More on Theoretical Theologizing on Hebrews 6:4ff

Joe asked whether, as some claim, the way that Tom Schreiner and I address the gospel’s warnings collapses into the so-called “hypothetical view” as advocated by Thomas Hewitt and Homer Kent, Jr. I offered a lengthy reply here. Joe has asked a follow-up question.

I understand the parallel you draw between indiscriminate gospel preaching to elect and non-elect and the use of warnings. However, there seems to be a crucial difference between the two scenarios. The initial call of the gospel is directed to both believers and non-believers, elect and non-elect. We preach to Adamic humanity, saying, "Any who refuse to believe in Jesus will perish." Two types of people hear this statement and respond accordingly. It would be strange to say "Members of the elect who fail to believe will perish." Or to phrase it in a conditional form "if a member of the elect fails to believe, he will perish." The category of people in the protasis simply doesn't exist.

Similarly, the warning passages on your reading posit a group of people who simply do not exist, nor can they exist. Hebrews 6 is a perfect example with its string of participles. There simply will never be a person who has "once been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, etc" and "falls away," if the first string of participles refers to regenerate believers. Thus, this group of people can only be theoretical, whereas on the traditional Calvinist view, the first set of participles refers to false believers.

In order for the analogy to work, it would be better to see the warnings addressed to professing believers, without any statement about whether one is truly regenerate or not. This would make the situation with the warnings parallel to the situation with the initial call of the gospel. On this reading, the warning could read something like "All members of the visible people of God who fail to persevere will perish eternally."

I hope the question I'm raising makes sense. Let me just say that I tend to agree with you and Dr. Schreiner on this issue. I simply raise this question because others have brought them to me.

Once upon a time many years ago, before that glorious mid-day moment when the light dawned upon me as my seminary friend kept pressing me to think biblically concerning the gospel’s warnings, I occupied my mind with the kind of theoretical theologizing that you represent well with your question. At that time, two wrong-headed notions loomed large over my thinking. The two wrong-headed notions were thoroughly entangled.

One wrong-headed and overly theoretical theologizing notion concerned the free offer of the gospel. There were two aspects to the matter. First, when we preach, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,” is this an authentic offer to the non-elect? How can it be authentic, if the non-elect cannot and will not believe? Second, when we preach, “Unless you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ you will perish,” is this an authentic threat to the elect who have not yet believed? Again, we young seminarians wondered how the threat could be authentic, if the yet non-believing elect can never perish.

The second wrong-headed and overly theoretical theologizing notion concerned the warnings of the gospel. First, when we preach, “If you persevere to the end, you will be saved,” is this an authentic admonition to the non-elect who hear the message? How can it be authentic, if the non-elect do not believe and will not be saved? Second, when we preach, “If you do not persevere to the end you will not be saved,” is this an authentic threat to the elect who already believe and who will not fail to persevere and be saved? Again, we young seminarians wondered how the warning could be authentic, if the believing elect person can never perish.

Honestly, I could confess to some shame for having used up more time with these questions than I should have. Nevertheless, in a sense, of course, it was necessary for me as a young seminarian to have to process these theoretical theologizing issues, because these were the structures of theological thought that were thrust upon us by those who went before us. The questions were raised in courses we were taking and in books we were reading. Evidently, these same issues continue to loom fairly large for young theological students today as indicated by your question.

The varied answers that we seminarians offered in response to these questions depended upon a number of other beliefs to which we had committed ourselves. As for me, Scripture had already persuaded me concerning God’s unconditional election of those to whom he desired to show mercy and of God’s unconditional reprobation of those to whom he desired not to show mercy. I cannot blame this truth for distorting my processing of the theoretical theological questions posed above. I have to blame my own distorted processing for temporarily leading me into wrong-headed notions concerning the free offer of the gospel whether with reference to the initial call to believe or with reference to the continuing call to persevere in belief. Because of my philosophically theoretical and quite antiseptic response to the questions I came to some rather awful conclusions however temporarily I held those awful notions. But thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ that he dissolved my wrong-headed thinking that wonderful spring day many years ago.

What was the major change that broke in for me that day? It was precisely what Jonathan Edwards observes concerning Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:27, which earlier I posted here.

He looked upon himself as still nearly concerned in God’s threatenings of eternal damnation, notwithstanding all his hope, and all his eminent holiness, and therefore gave great diligence, that he might avoid eternal damnation. For he considered that eternal misery was as certainly connected with a wicked life as ever it was, and that it was absolutely necessary that he should still keep under his body, and bring it into subjection, in order that he might not be damned; because indulging the lusts of the body and being damned were more surely connected together. The apostle knew that this conditional proposition was true concerning him, as ever it was. “If I live wickedly, or do not live in a way of universal obedience to God’s commands, I shall certainly be a castaway.”

That spring day, the light of the gospel broke in upon me to show me that I had been subverting the call of the gospel, whether the initial call or the continuing call, by becoming occupies with the doctrine of election in a theoretical way that the Bible does not do. I had fallen into the habit of categorizing people, including myself, on the premise of a theoretical imposition of God’s unconditional election of all whom he desired to redeem. Because historically speaking God’s election precedes our believing the gospel, I, like altogether too many, occupied my mind by theoretically framing my theology of salvation with God’s election as dictating every aspect so that my theology of salvation took on a rigidified form. I had failed to recognize the genius of John Calvin who in the final edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion wisely and rightly placed his handling of the doctrine of God’s unconditional election at the end of his whole discussion of the doctrine of salvation. Calvin came to recognize that the biblical teaching concerning God’s electing grace serves as a consolation that assures us who believe the gospel that we are God’s people. The biblical doctrine of election does not function as a theoretical premise upon which we should busy ourselves with questions whether the gospel’s call to believe is an authentic call to the non-elect and the gospel’s warning against unbelief is an authentic threat to the elect. Biblically speaking, the doctrine of election enters to explain why we believe and why we do not continue in unbelief as others.

The doctrine of election serves to assure us that if we believe in Jesus Christ, we believe because the Spirit has imparted belief to us, enabling us to believe in God who raised his Son from the dead and raises us also. Thus, the doctrine of election is altogether humbling. The only boast we have is in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31). Likewise, the doctrine of election serves to assure us that our preaching is not in vain (Acts 18:9-10; 2 Timothy 2:10). The doctrine does not serve to occupy our minds with questions that would stifle our calling all to repent and our threatening all that apart from repentance all will perish. It does not serve to stymie our admonishing and warning everyone that failing to remain in Christ Jesus will end in eternal destruction.

I had become accustomed to disconnecting God’s election from belief. Indeed, God’s choosing was unconditional, but Scripture makes it clear that God’s choosing is not abstracted from belief nor to be considered theoretically severed from the purpose for which God elected people. Rather, God chose us unto obedience (1 Peter 1:2). God chose us that we might be holy and blameless (Ephesians 1:4). In my zeal to preserve God’s unconditional election and to guard against allowing belief to condition God’s election of us, I had allowed my mind to abstract election from faith and from election’s purpose and do it in an unbiblical way. I had permitted my mind to lapse into a kind of necessitarianism. I allowed my mind to contemplate people as elect or as non-elect apart from belief, apart from obedience, and apart from election’s purpose, “that we might be holy and blameless.”

What is my point, then, Joe? It seems to me that the argument that some raise against the view presented in The Race Set Before Us and which you accurately capture is the same kind of theoretical theologizing that I formerly did which drove me to the adopt the tests of genuineness of faith view. As you express well in the following, I reasoned the following way.

In order for the analogy to work, it would be better to see the warnings addressed to professing believers, without any statement about whether one is truly regenerate or not. This would make the situation with the warnings parallel to the situation with the initial call of the gospel. On this reading, the warning could read something like "All members of the visible people of God who fail to persevere will perish eternally."

My wrongful preoccupation with the doctrine of election and my smuggling the doctrine of election in to explain biblical warnings and admonitions, especially a passage such as Hebrews 6:4ff, led me to such reasoning. It led me to agree with John Owen concerning the passage. It led me to twist and to mangle the plain sense of “those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:4-5). To make the passage conform to my preoccupation with the doctrine of election, I squeezed the plain and obvious meaning out of these phrases. Why did I do this? I did so because I presumed that otherwise the passage would jeopardize my doctrine of election. Why was this? It is because I preemptively asked the wrong question? I asked, “Does Hebrews 6:4ff imply that it is possible for genuine believers to fail to persevere and to perish?” Occupied with this question instead of with the function of the passage as a warning, I explained the passage antiseptically and clinically, just as John Owen does and as Roger Nicole and Wayne Grudem do in their respective discussions of the passage. I read the string of participles of Hebrews 6:4-6 as purely descriptive, as descriptive of people who already exist. As though the passage were a dead frog on a dissection pad, I isolated each participial phrase from the whole expressed thought. I analyzed each participle as simply descriptions of fraudulent individuals within the church as I neutered the passage of its warning function. I was preoccupied with the doctrine of election, so I endeavored to protect my belief in the doctrine of election from any implication of Hebrews 6:4ff that might seem to jeopardize my belief.

My mangled belief in God’s unconditional election would not permit me to hear the biblical warnings as addressed to me, a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. My laying unconditional election over the passage to quell the sense of tension the passage stirred in me enabled me to transpose the passage from one of projection to one of retrospection, from one of warning to elicit steadfast loyalty to Christ to one of testing to expose those who are disloyal to Christ. Consequently, Christians who adopt the reading of Hebrews 6:4ff that I once held render the warning just as empty as does the so-called “hypothetical view.” The fundamental difference is that the theoretical theologizing that I formerly did to the passage at least had a group of people remaining to which the warning was addressed. The passage warned those unmarked but nonetheless real non-elect people among us who profess faith in Christ. My theoretical theologizing spared me the imagined undue tension the passage raised. I vainly imagined the warnings, especially strong warnings such as Hebrews 6:4ff, were not addressed to the elect but to the non-elect.

This interpretation of the passage leaves many Christians dissatisfied. Many rightly feel that something is missing. They sense that if the passage is a warning that it should touch themselves, so they add another factor to their interpretation of the passage. In order to place themselves under the weight of the warning and to feel its full impact they make a necessary adjustment in their doctrine of assurance of salvation. To feel the full weight of the warning, Christians believe that the warning calls into question the genuineness of their profession of faith in Christ Jesus. The warning subjects these Christians to the perpetual awful contemplation: “I may be a fraud. I may be a hypocrite. My faith may not be genuine. I may have tasted the good Word of God. I may have become a partaker of the Holy Spirit. I may have become enlightened. I may have tasted the powers of the age to come. Yet, I may be a fraud, a hypocrite, an apostate.” Thus, Christians who adopt this view do serious injury to the biblical doctrine of assurance of salvation. They render assurance of salvation little more than assurance that “I am saved today, but as for tomorrow, I cannot be confident. I may apostatize tomorrow.” This is how John Piper preached Hebrews 6:4-8. Consider his concluding comments.

I'll be very personal, to give it it's sharpest point. If in the coming years I commit apostasy and fall away from Christ, it will not be because I have not tasted of the word of God and the Spirit of God and the miracles of God. I have drunk of his word. The Spirit has touched me. I have seen his miracles and I have been his instrument for a few.

But if, over the next ten or twenty years, John Piper begins to cool off spiritually and lose interest in spiritual things and become more fascinated with making money and writing Christless books; and I buy the lie that a new wife would be exhilarating and that the children can fend for themselves and that the church of Christ is a drag and that the incarnation is a myth and that there is one life to live so let us eat drink and be merry—if that happens, then know that the truth is this: John Piper was mightily deceived in the first fifty years of his life. His faith was an alien vestige of his father's joy. His fidelity to his wife was a temporary passion and compliance with social pressure; his fatherhood the outworking of natural instincts. His preaching was driven by the love of words and crowds. His writing was a love affair with fame. And his praying was the deepest delusion of all—an attempt to get God to supply the resources of his vanity.

If this possibility does not make me serious and vigilant in the pursuit of everlasting joy, what will?

I trust that all can recognize how the doctrine of unconditional election has prejudiced John’s interpretation of Hebrews 6:4-8. Indeed, it is true that when individuals who have professed faith in Jesus Christ and then forsake the way of the gospel, those individuals show that they never were truly the Lord’s followers (cf. 1 John 2:18-19). True as this is, this is not the truth disclosed in Hebrews 6:4ff. It is the truth revealed in other passages, such as 1 John 2:18-19.

It is commendable that the interpretation of Hebrews 6:4ff, as presented in John Piper’s sermon, attempts to rescue the gospel’s warnings from disuse. It is regrettable, however, that the rescue effort does so at the expense of another biblical doctrine, namely, the doctrine of Christian assurance. The interpretation of Hebrews 6:4ff, that I once held and which John presents in his sermon, calls into question our assurance of salvation. Under such preaching, in order to feel the weight of the warning, we Christians are obliged to suspend our assurance of salvation and to engage doubt as we interrogate ourselves whether we have truly believed in Jesus Christ.

There is a better way to feel the full impact of the gospel’s warnings. It is to hear the passages say what they actually say. I believe that Tom Schreiner and I treat Hebrews 6:4ff rightly, as the warning should be. If indeed we will preserve the passage for what it actually is, namely, a warning to all who profess faith in Christ Jesus, including genuine believers whose confidence is not subverted by the warning (see The Race Set Before Us, pp. 202ff), then I see no other legitimate way to explain the passage. Every other approach that I have found fails to address the passage adequately so as to preserve its warning function for believers and at the same time not subvert the biblical doctrine of assurance that we will be saved in the Last Day.