Ouweneel’s “most difficult problems” (III)

Originally posted on June 04, 2007 – by Andre Piet

In my earlier weblogs about Ouweneel’s article, I pointed out that “the most difficult problems in the Bible” are in reality projected problems. It is not the Bible that presents these problems—no, they are created where people fail to understand the teaching of Scripture.

The most fundamental truth of all in Scripture is: there is ONE GOD.
But when this message reached the pagan world in the early centuries of our era, it was rapidly mixed with pagan ideas. Not by blatantly denying the oneness of God, but by adding to it. One became three-in-one. And in this way the simple truth (one God) became, through a subtle path, complicated after all. Even more complicated than straightforward polytheism.

One God is clear. Two or more gods (in a certain sense) are too.
But what is one supposed to make of three persons who are all God, but not three Gods? With in its wake the insoluble contradiction of the two natures of Christ? Even the intellectual champions of Christian orthodoxy openly admit that here they are groping entirely in the dark.

Also number three of “the most difficult problems” that Ouweneel lists is, in fact, the result of letting go of the truth of the ONE GOD. It concerns the question of the creature’s free will. Does God have complete control over the will of a human being—yes or no? If the answer is “no,” and man can make choices independently of God, then God does not have control over everything.

Concretely: if God’s love wills that all people be saved, but all people do not will this, then all people will not be saved. That is the doctrine of free will. Realize what that means. It means that not God, but mankind itself determines its fate. God must share His place with man. More than that: man has the final word! Hence, the doctrine of free will—just like the doctrine of the Trinity—is, at its core, a form of polytheism.

What I formulated above about God’s determination, resembles the position of Gomarus. That’s true—but the similarity ends about there. Because Gomarus passionately denied that God wills all people to be saved. With that, he created—if possible—an even worse caricature of God than Arminius did.

Arminius said: God wants to save all people, but He cannot (> the free will of man).
Gomarus said: God can save all people (for man has no say), but He does not want to.

How vastly superior is Paul’s testimony:
There is one GOD, and HE wills that all mankind be saved—and therefore (because there is only one God), He IS the Savior of all mankind! (1 Tim. 2:4; 4:10)
He wills it, He can do it—and therefore He guarantees it!

In Scripture, man is clay in the hand of the Potter.
No one has made themselves. The Potter creates vessels of honor, and He creates vessels of dishonor (> the irreverent). He once hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would say no to God’s command. Pharaoh resisted God’s WILL, but fulfilled God’s COUNSEL in doing so. Just read Paul’s account in Romans 9. Even the greatest sinner has a place in His plan. Solomon wrote: “YHWH has made everything for its own pertinent end, yea even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4).

I remember like it was yesterday that, nearly thirty years ago, I came into contact as a young Christian Reformed teenager with the teaching of Ouweneel. How tremendous it was—how he fearlessly held up the confessions of the Reformation to the light of Scripture!
But why not also critically examine the older, ecumenical creeds? And not just on points and commas, but fundamentally.

Why expose unbiblical terminology in, for example, the Belgic Confession, but not in the Nicene Creed? When in fact it was precisely in those earliest creeds that the great derailment began. It was there that the evil started of exchanging “it is written” for “words of human wisdom.” There they left the path of “ONE GOD, the Father,” and entered the complex fog of pagan thought.

What a delusion to mistake these fogbanks for “Divine mysteries”…

Ouweneel’s response

Delen: