Category Archives: Theology

Minority Report: Unconditional Election and the PreCrime Department

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Minority Report is a blockbuster movie (based on a Philip K. Dick short story) that examines determinism and free will. In the movie the PreCrime Dept. is tasked with identifying and arresting criminals before they commit a crime. They do this based on information provided by the Precogs, three humans who have the ability to see into the future. Danny Witwer of the DOJ  is evaluating PreCrime and questions the premise on which it is based:

Danny Witwer: I’m sure you all understand the legalistic drawbacks to Precrime methodology. … let’s not kid ourselves: we are arresting individuals who have broken no law.

Jad: But they will.

Gordon Fletcher: The commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics.

The questions that the movie wrestles with is whether the future can be changed or not. Are the Precogs, who are similar to Laplace’s Demons, accurately seeing the future because all future events are determined? And what does determinism mean if it is possible for a future event to be prevented by the choices made be PreCrime agents. After all they arrest a criminal prior to the crime thus the determined event is never committed.

I couldn’t help but think that the PreCrime Dept. makes for an interesting (though imperfect) analogy to consider the Reformed doctrine of unconditional election. Continue reading →

Faith to Faith

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Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Since Romans 1:17 was such a crucial passage in Luther’s understanding the gospel and coming to Jesus I wanted to re-post an article I wrote examining how several scholars translated that passage.

There is an interesting series of blog posts at the Bible Gateway called “Perspectives in Translation” (which is no longer available). Here is the assignment on translating Romans 1:17 and the summary of the responses.

If any Bible passage could be credited for igniting the Protestant Reformation, it’s Romans 1:17. Yet as Luther understood so well, this one verse could inspire a thousand scholarly monographs.

Michael Bird addresses four areas that need to be addressed in rendering a translation for this verse. Continue reading →

Faith and Creed (Two views on Enduring Faith) – Part 2

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In the prior post we took a look at the literary context and form of the creed found in 2 Timothy 2:11-13 evaluating Charles Stanley claim that this passage strongly supports the idea that enduring faith is not necessary for salvation.

Since the creed is considered older than the letter to Timothy I thought it would be interesting to see if the ideas in these statements were expressed in Jesus’ teachings.

If we died with him, we will also live with him.

This passage is primarily understood as referring to our being raised with Christ to new life because of our identification with Christ by faith. This draws from the same ideas expressed in Romans 6, particularly 6:5 and 6:8. These ideas are also found in Col 2:12-13.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

Paul, continues to explain that because we are identifying ourselves with Christ’s death we should live for Him (Rom 6:11-14; Col 2:20;3:1-6).

The idea of dying and giving up our worldly desires, kingdoms, and even life so that we might live as a disciple was expressed by Jesus (Matt 10:38-39; 16:24-25).

If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake (dies for him) will find it (live for him).

If this teaching of Jesus is what the creed is trying to capture then those who identify with him (and find life) are contrasted with those who do not. This would give support to the third line of the creed referring to those who deny Christ as losing or being denied eternal life. Continue reading →