The Crash of Saddleback's Doctrinal Balancing Act

Rick Warren's "Frequently Asked Questions" webpage offers a large quantity of answers for seekers at his church. It's problematic however, when we find answers that contradict each other. Perhaps the contradictions get lost in the sea of other answers, and therefore nobody ends up noticing. One example is in FAQ #11 where he warns: "If you lean too far towards man's free will, you come down on the side of humanism: we are in control of our fate". This is contradicted in FAQ #60, which says your choice is important because "it determines where I am going to spend eternity". Well which is it?
Alan Kurschner says: Saddleback attempts a balancing act between predestination and free-will, and ends up embracing "Evangelical Deism" and the ancient heresy of "Dualism". Alan who previously wrote on the CalvinistGadfly website goes on to say:
Over the years I have often observed three objections to Calvinism: Caricatures, Eisegetical, and Emotional. The emotional objections are the most interesting in my opinion. One that pops up often is "We need to be balanced with Predestination and Free will." When a seasoned Calvinist hears this, they know exactly what that means. For those who do not know what I am talking about, allow me to decipher this code phrase for you by giving you a concrete example in action.
On the Saddleback small group page, there is a FAQ section titled, "Small Group Questions about Saddleback Church". There is a list of common questions that are asked in Saddleback small groups. Coming in at #11, the question is asked, "Do we really have free will?" The sub-question is, "How could God know and plan everything that will happen and yet also give us a free choice? Aren't these two ideas mutually exclusive?" Five very short paragraphs are given as an answer. Let's take some selections from the paragraphs and briefly respond to each one,
One of the great truths of the Bible is that God is able to know and be in control of all that happens (the Bible calls this predestination), and yet still give us free will and individual choice within that plan.
This is not what the Bible calls predestination. Predestination in a general sense is that God decreed those things that will come to past from eternity past. Further, there is no attempt to explain the statement "control all that happens." I would even argue that an Open Theist can agree with the statement above. But what caught my eye is the phrase, "and yet still give us free will and individual choice within that plan." Here the writer is obviously reassuring the Saddleback member that he or she has not lost their free will. It is predictable. Say anything about God and theology, XYZ, then add the tag, "but we still have free will."
One picture that has always helped me to understand these twin truths of God's sovereignty and our free will is that of two ropes hanging before you and extending through the ceiling above your head. One is marked predestination" and the other free will." [sic] If you were able to look through the ceiling you could see that the two ropes are actually one, hanging on a pulley above the ceiling. God can see, in ways that we cannot see, the ways that these seemingly contradictory facts are actually one powerful truth.
Don't expect Saddleback pastors to use the Biblical picture of God's sovereignty and man's will - that being Paul's picture that we are "lumps of clay" and God is the Potter. Nope, leave it up to a Saddleback humanistic Arminian to come up with a "two ropes" illustration to protect his own so-called libertarian free will and diminish our Lord's freedom.
This rope illustration is comical. Here the writer is pretending to be omniscient. I hope you caught what was said, "If you were able to look through the ceiling you could see..." Let's stop right there. The writer is contradicting himself by saying that we cannot look through the ceiling, then he goes on to tell us what is through the ceiling! Simply amazing. That would be like me saying, "We cannot know God's eternal thoughts, but let me tell you what they are." So, being that this Saddleback pastor says that no one can know these thoughts of God, he admits that he is privy to such information. He continues to enlighten us with what we cannot know. He says, "If you were able to look through the ceiling you could see that the two ropes are actually one, hanging on a pulley above the ceiling. God can see, in ways that we cannot see." Ah! there is a pulley above the ceiling...of course...now I understand, thanks to the omniscience of Saddleback gnostic pastors. But I am left with more questions than I had at first: Where is this taught in Scripture? If "God can see, in ways that we cannot see," then how can Saddleback pastors see what we cannot see? How can I look through the "ceiling" and attain this special knowledge of God's eternal thoughts? What else do Saddleback pastors know that I or you don't know? Did an angel appear to Saddleback pastors to reveal this special knowledge?
(By the way, when you hear the phrase, "twin truths" that is just a synonym for "We need to be balanced.")
He continues,
Our free choice cannot violate God's sovereignty and God's sovereignty cannot violate our free choice.
There you have it: Saddleback officially embraces "Evangelical Deism." But worse, they have committed the ancient heresy of "dualism." That is, affirming that there are two independent sovereign powers in the universe that govern their own realms.
What is God's opinion on this matter? Read that last Deist quote again,then compare that with what God Almighty says here in Romans 9:
18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? 22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory Romans 9:18-23
I am kind of torn... Do I take the word of gnostic Saddleback pastors who state that they have special knowledge from God on this issue, or do I go with the apostle Paul?
The other way that the rope picture helps me is as a reminder that I can't lean more heavily on one of these two truths - God's will and our choice - than the other. Be sure to keep these truths in balance.
Is this Paul's view of the human will? Does Paul take a "neutral" position on the will of God and the will of man in his treatise of Romans? Once again, this is simply Deist language couched in "Evangelical" jargon. Here we encounter, "Be sure to keep these truths in balance." By now you should know what this means when the Arminian says this. The attempt is to affirm a libertarian notion of free will and to negate God of his free will. This is no "balance," but simply man's effort of stripping the Creator of one of his attributes, free will, and appropriating it as an attribute of the creature. Oh it sounds nice and civil to say, "Let's be balanced," but the implication is that if you do not affirm their notion of "balanced," you are extreme.
There is no inherent value in being "balanced." Should we be balanced pot smokers? Should we balance our idolatry so it's not too extreme? "Let's be balanced" is all about rhetoric. I am not concerned with being balanced–my concern is to be Biblical. Saddleback is more concerned with being palatable with their members and pleasing their creaturely sensibilities than being faithful to God's Word.
In summary, make no bones about it, Saddleback detests the freedom of God. Sure, they may use nice sounding phrases that go unchallenged. But it is those platitudes that are most dangerous because they sound reasonable and "balanced" to the sensibilities of the creature's mind. What is more dangerous? Someone outside the "Evangelical" camp overtly attacking the freedom of God, or a group within the camp attempting to be "reasonable" in accord with their libertarian assumptions.
My heart goes out to those in Saddleback small groups. When these topics arise in a discussion group, the pastors or those leading the group will have their canned Arminian answers to such concerns or questions. Woe to those Saddleback pastors for "not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." James 3:1