Romans 9, Predestination & Total Depravity
A Critique of Reformed Theology
Predestination: Addendum 1: On John 3:16
[Note: This page and the two following are actually the first position paper I wrote in the context of the dialog with my beloved opponent. The issue at hand was the doctrine of Limited Atonement. I was responding to several books my friend had sent me. Among those was, A Journey in Grace by Richard Belcher. This is a little novel that teaches the “doctrines of grace” denoted by the acronym TULIP in a fictional story format. When dealing with the question, “For whom did Christ die?” John 3:16 always comes up, as it should.]
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
The issue at hand is that Calvinists maintain that the word “world” does not mean what it appears to mean (the WHOLE world) but that it refers to the “elect of God”. (For the sake of communication, I will use “elect” in the Calvinist sense of that term, even though I believe the Calvinist understanding is in error.) The elect being the “whoever(s)” or, if I remember correctly, Belcher’s position is that the term “world” in this instance refers to the elect that are among the Gentiles. Of course, the REAL issue is LIMITED ATONEMENT and by extension, since it all “hangs together”, TULIP in general.
The Calvinist rendering of John 3:16 would go something like this: “For God so loved those among the Gentiles whom He has foreordained to salvation, that He gave his only begotten Son, that ONLY those whom He has predestined to believe in Him, both Jew and Gentile, shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
The Calvinist interpretation (as I understand it) completely ignores the IMMEDIATE context. Let’s continue reading, shall we?
Vs 17: For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
Vs 18: He who believes in him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Vs 19: This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
Vs 20: For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
Vs 21: But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.
Verse 19 clearly says that the “world” includes evil men. Am I to believe that the “world” of verse 16 is something TOTALLY different than the “world” of verse 19? The “world” spoken of in verses 16 – 21 includes BOTH good and evil men. Therefore, the term “world” CANNOT refer to the elect ONLY since it includes men who hate the Light and love darkness because their deeds are evil.
So I have to conclude that “world” is exactly what it appears to be – the whole world. Well, that was simple, wasn’t it?
Now, the Calvinist will typically confuse, obscure and complicate the situation by saying, “But your interpretation of John 3:16 doesn’t agree with other scriptures and therefore must be wrong.” I believe that, in fact, Calvinists have misinterpreted and/or misapplied the “narrow” passages. At any rate, what we have here is the Calvinist saying, “Romans 9 (or any other “narrow” passage) is clear, therefore, John 3:16 doesn’t mean what it appears to mean.” The other person (me) is saying, “John 3:16 is clear, one doesn’t need to interpret it in terms of any other passage.” Defending the statement that Calvinists, in general, have misinterpreted Romans 9 is beyond the scope of this post. However, I would like to go into more detail about how I believe people (not just Calvinists) misuse the “comparing scripture to scripture” hermeneutic principle. (Don’t worry, I’m not done with John 3:16.)