Truth Unites - Justification, Calvinism, and More with Guillaume Bignon

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

I chat with Guillaume Bignon, author of Confessions of a French Atheist,  about his conversion to Christianity, his views of justification by  faith alone, and Calvinism.   Buy Guillaume's book: https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-French-Atheist-Hijacked-Christian/dp/1496443020/ Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics done in an ironic way. And I'm really excited and grateful to be talking with my friend Guillaume Bignon. How did I do at pronouncing that? Pretty good. Thank you, Gavin, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, maybe just at the start, do you want to take a moment just to introduce yourself? Yes, sure. So my name is Guillaume. I'm French. I live in the U.S. I have an American wife. And as a result, five adorable American children. I'm a software engineer during the day, and at night I have a secret identity as a Christian philosopher. So I was an atheist in France for much of my life, and then had a pretty providential conversions to Christ that led me to study Christianity and theology

a bit deeply. And so I ended up having a master's in New Testament studies and a PhD in philosophical theology, which now allow me to do some research, some writing, speaking on various topics of interests surrounding the Christian faith. So that's my secret identity and activities at night and on weekends when I'm not busy with five kids. So this is exciting. So you and I met at a theological conference, I believe, last year, and we connected. And then we've talked a little bit about justification and kind of shared notes. And you've helped me think about that a little bit. But I also realize where we have similar situation in that our fifth child is due in two months. So I'll probably be calling you not only for help with justification, but also for,

how do you parent five? Yeah, there's no how to. It's free for all. And you'd already know this with four. You're outnumbered. You're already losing. So you've given up at this point. So it's wonderful.

Exactly. People ask, you know, are you overwhelmed at the thought or something like that? And I say, no, because we're already at maximum capacity anyway. So, you know, one more, it's just, oh, we can handle that. But for people watching this interview, here's what we're going to do. Here's what you can expect. We're going to share a little bit about your testimony, how you came to Christ. And then we're going to talk about two issues, justification and Calvinism, because I know those are areas of active research for you.

And I think you'll be able to provide some really helpful treatment of those. And I want to encourage people to check out your fantastic book, Confessions of a French atheist, which I'll put in the video description. So please buy that and read that for people watching this video. So let's start off. Maybe a good question would be tell us a little bit about your testimony. Maybe what made you convinced of atheism to begin with? Yeah, so what made me convinced of atheism was somewhat the air we breathe in France.

I grew up somewhat in a Catholic faith in the Catholic faith with my parents being Catholics. And so we did go to Mass. But it was more out of tradition and this is what we do kind of a thing. It was never really a very strong conviction for me. And as soon as I was old enough to tell my parents that I didn't really believe this, I simply stopped going and nothing much happened and nobody lost their minds over this. It was not a dramatic deconversion of anything. It was just like, well, yeah, we're too old for this and let's not do this anymore.

So that was a very uneventful deconversion. at which point atheism was simply the default option for me. It seemed like, say, okay, well, we don't believe in God. We don't really think it's a huge question that needs to be detaining us for long. And so we just stop going and then we'll live our lives as if there is no God. And it seems on every front that this is the case. That was kind of the thinking at the time. So it was not an educated, sophisticated, convincing by arguments in favor of atheism, more of a default position.

They say, well, no, I don't believe in God. And so I think there is no God. So people can get the full story in reading your book. But give us an overview of how did you come back to Christ then? Yeah, so that's, I, there's a lot to say I can give a very long version or a short version. For the long version, the book goes into detail, and it's the entertaining story of a lot of different improbabilities that piled upon to each other with travels and betrayals and improbable meetings and experiences in visiting a church.

So I won't spoil that for the listeners, and if they want to get the entertaining story, it's all in the book like this. But the main pieces involve meeting, so in later in life, so around my mid-20s, meeting. So providential meeting with an American woman in the Caribbean and then being confronted with the fact that she had Christian,

which she professed Christian faith, and trying to make a relationship work with her, and trying to explain to her why that kind of religious belief is not going to fly with me, trying to go after that, and then being confronted with trying to understand what she even believes. And as a result, considering a little bit, educating myself a bit about what the claims of Christianity were, and then through this, I ended up connecting with a pastor in France to try to discuss a little bit Christian belief and practice. And then through a number of, again,

lots of improbabilities involved in there. So how I even got to meet him, why I got to connect, why I stayed. But through the conversation, the number of intellectual PCs changed in my mind. There's a lot of different objections that I had or concerns that were satisfyingly resolved.

And then it was not a purely intellectual exercise. Again, I had lots of animosity towards the Christian faith and practice. And some of those came breaking down in my own personal experience through that season of intellectual questioning. And in the end, it's also the gospel that clicked. So it was, I mean, as you know full well, a Christian is not someone who just intellectually affirms that there is a God and that Jesus is raised from the dead. It's also somebody who was received forgiveness and found life in Christ. So that also came with a revenge and clicked on my heart as much as on my mind when I finally understood the message and my experience also related to that and I embraced the gospel. So hopefully I didn't spoil too much of the details and gave you enough substance to understand where I'm coming from.

For all of the details, it's in the book, Confessions of the French Atheist. That's releasing just any day now. Yes. What would be the key intellectual changes that you? you went through if you could identify one or two or three of the key changes that led to your conversion. Yeah, yeah. There's a number of barriers that were there that got broken down through those conversations. One of them was that first of all, I thought that you really had to be outright dumbed to believe in the supernatural, that no sensible, no intellectual could believe those sorts of

things. This one was easy to dispose of when I finally met professing Christians that pastor, particularly in in France with with whom I was discussing who was clearly intelligent who was sensible and yet believed that a supernatural God exists created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead. So that was one sociological belief that was clearly manhandled here. Simply meeting folks who clearly think well and still believe that God exists. Another big barrier I had was my view of Christian sexual ethics. So I was convinced that the Christian view on relationships and sexual intimacy was repressive and intolerant. And so discussing with him, we got a chance to reassess it a little bit.

He got to paint a much prettier picture of what that looks like, somewhat of an attractive picture, even though I was very hostile against the idea that sex could only be in marriage. And also the attached belief that a Christian should really only marry another Christian. I thought this was intolerant. This was like, how dare you tell me that I'm not good enough for you as an atheist if we are going to have a relationship? And then just thinking through these issues, I came to realize both that it was not repressive, that it was simply a more conservative standard, and one that in some respect, I respected and appreciated. particularly because my own romantic life had been littered with betrayals and cheating and

really the ugly stuff that I had done to all my past relationship and I had caused so much pain that somehow this pastor painting a very conservative picture where he hadn't even kissed his wife until they got married and they heard the traditional words, you may kiss the bride. I was terrified of such a thing and this is not what I wanted, but there was something beautiful about this. And so I got to relax a bit about those sorts of things. And the intolerance thing, you realize, no, this is just common sense. If we're going to be like a marriage relationship requires intimacy, and if one of the two persons has God at the center of their life and beliefs, all major decisions are made in light of their Christian faith.

And the other things that this is not only false, but actually intellectually subpar and ridiculous, there's no building a successful marriage there. So this kind of reasoning allowed me to understand, no, this is not repressive and this is not. intolerant. It's just a good different view than I had. So the dumbness of Christian belief, the Christian view of sexual ethics, I thought also that perhaps science disproves God. I mean, this is, again, not something that I was strongly informed about, but it just picked up from the overall culture that if you're a scientist, you cannot believe that God exists. And there are a bit of a reflection on my own scientific studies. I mean, I studied engineering, so math physics, engineering science and realized that little of what I had learned in science myself was really

conflicting with God's existence or even relevant to the question of God's existence. So that was kind of also a social more that I had picked, like something that was in the air that I had somehow absorbed that I realized doesn't really have much of a leg to stand on. And then the big intellectual shift also that happened there in terms of knowledge is that I realized that doesn't really have much of a leg to stand on. And then the big, the big intellectual shift also that happened there in terms of knowledge is that I wanted to, if I were to ever become a Christian, I wanted to have more than just a blind faith. I wanted to have something like knowledge. I wanted to, I don't know if I wanted to be sure or expect certainty about those things. And I got to appreciate a couple of things around what it takes to know something. The first is I realize we don't need absolute

certainty in order to have knowledge. It's kind of something that my standard was completely unreasonable that there's tons of things that we know and that we don't have absolute undeniable certainty. I mean, there's very little, if anything, in this world that we have absolute certainty about. You know, that's what's kind of Descartes's insight, that he had to boil down to only his own mere existence and everything else was doubtable. And I don't think that's a reasonable standard. So with all respect to René, this is something that I think we can know plenty of things without having that kind of absolute certainty. And I came to appreciate that one way in which we know short of absolute certainty

was on the basis of testimony, that there's a very simple way in which we know some very important things. And that simple way is that somebody who knew told us. And, you know, if their testimony is reliable and they tell us, then now we know. And so I came to appreciate that lots of things I knew like that, like my date of birth or my name or who my parents are. They're all on the basis of the fact that somebody who knew told me and now I knew. And I came to see a bit of a parallel with the way that we come to know what happened with Jesus of Nazareth.

So I was reading the New Testament and trying to understand how can we be sure that those things happened. And I simply appreciate, okay, well, first of all, we can't have absolute certainty. And second of all, the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really come across as trying to give us exactly what I'm describing. Their account of what they say, yeah, we've investigated or we've seen those things. This is what Jesus said. This is what Jesus has done. And then he was raised from the dead. Now, and we tell you because we think it's important.

And all of this is in the plain language in the New Testament. And in my own thinking about those issues, I came to appreciate that there was a sensible way of believing that those things happen on the basis of their testimony and that we could genuinely know that this was the truth, not just have to a blind belief. in Christian faith. So these are some of the sketch of the intellectual shifts that happened throughout those several months of conversation with that French pastor.

And that led me to relaxing intellectually about the truth of the Christian faith. Obviously, after that, the message had to go through the heart and the gospel pierced my heart. And I embrace Christianity as with through a spiritual renewal. But these are the intellectual components of that renewal that happened. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing to see how God draws different people

himself and it looks different in different testimonies but oftentimes you see that light bulb moment when the gospel really lands at an existential level to people and so that's really cool to hear because and the intellectual process is also fascinating as well so hopefully that gives people a bit of a flavor for what they're getting into with the book and i just would encourage viewers to get the book i think they'll find it fascinating so um transitioning into the topic of justification a little bit as your sort of of coming back to Christianity. How did that topic come up for you? What made that of interest? Yeah. So the topic of justification by faith is what I take to be at the center of the Protestant message that I embraced in my conversion. So this came as a shock to me that when finally the gospel

clicked, I've been calling it the gospel, but let's unpack a little bit with the good news that Jesus dying on the cross serves the purpose of paying for. for the penalty for our own sins in such a way that we are acquitted, we are granted forgiveness for our sins and are given eternal life on the basis of what Jesus has done, not on the basis of our own righteousness or anything that we do, simply on the basis of his gift and that's a gift that we received by faith. So this is the traditional Protestant explanation of what happens. We believe in Jesus and as a result we are acquitted of our sins and have it to be life. That message was, first of all, was shocking to me because I had never heard anything like

this until I was 25. So I don't know if American evangelicals take that basic biblical teaching to be overwhelmingly widespread everywhere that nobody can ignore this. I had never heard such a thing myself. So that came as a shock and was powerful. And it met my existential struggles at the moment as well. Again, going back to my story, I explained in detail why that came very, very, powerfully to me at the moment where this is exactly what I needed. So God was clearly working the need and the remedy at the same time. And the expression of that gospel of that good news is clearly what I take to be the Protestant message. And when I became a Christian and then people started to ask, well, you know, you were raised in your Catholic faith. So why not return there? And I had to explain that not this message that I

understood to be the biblical truth is not what I take the Catholic Church to teach about this matter. And for that, for me to know that, I had to go and look at a bit at what the Catholics do say. It's almost surprising to me to say, how did I fail to hear the message for all these years? Did I just, you know, was I blind to it? And no, I came to appreciate that the Catholic Church actually denies that. And this is a Protestant explanation of the good news of Christ. And so this was my explanation at the time to say, well, look, I've come to believe that this is what the Bible says. I think it's true. And I do know that the Catholic Church denies this.

And that was good enough for a while. The reason it got me into studying a little bit more of those things in more recent years at more academic level is that I was very confident in telling you that the Catholic Church denies the Protestant explanation of justification by faith. but I wasn't all that great I'd explain to you what they teach instead. So there was a system with sacraments and then some explanations about sanctification and justification and what are the denials

of the various councils denying some of the teachings of the Protestants, but I didn't have a very good view of what the Church of Rome teaches on those matters and it frustrated me to not be able to contrast them so well for people who asked. And so I went and studied the Catholic sources

for quite a bit. And there, so it was all after my doctoral work on free will already. So I had already done the work to understand how arguments work and how to unpack debates and how to make a good case for a position and to clarify ideas. And one thing that I really valued in this training that I had as a, also for now, on free will, was the ability to identify equivocation. When people are talking past each other, because they are using same words with different. meanings. And in my readings of the Catholic sources and of the various controversial literature on both sides, Protestants and Catholics on justification, I came to see a few of exactly those instances where words are used in different ways and people are talking past each other.

And so once I finally saw these things, I was able to clarify that, at least in my own understanding, and then see, okay, there's plenty of interesting things that follow once you clarify those misunderstandings. And so there's substance there for me to do more research and writing on this, which is the path that I'm currently on, to try to explain what are some of those equivocations and what kinds of misunderstandings do they produce? And therefore, what can we say when we think rightly about those matters, having clarified the words to begin with? Yes. Okay, so let's talk about from your vantage point, where do Catholics and Protestants agree in ways that are sometimes misunderstood, or we don't realize there may be more common ground than is expected.

And then after that, let's talk about, well, what are the remaining areas of disagreement that are on the table? Maybe we can take those in order from your perspective. Where would be the points of unexpected agreement or overlap? Yeah, so there's lots of items to cover in those. And I'm not going to dive into a long speech. It's already a default of mine. And you just ask a small question and I speak for 15 minutes. Let's not ruin this interview like this.

So let me just tackle the big ones. I think one way of where there's more agreements than I initially suspected is on the place of good works in the discussions on justification. So the Protestants are very eager to say that we're saved, we're justified, we're acquitted by faith alone, that this is purely our faith in Christ. and that's good works are not the grounds for our justification. God does not look at our righteousness, our goodness. No, it's all because we place our trust in Jesus,

and that's his sacrifice on the cross that accounts for the fact that we are justified, that we are forgiven, that we are acquitted, and that's free, simply on the basis of our faith in Jesus. And one natural opponent of this view would be to say, well, no, you're justified, you're acquitted, on the basis of your own goodness, your righteousness. You know, God looks at you, you're good enough, your good works are great, and so you get a pass on that basis. That's a very traditional opposition between the two and one that the reformers are very eager to press.

And to some extent, there are some relevant conversations to have between Protestants and Catholics about the place of good works and some genuine disagreement can be formulated. What I did come to appreciate, though, is that Catholics, the most of the most of the most of main answer to the question that Protestants are raising when they ask, are we justified by faith alone? The Catholic answer is rarely heard because Catholics use the word justification to mean something different than the Protestant. What they mean is more close to what the Protestant would call sanctification, because Catholics use the word justification to describe a process that involves a moral improvement, a transformation, a renewal of the person with actual acquisition

of righteousness in there. That's what they use the word justification for. So to Protestant ears, that's terrible. Don't put good works inside of justification. It's just that the word justification is used differently. And once you clarify this, I was able to say, okay, well, then the relevant answer from the Catholic Church is not going to be what they say about justification.

It's going to be what they say in answer to the Protestant question, which was, what must I do to have eternal life? And there are found in the Catholic sources, is an answer that's quite clear, obviously one that I disagree with, but there was one that I did not expect. And the answer is fairly systematic in pointing to the sacramental system with baptism as the means of entering into what they call a state of grace. And then it's a state of grace that if you're into the state of grace when you die, you are acquitted. You have eternal life. but you can also lose that state of grace on Catholicism if you commit a mortal sin,

at which point the only way to come back into the state of grace would be to receive confession from an ordained priest. And that being in the state of grace or out of the state of grace is what I think is the true equivalent to what the Protestants view as justification. It's a binary status, you're in or you're out, and it is the one that determines at the moment of death whether you have eternal life, or you undergo judgment and condemnation. So that's what I found from the Catholic sources. And there, once you can appreciate that system here is not like good works, righteousness, and moral appraisal.

No, the baptism and the confession, if necessary. Both of those things are sacraments that don't have to do with you being a good person or performing good works. So I found that there is some degree of agreement here that the ultimate ground of our being in or out, justified with Protestant language or not justified or in the state of grace or out of the state of grace with Catholic language is on neither side based on our own moral righteousness. And so that's a common ground that I did not expect and that I did fine. Yeah, that's helpful. In our previous dialogue, I think in emails, we had talked about the word justification being used in these two senses and how sometimes this isn't appreciated. and we had various metaphors.

You know, for me, it was an American and a Brit debating whether football is the greatest sport. And you can quickly imagine how unless we understand that we're using the word football differently, the conversation is going to run awry. And I think you had some other metaphors as well. Was one of them about a cake? Yes, I was saying that the word cake between a French person and an English person in French cake is a salty meal.

It's an appetizer. with a ham in it. And then for the English person, the cake is either cookie or the birthday cake. So if you are debating what are the ingredients in order to make a cake, it's pointless to debate about the ingredients themselves. You first need to agree on what meal you're talking about. But then I came to appreciate your metaphor better than mine. So if I do write on this, I will steal your football metaphor and I'll footnote you with a

thanks for it because I think it communicates better the point that the, the, the two persons are using the same word with different meanings and that they refer to two altogether different things, the ingredients of which are pointless to debate until we agree on the actual meaning of the word, the reference of the word. So I think that's exactly what's going on with justification and therefore debating whether we're justified by faith alone or justified by faith plus works is the wrong way of approaching the question because it's leaving the equivocated word justification in the middle of our debate thesis. And that doesn't work. So that's traditional way of framing the debate. Are we justified by faith alone or faith plus works doesn't give justice

to the debate because the Catholics say, well, justified by faith plus work. Yes, they would say yes for that because they mean something different by justification. But it's not the really interesting question that Protestants are asking here. So we should just let the word justification aside for a second and ask our question without it, which is, what must I do to have eternal life? That's what we really are interested in with justification. And then the Catholics have an answer. They don't call it justification, but they do have one that now we can put on the table. And their answer there is not faith plus works. The answer is the sacramental system gives you the state of grace that you obtain by baptism and that you regain by confession to an ordained priest if you commit a mortal

sin in between. And that is fully evaluatable. And now we have a very valuable. And now we have a good debate. Yes. So would you say, and I think it's really helpful for Protestants to be open to see where are the areas where we have more overlap and there's no compromise in that. It's not like we're saying, well, the remaining differences are not significant or something like that. It's just a recognition. And I think Protestants should appreciate the fact that the Catholic language, even if you disagree with it, it should not be sort of with a sleight of hand sloughed off because it has massive historical pedigree from Augustine. Augustine uses the word justification like that, and there's a massive tradition stemming from him for using the language like that. So there's a little

humility in the process here, I think is helpful for Protestants to really, well, both sides, really, to try to understand one another. So would you say that, how would you respond to this statement? Our main difference on this issue has to do with the sacraments, not the word justification. Yeah, I think so. We do disagree on the meaning of the word justification, but that's not a disagreement that I want to spend my research and writing debating. Is the word correctly? I do think the Protestants have it, right? I think that the word justification comes from the Greek word dikaisune.

And I think in the text of the Bible, dikaiosune is quite uncontroversially now, right? It's kind of recognized even by Catholic scholars that the word is employed to speak of an acquittal. that it is really a forensic concept of acquitted or condemned. So I think that's an interesting conversation about the meaning of the word, but I'm a philosopher. I'm like words. We have plenty of words. Just clarify the words. You use a compound expression and now you have two different concepts and now we can debate the concepts.

And those are much more interesting to debate. And yes, they are going to be involving the sacraments for the Catholic side. And the Protestants will say, no, that justification you only have by faith. their own. One of the common caricatures in the other direction against Protestants is that Sola Fide is associated some way or another with easy believism. And the idea here is that there's no conception of good works as necessary for Protestants. And so, you know, people will say, so how would you respond to this statement? Someone says, look, the only time we have justification by faith alone in the Bible, it's denied in James chapter.

chapter two. So therefore, that's a problem for Protestants. Yeah, so so that's also a common objection against a Protestant view. And here, so there's, there's there's equivocation on the word justification. So there's several different ways that we can resolve the, the misunderstandings or the equivocations. We say, let's talk about the same thing here. And the Catholics now may be concerned that when we say there are no good works inside of justification. That's because for them, justification is that process of renewal and growing in faith in Christ and becoming an actually better person. And so they might be wondering, well, if Protestant say there's no good works in this, right? Same word, justification. Then do Protestant deny that this

needs to happen? And this is where Protestant can clarify that no, none at all. Any genuinely converted Christian who has the justification on the basis of his faith alone will, it will follow, that he will also be sanctified, and this is the very consistent Protestant view, that sanctification necessarily follows a genuine justification so that there will be a moral transformation. So the equivocation being recognized on both sides allow both sides to appreciate the full orb teaching of the other side much better. And so if you want to get equal and complex, you can now simply distinguish between, well, I would say, P justification, right?

Protestant justification and C justification, just give them different names, and then ask, are we be justified by faith alone, or are we C justified by faith alone? And the additional, helpful piece to realize here is that also faith is employed differently between Catholics and Protestants. So faith typically from the Catholics is going to be purely the intellectual sense. So that's they distinguish between faith, hope and love. And so they would say that the hope and love component is not part of faith. And so it's the purely intellectual belief. And the Protestants, when they say we're justified by faith alone,

means something much stronger than just intellectual sense. They have the fully trusting relationship of placing out belief, placing our faith, placing our trust in Christ. So there is equivocation on justification and equivocation on faith. And once you point those two out, and you, again, like the good philosopher, just give them sweet different names so that you have now four different labels, P justification and C justification, and P faith and C faith, you're able to ask four different questions, right? You have the matrix of the four. And so you can ask, are we P justified by P faith alone? Are we P justified by C faith alone? Are we C justified by C faith alone? And are we C justified by C faith alone? These are four different questions, and here, when you clarify the meanings of those, you realize that Protestants and Catholics agree on the answer to three of those four questions, because they all agree that we are not p-justified by C-faith alone. We are not acquitted, right, p-justified, we're not acquitted on the basis of C-faith alone. C-faith would be the Catholic view of faith, which is just intellectual assent.

Partisants agree that we're not justified by that kind of thing alone. Are we P justified by, sorry, C justified by P faith alone. So C justified is this moral transformation process by P faith alone. Well, no, Protestants also deny that because P faith would be just placing our trust in Jesus. That's not the only thing that happens in C justification. There is an actual transformation and that's what Protestant call sanctification. And that also happens. So we're not C justified by P faith alone.

Now, are we C justified by C faith alone? So are we transformed, like the Catholics say, happens in justification by intellectual assent alone? No, we're not. Catholics deny it and Protestants also deny it. So that's three of those four questions on which we agree. The answer is no. The only one that we disagree on, and that's, I think, where the debate really lies, is are we be justified by P faith alone?

And this is where the Protestant says, yes, we are acquitted, like P-justified, by P-Faith, which is an active living trust in Christ alone. And that's the one that Catholics have to deny. So there's quite a bit of agreement when you remove the equivocation. And yet it's not full agreement because we clearly learned on one of those four questions where we disagree, where Protestants say, yes, we are, be justified by P-Fa-Fa-Lone. And Catholics say, no, we're not. And that's where we can debate. Yeah. So I want to ask one last question before we go on to Calvinism, and that's what are your remaining concerns practically or theologically about the Catholic view?

But just two quick observations. One is kind of an ancillary methodological thought that's come up into my mind is the helpfulness of having people with philosophical training involved in conversations on theology, because sometimes there's conceptual clarity in the way philosophers approach things that is so helpful. another thought is the way you cash that out is very similar to how I've thought about this. And one of the things that's helpful for me has been to go back to the New Testament. And see, to some degree, some of these diverse usages of terms and tensions are reflected in the New Testament itself. Because James uses the word faith as intellectual assent. He says, even the demons believe. Paul is using the word faith in a different sense.

He speaks of faith working itself through love and so forth. And I also think the word justification is being used a little different. in some passages. So it's... That's exactly right. If I can comment on this, that's very often the case that we theologians use words to give them a technical theological meaning, you know, justification, sanctification have acquired a technical meaning in theological conversation and that's fine, that's helpful. But when those very words are found in the Bible, we should not necessarily assume that they are invested with that technical meaning there. And one way of seeing this is,

for example, in first Corinthians one, where Paul tells the Corinthian that they've been sanctified. Are we talking about the same Corinthians as we see in First Corinthians 10s and 11 when they get drunk at the Lord's table and they have sex with their mother-in-lawers? So clearly, the sanctification is talking about is not exactly the technical term of sanctification of having been transformed and renewed and being perfected morally. It's just that the New Testament sometimes uses the words in what is not the technical usage of the theologians.

Yes, that's very helpful. Okay, so briefly, give us any final thoughts about, because we want to chart out those areas of agreement, but we also want to be clear about where are the remaining areas of disagreement. And some of those are very practically significant. So what would be at the end of the day your areas of disagreement with the Catholic position? Yeah, so once we've really clarified and see those two systems to be compared, right, where the answer to the question, what must I do to have eternal life is laid out? And the Protestants say you have to repent of your sin and trust in Jesus. by faith alone, you will have that acquittal and eternal life. And the Catholics answer, you must be in a state of grace at the moment of death, which is acquired by baptism. And if a mortal sin is committed, retrieve it by confession to an ordained priest and absolution. So once we have those two views, my remaining concerns simply are that I think that the Protestant view is true, that this is the one that is taught biblically.

And in terms of practical application, you know, you said that it matters practically. well yeah it sure does because if I take the Catholic system that I've just described and apply it to me, I think it's very clear that I am not in a state of grace right now. And this is an interesting timeline of my own life, is that I grew up in the Catholic face. I was baptized as an infant. And so that is the baptism that counts if Catholicism is true to put me into a state of grace. And while the Catholic Church recognizes the validity of Protestant baptisms, as long as they are Trinitarian, that they have the right. matter, the right form, and the right intention, that they can say, yes, Protestant's baptism

work to get you in the state of grace. You don't have to be baptized by a Catholic priest. So they do agree with that. They do deny that you can be baptized more than once. So I don't know what your chronology is, Gavin, if you were ever part of the Catholic Church or whatever, but I, having been baptized as an infant, this is the one that allegedly got me into the state of grace. And then as my book readily explains, I've lived as an atheist and I've committed all sorts of things that surely qualify as mortal sins according to the Catholic Church. So that, again, if Catholicism is true, has taken me out of the state of grace. And my Protestant baptism from after my conversion as an evangelical Christian counts for nothing according to the sacramental system.

What would be necessary for me to return into a state of grace is confession and absolution to an ordained priest. And I have no intention of doing this. So it seems like the sacramental system declares me to be outside of the state of grace. So it is very practical and I have some skin in the game here. Thankfully, I'm very convinced that the New Testament teaching and the apostolic deposit is that we are not saved by that sacramental system. We are saved by faith alone in Christ alone. And this is the beautiful message that I came to discover in my conversion story. Yes.

Wonderful to hear your thoughts about that. I very much agree with the, in the Protestant system, there's an emphasis upon the simplicity of the gospel that results in a kind of assurance that is really wonderful. So, and hopefully that discussion will be clarifying conceptually for people as well and working through issues of justification. But let's talk about Calvinism a bit as well, because this is another area of expertise and research for you. And in other interviews, you've gone into kind of more of the nuances of definition

and kind of really laying things out, you know, what is compatibilism? What is libertarian free will and things like this? So we can go into that insofar as we'll be helpful for what we're talking about. But let's just jump right into some of the more street-level objections, concerns, and so forth. So I'll sort of, as a fellow Calvinist, I'll sort of play devil's advocate and throw some thoughts your way and see, you know, how do you respond? to this one, that kind of thing. Sounds good. But first of all, just tell us what is Calvinism and why would you go by that label?

Yes, Cheryl. So the word itself is not entirely uncontroversial and it means different things in different contexts. So sometimes Calvinism simply refers to the entirety of the, you know, the Presbyterian beliefs, the reformed tradition, you know, starting with John Calvin and, you know, involving all sorts of things that maybe I as a self-identified Calvinism. don't even believe. I mean, you're a Baptist as well. I am also a credo-baptist, so I do disagree with the reform tradition on that, right? So the Presbyterians reformed would disagree with me. So in that sense, I'm not a Calvinist in that sense. But when we talk about Calvinism in the

context of discussions on providence and free will, I think that the Calvinist view is the view, again, that was codified in the number of the reformed confession. So if you take the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession, they have very detailed sections on divine provenance and human free will. And they teach a view that I think is properly called Calvinism. And that is in the theological and confessional tradition, a view that places a strong emphasis on God's sovereignty that God controls and ordains everything that comes to pass. And yet that human free will is left intact by this because we are morally responsible and God is still in a place to judge us or praise us. So we are praiseworthy or blameworthy for what we do. That is what I take

to be the teachings of the reformed confessions, the tradition called Calvinism. And then there's the application of all of that in the very technical philosophical debates where this is going to be unpacked in questions that philosophers raise more often about determinism. That is, does God's Providence mean that he determines the outcome of human choices. And if he does, is that compatible with more responsibility? So I take the view that Calvinism is, yes, that reformed tradition there with all of the confessions and the statements on providence and applied to philosophical debates. We find the equivalent debates where you have the question of those we say, yes,

where we are determined, our choices are determined and yet they are free. or those who say, no, we are not determined. I mean, we would not be free and morally responsible. So we have that debate, and there I think that the label of Calvinism fits nicely for those who say, like me, that the outcome of our choices is determined by God's providential control of what we do. And yet, we are still morally responsible. So that's the dual affirmation, that you use the word compatibilism, that is the one that's there for the philosophical debate. it's those we say that us being determined is still compatible with us being morally responsible or having free will. Yes, okay.

Long answer for the usage of the word, but I think it frames the debate well, where you have the historical tradition and the philosophical debates, where the Calvinists take the determinist compatibleist, in my opinion. Yes, okay. Now let me just say a word of how I approach this because I have many non-Calvinist viewers. Now, I have a lot of patience for this conversation. I have a level of sympathy for how someone might come out to a different side. I view it as an in-house discussion among brothers and sisters in Christ. I don't look at those who aren't Calvinists and say, oh, how dare they or how could they possibly come to that conclusion? Because I feel that we're in deep waters here. We're talking about how the sovereignty of God relates to creature creatures wills and decisions and that's very tricky uh so i have a lot of patience for this and so but i understand that a lot of people um who watch my videos are very concerned about calvinism and they view it as this kind of dark foreboding system and so you know here's an initial sort of uh sentiment uh that i'll throw out that some feel this way and i'll see how you would would anyone believe in Calvinism since it makes God into a kind of monster? Yeah, so I guess the easy way out of this is to deny the premise that this makes God into some kind of monster.

So do you have another question? So no, so that's one general concern. So my own work is focused on the two main families of objections against Calvinism. One is this question of free will. Like if God determines what we do, can we be morally responsible for what we do, do we have free will. So that's really the textbook question of compatibleism. So I focus on those objections. And then there's a related family of objections that are more to do with what you've just raised, which is questioning the goodness of God in light of the fact that if he determines what we do, that includes all of the bad things that we do. So that would mean that he determines the outcome of our sinful decisions and everything that's evil in this world

happens under the providential decree of God that's expressed in determination, that God determines the outcome, that he necessitates that those things happen, and that those things involve all of the evil in the world. So we're talking horrendous things. So then the question is raised, does that affect God's goodness to affirm such a thing that God providentially decrease the good and the bad? So I do a lot of work to try to unpack the question well and to give the tools to think about this correctly. Some of it's biblical to begin with, right? As Christians, we want to have some grounding in the Bible. And so I point out a number of the things that the Bible says about God's involvement in both good and evil, that the Bible doesn't tend to shy away from that kind of language

as much as we sometimes do to say that God is in control of all of that. He creates light and darkness. You know, does disaster come to the city unless the Lord has done it? Those kinds of languages where this spectrum texts like Tom Shriner calls them, where God declares his full control of the good all the way to one end, all the way to the bad on the other end. So there's biblical teachings to account for in your own philosophical views. And then how do we understand God's goodness in light of his decree of all of this evil that happens? Then it's going to be an affirmation that God, in decreeing things the way that how he,

in decreeing things to be the way they are, he has good reasons. And so this is a fairly traditional Christian answer to the problem of evil that says that's all the evil that happens under God's watch at least. If not his decree, at least his watch is justified by the fact that God has good reasons to permit this. And that's just because we sometimes we rarely see what good reasons God may have doesn't mean that he doesn't have them. So this general blanket answer to the problem of evil from Christians is something that can be applied by Calvinists more specifically to say, well, why would he determine that this happens like that? Well, he has a justifying reason that. And if he does, then there's not necessarily something wrong about him bringing this about if he has a good redeeming purpose behind this.

So the relationship between God and the evil that happens, if determinism is true, raises all sorts of different technical question. We can ask, well, is this inappropriate for him to cause evil or to be the author of evil or for him to not be permitting evil? And so I try to tackle all of those and try to look at examples and arguments that would lead us to think this is inappropriate for God to do that. But ultimately, I conclude on each case that not only there's no strong argument in favor of the claim that Calvinism involves God inappropriately in evil, but there's also very often rejoinders from showing that whatever the Calvinist is affirming is relevantly similar to what non-Calvinist would be saying. So clearly the Calvinist view is stronger in affirming that God is

determining the evil that happens, but many times over, whatever the non-Calvinist complains about in that scenario are things that are found also in their own views. And so it allows us to a little bit soften the differences quite a bit to say, no, look, we are both in the same problem trying to explain some things that are tricky that are not uniquely present in the Calvinist view. So that goes a long way as well. And there's a lot of arguments in the literature that tried to do that. Greg Welty has a famous paper where he tries to show that when comparing Calvinist and the Molinist view, which is one very popular non-Calvinist option for the view on free will and providence. He tries to show that, yeah, Calvinism and Molanism are not the same,

but if you take concrete examples, you can show that the God of Molinism and the God of Calvinism face similar challenges, such that if the Calvinist has indeed a true challenge there, then it also undermines the Molanist view and vice versa. So that if we all agree that this similarity is not a problem, but then we don't have a problem with the Calvinist view after all. Yeah. this is something I'm really glad you said that this is something I personally feel would really help bring more patience and sympathy within the discussion is realizing Calvinists are not uniquely facing this problem even for a classical Armenian you've got foreknowledge and yet God still chooses to create he still chooses not to intervene in such a way as to close off the possibility of horrific evil and so some of the more that doesn't mean they're the exact same problems but it does mean that the most basic sort of moral intuition kind of problems are on the table no matter what we hold to. Unless you go an open theist route and think God is surprised by evil, but even then, there's lots of case studies you can show where you could ask, well, why doesn't God intervene in this

way or that way and so forth? So the problems of evil that we face in this area just seem to me like they're on the table for all the systems to a large degree. But here's another objection that might allow you to get into your first of your two areas of research that you mentioned. The scripture says, First Timothy two, God desires all shall be saved. Calvinism says God does not desire, does not will the salvation of all. Therefore, Calvinism is against the scripture. Yeah. So this is here another area where identifying equivocation pays off.

And I think that the Bible and all Christians must recognize that there are different ways in which we speak of God's will. and that there are degrees and that God can have some things that he wills or desires, and yet providentially brings about the opposite. And for that to happen, it's all that it needs is that he has some degree of desire or incentive to do one thing, but greater desires or greater incentives to do something else. So as long as that's present, then we're going to find ourselves saying that God wants something and yet doesn't actualize it or doesn't bring it about. And that doesn't really give us license to say that therefore he was completely unable to do so.

It's simply that he has a constellation of desires that are mutually exclusive and that he ultimately goes for what he most wants to bring about. So the issue of God's will, there's lots, again, of literature, I think that John Piper has a really good article on this. Are there two wills in God where he goes through the very clear biblical examples of things that God says, I want this to happen. And yet he brings about something else. And we understand that simply he has some will, but he has a greater will for something else. So that's a broader answer to the problem of evil once again. He has some sense of the will that evil doesn't happen. But if a certain instance of evil has a greater redeeming purpose behind it, then God is going to bring it about for the sake of the greater good,

even though he has some desire that it doesn't happen. And, you know, again, take this to the paradigm example of Christ's death on the cross. there's a strong real sense in which God does not want Jesus to die on the cross. It's bad. It's evil. It's a murder. And yet he has an overwhelmingly good, overriding reason to bring this about. And therefore, the Bible can tell us that it pleased the Lord to crush him, which is a very strong language. But here we simply, we don't deny the goodness of God. We simply see he has some good purposes that are only accomplished through something really evil. Therefore, he decreased the greater good. Now, this is great with the cross of Jesus, because we are told what that greater good is.

So we're in a good position to cheer. Most of the evil and suffering that happens in this world, we are not in a position to judge. And we just have to trust that God is good. It just doesn't give us a strong reason to reject that he's in control of the evil that happens, as long as it's possible that he has a good reason behind it. If you had to go to two or three passages in scripture to try to support compatibilism, where would you look to first? So compatibilityism is a very technical philosophical thesis, right?

So it's the compatibility of determinism and more responsibility. So there's lots of places where the classical proof text used by Calvinists that I think are helpful in this area to say, here are examples of something that God says he brought about. And yet it was through the human free will of various people. and he turns around and does judge them morally for what they've done, even though he claims that he's the one we did it through them. So those texts are helpful there, and we can look at Genesis 50 with Joseph's brothers, selling him into slavery, and then where Joseph says, Joseph says, you didn't send me to slavery.

God sent me. Well, we did it. They did. God did. And yet they are morally responsible for having done it freely. God wasn't holding a gun to their heads or a knife under their throats. please send your brother to Egypt. No, they did it fully of their own,

but God says he's the one who did that. So that's one key example. The crucifixion of Jesus is another one, where the biblical teachings on that are just as explicit as I just said they were. In Acts 2 and in Acts 4, we are given the full providential picture where we say that God is the one

who brought together all the wicked men that plotted against Jesus so that he would be crucified. You have Isaiah 10, where God is sending the Assyrian, against Israel as an act of judgment on Israel, and yet he turns around and then judges the Assyrians for the wickedness of their hearts. So you have all of those classical texts where you have both God's control of the human choices and more responsibility for those choices that suggests

something like compatibilism. Now, I repeat, compatibilism is a very philosophical, technical thesis, so you don't find discussions of determinism and necessitation of choices in the Bible. this is not the language or the context for those kinds of discussions. So then it does raise the further question of when the Bible says that God decrees or brings about or that he really makes it happen. Like that kind of language is there. I know, there is potentially room to say, well, maybe it's not through determination. So that's where Molinists, for example, might have a view where, yeah, God decreased things. It just doesn't determine them.

So that's why the biblical text doesn't necessarily, quoting you through. three scriptures is not going to settle the debates like case closed Calvinism is true. You need to unpack the text and then the philosophical arguments with biblical premises to assess whether determinism is compatible with more responsibility. But I think the minimal biblical data does give you more responsibility. I think that we are more irresponsible in such a way that God can very well blame us or praise us for what we do. And the other phrased mildly and uncontroversially that God brings about quite a bit of things that we do freely. Now, does that mean that he determines it?

There might be still the disagreement between Molinists and Calvinists, but at least God does that. And, you know, this is why you're trying to unite Christians around various perspectives. I think that those two things are important, biblical, and we can rejoice that at least they are affirmed by both the Calvinists and the Molinists in this debate, that we agree that God brings about sovereignly lots of things that lots are all things. and also that we are morally responsible for what we do. Last question on this topic.

At a practical level, what would you say would be helpful for Calvinists and non-Calvinists that could help our conversation improve, whether at an intellectual level or just at a relational level? Let's see. Well, I'm going to give you the stock philosopher answer, but I do think that's understanding the usage of the words and removing equivocation is going to remove misunderstandings. And that does remove some fears that the other is affirming something terrible. So I do try to identify some of those equivocation. So what does free will mean?

What does it mean to have free will? Sometimes it frees in terms of an ability to do otherwise. So I do something freely because I could have done otherwise. All of those concepts are equivocated. So people use them with different meanings. and some of which are Calvinists, some of which are non-Calvinists. So a focus on some of those points of disagreement where there are equivocation, clarifying those allows us to speak to each other more clearly and to target actual views rather

than stroman of our own making. I think these are helpful in conversations between Calvinists and Armenians. And then, yes, focus on the essentials as well. I mean, I come back to my understanding of the good news and the gospel. not a gospel issue. I think that free will is an important and interesting and entertaining topic to debate and to discuss. And yet at the same time, it's not affecting the question of what must I do to have eternal life. And that is one that I care deeply and more than free will itself. So that we have far more in common when I debate a Mormonist or an Armenian than I do

when I debate a Roman Catholic on the right view of salvation, because I do think that salvation is at stake that it's a very important question to get wrong, what must I do to have eternal life, in ways that is less dramatic when you get wrong the question of what's the nature of free will and divine providence. Right. Fantastic. Well, Guillaume, thank you so much for the chance to talk. I really appreciate your work and everything that you're doing. Last thing is, where can people find out more about you? Yeah, so I tweet on Twitter. My handle is, is theology, so that's theology, except a G-U-I at the end for Guillaume. So that's T-H-E-O-L-O-G-U-I, Theology.

So I tweet there. Otherwise, they can also simply look for some of my work on YouTube if they type my name. If they are fortunate enough to have my name not misspelled and type it into YouTube, they will find plenty of things that I had to say there. And then my next book, Confessions of a French atheist, is coming out with Tyndale on June 7. And so that's also I have a place to see you. a little bit of what I'm up to and what I did.

Fantastic. And again, for everybody watching, there's a link to that book in the video description. So let me encourage people to buy the book, read the book, talk about the book. I think they'll find it really interesting and really helpful. So thanks for watching everybody. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe, and we'll see you next time.