Christ died for ALL men: Interacting with those who are not the elect

I have recently been blessed to share a new acquaintance, Father Kenneth Tanner, pastor of Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, MI.  My introduction to Fr. Tanner was a beautiful poem about our Lord's entry into the world as a babe which I will share with you at the end of this post.

This web log entry is actually a response to a Facebook discussion that began following a post by Fr. Tanner on his own wall which is as follows:

  "In my youth, I was down on folks who said their faith was all about Jesus, who seemed to sit loose on doctrine.
   Yet the older I get the more I think Jesus plus nothing *does* actually equal everything, *if* we really know Jesus.
   If someone wants a vague Jesus, or wants Jesus on their own terms, so that they reject or ignore the experience, practices, and teaching of the first Christians, and of (frankly) most Christians down the centuries, my youthful concern still guides.
   However, time has taught the opposite is true, too: tightly-controlling abstract doctrines apart from an encounter with the living Christ are as dangerous as a vague Jesus with no Creed.
   I ran across a stunning example of this late last night: a learned man, someone with obvious Christian commitments and academic credentials, who, because of an a priori commitment to what is called "definite" (aka, "limited") atonement, admits he is reticent to tell sinners that Christ died for them for fear of lying to them if they are not of the "elect."
   You see, the doctrine of definite (limited) atonement teaches that Jesus' death on the Cross was not intended for "the sins of the whole world," as John plainly tells us, but for the sins only of those who God foreordains to salvation.
   Besides bordering on blasphemy, in its diminishment of the Cross, the doctrine makes a joke of apostolic missionary effort in the New Testament on down to this day, and it puts a damper on Christ's command to preach the Gospel to all nations. Who wants to have either a limited Cross or the fear of telling lies in their mind and heart when they declare the work of Jesus for all persons?
   Bottom line: Someone who starts with Jesus can never paint themselves into the corner this professor and brother in Christ finds himself because he commits first to a set of abstract doctrines, not to the behaviors, actions, teachings, dispositions, and person of Jesus as *the* controlling reality and manifestation of the invisible God."

Below is the exchange which followed that led to my desire to respond more fluently.  I should point out that my initial response was 2 hours after my normal bedtime and hastily typed on my phone.  That Fr. Tanner's eloquent defense was posted another 2 hours later is humbling to say the least.

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Kelley: Fr. Tanner, it is tough for me to read the gospels and not come away with a sense that there is an elect. I do not think it is incompatible with missionary effort as no one but God knows whom the elect are. The more I ponder the "free-will vs. predestination" antinomy, the more I realize that our Lord is big enough to reconcile these things which boggle our finite minds.

Tanner: Jesus dies for the sins of the world. No exegete not already committed to a limited atonement reads the passage as other than "all sins." All sin. I see no conflict in acknowledging the complete victory of God on the Cross over all sin at the same time we discern that some will choose to reject the incomprehensible love expressed by this victory. Yes, election is central to the New Testament but as in the Incarnation, so also at the Cross and in the Resurrection, Jesus Christ is the New Adam, represents a new humanity, a Son whom God elects from before all worlds so that all might be elect in him. Radical universalists say we ultimately cannot resist the choice of God, the choice that as Father, Son and Spirit loved us before any of us existed; while most of the rest of us suspect from the witness of Jesus and the apostles that God really does give us the terrible freedom to choose not to elect his loving "yes," not to accept his loving choice of us. I cannot imagine doing so, or that anyone would, but I do catch glimpse of it in myself, first, and also, at times, in others. I want to believe that God's love is so powerful that no one will be able to resist his love forever. Many say it's Christian to pray that this might be so even as we cannot preach what we do not know. I am one of them.
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Okay, so I am not going to pretend that I think I can convince Father Tanner of the 'rightness' of reformed theology.  I might say that Tanner cannot imagine anyone not accepting God's loving 'yes,' simply because he is a member of the elect and can only think as one; but that would be wriggling off the hook, rather than confronting the dilemma.  In fact, as I pondered how I might respond throughout the day today, I became increasingly convinced that I should just toss this draft and concede that I am not so far along the process of sanctification as my brother Kenneth and I would best be served and serve others by keeping my thoughts to myself.  Then, after a busy day that kept me from doing anything other than my job (I dislike that kind of day though I'm blessed to help people as a career), on my drive home it occurred to me that these may not be words that Fr. Tanner needs to hear, but rather his friend who is locked in a theological quagmire that is stifling the Gospel.

As I initially said, I do not think you can honestly read the gospels, in particular the gospel of John, and not come away with a concept of  'the elect.'  The evangelist and disciple whom our Lord loved and to whom He entrusted his dear mother does say that Jesus died for "the sins of the world," that "God so loved the world he gave his son."  But the same evangelist records our Lord's prayer.  Not the prayer He taught us to say, but the prayer He prayed for us.  In John 17, Jesus prays for those who believe He was sent by the Father, those who the Father gave Him from the world (vv. 8-9).  The elect.  That same evangelist records in his apocalypse an image of our Lord destroying thousands by the power of His word, a vision of an occupied throne sovereign over all, and a prediction of trials for the fledgling church in Smyrna.  The letter to Smyrna (Rev 2:8-11) includes the duration of those trials proving He is aware of the actions the enemy will take against the church and knows the length they will last, that they are predetermined.  For me, it is the writings of this evangelist which most thoroughly inform my position as a believer in predestination.

It is, however, this same evangelist who most thoroughly informs my understanding of God as triune, as "loving relationships in community" as Tim Keller puts it in The Reason for God. To continue to quote Keller's remarkable chapter on the trinity, God is three persons in one, "...in the Christian conception, God really has love at his essence." God offers this love to us.  So how to reconcile the dilemma of delivering a message of hope to someone who may be doomed?  We simply cannot look at it in this way.  We must fall back on our best examples of what our Lord asks of us as members of His body, doing His work.  The Apostles.  They were privileged to hear directly from the incarnate Lord what His work for them was to be.  That work?  Share the message of hope.  Cry out at every opportunity the message of God's love and redemptive plan.  The Apostles, including Paul, do not stop to consider whether someone they share the message with is of the elect.  They trust God, the Holy Spirit, to use them and place them in the position to best achieve His work.  Since I'm not trying to convince a free-will advocate, but rather a believer in predestination there is one example which stands out for me in Acts, when Paul is prevented by the Spirit from going to Bithynia (16:7).  We must trust the Holy Spirit to guide us to those to whom we are meant to share the Gospel.

As I have told a friend who is not (yet) a brother on several occasions, God is a relentless pursuer.  Challenges have faced this friend, things we feel we should not have to endure, and yet somehow I find myself able to share the Gospel with him most easily in the wake of these misfortunes.  I am convinced that God has placed these storms in my friend's life to His good purpose (Jonah 1:14) or at least He is, in Keller's words again, "weaving bad decisions into His loving plan for us."  Should I have withheld the message of saving Grace the Gospel offers because my friend is desperately fleeing God's love?  I see the predetermined-ness of my availability at the precise moments where he needed to hear that God loves him, rather than focusing on the possibility that, perhaps, he will succeed somehow in escaping God's loving, untiring, pursuit of him.  I must trust that my work, as all disciples (and Apostles) before me, is to share the Gospel and I must trust that God's will is not to let one true kernel be lost (Amos 9:9).

Thank you for reading this.  I must end by honoring Father Tanner's request. 

 "To be honest, brothers, I have already taken my eyes too far off Christ with what I've written above about us and how we respond to his love or not. I just listened to John Rutter's magnificent setting of Charles Wesley's "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Give it a listen--hear the words, especially that last verse--and let him take over your vision. Peace." 

Below is the amazingly beautiful poem, which as we are immersed in the season of Advent, seems most appropriate as we contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation.  Let it wash over you and bless you:

She lays his bright flesh in a feed trough, swaddled against the anxiety of leaving her womb, nestled by wool and straw from the cold night's sting.

The One who was God before all worlds lies there, as helpless against fragile existence as any of us, bound to the poverty of homelessness, a slave now to the elements he created, a hungering creature of necessity, soon to be an immigrant fleeing political terror, held aloft from the damp ground by wood that as God he holds together.

At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon said of this tightly wrapped bundle of dust, 'the heaven of heavens cannot contain you.' Yet contained he was for nine months within this weary teenager named Mary, smeared with dirt, sweaty from her labor, catching her breath in time with this One who breathed the stars into the astonished sky above them.

The beginning and end of the Christian revelation of God is this baby, this mother, this manger, this dust, this sweat, this wood, this night, these halting breaths. 
-Kenneth Tanner