Is God a Needy Vacuum Trying To Suck Praise Out of Us?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Austin Fisher is the author of a new book titled
00:00:07.760 | Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed.
00:00:10.640 | It's a book-length critique of you, Pastor John,
00:00:13.080 | and Jonathan Edwards, and neo-Calvinism.
00:00:15.840 | And on his blog recently, Kevin DeYoung
00:00:17.960 | has written a fairly lengthy review,
00:00:19.640 | so there's no need to do an in-depth review
00:00:21.200 | of the book here, but there is something in the book,
00:00:23.720 | a specific critique of you that I want you to address
00:00:26.400 | here on Ask Pastor John, and it comes on page 58
00:00:29.400 | of his book, where Fisher says your emphasis
00:00:32.040 | on God's glory negates a proper emphasis on God's love.
00:00:36.580 | He says that you've made God into a needy,
00:00:38.600 | glory-monger, trying to suck praise out of us,
00:00:41.540 | and this, he says, has shrouded the beauty
00:00:44.040 | of God's self-giving, his love to us.
00:00:47.340 | In Fisher's own words, he says this, quote,
00:00:49.920 | "God's love is an end in itself."
00:00:53.260 | And here I find a radical departure
00:00:55.480 | from Jonathan Edwards, John Piper,
00:00:57.560 | and the self-glorifying black hole of neo-Calvinism.
00:01:02.000 | Edwards claimed that the ultimate aim of God
00:01:04.280 | in creating the world was the full manifestation
00:01:06.440 | of his glory, i.e. his self-glorification.
00:01:09.760 | Love is just a cog in the bigger glory machine, end quote.
00:01:14.600 | Pastor John, how do you respond to this type of criticism?
00:01:18.660 | - Well, first of all, Tony, thanks for the question.
00:01:21.440 | I am reading the book, I have it here in front of me.
00:01:24.720 | I don't know that I'll read the whole thing,
00:01:26.280 | and people will see why.
00:01:28.240 | I might not finish it before I'm done here,
00:01:30.320 | but let me start with that phrase,
00:01:33.120 | the self-glorifying black hole of the neo-Calvinism,
00:01:38.120 | which I suppose I would represent
00:01:40.200 | even though I'm an old guy.
00:01:41.640 | That phrase, self-glorifying black hole,
00:01:44.920 | implies that God is like a cosmic vacuum cleaner,
00:01:48.800 | I suppose, with endless need.
00:01:52.440 | And guess what it's implying?
00:01:53.440 | Because later, Fisher says, quote,
00:01:57.920 | "God doesn't love us in order to take something from us,"
00:02:02.920 | glory, worship, praise, like he's a vacuum cleaner
00:02:05.880 | sucking up glory, worship, praise,
00:02:08.440 | and they're all disappearing into a black hole.
00:02:10.360 | "God doesn't love us in order to take something from us.
00:02:13.800 | That's what needy, greedy human loved us."
00:02:17.280 | So he's portraying Jonathan Edwards' view
00:02:22.480 | of God's pursuit of his glory
00:02:26.200 | as like needy, greedy human vacuum cleaners do,
00:02:31.200 | black holes do.
00:02:34.200 | Now, Tony, that is absolutely an appalling
00:02:38.180 | misrepresentation of Jonathan Edwards.
00:02:40.380 | I mean, he should be ashamed of that.
00:02:42.840 | To give the impression that Edwards' massive vision
00:02:47.740 | of the end for which God created the world
00:02:49.460 | teaches that God as needy or taking,
00:02:54.160 | like a greedy human is either ignorance
00:02:57.080 | on his part or deceitful.
00:02:58.940 | Over and over, Edwards stresses
00:03:03.000 | that God's self-glorification
00:03:05.980 | and self-communication are one.
00:03:09.840 | Here's a couple of quotes.
00:03:11.460 | I just read these recently from a sermon
00:03:15.640 | that was published in the Yale edition.
00:03:18.320 | "God's end," this is Edwards,
00:03:20.100 | "God's end in the creation of the world
00:03:22.680 | consists in these two things,
00:03:25.820 | to communicate himself and to glorify himself.
00:03:30.820 | God created the world to communicate himself
00:03:34.880 | not to receive anything."
00:03:39.400 | Okay, that's the way Edwards talks.
00:03:42.200 | Here's another one.
00:03:43.540 | "These two things ought not to be separated
00:03:47.100 | when we speak of God's end in the creation of the world.
00:03:50.960 | Indeed, God's communicating himself," that's one,
00:03:55.040 | "and glorifying himself," that's two,
00:03:57.400 | "ought not to be looked upon
00:03:59.920 | as though they were two distinct ends,
00:04:03.440 | but as what together makes one last end,
00:04:08.000 | as glorifying God and enjoying God
00:04:11.040 | make one chief end of man.
00:04:13.680 | For God glorifies himself in communicating himself,
00:04:18.600 | and he communicates himself in glorifying himself."
00:04:23.500 | That's end quote from Edwards.
00:04:25.100 | So what Edwards teaches, and what I teach,
00:04:28.120 | and what we see in the Bible,
00:04:30.480 | is that God seeks to magnify and display
00:04:34.360 | and uphold his glory, that is,
00:04:36.540 | the fullness of the beauty of his manifold perfections
00:04:41.780 | in all things, and he does this
00:04:45.940 | in communicating himself to his creatures
00:04:50.360 | for their enjoyment, and in their enjoyment,
00:04:54.080 | they are glorifying him.
00:04:55.600 | That's what we teach.
00:04:56.560 | That's what Edwards taught.
00:04:57.600 | In our receiving, receiving, receiving, receiving,
00:05:01.640 | not dumping and dumping onto God,
00:05:04.800 | but in our receiving more and more of God
00:05:07.840 | as he communicates more and more of himself,
00:05:09.720 | we receive it with joy in it,
00:05:12.800 | and our joy, Edwards teaches so explicitly,
00:05:16.080 | is the glorifying of God,
00:05:18.660 | so that all this talk about God being a black hole,
00:05:21.760 | or God being this cosmic vacuum cleaner,
00:05:23.820 | or God taking and taking and being greedy like a man
00:05:26.520 | is simply ridiculous misrepresentation
00:05:29.360 | of everything Edwards taught.
00:05:31.680 | We glorify God precisely by receiving.
00:05:35.960 | I just read this morning, Psalm 50,
00:05:38.600 | where God gets on the case of his people
00:05:40.720 | by making sacrifices because he says,
00:05:42.400 | "I don't eat the meat of bulls,
00:05:46.440 | "or drink the blood of goats.
00:05:47.900 | "I own the cattle on a thousand hills.
00:05:49.740 | "Call upon me in the day of trouble.
00:05:51.620 | "I will deliver you, and you will glorify me."
00:05:54.120 | That's exactly what Edwards is saying.
00:05:56.000 | God gets glory.
00:05:57.040 | You will glorify me when I meet your needs,
00:05:59.760 | not you meet my needs.
00:06:01.460 | So to this representation of a black hole thing
00:06:04.520 | is really an unworthy kind of misrepresentation.
00:06:08.920 | But here's another problem, probably a deeper problem,
00:06:13.640 | a methodological problem.
00:06:15.760 | It appears that the objections
00:06:18.680 | that are in that part you read and others to Edwards
00:06:23.160 | is owing to an approach to the Bible
00:06:26.300 | that speaks in generalities
00:06:29.920 | and hovers above the biblical text
00:06:31.820 | rather than pressing down into the warp and woof
00:06:36.100 | that make the fabric of meaning what it is.
00:06:39.300 | So maybe I could get at this
00:06:41.480 | by just a couple of textual examples,
00:06:43.560 | and then we'll have to let it go
00:06:45.040 | because the limitations on this.
00:06:46.960 | Let's just take two texts.
00:06:49.060 | One, Romans 15, eight and nine.
00:06:52.140 | "I tell you that Christ became a servant
00:06:55.520 | "to the circumcised in order that,"
00:06:59.980 | I'm skipping over a phrase,
00:07:01.140 | just jumping straight to the "in order that,"
00:07:02.900 | "in order that the Gentiles might glorify God
00:07:07.620 | "for his mercy."
00:07:09.780 | Okay, now, what's the inner textual logic
00:07:14.620 | of the relationship between mercy,
00:07:16.860 | which is a form of love, and glorifying God?
00:07:20.780 | And the answer is, he sent Christ to serve us,
00:07:25.780 | and in serving us, he showed us mercy,
00:07:29.460 | and in showing us mercy, he does it, quote,
00:07:32.620 | "in order that we might glorify God for his mercy."
00:07:37.620 | Now, to argue against the fact that God loves us
00:07:43.460 | in order to be glorified for his loving us
00:07:47.740 | is clearly contrary to this text,
00:07:50.660 | and that's the kind of thing I hear.
00:07:52.060 | Those generalized statements that love is an end in itself
00:07:56.500 | and therefore cannot be performed by God
00:07:59.180 | as a means for himself to be glorified.
00:08:01.140 | That's contrary, the opposite of what that text says,
00:08:04.540 | even though I would go back and say,
00:08:07.620 | the glory that God gets is precisely
00:08:10.660 | in our enjoying the love that he shows us.
00:08:14.660 | It's not like they're two separate things.
00:08:17.580 | Here's a second text, last one.
00:08:21.060 | This is Romans 9, 22 to 23.
00:08:24.260 | "What if God, desiring to show his wrath,"
00:08:29.060 | desiring to show his wrath,
00:08:31.580 | "and to make known his power,
00:08:34.300 | has endured with much patience
00:08:36.220 | the vessels prepared for destruction,
00:08:39.360 | in order to make known the riches of his glory
00:08:43.360 | for the vessels of mercy,
00:08:45.060 | which he has prepared beforehand for glory?"
00:08:47.260 | Now, God's wrath and God's power are in this text,
00:08:52.260 | and he is desiring to show them,
00:08:58.060 | and he's doing it in order to make known
00:09:02.420 | the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy.
00:09:05.820 | In other words, in order to display more fully
00:09:08.860 | and enhance our experience more deeply
00:09:12.180 | of his arriving mercy.
00:09:15.980 | So mercy and love are the end or goal
00:09:20.220 | of God's holy wrath,
00:09:24.060 | and just wrath on some.
00:09:26.840 | It's a means of maximizing the glory
00:09:30.340 | of undeserved mercy to others.
00:09:33.100 | So when Miroslav Volf says,
00:09:36.700 | "We don't have to give up on the idea
00:09:39.540 | that God seeks God's own glory.
00:09:42.560 | We just need to say that God's glory,
00:09:47.140 | which is God's very being, is God's love,"
00:09:51.820 | I want to ask, "Is he allowing for what Paul says?"
00:09:57.200 | That God not only shows love, but wrath.
00:10:01.800 | And in such a way, he shows wrath in such a way
00:10:05.720 | that it's more loving to show wrath
00:10:10.720 | so that the vessels of mercy
00:10:14.260 | experience their mercy more deeply.
00:10:17.660 | Does he get into the warp and woof
00:10:21.240 | of the logic of the apostolic word enough
00:10:25.920 | to stop talking in just mere generalities
00:10:28.900 | about God's love being a giver,
00:10:33.900 | which would leave you thinking,
00:10:35.760 | "Well, I guess there's no place for hell then."
00:10:37.880 | Well, there is, and hell or wrath or power behind wrath
00:10:42.800 | are, Paul says, "In order to make known
00:10:45.480 | the riches of his glory to the vessels of mercy."
00:10:48.200 | So my concluding point there methodologically
00:10:51.000 | is to simply say, "Let's get down into the threads
00:10:55.880 | of the texts and see how they are woven together
00:10:59.520 | to make the meaning of the Bible."
00:11:01.720 | - That's very rich, Pastor John, thank you.
00:11:03.720 | And one book that gets to the heart of God's love and glory
00:11:06.560 | is a book by Jonathan Edwards and by you, Pastor John.
00:11:09.680 | It's titled "God's Passion for His Glory,"
00:11:11.620 | which includes the full text of Edwards' foundational book,
00:11:14.080 | "The End For Which God Created the World."
00:11:16.800 | Pastor John, you wrote the first 100 pages,
00:11:18.840 | and then Jonathan Edwards wrote the last 150 pages,
00:11:21.840 | in a sense.
00:11:22.920 | It's not an easy book to read, but it is essential
00:11:25.440 | if you wanna look into these themes with greater depth,
00:11:27.480 | and you'll find almost 400 mentions of love in the book,
00:11:30.460 | showing just how important love is for understanding
00:11:33.040 | the ultimate purpose behind God's act of creation.
00:11:36.080 | And because we have such faithful donors
00:11:38.280 | supporting the ministry, you can download the entire book
00:11:40.840 | free of charge at desiringgod.org,
00:11:43.640 | click on books, and then look for the title,
00:11:45.680 | "God's Passion for His Glory."
00:11:47.960 | We will return Monday.
00:11:49.360 | Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:51.320 | Have a great weekend.
00:11:52.600 | (upbeat music)
00:11:55.180 | (upbeat music)
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