Thesis: Traditional Calvinistic interpretation fails to due justice to the context by disconnecting any known reason for the Father drawing people. Whereas I believe the text gives the reason for those drawn and not drawn.
Contemporary Arminian Interpretation Fails: By also not paying attention to the context. It essentially see's the drawing in the same way albeit universal and not effective.
However, there exists a strand of Arminian Interpretation that has some history and pedigree to it. This A) reads the passage in context with sensitivity to the Old Testament background. B) Explains the rationale for Christ's statement and the reason for the drawing. C) Posits a prior relationship with the Father as key to understanding to the text. D) Emphasizes the main point is the unity between father and son, and thus Christology.
The Argument: After explaining why the classical/contemporary Arminian view fails because clearly not all are drawn (as they would argue), Joe Dongell writes in Why I am not a Calvinist...
But the Calvinist reading likewise fails to account fully for the context. Jesus is locked in a strenuous debate with religious leaders who claim special knowledge of and standing with God. From this privileged position, they seek to discredit Jesus completely. Their implied charge essentially involves an attempt to sever Jesus from God, affirming the latter while rejecting the former. In doing this, they wish to establish the right to claim, "We know God intimately, but you are utterly alien to us! We stand in right relationship to God, but we completely reject you."
Jesus counter charge strikes directly at the root of their authority: the presumption that they knew God in the first place! "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you (Jn 5:37-38). Far from knowing God, then, Jesus opponents had already rejected not only the testimony of John the baptist but also of Moses: "If you believed Moses, you believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" (Jn 5:46) In this question poses by Jesus we discover the key principle: rejecting God's first offerings of truth will utterly block further illumination. God will not offer more truth or manifest his full glory (the eternal Son) while light at hand is being spurned. In other words, we can't actively reject the Father and at the same time have any chance of accepting the Son. Since the Father and Son are one in nature, character and mission, the rejection of one necessarily involves the rejection of the other. The fundamental issue of this passage is not that of predestination but of Christology and the unity of the Father and Son.
The Jewish opponents's inability to come to Jesus did not lie, then, in the hidden, eternal plan of God but in their own track record of trampling prior light, of having already denied God himself and spurned God's corrective punishment. Had they received Moses fully, thereby coming to know the Father to the degree possible at that time, they would have already belonged to the Father's flock, and the Father would have drawn them to the Son. But in rejecting Jesus, they demonstrated that they never surrendered to God in the first place, that they had set their faces like flint against all of his continued overtures. Since they did not belong to the Father's own flock, they wouldn't be part of the transfer of sheep already trusting the Father into the fold of the Son (Jn 6:37, 39).
Their spiritual vanity came to full light when they imagined themselves as being qualified to pass judgment on Jesus, the very embodiment of all truth, while persistently spurning God's lesser lights (e.g., Moses and John the Baptist). Were they willing to drop their pretensions and surrender to God's teaching, they would have been taught by God and led on to the Lord of life, since Jesus promises that "everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me (Jn 6:45)
By way of analogy (a really bad one) ... If some critic of Ben Aflecks Batman said "that was a bad portrayal of Batman." He was "nothing like the real batman is supposed to be like in the comics," one might say. Yet, the truth is this critic has never once read the comics. He has a Batman of his own creation in his head. The source material strongly supports that Ben Afleck is actually doing a great job as Batman. Those who truly know the comics, and are acquainted thoroughly with them, will naturally appreciate Ben's performance. Those who are presumptuous and think they know better, reject him for the batman they saw in the Joel Schumacher films or some other abomination. But those who know the comics, the animated series, exc. will be drawn. Again not a great analogy but it makes a point. Whether Calvinism is true or not, it is not found in this passage.
No comments:
Post a Comment