Everything's Coming Up Irish: A Yeats Poem

The lovely MissM has posted a poem by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats at the new and improved Regaining Paradise.

Would you like to join in the Everything’s Coming Up Irish fun? Post anything related to Ireland or Irish things and send me the link (You can email me, or leave your link in the comments to this post.), then look for a link to your post in one of the upcoming ECUI posts. No blog? No problem. Email me your contribution or leave it in the comments and I’ll post what you’ve contributed in one of the Irish posts.

Hypercalvinists

You thought they were an extinct bird, didn’t you? Nope, they may be rare, but they exist, and the Baptist Board seems to have more than their fair share of them. Right now, I’m in a discussion with someone who doesn’t believe in duty-faith. In other words, this person doesn’t believe that the non-elect have a duty to believe, which is one of the classic hypercalvinistic beliefs.

Because they are rarish birds, the temptation is to ignore them. The problem in this case is that this hypercalvinist claims to be a Calvinist. Spurgeon, says he, is a “weak Calvinist”, while he’s the real sort. So there his posts stand, confirming all the suspicions about Calvinism that many noncalvinists already have, and it’d be a mistake to leave him unchallenged.

You don’t know what hypercalvinists are? They come in different breeds, but here are two common signs of a true hypercalvinist:

• The denial that people have a duty to believe before they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and enabled to believe. This comes from the idea that God can’t hold people responsible to do what they are unable to do. In this case, the argument is that the gospel calls people to believe that Christ died specifically for their sins, and since Christ only died for the elect, if people in general have a duty to believe the gospel, they are being held responsible to believe something that is a lie. Therefore, God cannot hold people responsible for not believing the gospel, since the gospel isn’t true for them anyway.
  
• Based on the previous point, hypercalvinists deny that there is a universal call or offer in the gospel.
  

So that’s where I was for a while this afternoon. There are some discussions I can take part in without much thought, because I know the various arguments inside, outside, upside down. This isn’t one of those. I’ve never done this before and I’ve already made a couple of mistakes, but you are welcome to check things out anyway. I figure it’ll be a learning experience.

In a related note, someone else in another Baptist Board conversation is arguing that God is the author of sin, and this time it isn’t just a terminology thing. This man believes that God causes people to sin in exactly the same way that he causes people to do good: God is “… the Agent, or Actor of Sin, or the Doer of a wicked thing”, to quote Jonathan Edwards. I’d comment in that one, too, but I can only handle one thread at a time.

Related post: The Authoring of Sin

Purposes of Christ's Death: Titus 2:14 and Ephesians 5:25-27

This is another reposting of a piece from the Purposes of Christ’s Death series that I began shortly after I started blogging. You can find the other reposts from this series by clicking on the purposes of Christ’s death label at the end of this post.

This post looks at two portions of scripture at once, because the purpose statements in each of these texts are similar.

He gave himself for us to set us free from every kind of lawlessness and to purify for himself a people who are truly his, who are eager to do good. (Titus 2:14 NET)

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to sanctify her by cleansing her with the washing of the water by the word, so that he may present the church to himself as glorious—not having a stain or wrinkle, or any such blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25-27 NET)

The purpose statement in the first verse is “to set us free from every kind of lawlessness and to purify for himself a people who are truly his, who are eager to do good”; and in the second text it is “to sanctify her by cleansing her with the washing of the water by the word, so that he may present the church to himself as glorious—not having a stain or wrinkle, or any such blemish, but holy and blameless.”

Since I’m concluding these two purpose statements are similar, you can see that I’m making the assumption that the church and a people who are truly his are roughly equivalent in meaning. Each statement, then, says that a purpose of Christ’s death is have a group of people who are pure or spotless. In the first verse, these people are called “a people who are truly his.” The idea is ownership. These are people who belong to Christ; they are his treasured possession. In the second text, the group of people are called “the church”, and you can see the idea of treasured possession here, as well, because the church is likened to Christ’s bride—something He loved in the same way that husbands are encouraged to love their wives, and something that He was willing to give himself to obtain.

In Titus 2:14 it is said that Christ’s death was “to set us free.” This literally means “to release when a ransom is paid”. Christ’s death, or his giving himself for us, is intended as a ransom payment whereby His people are released from sin, and also as the basis upon which they are purified. I would take this purification to be that of the sanctifying process, although some might argue that. These purified people who belong to him are then identified by their zealousness for good works. To obtain for himself a purified people, then, is the purpose of Christ’s death given to us in this verse.

In the second statement, Christ is also described as having given Himself. He gives Himself on behalf of the church, in order to sanctify her; and then, when she is completely sanctified, He presents her to Himself in all of the glorious purity that has been worked in her based on His own death for her. According to these verses, possessing a purified church is a purpose of Christ’s death.

One purpose for Christ’s death, then, is for Him to possess a purified people.