Over the past year I’ve been under attack by a handful of Calvinists who have attempted (among other things) to ensure that I lose my job. Their attacks have been characterized by quote-mining, misrepresentation, and outright deception. For example, I’ve been accused of denying inerrancy even though I have explicitly endorsed inerrancy (properly defined) as in my article “Errant statements in an inerrant book.” (I know these attackers must be familiar with this article because they seem to document whatever I write with meticulous precision.)
I’ve also been accused of denying substitutionary atonement simply because I don’t accept penal substitutionary atonement as a theoretical account of the mechanism of atonement. Sadly, my attackers are apparently unable to grasp such theological nuance or to conceive of thoughtful evangelicals differing with their Calvinist views. And to cap it off I’ve been called things like “apostate” and “God hater”.
Alas, my attackers have failed. I’m not going anywhere, and I will still continue to articulate a nuanced and progressive theological position. And no doubt these attackers will continue to have conniptions as they read the blog and obsessively document my daily “errors”.
The Psalms provide a great respite from the attacks of folk like these. For example, in Psalm 7:1-2 we read:
Lord my God, I take refuge in you;
save and deliver me from all who pursue me,
or they will tear me apart like a lion
and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me.
This passage represents a cry of deliverance, and I’ve certainly had moments where I identified with the Psalmist. And since God still speaks today, I”ve also enjoyed Killswitch Engage’s song “Eye of the Storm”:
Together we stand
Never fall
No matter the trial
We will overcome
Together we stand
Never fall
No matter the Trial
We will overcome
Through the eye
Of the storm
You are never alone
Even through, the shadows
You are never alone
(Warning: don’t listen to this song unless you can handle metalcore.)
But many utterances in the Psalms take a harder edge. And this is where things get interesting. You see, one of the sources of outrage from my attackers comes from the fact that I reject a straight appropriation of the imprecatory Psalms, those passages where the Psalmist calls down curses on his enemies. Instead, I read the Psalms through Messiah Jesus who called us to pray for our enemies, not curse them. And that occasionally places me at direct odds with the voice of the psalmist as I align myself with Jesus.
Consider Psalm 83:16-17:
Cover their faces with shame, LORD, so that they will seek your name.
May they ever be ashamed and dismayed; may they perish in disgrace.
If I agreed with my Calvinist attackers on the imprecatory Psalms, then over the last year I would have had excellent grounds to pray these very words against them! But instead I am attacked by these folk precisely because I refuse to identify myself with the hatred of the imprecatory Psalmist. Oh the irony!
I shared one of the recent attacks with a friend this past weekend. In his email reply he wrote simple but breathtakingly profound words:
“Keep the faith – and keep praying for your enemies!”
This friend of mine speaks as one who has been in the trenches, for he too has been persecuted by Calvinists enraged that he failed to conform to their doctrinal framework. They too were angered that he refused to accept that the voice of the cursing Psalmist is consistent with Christian convictions. And he advocates in return prayers for his enemies, not prayers of destruction but rather of shalom.
Let me emphasize what should be obvious: the fact that some Calvinists invoke the imprecatory Psalms and attack those who disagree with them does not mean all Calvinists do this. Some of my closest friends are Calvinist theologians. But that doesn’t change the fact that I have consistently been attacked by a certain number of Calvinists who seek to live out their vision of the Christian life even as I strive to live out mine. And there we see two fundamentally irreconcilable visions of the Christian life.
