Weeding the TULIP

Speaking of Calvinism, I’ve never been completely comfortable with the theological acronym, TULIP. For those of you new to this topic, here’s what it means:

T – Total Depravity of human beings

U – Unconditional election

L – Limited Atonement

I – Irresistible grace

P – Perseverance of the saints

Since my Arminian-Wesleyan bones often override my Calvinist cartilage, TULIP never quite works for me. I’m fine if it works for you, but I’m just saying . . .

I think it’s the U and the L that bother me. I don’t line up with the idea that God, from the beginning of time, pre-selected (elected) that some would be his eternal children and everyone else would burn for eternity in hell (problematic doctrine of hell—a topic for another day). The missiologist Lesslie Newbigin has helped me with this. In his book The Open Secret, he describes the biblical view of election as the people of God being selected, not to the exclusion of the world, but for the sake of the world:

“ . . . a few are chosen to be the bearers of the purpose; they are chosen, not for themselves, but the sake of all.” (34)

It’s more of the idea that followers of Jesus are called to be the light of the world, to participate in God’s ongoing mission of reconciliation. I find more biblical support for Newbigin’s view than I do for the thinking that has created the U.

Second, I don’t much like the L. This Jesus who died entered death willingly in obedience to God the Father—the same God who “so loved the world” (John 3:16), and who “in Christ, was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). I see the Atonement as something that has no God-imposed limits. It’s for everyone, including those who want nothing to do with God.

So, in good, reckless, free will-style, I’ve come up with my own acronym: UUP.

U – Universal love of the Father (in other words, God’s love is for the whole creation)

U – Unlimited Atonement (God’s work in and through Jesus is for the whole world)

P – Particular response to the conviction of the Holy Spirit (in other words, not everyone will embrace what God has done on their behalf. People can say “no” to God on both sides of death if they so choose)

Since I’m not a professional theologian (meaning, I don’t actually get paid for messing about theologically), I get to do this sort of thing. You do too, although you probably aren’t foolish enough to put it out on a blog so that you make some people mad at you. But there is a bit of a problem with my theological construction: The acronym doesn’t clearly spell anything.

On the one hand, we could pronounce it like an extended UP (U-U-Up and away!), pointing to the heavens above us.

Or, we could pronounce the double-U as long vowels, making it sound like oop. Some of you might think that’s appropriate.

A Lenten Reflection for March 13, 2013

“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” (John 6:37-38)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh . . . (Romans 8:1-3)


Our story of faith seems to move from the singular to the plural, from the particular to the universal. It moves from Abram to his descendants to all the families of the earth; it moves from Moses to the Hebrew slaves to the nation of Israel; it moves from Jesus to his followers to the church and to the world.

Paul tells us that Jesus came deal with sin. John tells us that Jesus came to be the savior of the world (1 John 4:14). The issue of sin moves easily from the particular to the universal and back again. Sin may be about me, but it’s about me in the context of us.

When we read the narratives of the gospels, it is a bit shocking to see how this dealing with sin comes about for Jesus. It comes about by sin having its way with him. The story culminates in sin winning the day, parading Jesus’ perfect, broken body around like a macabre trophy. Sin wins and Jesus suffers and dies.

I suppose that’s part of the reflective lament of the season of Lent. We hover over the passion narrative and watch tragedy unfold. This one sent as savior of the world, whose words and works rolls across the cracked and wounded skin of Israel like a healing salve, is suddenly despised by his own people and brutally, shamefully, executed. Somehow, in that sad drama, Jesus deals with sin.

It isn’t just that Jesus takes my sin and your sin away. It’s that Jesus allows the systemic, violent sin of the world to focus its fury on him on a particular day in a particular point in human history. In that particularity, in and through Jesus, God takes both sin and death into himself. He doesn’t heap sin and death on us; he embraces them willingly in order to rip out their teeth and ultimately destroy them.

We don’t see the turning of the tables until Easter. Yes, sin and death win on Friday. But their power is unraveled on Sunday. Yes, in the world there is still sin and, yes, we will still die. But neither sin nor death gets the last word in the story. God’s word is the last word.

And his word is Jesus.

A Lenten Reflection for March 11, 2013

I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it—you have founded them. (Psalm 89:1-2, 11)


When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” (John 6:14)


The Bible begins with a story about creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” But the first hearers of that story did not listen from a theological vacuum. Before they were the people of Genesis, they were the people of the Exodus.

The ancient Hebrew people were encountered by God (not the other way around) when they were rescued from their slavery in Egypt. God continued his redemptive work by leading them through the wilderness and to a place that would be the land promised to them by God. They first of all experienced God as their redeemer, their rescuer.

And then the opening chapters of Genesis connect some stunning theological dots: The God who rescued the people from slavery is also the God who created all things. This wasn’t the act of a territorial god who just happened to outsmart the Egyptian deities. There were, in fact, no other gods. The God of the Exodus, the I AM of the burning bush, the God whose steadfast love and faithfulness is celebrated by the psalmist, is the one, true God. This same God created the heavens and the earth. The redeemer God and the creator God as one in the same.

The people experienced Jesus in a similar way. Their understanding was not very theological and it clearly wasn’t framed by scientific inquiry. They experienced Jesus as redeemer, as the one who rescued them from demonic oppression, sickness, hunger, marginalization, and even death. Like the people of Moses’ day, the theological dots wouldn’t be connected for quite some time.

I can attempt to know God through theological and scientific inquiry, but I won’t encounter him that way. God, however, is the one who initiates encounter with me, and it comes as he determines. My inquiries just might produce revelations along the way, but they won’t serve as stepping stones up the tall mountain where I just might locate God.

Sometimes people chafe at the particularity of Jesus. Why, as Christians insist, would God reveal himself in that one person at a specific point in history and in a backwater location at the fringe of the Roman Empire? Why not to all people everywhere at the same time?

It seems, however, that particularity is the way that God does his redeeming work. To act universally would be to act outside of history. God works with real people in real human existence to redeem and rescue in real time. And through God’s particular, redeeming work, a universal call comes to the world.