
Note what Dewey is doing here… and this is significant because Dewey’s theories became adopted and embraced by America’s public schools. It was and remains the background rattle and hum that all of us who attended government schools were immersed in. Dewey is saying that the Democratic ideal is at Warfare with Christianity precisely because of its doctrine of election. Dewey was an enemy of God separating Goats and Sheep. Dewey rails against the idea that Christians don’t accept the egalitarian doctrine of the Brotherhood of all men and keep in mind it is our doctrine of Unconditional Election which forbids us by Christian Confession from embracing the pagan idea of the Brotherhood of all men. Dewey’s America – and that is the America we live in – hates Unconditional election because Unconditional Election distinguishes between inferior and superior…. it creates Aristocracies both Spiritual and Natural and so it must be snuffed out.
So, when we as Christians embrace Unconditional Election in its broadest meaning and implication we have set ourselves again Democracy and Egalitarianism. Our enemies understand this better than we do. They are so adamantly anti Christ precisely because we believe in this doctrine of Unconditional Election root, twig, and branch. We believe that because God’s Sovereign Election not only applies to spiritual categories but also to natural categories – and all this by grace alone and God’s sovereign choice – therefore better and worst categories exist, so egalitarianism is a lie from the pit that smells of sulfur.
Now in the modern Reformed Church I can see, in my imagination, the brick-a-bats that are coming in my direction. But once again, I have taken to myself an old habit that you know of. I am not one to get out on a limb apart from dragging some poor Church Father with me to give me coverage. This time I have brought the venerated Abraham Kuyper. You may cast bricks at me, but before you hit me you’ll be hitting Kuyper.
Listen to Kuyper and learn where I got what I have just said for the last few minutes,
For this is precisely the high significance of the doctrine of Election that, in this dogma, as long as three centuries ago, Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem (of the presence of distinctions), solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honoring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all embracing predestination … all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature … all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, seeking unity and placing the glory God above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of Election to spiritual life, and to the hope for all life to come?”
(A.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, pp.117-119)
Conclusion
Now in rounding off this morning, we should raise a warning. The idea of being of the Elect is not only or primarily even one of privilege though it certainly is privilege. Scripture teaches that
“To whom much is given much is required.”
And so the truth of Unconditional Election should humble us… should energize us to work for the Kingdom. We have been given more than we will ever be able to praise God for and the consequence by all rights should be that we labor for the crown rights of King Christ.
