Since my days at Wheaton College, when I followed Clyde Kilby’s advice to read Orthodoxie, G. K. Chesterton is one of my favorite books. I think this is the only book I’ve read more than twice (with the exception of the Bible).
That’s weird. Chesterton was not only Catholic, he also hated Calvinism. So what’s between me and orthodoxy? I still think that at least half a dozen Roman Catholic insignia are harmful to the true Christian faith (e. g. papal authority, baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, justification as transmission, purgatory, worship of Mary) And do I believe the doctrines of grace?( (Reformed theology ?, Calvinism?) They are a precious and healthy expression of biblical doctrine.
What do you have in common (? Elfol’ndia?)
But I always go back to the orthodoxy of Chesterton. La reason is that we see the world in the same way, and the Calvinism that he abhors is not the Calvinism I love.
? We both marvel at the fact that we swim in the same endless sea of wonder called the universe.
? We are not surprised at both of us by the pointed or flat nose, but by the fact that humans have a nose.
? We both think it’s very likely that the reason the sun rises every morning is not because of something called “law” but because God says “Let’s go again!”And he says it more like an excited kid than a stern boss. .
? We both believe that logic and imagination are fully compatible and that neither will be useful without the other.
? We both believe that the magic of the universe must have meaning, and that this meaning must have someone to make sense of it.
Do we both believe that the glories of this world are like goods saved from primitive ruin?A ruin whose evidence is everywhere.
? We both believe that the paradox is intimately linked to the nature of the universe and that opposing it is crazy. “Poets don’t go crazy. Mathematicians go crazy and cashiers, but this rarely happens to creators. [?] The poet simply asks”. put his head in heaven. The logical thing is, he’s trying to get the sky in his head. And it’s the head that breaks? [1].
These agreements, and another hundred, happy and broad, take me back to Chesterton, because no one declares these things better than him. Like CSLewis, he sees more amazement on an ordinary day than most of us in a hundred miracles. Will I keep going back to anyone who helps me see myself and get amazed at what’s before my eyes?Anyone can help me cure myself of ‘see what they don’t see’ disease.
It’s not the same Calvinism
But so how can Calvinism awaken in me so much joy and so much aversion to Chesterton?Because they’re not the same Calvinism. Chesterton believes that Calvinism is the opposite of all the wonderful admiration we have in common. The Calvinism he hates is part of rationalism that drives people crazy.
Only a great English poet has gone mad, Cowper. And he definitely went crazy for logic, for the disgusting, strange logic of predestination. Poetry wasn’t his evil, it was his medicine. Poetry has preserved some of his health. [?] He was convicted by John Calvin, and almost saved by John Gilpin.
No, Mr. Chesterton, William Cowper didn’t go crazy for Calvinism, he went crazy for a mental illness that had affected his family for generations and was saved by John Newton, perhaps the humblest and happiest Calvinist of all time. And you both saw the miracles of? Wonderful Grace? Through the eyes of poetry. Yes, it was a healing balm, but wasn’t Calvinism the disease?Otherwise, John Newton would not have been the happy, healthy, pious friend he was.
The Calvinism that springs up? The profile?
This is why Chesterton’s arrows in Calvinism don’t make me fall. Is the Calvinism I like much closer?Elfoland? That he loves that rationalism he hates.
I would certainly be baffled by my experience. For me, the largest, strongest, most beautiful and fruitful tree that grows on the ground?Elfol’ndia is Calvinism. Here is a tree big enough, strong enough and big enough to bring to life all the paradoxical branches of the Bible and tremble with joy at the clarity of God’s sovereignty.
In the shadow of this tree, have I freed myself from the Procustian forces of the anti-bbolic presuppositionalism of free will?The strange and difficult assumption that without the right to ultimate self-determination, human beings cannot be responsible for their choices. away from that narrow, rationalist tree scattered in the shadow of the imposing tree of Calvinism, it was a happy day, suddenly I discovered that all poetry spoke of it, it is the tree where all the branches of all the truths that men have tried to develop separately.
What to do with logic?
It is a great irony for me that Calvinists be stereotyped as people governed by logic. For forty years, my experience has been the opposite. The Calvinists I met (English Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon, JIPacker, RCSproul) are not governed by logic, but by the Bible. Opponents bring their logic to the Bible and cancel text after text. Branches are cut by “logic,” not exegesis.
Who are the great lovers of today’s paradox?Who are the shepherds and theologians who take the horns of each biblical dilemma [2] and swear by Man-God: I will never abandon any of them?
It’s not the criticism of Calvinism that I find. They read about divine love and reject predestination. They learn about human choice and reject divine government at all our stages. They read about human resistance and reject irresistible grace. Who is governed by logic?
For forty years, Calvinism has been, for me, a vision of life that embraces mystery more than anything I know. It’s not governed by logic. It is governed by a vision of the indescribable and galactic immensity of the word of God.
Let me be clear: it doesn’t embrace contradiction. Chesterton and I agreed that the real logic is the Elfoland Act. “If the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, then it is (in an ironic and terrible sense) that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. “Neither God nor His Word contradicts one another. But are they paradoxes? Yes.
We, the happy Calvinists, do not intend to put heaven in our heads, we are trying to put our heads in heaven, we do not intend general answers to the revealed paradoxes, we believe. We’re trying to figure it out. And we’re in songs and poetry over and over again.
From the dilemma to the unicorn
We do not adjust the emblematic categories of Scripture to human reason Do we assume, as one of our tasks, the creation of categories, in human minds, which had never existed before in these minds?A work that only God can do, even though he constitutes us as agents; for example, we work to create categories of thinking like these:
? God rules the world, from joys to suffering and sin, from drawing and falling a bird to placing nails in his Son’s hand; However, even if he wants such sins and sufferings to occur, he does not sin, but is perfectly holy;
? God governs all the steps of all people, good or evil, at all times and in every place; So, however, that everyone is responsible for it and will bear the righteous consequences of their anger if they do not believe in Christ;
? They all died in their crimes and sins, and are not morally able to come unto Christ because of their rebellion; however, they are obliged to come and will be punished fairly if they do not;
? Jesus Christ is a person of two natures, divine and human, so that He held the world through the word of his power while living in his mother’s womb;
? Sin, though committed by a finite person and within the limits of finite time, is nevertheless worthy of infinitely extensive punishment, for it is a sin against an infinitely worthy God.
? The death of Man-God, Jesus Christ, manifested and glorified God’s righteousness so that it would not be unjust to declare righteous to the righteous who believe only in Christ.
These are some of the intertwined and paradoxical branches of the Calvinism tree. They do not germinate on the ground of fallen human logic. They grow on the ground impregnated with the Bible of “Elfolandia”. Those who live there think that a two-horned tree The dilemma is probably becoming a unicorn.
I thank God for Chesterton; his gift of seeing the world and describing it is second to none; it opens my eyes so that I am amazed at what is there; and what is there is the work of God’s hands. , but his eyes helped me see Jonathan Edwards’ God more clearly than ever before.
[1] CHESTERTON, G. K. Orthodoxie. Editora Mundo Cristo, 2012, 2nd edition. Translation by Almiro Pisetta. (Kindle version). All other Chesterton quotes in this text are from this edition (translator’s note).
[2] “Demonstrating that the premise of the conjunctiva is incorrect is called ‘Catching the Dilemma by the Horns’. “Does it consist of showing that at least one of the sets is false?. MARTINICH, AP Philosophical Essay: What is it, how (Ed. Loyola, 1996, p. 158) (Translator’s Note).
By: John Piper. © 2012 Original The Desire of God: The Sovereign God of?Elfland? (Why Chesterton’s anti-Calvinism doesn’t put me off)
Translation: Leonardo Bruno Galdino. © 2016 Faithful Ministério. All rights reserved. Website: MinistryFiel. com. br. Original: The Sovereign God of?Elfoland? (Why doesn’t Chesterton’s anti-Calvinism put me off?)
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