Simply put, middle knowledge affirms, with classic Arminianism, that God’s predestining activity is based on his foreknowledge of what all humans would do in all possible situations that they could find themselves in. But it also observes that God’s omniscience is so great that it is not limited just to what all actually created being would do but to what all possibly created beings would do in all possible situations. Because God creates only a finite number of persons between the beginning of the universe and Christ’s return, his sovereign choice is preserved, because he must choose to create some beings and not others. Thus, with classic Calvinism, his sovereign, elective freedom is preserved.

Essentially, Blomberg seems to be saying that God knows how different types of people will respond to different situations in life. Based on that knowledge, God chooses whom to create (and presumably when they are created), thereby sovereignly affecting the course of human events.

It is interesting to me that with the change of one single letter, Blomberg’s position might echo that of Greg Boyd, a leading proponent of open theism. That is, if the statement, “God’s predestining activity is based on his foreknowledge of what all humans would do in all possible situations that they could find themselves in” were modified to read “[...] what all humans could do in all possible situations [...]“, then open theism fits.

In his introductory book on open theism, God of the Possible, Greg Boyd lays out the basic model is that God is sovereign and has imagined or created all of the possibilities of choice in life, but leaves the actual choosing up to us. Sort of a grand book of Choose Your Own Adventure, where we are free to make decisions that take our lives down different plot lines, but the paths that we go down have already been imagined and thought of by God.

The difference between open theism and a more traditional model is whether God foreknew what choices we would/will make, before we make them. The traditional view says, “yes, God foreknew what choices we would make and thus knows what path our life will go down”, while open theism says, “no, God does not know what choices we will make, leaving our life’s path a sequence of open possibilities.”

As for the second part of Blomberg’s position reconciling middle knowledge with Calvianism, I don’t see a conflict there if open theism were in play: based on God’s knowledge of our tendancies, he chooses to create some beings and not others. The difference is whether God has specific people in mind for specific tasks/outcomes in history, or whether he uses specific types of people, who may or may not respond “appropriately”. In either case, God’s “sovereign, elective freedom is preserved” through the intentional creation of human beings throughout history.

ElShaddai took the Which Modern Evangelist/Theologian are You? quiz and the result is Rob Bell

You are the Pastor of Mars hill Bible church in Michigan. You are the author of a number of books including “Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith” and “Sex God.” Despite what many think, you actually hold to traditional doctrine, but you have a completely different & unique way of explaining it. As a result, you are VERY controversial…but you actually kind of like that. (At least it makes people think) You are an artist and it shows. Be careful about too much “Post-modernist” language. It confuses people a lot of “Traditionalist,” who don’t want to have to think to hard.

Just in case you’re curious, my answers were:

1. An M.Div is helpful, but you still need the Holy Spirit to help you out as you study.
2. Of course it’s free will. If you can’t freely love God, then it’s NOT real love.
3. “It’s not about YOU!”
4. Hey, there’s an empty strip-mall. Let’s fix it up and use that.
5. Everything you do is Spiritual, wether [sic] you realize it or not.
6. “Death Proof” (Or possibly “Apocalypse Now”) [EE: no idea what "Death Proof" is, but I love "Apocalypse Now" -- my other choice would have been "Time Bandits", which doesn't change the result.]
7. Remind everyone that Jesus already did the heavy lifting for them. All they have to do is embrace that reality.
8. Anything “Techno” by D.J. Teisto or Paul Oakenfold
9. Standard fair with a contemporary worship service.

Battle was joined and a small number of Jews fell. [...] Next day they went to collect the bodies of the fallen, as by now had become necessary, in order to take them for burials with their kinsfolk in their family graves. On each one of the dead they found under the tunic amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, objects forbidden to Jews by the law. It was evident to all that here was the reason these men had fallen. So everyone praised the acts of the Lord, the just Judge and Revealer of secrets, and turning to prayer they begged that every trace of this offence might be blotted out. The nobel Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves free from wrongdoing, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He levied a contribution from each man, and sent to Jerusalem the total of two thousand silver drachmas to provide a sin-offering – a fit and proper act in which he took due account of the resurrection. Had he not been expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and senseless to pray for the dead; but since he had in view the splendid reward reserved for those who die a godly death, his purpose was holy and devout. That was why he offered the atoning sacrifice, to free the dead from their sin.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful that Jesus Christ died as the perfect and eternal sacrifice of atonement for our wrongdoing, that we are freed from sin by his blood shed on the cross and not by silver or gold or any other work of our own doing.

As part of the ESV dialog, I found the following quote from Kenny Pearce somewhat irresistible, as it points to one way to understand and accept the ESV:

The ESV is a lot like the NKJV. It’s not as good in literary quality, in my opinion (I am not an expert on English literature), but most scholars believe that the New Testament text the ESV is based on is more accurate than the one that KJV and NKJV are based on, and ESV also renders certain words which have theological significance more consistently.

This last remark, about theological words, brings me to my final point, which I think is the real reason for a lot of very intelligent people, such as Phil Ryken, use and recommend the ESV. These ESV proponents push the fact that the ESV consistently uses words like ‘propitiation,’ ‘justification,’ and ‘atonement’. Other people will point out that these aren’t really good English translations of the original terms – after all, in English they are technical terms of Christian theology, and in the original Greek they weren’t! However, I think this criticism misses the real point. There is one activity for which I think the ESV is, hands down, the very best translation, and this, I think, is what Dr. Ryken means to endorse it for: it is the very best translation if you are consulting a Bible while reading or otherwise learning Reformed theology. This, I think, is what Dr. Ryken means when he says that when he was teaching from the NIV he would have to stop and say “this should say ‘propitiation.’” He means that when Reformed theologians teach about ‘propitiation’ they mean to be offering a theological explanation of what the Bible means when it uses the Greek word hilasmos (and possibly also hilasterion) and that word occurs here. If you have a Bible that doesn’t say ‘propitiation’ in those places, you won’t be able to figure out how this particular Reformed doctrine is supposed to be derived from Scripture and so you won’t really understand Reformed theology properly.

Certainly the positioning of the ESV as a Reformed translation has been done before, often by its detractors, but Pearce offers a perspective from the ESV side that’s worth chewing on for a while. He concludes:

I think [my explanation] does explain why many reasonable and intelligent people think the ESV is the very best translation out there, and I think it also makes a case that it might not be unreasonable for a church or denomination in the Reformed tradition to adopt the ESV as their ’standard’ Bible [...].

God who is the Splendour of Israel does not deceive, nor does he change his mind, as a mortal might do.

My initial reaction is that open theism does not presuppose that God’s mind was determined in the first place, therefore the openness of his reaction or response to a situation is not a matter of “changing his mind”, but fixing it on a path in the first place.

1. Because Jesus has come as the promised son (Isa. 9.6), there is no longer any need for religious or legal privilege to be given to fathers and sons. “Daughters are equally endowed with the Spirit and receive the same baptism,” as well as “the right to inherit the future of God’s kingdom”.
2. There is no longer a need for a child to be born who will usher in God’s kingdom, so procreation is no longer a justification for a relationship or marriage. “There is no religious duty to have a child.”
3. As a result of the previous consequence, “there is in principle no longer any need for men and women to marry [...]. Voluntary celibacy and voluntary virginity [are not] deficient ways of living.”
4. However, every new child is born for the future of God’s creation and represents a renewal of hope in the kingdom of heaven “among fallen men and women”.

Presumably, Moltmann believes that the Genesis 1 mandate to fill the earth and have dominion over it was fulfilled by Christ, the perfect human, establishing his reign over creation.

I wonder if some of these thoughts are reflected in Jesus’ comment that in the age to come, men and women “do not marry, for they are no longer subject to death. They are like angels; they are children of God, because they share in the resurrection.” (Lk. 20.35-36) Christ fulfilled the prophecy of the promised son, so procreation is no longer needed in this age or the age to come.

See also: “Grokked, not yoked?“

When he set the heavens in their place I was there,
when he girdled the ocean with the horizon,
when he fixed the canopy of clouds overhead,
and set the springs of ocean firm in their place,
when he prescribed the limits for the sea
and knit together earth’s foundations.

Then I was at his side each day,
his darling and delight,
playing in his presence continually,
playing on the earth, when he had finished it,
while my delight was in mankind. (8.27-31)

Wisdom, Sophia, the divine daughter, is a child playing next to her Father as he creates the world.

If we understand wisdom not just as a human virtue but in the first place as a presence of God in creation, then we understand why Jesus is presented in the New Testament both as Israel’s messiah and as the Wisdom of creation, so that the Christ mystery is both male and female. When the Gospel of John calls the divine mystery of Jesus the Logos, the Word of God, [then] Sophia, the Wisdom of God is meant too. Jesus is the incarnate Sophia, Jesus is the incarnate Logos — both Sophia and Logos given human form. (p.12)

With this in mind, perhaps when we run across a translation like the TNIV in Philippians 2.6-8:

[Jesus] Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death-
even death on a cross!

We should not howl in protest that Jesus is being made into some androgynous, genderless figure, but perhaps reflect that:

God created human beings in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Jesus incarnate as the perfect human being, reflecting the complete image of God as Word and Wisdom, both male and female, flesh and spirit. And when we, as Christians, declare our faith and trust in Christ and are filled with the Holy Spirit, perhaps then we too are becoming complete human beings, reflecting the image of God in physical flesh and spiritual wisdom. Our flesh can be male or female, but without Wisdom, the Spirit of God, Goethe’s eternal feminine (Ewigweibliche), we are an incomplete image of God.

As such, I’ve been increasingly drawn towards the moral wisdom messages found in the letters of James and Peter. We’ve been covering 2 Peter 1 in church this summer, so there’s undoubtedly some influence there, but this goes beyond that, I think. This past Sunday, after the boys had woken up and gone down to the basement to carry on with their general chaos-making, I had a few quiet moments to read in the kitchen before my wife got up and preparations for church began. Without a deliberate reading plan in mind, I opened to James. Should it have been any surprise to me then that the heart of the message at church was James 2:26?

“As the body is dead when there is no breath left in it, so faith divorced from action is dead.” (REB)

Or more familiarly, “faith without works is dead.”

Our senior pastor was away, so the message was delivered by our friend, Micah, who is the leader of SOULstice, a post-modern outreach of the church. His sermon was based on Philippians 2:1-18 and he gave an impassioned challenge to the church: get off your duffs and put your faith into action in the local community, not just the global missions programs that are well supported. It’s one thing to open our pocketbooks and support various programs; however, as Philippian imitators of Christ, our life as the collective body of Christ is to deny ourselves and give ourselves away in service to others where we are, not just where others are going in far-off lands.

If I might recast his words into a baseball analogy: the church is not home base, with the goal being to bring the unsaved into the church and score runs – rather, the church is the dugout from where the players are sent onto the field. The church is the means, not the end.

That seems like all well and good basic Christianity, but sometimes you need it thrown in your face in a different format to renew the spirit. Micah’s good at that and it was reviving to be challenged corporately in the same vein where the Spirit has been leading me individually.

My prayer is that the faith that I share even with demons would be put into action that reveals a Holy Spirit-filled life.

Update: for some additional thoughts on the impact of a working Church, see Chris Fann’s latest post on Koinonia.

The northern Israelites were sent into exile but they were not forgotten. Though they were dissolved into the nations through intermarriage God did not forget about them–he still knew where they were, much like God told Elijah he knew where the faithful remnant of his people was in his day (cf. Rom 11:2-6).

Paul thus sees his Gentile mission in terms of the pan-Israelite hope. The northern tribes must be restored to fulfill the promises made by the Lord through the prophets. Where are they? Among the Gentiles. To bring Israel home means to bring in the Gentiles. This is the mystery. God allowed Israel to be exiled so that he could use them to eventually bring the nations home as well–as their relatives.

God’s purpose in election was not to arbitrarily divide all of humanity into two groups, the saved and the damned, but to further His redemptive purpose in a particular, sharply defined context.

Note the verb tense, “was”. The key to his perspective is understanding that this context is in the past. For Steve and other full preterists, Paul’s reference to “until the full number of Gentiles has come in” in Romans 11:25 points to fulfillment in 70AD, not a future consummation.

The “full number” of Gentiles was already starting to be filled up. The generation Jesus spoke to that was not to pass away until He returned was nearing its end. The foreknown Jew and Gentile “first fruits” were about to be offered to God and redemption would soon be available to anyone who would believe. The coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of judgment at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 definitively eliminated the Jew/Gentile distinction by fulfilling once and for all the promises of God to Israel and vindicating those awaiting the fullness of a new, better covenant (Jer 31; Heb 8).

Steve closes with an appeal to Revelation 22, where the Spirit and the bride invite everyone to receive the water of life:

God’s purpose in election has been fulfilled. All are free to believe and receive the water of life. Praise God for fully accomplishing His redemptive plan for humanity!

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