My wife and I were preparing to lead a Bible study session on the perseverance of the saints when we got into a disagreement on certain aspects of salvation. Was it once saved, always saved? Was it possible for a regenerate Christian to renounce his faith? Did God unconditionally elect those he would save or did he elect based on how he knew people would respond to the Gospel?
Weighty questions indeed. One way to visualise the situation was to sketch it out. And we did. A few days later, we realised we had landed head-first into the age-old debate of Calvinism versus Arminianism. I have to admit we talked long and hard, even arguing at time about it. But as I pointed out to her, it was better that we argued over matters of the Bible than other things like money or work.
Did we settle it in the end? As it turns out, it was something that John Piper had preached before and also Pastor Rob Bell's video "Everything is Spiritual" that helped us wade through this.
Pastor John said that two contradictory thoughts in the Bible can co-exist. Both can be true without negating the other. Our minds are finite and limited so just because we can't put the pieces together, doesn't mean they don't fit together.
And Pastor Rob Bell used the Flatland analogy to explain things that don't fit together. The example was people who could only understand two dimensions arguing whether a particular shape was a rectangle or a circle. It had to be one or the other and not both. Then he held up a whiteboard marker lengthwise and showed that it was a rectangle. He turned to the tip and showed that it was a circle. The whiteboard marker was both a rectangle and a circle. At the same time! And you could only understand this because you understood there were three dimensions. Our minds therefore are limited in its dimensions. There will be things that don't fit together but with full understanding (perhaps in heaven) we will understand fully.
So we understood that God is sovereign and unconditional elects those whom he will save. At the same time, Man has free will and chooses whether or not to believe in the Gospel. Is it a rectangle or a circle. It's both at the same time.
