Does Democracy Self-Destruct?

Under the ambiguous but ubiquitous phrase 'a democratic society' one generally understands tolerance - extending the respect to the other's freedom in allowing him to say or do something which is wrong. Freedom means giving the other the permission to do as he pleases - within limits, limits designed to protect civil society - even when it means allowing the other to make mistakes. To parallel Lincoln's famous question, can a society based on tolerance long exist?

If we extend tolerance, will we ultimately give fertile ground to anti-Christian views, and will those views eventually choke out the cultural impact of Christianity - the very Christianity which alone makes such tolerance possible? Does Democracy bite the hand that feeds it? Does Democracy eat its own children?

The question is posed, does a representative democracy require a Christian culture to remain viable? As worded, the question seems to ask more about democracy as a political procedure than a society. It also speaks of a Christian culture, which is perhaps something separate from true Christian faith. We are speaking here about the cultural impact of Christianity, not about the personal faith of the individual, nor about the individual's interaction with God. Professor David Loy writes:

The claim is often made that representative democracy requires a Christian culture to remain viable because it arose on the soil of Christendom. The claim, however, is hotly contested. To address that debate the Catholic Academy of Bavaria invited two high-profile German intellectuals to give addresses on January 19, 2004. Jürgen Habermas, one of the most influential German philosophers of the past century, represented the secular claim that democratic regimes can - indeed, should - function without any religious commitments. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, argued that democratic regimes require a pre-political moral foundation.

Ratzinger argues “that democratic regimes require a pre-political moral foundation.” This seems like a safe statement; any government requires a modicum of morality among its citizens – honesty and a dose of goodwill – even the most ruthless and perverse dictatorship relies on the presence of such things. A democracy seems to require more of these moral qualities than other forms of government. But are they necessarily linked to a Christian culture? We have seen, in history, example of the ‘noble savage’ and the ‘moral pagan’ - and even met such people ourselves. Christians sometime succumb to temptation and fail to offer the moral qualities which a democracy needs. Can we say that, on average, citizens in a ‘Christian culture’ will offer more moral fiber? Yet Paul’s epistles tell us that God’s law is written on the hearts of all men.

Jimmy Carter vs. Jesus Christ

Former United States President Jimmy Carter made a public break with his life-long church body, the Southern Baptist Convention. In a written statement, he identified the Baptist view of gender roles as the reason for his departure. Carter's assertions are mixed: some are accurate, and some are not. Sorting his truths from his errors is instructive. He writes about the order of creation; the organization's

leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

Carter objects to the word 'subservient' as apparently used by some leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, given that he places it in quotation marks. A statement written in 2008 by Richard Land notes that

the Southern Baptist confessional statement does not state that "women are to be subservient to men."

In either case, there is no textual evidence to suggest that Christianity demands that women be "subservient" to men. No Greek or Hebrew word which is commonly rendered into English as 'subservient' is applied to women in the New Testament. Whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention has applied, or does apply, that word to women is a matter to be investigated. If it has so used that word, Carter is right to decry such usage.

By contrast, the New Testament does use the word 'submit' which is semantically nearer in flavor to 'support' than to 'be subservient'. The use of 'submit' has long been a source of discomfort to interpreters. Perhaps it is best understood that marriage is a relationship - a exceptional one, to be sure, but a relationship among others nonetheless - and Christians are supportive of those with whom they are in relationship: spouses, siblings, friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc. Why the New Testament specifically underscores this call to support on the part of the woman and not of the man, is a good question. Why does Carter not applaud or encourage the desirable quality of supportiveness?

To understand Eve as solely or even primarily responsible for original sin is also textually not plausible. Adam and Eve share responsibility for original sin; this much is clear in the Hebrew text. God, e.g., gives Adam a consequence for sin before He gives a consequence to Eve, and it is to Adam, not Eve, that God asks the ominous question, 'what have you done?' There is also a plausible argument to made, which would assert that Adam might bear more than half of the responsibility for original sin. If, in fact, the Southern Baptist Convention assigns more than half the blame to Eve, Carter is correct to question it. Whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention did or does so, is a matter for investigation.

On balance, Carter makes points worth considering. Whether or not they are accurate requires further investigation, and whether or not they are significant is questionable, given that they find fault not with Christianity, but rather only with one particular organization, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Herein lies perhaps Carter's greatest weakness, inasmuch as he has busied himself with questions of what the Southern Baptist Convention might have done, instead of questions about what the Christian faith in fact does. Specific questions about statements from the Southern Baptist Convention belong to the minutiae of Church History studies. Such questions might be interesting and valuable to scholars, but the significant questions about what the living Christian faith does are the questions by which one evaluates that faith.

This error on Carter's part is compounded by a reading public which is all too inclined to confuse churches with the Christian faith. Churches are flawed, imperfect, and sinful organizations, populated by flawed, imperfect, and sinful human beings. One expects churches to fall short of the high standards they profess; indeed, they expect it of themselves. Christianity, by contrast, is something alien - it is not a human product. It is the infinite manifesting itself among the finite. It is a self-disclosing glimpse given by a perfect and sinless God - a glimpse of loving compassion, stern justice, and superlative power.

Carter first broke with the SBC in 1993. He released a statement at that time explaining his move; he released similar statements in 2000 and 2009, each time announcing his departure from the denomination: re-wordings of the previous statement. In the most recent statement, he writes that he is disappointed with the SBC leadership because it

prohibited [women] from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

As in the political world - despite combat roles for women in the military, there is still no consensus about units like the Navy's SEALs, the Army's Rangers, and the Green Berets - and in the sports world, intelligent and honest people disagree about the roles of women in the institutional church. Carter raises a real issue. But the issue, though real, is not one which touches the Christian faith. It may be a valid reason for leaving the SBC, but it is not a relevant bit of data by which to evaluate Christianity.

Much of what Carter says as a critique of the institutionalized church is valid, and it is utterly appropriate that he, as a practicing Christian, make that critique. The distinction is between the Christian faith and the church, and for two millennia, Christians have subjected the church to relentless criticism. In this sense, Jimmy Carter is a minor figure in a long line of reformers, from Jan Hus to Martin Luther, from Athanasius of Alexandria to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

A critique from a practicing Christian, directed at the institutional church, is however not a critique of Christianity; to the contrary, it is a support and defense of Christianity, because the very basis of its critique is to find those points at which the church fails to measure up to Christianity.

It is at this point that Carter's denunciation of the SBC goes awry, because he is smart enough to know his audience, and knows that it will be taken as a critique of Christianity. Faithful Christians who wish to reform and improve the church will read Carter's complaint thoughtfully; they may agree with some or all of it, or they may disagree with some or all of it. But Carter's writing will come, and has come, before the eyes of those who attack not only the church, but also, and primarily, the Christian faith. Those who, deliberately or accidentally, fail to distinguish between an all-too-human organization and the Rabbi from Nazareth - they will understand Carter's attack as an attack on Christianity itself, or they will deliberately misunderstand it as such.

Entering the discipline of comparative religious studies, Carter notes that

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.

Seeming uncomfortable, Carter intimates, but does not directly state, that women have fared better in those cultures which were largely formed by the Christian faith. To cite one example, it was first in those nations that women obtained full franchise and suffrage in the political process. The Territory of Wyoming granted full voting rights to women in 1869; by around 1920, women in the United States, Canada, and most European countries had the vote. By contrast, in those nations whose cultures were shaped by Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other traditions lagged significantly, and there are still states on this planet in which women are denied the vote, primarily Muslim states. Carter hints at this, but does not make the point explicitly:

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

It was in those same nations - those shaped by the Christian worldview - that marriage began to be understood as volitional: women were not sold into marriages, and arranged marriages declined in number until they disappeared. Likewise, violence against women was seen as a moral evil: to use a coarse phrase, "wife beating" became socially stigmatized and eventually illegal.

Carter's statements raise valid questions, and are worth reading. The timing of the statements, and he periodic re-issuing of the statements, is clearly politically motivated, some of the statements being timed to correspond to major elections - he issued another statement in 2012 - and his willingness to subordinate the spiritual to the political is saddening. As a principle, a proposition articulated by a faithful Christian in a critique of the institutional church may also be true when an anti-Christian asserts that same proposition in a critique of the Christian faith, but while it is equally true in both cases, the critiques are not therefore equally valid.

Carter, wittingly or not, formulated theses and implied others, which are then picked up by those who would attack the faith he professes. He is smart enough to know better. He was willing to offer ammunition to those attacking the faith, if it was the price for supporting his party or one of its candidates. Carter's character is brought into question if he is willing to expose his faith to abuse for the sake of bringing glory to his party.

(In the interests of full disclosure, the author of this blog is neither a member of the SBC nor a supporter of Mr. Carter's candidacies.)

Sent to Hell?

Does God send some people to Hell? Although this question is uncomfortable, it needs to be asked. Although it is sometimes insincerely asked - posed more to annoy than to seek the truth - it needs to be answered. Perhaps the best answer is "I don't know."

Some would answer with "yes" - followed by "and He is justified in doing so" or "because they earned it" or by the conclusion that God is unjust.

Others would answer with "no" - explained as "God doesn't send anyone to Hell" or "He doesn't send them, they get there on their own effort."

In the long history of detailed academic debate about this question, various nuanced positions have been developed, explained, attacked, and defended. These competing explanations, of course, are one source of the divisions which have given rise to competing churches, denominations, and schools of Christian theology.

In America, with its penchant for oversimplifying questions, one is familiar with seeing questionnaires which pose questions about religion. If one answers yes to the question "Christian?" then one is usually next confronted with the query, "Protestant or Catholic?" Although it is part of common knowledge that there are a great variety of Protestant churches, the simplification of the question to "Protestant or Catholic?" does justice to nobody, not even the Roman Catholics, who also know well that not all non-Catholic denominations can be lumped into one basket.

Merely because a Christian is not Roman Catholic is no reason to apply the label "Protestant" to her or him. On a global level, we are aware of Coptic Christians in Egypt and Syriac Christians in other Arabic countries, whose roots are more ancient than either the Roman Catholics or the Protestants. Even in Europe, the label 'Protestant' applies perhaps most accurately to some Calvinistic or 'Reformed' churches. Many serious and educated Lutherans respond to the question "Protestant or Catholic" with "neither," seeing themselves belonging to a third category. Theologian Joseph Stump writes:

Protestantism split into two great branches, the Lutheran and the Reformed. For Lutheranism the determining principle was faith; for the Reformed or Calvinistic branch it was the absolute sovereignty of God. This principle of Calvin and the rationalizing principle of Zwingli, who sought to banish all mystery and to make every doctrine completely intelligible, explain the course taken by Reformed theology.

The Zwinglian hyper-rationalist tendency to create a logical explanation for any bit of dogma leads some Reformed churches to intellectually contorted positions.

Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism agree in maintaining the Formal and Material Principles of the Reformation; namely, the supreme authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Lutheran Church is conservative and permits the retention of those traditions which are not contrary to the Scriptures; while the Reformed Church is inclined to reject all traditions which are not actually commanded in the Bible. Zwinglianism, being averse to the acceptance of mysteries and insisting on comprehending the doctrines of Scripture, seeks to explain away what it does not understand. Lutheranism, on the other hand, accepts the teachings of Holy Writ, even which it cannot comprehend them. Calvinism, basing all on the absolute sovereignty of God, lands in arbitrary divine predestination, and thus restricts the scope of the Gospel and efficacy of the Means of Grace. Reformed and Lutheran Protestantism differ more or less widely on the doctrine of the Word of God, Predestination, the Person of Christ, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper.

Attempting to cure Reformed thought of its tortured postures, some rejected predestination, but landed in another odd position, having rejected the efficacy of pure grace along with predestination. The Arminians, then, arrive at a naked works-righteousness.

Some of the Reformed Churches have, however, rejected the Calvinistic position, e.g. the Arminians.

Pure grace, taken as a principle, is God's inclination, translated into God's actions, of giving to humans something better than what they deserve. Grace is a feature of God's personality. Humans are passive, God is active. If faith saves, that faith was inserted into the believer by the Holy Spirit, with no effort or cooperation on the part of the believer.

The Reformed Churches separate the working of God from the Means of Grace, and conceive of God as working directly, or as adding His working to the Means - a thing which He is supposed to do, however, only in the case of the elect. The Lutheran Church, on the other hand, regards the Means of Grace as never disjoined or separated from the power of God, but as always accompanied by it, and as the means employed by God for the accomplishment of His gracious purposes.

Calvin, by contrast, sees humans as passive, not in salvation, but in damnation. God alone is active in decreeing eternal torment for some humans.

Calvin says (Institutes, Book III, Ch. 21, Sec. 5): "Eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for the one or the other of these ends, we say he is predestined either to life or death." Calvin distinguishes (Book III, Ch. 24, Sec. 8) between the merely external call which God intends for the non-elect as "a savor of death and an occasion of heavier condemnation" and the special call through which "by inward illumination of His Spirit He causes the Word preached to sink into the hearts of the elect." In the case of the sons of Eli (Book III, Ch. 24, Sec. 14) Calvin declares that “though the Lord was able to soften their hearts, yet they were left in their obstinacy because His immutable decree had predestinated them to destruction.”

While Lutherans cling to God's grace, which drags them into Heaven despite themselves, Calvin sees God's wrath as damning others preemptively. The will of the human is bound in either case. For Lutherans, the will is incapable of free choice, or morally right choice, until it is justified and sanctified; the Lutheran will cannot get itself into Heaven, but it can always get itself into Hell. Calvin's will, like the Lutheran will, cannot get itself into Heaven, but unlike the Lutheran will, it can't even get itself into Hell.

The doctrine of grace is closely connected with that of the free will. The Greek Church regards grace as meant to assist human freedom, and not to create a new spiritual life. Pelagius taught that we can live a holy life by the mere power of our own determination to do so, without the aid of the supernatural grace of the Holy Spirit. Augustine conceived of grace as a new creative principle, but taught an absolute predestination and the irresistibility of grace, thus doing violence to the universality of God's grace on the one hand and to the moral nature of man on the other. Semi-pelagianism regarded grace as the power which assists man's natural powers. The scholastics taught that grace is a superadded gift, which simply completes man's nature. Protestantism returned to the doctrine of Augustine. But while Calvin carried out Augustine's doctrine to its logical consequences, Lutheranism rejected his doctrine of absolute predestination and of irresistible grace. According to the Lutheran conception man can by his natural powers resist the grace of God, but he can and does accept that grace only by means of powers which grace itself bestows upon him. Roman Catholicism regards grace as being infused into the soul and producing an ability to do good, so that, as a consequence, justification is regarded as a making righteous, and not as a declaring righteous.

The process is powered by God's grace from start to finish: even after justification and the beginning of sanctification, it is still divine gifts, not human efforts, which do all good in the life of the believer:

The old dogmaticians, following the example of Augustine, distinguished between the following kinds of grace: Prevenient grace, which offers the benevolence of God and the merit of Christ through the Word, removes the natural incapacity, and invites, excites, impels and urges to repentance; Preparing grace, which restrains the natural resistance, imbues the mind with the letter of the Gospel and bruises the will through the law, so that it is more and more disposed to accept salvation by faith; Operating grace, which confers the power of believing and kindles justifying faith (regeneration, justification, mystical union); Cooperating grace, which concurs with the justified man in the promotion of sanctification and good works; Conserving grace, by which faith and holiness are conserved and confirmed.

From the outside, grace acts upon us. Even on the inside, our efforts at sanctification turn out to be alien things planted inside us by God.

Quenstedt distinguishes between assisting grace and indwelling grace. The former works on man from the outside, and includes incipient, preparing, exciting, operating, and perfecting grace. The latter is the grace which dwells in the believer, and which cooperates with him in his sanctification.

Even the intellect is powered by grace. Our knowledge of God, of Scripture, of doctrine, of good, of evil, etc., is created in us, not by our own power.

The activity of the Holy Spirit is described by the later dogmaticians as constituting four offices: the elenchtical, to awaken a knowledge of sin; the didactic, to give a knowledge of the way of salvation; the pedagogical, to convert the sinner; the paracletic, to console and strengthen the converted.

While Lutheranism stresses that God's grace is for everyone, Calvinism and Arminianism see grace as only for some. Michael Horton writes:

Everyone who takes the Bible seriously must believe in election in some sense; it is a prominent theme throughout Scripture. The real difference (especially between Arminianism and Calvinism) emerges over whether the elect are chosen unto faith or in view of their faith. In order words, is election unconditional or conditional? Does God choose who will be saved, apart from their decision and effort, or does he choose those whom he knows will trust and obey? Another view, called corporate election, holds that God has chosen the church as a whole rather than electing individuals to belong to it.

It is again Zwingli's hyper-rational demand for logical explanations, in place of acceptance of mysteries, which drives these churches to the inevitable conclusion of a God who actively yet arbitrarily damns. Roger Olson writes:

Many scholars consider the real founder of the Reformed tradition to be Ulrich Zwingli, who wrote a lengthy essay entitled On Providence. This essay came to be influential on Calvin and, through him, on the whole Reformed tradition (although many Reformed people, especially the ones I have labeled "revisionists," have come to reject much of it). Zwingli defined providence as God's "rule over and direction of all things in the universe. For if anything were guided by its own power or insight, just so far would the wisdom and power of our Deity be deficient." Zwingli continued his exposition by denying that anything in the world is "contingent, fortuitous or accidental" because God alone is the "sole cause" over everything, such that all other so-called causes are merely "instruments of the divine working."

The Zwinglian taste for rational explanation is so strong that it swallows even the idea of a God who chose and carried out, not only the random damnation of numerous individual humans, but also the fall of the entire human race:

Calvin sums up his whole doctrine of God's providence thus: “No wind ever arises or increases except by God's express command.” In other places, he argues that God's providential governing of history cannot be expressed by means of permission; God does not merely permit anything but ordains it and brings it about most certainly. For Calvin, this is seen most clearly in the fall of Adam, which was foreordained by God.

Zwingli demands rational explanations above all else. Calvin takes Zwingli's desire for reason and adds its overriding central focus on God's sovereignty; the mix of the two lands Calvin in the situation of absolute predestination - the "double predestination" in which God not only predestines some to Heaven, but He also predestines others to Hell. Luther, by contrast, understands God's personality to be essentially gracious - and by 'grace' Luther understands the agape or 'love' of the New Testament. Luther tells us that Jesus paid the price for all humans and offers eternal life to all humans. The Holy Spirit works to bring all humans to Jesus, because they cannot bring themselves. If individual humans find their way into Hell, it will be because they used the free will, given to them by the Holy Spirit, to resist the Holy Spirit. To the question 'how?' in all of this, the Lutheran accepts the concept of mystery, the concept that human reason cannot answer all questions.

Extreme Grace

It is clear that God is gracious - but what exactly is meant by 'gracious' is not always clear. Scripture is clear that we are saved by grace and not by our own works or efforts (the locus classicus is naturally the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, but other passages concur). When grace is taken not only as an attribute or quality of God - God's attitude, as it were - but as a principle, the extension of this principle leads to some surprising conclusions.

Many theologians have entertained the proposition that it is more difficult to get into Hell than into Heaven, although few are willing to assert it dogmatically. It follows, however, from the notion that there is nothing we can do to get ourselves into Heaven.

In Martin Luther's commentary on the third chapter of Genesis, he alludes vaguely to this hypothesis. The translator, George Victor Schick, and the editor, Jaroslav Pelikan, of the American Edition of Luther's works, clarify in the footnote that Luther was referring to a German proverb: "It requires more perspiration and toil to get into hell than into heaven" (pg. 215 of that edition). The footnote also refers the reader to volume 13 of the same edition.

In that volume, in Luther's commentary on Psalm 90, Luther addresses the same idea and the same proverb. Speaking of the human lifespan, the Psalmist says that "the best of our days are toil and trouble.” Addressing various understandings of that phrase, Luther speaks of idolatry as a way of spending one's days in "toil and trouble," and reflects on the underlying Hebrew vocabulary words. He writes:

Elsewhere Scripture employs these words for fictitious worship or idolatry. It does it for the reason that every superstition truly tortures man. And so we speak in German of "martyrs of the devil." They are the people who load upon themselves unnecessary troubles.

A life spent in superstition and in the worship of idols is a life spent putting forth great effort. False religions demand more work from their followers than God does.

We also have a German proverbial saying which says that it requires more perspiration and toil to get into hell than into heaven. False religion or idolatry cannot secure for the heart genuine joy and peace in the Lord. It necessarily disquiets and disturbs the heart. Therefore these two Hebrew words admirably apply to idolatry.

Contrasting the fevered panic in which idol-worshipers must constantly devote effort to earning favor from the objects of their worship, the New Testament letter to the Hebrews speaks of "entering into a rest," a type of expanded and deepened Sabbath rest: peace. This inner peace is given by God and founded upon His grace, the very opposite of the anxiety in which the idol-worshipers live.

Hence all of life is toil and trouble, unless, and in the degree to which, they are mitigated in the regenerate, who believe and hope in God's mercy. They are the "new people" (Eph. 4:24) who cannot become old.

Thus we see how much work - constant effort and concern - it takes to follow an idol into Hell. By contrast, the life of Christ's followers is characterized by peace and joy. To be sure, Jesus tells us that we will face suffering in this life, and that we are "laborers" in God's Kingdom. Yet even our suffering and work are permeated by, and founded upon, such peace and joy.

What Was God Thinking?

Many Christians will run screaming from the room whenever a conversation begins to use words like 'predestination' and 'election' and 'foreknowledge' - such discussions seem to go in mind-numbing circles and engage in hairsplitting minutia. Might one not live a reasonably God-pleasing spiritual life without delving into this most complex topic? Yet such questions merit attention, because they lie near the core of the Christian concept of salvation.

A long list of labels is used to describe various views on this topic: Calvinism, Arminianism, Pelagianism, synergism, and monergism. With each of those categories, subgroups exists: hyper-calvinism and semi-pelagianism, for example. The wisest course to investigating the matter is to strive for clear definitions for these bits of jargon.

John Calvin was born in France, but spent much of his career in Switzerland. Directly and indirectly, he influenced the formation of many churches and many theologies, from the Presbyterians in Scotland to the Dutch Reformed Church. Author Michael Horton writes:

The label "Calvinism" came into use around 1588 in Lutheran polemics against the Reformed view of the Lord's Supper articulated especially (but far from exclusively) by John Calvin (1509 - 1564). Although Luther's name became incorporated in Lutheran churches, "Calvinist" churches have been identified historically as "Reformed." Calvin has never occupied the unique and decisive role in the development of the Reformed tradition that Luther has had in Lutheranism. In spite of his obvious importance, none of Calvin's writings is subscribed in Presbyterian and Reformed churches, whereas the Lutheran Book of Concord includes several of Luther's writings and John Wesley's sermons are included in the Methodist statement of faith.

Historians note that there is some laxness in the relation between Luther and Lutheranism; not all that came from Luther's pen is Lutheran orthodoxy, and orthodox Lutheranism includes some propositions which neither came from Luther's pen nor would elicit his agreement. But in any case, the relationship between Calvin and Calvinism is decidedly looser.

Although there exist varieties of Lutheranism, and academic representatives of each heatedly debate about which of them has the right to wear the name of the authentic 'Lutheran' church, the ambiguities arising from any use of the words 'Calvinism' or 'Reformed Theology' are greater by an order of magnitude. Author Roger Olson, in his critique against Calvinism and Reformed theology, writes:

Before plunging into my critique of Calvinism, it is incumbent on me to explain as carefully and precisely as possible what Calvinism I am criticizing and what Reformed theology I am against. But the categories themselves are used in such different ways by different theologians and historians that it is difficult to treat them as boxes - closed categories in which every belief either wholly fits or does not. There is much fluidity and ambiguity in these terms and the phenomena which they describe.

Many of the binary theological propositions which can be used to clarify an ecclesiastical theology - infant baptism, the real presence of the body and blood in the sacramental bread and wine, the foundational nature of Scripture, spiritual regeneration, the nature of grace - do not help us to mark out the boundaries of Calvinism. Reformed theology is characterized by Olson as a

type of Protestant theology tied to a historical branch of the Protestant Reformation stemming from the reforming efforts of primarily the Swiss theologians Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin (and their associates) but also of Strassburg theologian Martin Bucer. Strains of it may be found in denominations as diverse as Congregationalism and Anglicanism.

Defining Calvinism historically allows us to identify it genealogically, which explains its presence and influence, while allowing for some intellectual inconsistency among its various particular instances. There may be, and are, contradictions between its various manifestations despite the fact that they trace their roots to the same source. While such a characterization of Calvinism is helpful from a historical perspective, it does little to aid an investigation of Calvinism as a systematic theology. Olson notes that

common to all Reformed theologies is an emphasis on God's supremacy and sovereignty, although this is interpreted in different ways.

A frequent feature of analyses of Calvinism is a comment about the relative emphasis placed upon God as sovereign versus God as loving - lord versus savior. Like most theological slogans, it is deceptively simple, and unfolding its implications requires many gallons of ink.

Calvinism as a whole does not define itself by a unified set of documents, in contrast to the many manifestations of Lutheranism which nonetheless adhere to a common set of confessional texts. Individual Reformed churches do, in fact, have their peculiar confessions; a larger set of these makes a loose core of Calvinist texts, and would include documents like the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Jesus, Civil Engineering, and Recycling

Among Christians who celebrate the liturgical season of Advent, reading chapter 40 from Isaiah - quoted by Luke in his third chapter - brings thoughts of December, even when read in July. But this famous passage has a meaning not confined to the weeks of Advent:

A voice of one calling:
In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Depending on which English translation you read, the wording will vary slightly; Luke seems to have used a Septuagint reading which yields a slightly different English rendering. In any case, however, the primary meaning of the text has nothing directly to do with Christmas, Advent, or the birth of Jesus. Perhaps even more surprisingly, its topic is civil engineering.

Planning and constructing roads, bridges, dams, and the foundations for large buildings - that is civil engineering. Knowing about different types of cement and concrete, steel and dirt - that's how a civil engineer calculates his designs. If you read our text from Isaiah carefully, that's Isaiah's theme as well.

Isaiah was writing about what would happen when the captives - Israelites who'd lived in the kingdom of Judah, but been taken as POW's to Babylon when Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian armies besieged Jerusalem - finally got their freedom back. When that city fell, the rest of the countryside was also taken by the invading army. Between 598 B.C. and 583 B.C., groups of Judaeans were deported. They lived in Babylon, at first under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, then under other later rulers, for approximately 70 years.

King Cyrus of Persia was bad news for the Babylonians, but good news for the captives from Judaea. In 538 B.C., he conquered Babylonia, and allowed them to return to their homeland. The Persians were known for building a system of roads which connected the various territories which they first conquered, and then incorporated into their expanding empire. It is about these roads that Isaiah writes.

Filling in low places, carving notches to create passes through hillsides, straightening winding roads into direct highways: Isaiah is describing the civil engineering projects of the Persians. The captives would have a good trip home.

Although this early freeway project is the primary meaning of the text, it is not the only meaning. Although "green" politics made its appearance in the second half of the twentieth century, God was already recycling long before that. Isaiah received a prophetic message, and even after the end of the Babylonian Captivity, the passage would be reused.

The first time that Isaiah's text was recycled was concerning John the Baptist, as Luke recounts. "Prepare ye the way for the Lord!" meant, not Persia building physical roads for Israelites returning from servitude, but rather now it was recycled to mean that the Messiah was arriving. John's task was to prepare Israel for the advent of its King.

But the recycling didn't stop there. This text finds a continual application in the heart and mind of every human: we are invited to receive the Messiah and the salvation He gives. We receive Him in different ways at different times - He is constantly approaching us - through His written Word, through bread and wine, through the water of baptism. Again and again, Jesus shows up in our lives. Prepare the way for Him!

And, of course, the text from Isaiah is recycled seasonally: every year during the time of Advent, the passage is read again, and we are reminded of God's magnificent sweep through history - He keeps approaching people with His saving love, rescuing the captives from Babylon, rescuing us from the consequences of our own sinfulness.

There are probably more and other ways in which this passage has been, is being, and will be recycled: other ways in which Isaiah's words, "prepare the way for the Lord!" break into earthly human existence with the power and light of God's gracious intervention in our lives.

Saved? Saving?

The verb 'save' and its various forms have been used - overused - in some branches of Christendom, and, as a piece of jargon, disputes rage over the slightest variants in the exact definition of the word - although, to the ordinary layman, its general meaning is clear: the notion that one will enjoy some better type of afterlife.

So, while an intuitive concept of 'being saved' is firmly in place, the details and specifics aren't. Textual evidence about the topic is interesting, in terms of verb forms.

The verb is used in the past tense 'saved' in loci like II Timothy 1:9, Titus 3:5, Romans 8:24, and Ephesians 2:5-8.

The future tense appears in Romans 5:9-10, Romans 13:11, I Corinthians 3:12-15, and I Timothy 4:16, Hebrews 9:28, and Matthew 24:13.

Verbs hint at a present process of "working out one's salvation" in Philippians 2:12, I Corinthians 1:18, I Corinthians 15:2, and Acts 2:47.

The average layman is probably inclined to answer "yes" to the questions "Are you saved?" and "Will you be saved?" A slight rewording to "Have you been saved?" will probably also elicit an affirmative response. The question "Are you being saved?" might evoke more puzzlement than anything else.

These linguistic riddles may serve to remind us that there is a broader meaning to 'save' than merely a ticket into the afterlife. Salvation has implications for humans in this life as well. Aside from what happens to us after death, salvation is both a comfort and challenge in this life, as Kierkegaard put it - both a Trost and a Forderung or even a Herausforderung.

Being "saved" in this life is, then, both an asset and a task. Salvation, in the broader sense, involves the power of God in our daily lives here and now: the power to live through suffering without losing our inner peace. Salvation also includes sanctification, as the Holy Spirit works in us to continually refine us and make us into what God wants us to be.