Why Pray For Someone Else's Salvation?

One challenge that Calvinists issue to others is that only a Calvinist can consistently believe that prayer for the conversion of unbelievers is effective. As James White has argued when debating Michael Brown, non-Calvinists believe that God is work as hard as he possibly can in order to save as many souls as possible. If this is the case, why pray for someone else's salvation?

At first glance, this might look like a challenge. The problem is that ironically, it is Calvinism that cannot provide an answer to this question, while non-Calvinists have at least one way out.

Remember that one of the five pillars of Calvinism's TULIP is Unconditional Election. Monergism.com explains:

The doctrine of election refers to “that eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of men to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.” In order to emphasize the fact that God’s election or choice of certain sinners to be saved is not based upon anything that the sinner himself does, Reformed theologians refer to election to eternal life as unconditional election. 

Virtually all modern evangelicals and fundamentalists emphatically reject the biblical doctrine of unconditional election. They teach that election is based not solely upon God’s choice or good pleasure but upon God’s foreknowledge of man’s exercise of faith.

The key here is that unconditional election is a much stronger doctrine than many people realize. It is not only the case that people are divided into two categories (saved and damned) before the foundation of the world. This in itself is not problematic. The problem arises when we realize that this election is not in any way dependent upon the things that we will do or would do. If it was, then election would be conditional.

On this view, it makes no sense to pray for the salvation of anyone else. If the election of others is dependent upon whether or not you pray for their salvation, then election is conditional (conditional upon whether or not you pray for them). If election is unconditional, then your prayers are not a factor in it.

How might a Calvinist respond? An easy way out is to go for theistic determinism. This is to say that God determines each of our acts and choices. This would restore the compatibility between unconditional election and the effectiveness of prayer. God determines that your friend will be saved, and then determines that because of this, you will pray for your friend's salvation. So long as God's decree of election is logically prior to the means he ordains, then it is unconditional.

The problem is that this solution works too well. Under this definition, any system of salvation is compatible with unconditional election. God could ordain that we are saved by means of the Roman Catholic sacramental system, and it would still qualify as unconditional election (assuming theistic determinism). We can do even better. Rabbi Akiva taught that we are saved by works. If our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds, then we can go to heaven. Even this system can qualify as unconditional election, so long as God determines that your friend will be saved, and then determines that because of this, he will commit more good acts than bad acts.

What's even more ironic is that the non-Calvinist has ways out of this. If election is conditional, then God's knowledge of your prayers may have an influence on God's decree of election. The Calvinist may retort "Isn't God already working at 100% effort in order to save as many as possible?" The non-Calvinist can bite the bullet and say that this is not the case. However, the non-Calvinist has another solution as well.

God does all he can do without undue intrusion. When we pray, we affect what counts as an undue intrusion. Perhaps it would be unacceptably heavy-handed if God messed with an atheist's brain chemistry to make him more open to theism. However, if enough people prayed, such an act might no longer be heavy-handed.

Think of police involvement in civilian affairs. There are cases when police involvement is unacceptably intrusive if the police take the initiative, but not intrusive if they are called. Domestic disputes and noise complaints fall into this category.

What Christians Can Learn From Skeptics: Editing Wikipedia

This is a video that every Christian or Messianic Jewish apologist needs to see. Susan Gerbic is one of skepticism's greatest geniuses for developing this method. The lecture itself is only 27 minutes long, and is absolutely worth viewing multiple times. This is a lecture by Susan Gerbic, who is a skeptic and anti-paranormalist. She leads a group of Wikipedia editors in order to infuse her ideology into Wikipedia. From Gerbic:

We use Wikipedia to shape the public's view of paranormal topics. We already know that shouting and belittling believers is not the way to go about changing minds. Guerilla skepticism is the act of inserting well-documented well-cited information into Wikipedia. We still follow all of Wikipedia's guidelines. We are also trying to improve the history of the scientific skeptical movement and document it. It allows editors to edit from home without being confrontational with people.

From a fan: "I am amazed at what great ideas you and your team have with Wikipedia. It is the opposite of harm reduction. I'll bet that 99% of hits on Wikipedia pages you update come from non-skeptics. The best part is the sure fact that they are going to Wikipedia means that they are in the moment in that ever-so-elusive information gathering phase of thought. For typical laypeople, that phase is shockingly short, and once it's over, it's over for most true believers."

Gerbic is absolutely right. People generally trust Wikipedia, and do not view it with the same degree of scrutiny with which someone would view an atheist website.

If you are a rising Christian apologist, but don't have the time, money, or experience to publish in professional journals or debate atheists on stage, that's fine. The Internet is a great place to conduct apologetics. Instead of wasting your time arguing on message boards or social media (like Facebook), why not learn to edit Wikipedia? It costs nothing but time, and it reaches an audience far more open-minded than anyone you will debate online. Remember that people trust Wikipedia as a reliable source of information, something not lost on Gerbic.

Gerbic's tactics have worked due to organization. Wikipedia has mobs of tens of thousands of editors. Gerbic's group is a small, but highly focused army of 90 editors, and it has changed the face of Wikipedia's paranormal pages, as well as its pages on famous skeptics, creationism, and evolution. As far as I know, there is not one single Christian apologetics organization that focuses on Wikipedia. Not one. Zilch. Zip. Zero. This needs to be fixed.

Gerbic's Tactics

Working Backwards: Instead of starting with a Wikipedia article, look for an article in a well-documented source, such as a book by Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell, and find a home for the information on Wikipedia. You're not creating a page for the topic, but finding apologetics and research material related to the topic, and then finding an article or several articles in which to insert the information. Gerbic says that one issue of Skeptic magazine can give you 100 edits on Wikipedia. I assume that Craig Keener's book on Miracles can give you far more.

Inserting Links: Find ways of getting those nifty blue links to your favorite apologists on to different pages. An example is mentioning J.P. Moreland or Richard Swinburne on the Dualism (philosophy of mind) page, and making sure that the name is linked, so that someone who is browsing philosophy of mind may decide to visit the apologist's page. Wikipedia articles are like potato chips, you cannot read just one.

We've Got Your Wiki-Back: Improving the Wikipedia pages of Christian apologists, so that when people visit their pages, they will have easy access to their works and materials. We want the Wikipedia pages for apologists like J.P. Moreland, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, and Sean McDowell to be as full, updated, and rich with information as the pages for James Randi and Richard Dawkins. We are not doing this project for us. We are doing this project for the world, and especially for people who are on the fence about these issues. If we don't respect our spokespeople, who is going to respect them?

Relevant Topics: Topics and people that are relevant to apologetics. We want to add information from apologetics sources to Wikipedia topics such as creationism, intelligent design, pseudoscience, philosophy of science, dualism-interactionism, historical Jesus, eyewitness testimony, the minimal facts argument, and various arguments in natural theology. We need to add links to criticism of opponents of apologists, especially the ones that are in the news. People who are in the news get a lot of Wikipedia hits.

Specialists: Gerbic's World Wikipedia Project recruits people from all over the world who speak different languages, so that she can insert skepticism into pages in Dutch, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages. We need people who can translate, and closed caption apologetics lectures so we can get them into other languages, which can then be imported into foreign language Wikipedia entries. We need photographers who can take and upload better photos of apologists and apologetics events, which can then create better pages for apologists and their events. Some people specialize as researchers. Others track and post pages that need updates and expansion. Some even monitor Wikipedia pages to make sure that the right edits go on them.

Working as a Team: Gerbic's team coordinates their projects. They train new Wikipedians on how to edit Wikipedia so that the edits stay. They proofread each other's work, and make sure that all material cites its relevant sources properly. They share tactics, discussing what does and does not work.

Bonus: And for anyone who doubts how effective her team has been, check out the results of their major projects.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 1

In this section, Troki writes 100 chapters aimed at attacking the New Testament. Most of them are short enough to be quoted in their entirety.

Matthew 1 contains an account of the genealogy of Jesus, and traces back the descent of Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Solomon son of David. The enumeration of his ancestors terminates thus (ver. 15, 16, 17), "And Eliud begat Eleazar, and Eleazar begat Matthan, and Matthan begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations."

In Luke 3:23, 24, however, the genealogy of Jesus differs from that given by Matthew; for he assigns the descent of Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Nathan the son of David. The parentage of Jesus is there described as follows: "And Jesus was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, etc., etc. Thus while, according to Matthew, there are forty-two generations, reckoning back to Abraham, there are twenty-six according to the names mentioned in Luke. Besides this, the list of names given in Matthew is not calculated to afford a correct knowledge of the descendants of David, for three generations, Ahaziah, Jaos, and Amaziah, are omitted, and Uzziah is represented to be the son of Joram. See the correct genealogy in 1 Chronicles 3, and in the historical part of the Second Book of Chronicles beginning at chapter 22 etc.

It appears that the omission of three generations of kings was done advisedly, in order to make out Matthew's three series of fourteen generations. However, after all it must be owned, that contradictory accounts of the generations have no reference to Jesus, but only to Joseph. For, as Mary is stated to have remained a virgin, even after her marriage with Joseph, we do not see the use of putting forth a long string of names which had no relation to the founder of the Christian religion. 

So here are the genealogies laid out in an easier fashion:

 

 Luke's gospel was about Mary, and therefore the most likely solution is to say that Matthew was about Joseph (legal line) while Luke was about Mary (biological line). Troki's quote at the end seems bizarre. Mary is the biological ancestor of Jesus, so why would she have no relation to the founder of the Christian religion?

Michael Brown takes a slightly different stance, stating that Shealtiel and Zerubbabel were two fairly common names of their time. This is confirmed by Babylonian inscriptions during the Persian period. They have different parents. They have different children. They are descended from different sons of David. Their chronological placements are off by as much as a century. There simply is no reason to think that the Zerubbabel and Shealtiel of Luke's genealogy is the same as those in Matthew's.

Note also that Matthew's list contains three sets of 14. What is so important about 14? Hebrew letters also have numerical values, one can add the numerical values in a name to get a sum. This is called gematria. What is the gematria value of David's name? 14. Matthew is skipping generations, which is fine since the terms for "father" and "son" can also mean ancestor and descendant. The purpose of Matthew's genealogy is to show the royal lineage while encoding the gematria value of Israel's greatest king.

This objection seems strange coming from someone who believes in the Tanakh. The same genealogical issue for which Troki faults the New Testament occurs when one compares the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. For example, 1 Chronicles 2 states that Judah had five sons named Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah. In 1 Chronicles 4, the sons of Judah are Perez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur, and Shobal. Of five sons, only one has the same name. In 1 Chronicles 2, Perez has Hezron and Hamul. In 1 Chronicles 9, Perez has Bani as his son. In Nehemiah, the son of Perez is Mahalalel.

There are many more difficulties in 1 Chronicles alone. Those of you who have studied 1 Chronicles know that there are ways of harmonizing these accounts. All I am asking for is a little consistency.

Michael Brown concludes with this insight. "Common sense would also tell you that the followers of Jesus, who were totally dedicated to demonstrating to both Jews and Gentiles that he was truly Messiah and Savior, would not preserve and pass on two impossibly contradictory genealogies. In fact, this very suggestion directly contradicts the common objection that the New Testament authors rewrote the accounts of the Gospels in order to make Jesus look like he was the Messiah. The reality is that they accurately reported the story of his life and were careful to include two important genealogies in presenting the account of his ancestry and birth."

Chizuk Emunah Under the Microscope: Chapter 50

In this chapter, Troki challenges Christians for taking the New Testament as a substitute for the Mosaic Law. It largely repeats accusations that have been answered in other chapters. As a result, this article of response will be short.

Remember that monotheism is belief that there is one God. Unitarianism is the belief that God is one person. The Tanakh teaches monotheism, but is silent regarding unitarianism. We do learn that Jesus taught himself to be God, using divine prerogatives such as the forgiveness of sins. He freely accepted worship. He attributed deity to himself in numerous instances, such as John 8:58.

Troki objects to Christian worship of images, but this shows Troki's invincible ignorance. No denomination of Christianity worships images. Even the Catholic and Orthodox denominations merely pay homage to images, just as Jews payed homage to their king, and to the holy sites.

Troki is right in saying that Christians should not vilify the Jews for the death of Jesus. All instances of New Testament hatred toward the Jews are not an attack on the Jews as a people, but an attack on unbelief in general. If the New Testament had been antisemitic, then Jewish believers in Jesus would have been vilified as well, which did not happen.

Some of the things that Jesus taught were hyperbole, as was the custom among wisdom teachers in the first century. Followers of Jesus are not called to tear their eyes out, although some believers such as Origen took these teachings a bit too literally.

Finally, the New Testament does not abolish the law, but follows exactly the same doctrine to which the Talmud holds. The Torah is forever, but the mitzvot are temporary. Most of them are not binding in the Messianic age, as stated in Tractate Niddah 61a. Since Troki is a Karaite and does not hold to the Talmud, this is forgivable. For rabbis who use his material uncritically, it is not.

End of Chizuk Emunah Part 1.

חזק חזק ונתחזק
Chazzak, chazzak, v'nitchazek!

Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strengthened!

Chizuk Emunah Under the Microscope: Chapter 49

Again, this chapter is short enough to quote in its entirety:

An extraordinary degree of inconsistency presents itself in numerous points, when we compare the doctrine of the Christians with the teachings of Jesus and his Apostles.
In the first place, we find that Jesus does not, in any part of the New Testament, call himself "God" but continually calls himself "Man" or "the Son of Man." The title of Divinity attributed to Jesus is consequently conferred upon him without the sanction of that Book, the authority of which can alone be of value to the Christians. 

If Jesus had openly called himself God, that would have only confused the crowds. They believed that God is immaterial and in heaven. And in a sense, that is true. The Hasidic sects have noted that God is both a fountain of unity and of diversity. They see God's being like a branching tree. It is unified, and yet complex in its unity. I have answered this objection a previous post, so I will only go over a few points.

The earliest generation of the followers of Jesus considered him to be God (Philippians 2:9).
Jesus freely received worship.
Jesus freely took on divine prerogatives such as the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus applied Tanakh passages that describe the God of Israel and applied them to himself.
Jesus' teaching is the best explanation for why Paul, the other apostles, and the entire early church worshiped him as God in the flesh.

Again, Troki writes:

In the second place, we notice that Jesus expresses himself, in various places, that he did not come to abolish the law of Moses, but to uphold it. Thus we read in Matthew 5:17, 18, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil: for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle, shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." In a similar manner, we find in Luke 16:17, "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Nevertheless, the Christians persist in believing that the Mosaic dispensation is no longer in force, but; has been superseded by that of Jesus. 

This is a misunderstanding of what Jesus meant when he said that the law would not pass away. As N.T. Wright noted repeatedly in his material, the Tanakh does not answer the question "how do I go to heaven after I die?" All of the blessings and curses regarding the law were linked to rewards and punishments on this earth. It is only later, by people like Rabbi Akiva, when the teaching that obedience to the law is how you get to heaven. Being a Jew was no guarantee of salvation, nor was being a non-Jew any guarantee of damnation. Non-Jews like Job and Melchizedek were righteous in the eyes of God, while many of the kings were wicked and damned.

The purpose of the law was as a treaty between God and Israel as a collective whole. The nation as a single unit was rewarded and punished. Paul, Timothy, and other Jews who followed Jesus kept the law. The book of Acts is very clear about this. They knew that the law was not abolished. Why then do most Christians not follow the Mosaic law?

First, most Christians are not Jews, and hence would not be bound by the Mosaic law in the first place. For the majority of Christians, this objection is irrelevant. For the Jewish Christians, there was no need to follow the law once Israel was destroyed and scattered in the year 135. To follow the law today is something like trying to follow the United States tax law after the nation is obliterated.

The rabbis acknowledge this. In Midrash Vayikra Rabbah, all sacrifices except the thanksgiving offerings will be annulled, since there will be no need for them. In Midrash Schochar Tov, God will permit what is now forbidden. The Babylonian Talmud (Niddah 61b and Shabbat 151b) states that in the world to come, most of the mitzvot (commands of the Jewish law) will not be in force.

Troki again:

In the third place, we observe, from the words of Jesus, that he thought everlasting bliss depended on the obedience to the holy laws of Moses, for when asked by the rich man, what he was to do in order to earn beatitude in life everlasting, Jesus answered (Matthew 19:17, 18, 19, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. The rich man said unto him, Which commandment? Jesus answered, Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; honour thy father and thy mother; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The Christian of our day adds, that the sole condition on which life eternal depends, is the belief in Jesus as the Saviour of the soul. Jesus moreover taught the young man (Matt 19:21) "If thou be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." This precept we have never yet seen performed by any Christian.

 Troki makes a good point. If we manage to keep God's commands perfectly, we can inherit eternal life. This means that we do not inherit sin from Adam. We are not born guilty of sin. Instead, we commit sins, and are damned for it. This was still beside the point for the conversation in Matthew 19. In this story, Jesus was approached by a rich young ruler who thought he had it all together. The man thought he was righteous, and Jesus had to ask him a series of questions so that he might listen. Jesus then directly challenged the man's illusion of piety. If he was so perfectly righteous, he would value God more than any material possession. Of course, the ruler was unwilling to do this, and so his illusion of piety was dissolved in front of the whole crowd.

Jesus then makes his point in the next paragraph. It is very difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, since people who make a lot of money tend to make wealth the focus of their lives. Peter then asked Jesus "who can be saved?" Jesus replied "with men this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." The rich young ruler represented the height of Jewish piety, the rich man that Tevye wanted to be. Jesus was making a point that even someone like that cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Humanity has too many weaknesses. Everyone has sinned, and continues to sin. No one can be perfect, and thus we need God's grace in order to have any hope of obtaining salvation.

Troki's fourth point:

In the fourth place, we do not anywhere find the Christian who submits to the humiliation enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, when he said (Luke 6:29) "And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also," etc.

 Apparently, Troki has not read Foxe's Book of Martyrs, or all the other stories of Christians doing just that. The Amish are pacifists and do take this advice literally, although the intent of Jesus was to teach through rabbinic hyperbole. This is similar to saying "tear out your eye and cut off your foot." The point of the passage is to love your enemies, and to be better than the surrounding world. Another way of summarizing this passage is "be proactive, not reactive."

Troki's fifth point

In the fifth place, we have to point out that, while the Christians believe that Mary, after having given birth to Jesus, still remained a virgin, Jesus himself was not of that opinion; for, according to John 2:4, he said, "Woman what have I to do with thee"?

Troki is right, although John 2:4 is not the best passage for this. Matthew 1:25 states that Joseph had no relations with her until she had a son. This implies that he did have relations with her afterward, otherwise the passage simply should have said "he had no relations with her."

And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:53-58)

Even Josephus notes this, mentioning in book 20 of his Antiquities about the death of James, the brother of Jesus, the so-called Messiah. Even if, somehow, the church used the term "brother" in this non-literal way, Josephus did not.

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” (Luke 8:19-21)

Luke 8 seals the deal. Here, he is comparing his figurative use of mother and brothers to a literal use. If he was not told about his literal biological mother and brothers in the first part of this passage, then it would break the parallel and render it meaningless.

Troki's sixth point:

In the sixth place, we find the Christians at variance, not only differing from the Mosaic, or rather Noachic prohibition of eating blood, but even from the injunction we read in Acts 15:20, "But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood." See also ibid. 15:29 and 21:25.

Michael Horudmann answers this question quite well. "These four commands from Jerusalem to Antioch all dealt with pagan practices associated with idolatry. Most, if not all, of the Gentile converts in Antioch were saved out of paganism. The church leaders were exhorting the new Gentile believers to make a clean break from their old lifestyles and not offend their Jewish brothers and sisters in the church. The instructions were not intended to guarantee salvation but to promote peace within the early church." 

Paul writes in Colossians 2 that "Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath." The laws given to Noah were for his protection. He was for the first time allowed to eat meat, but God warned against eating it raw. Peter and Paul both recognized (in their letters and in Acts) that we have been set free from dietary restrictions, but must make sure that our actions do not cause others to stumble.

The Quest For Certainty