The Wonderful Decree

Reconciling Sovereign Election and Universal Benevolence

Travis James Campbell

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781683593331
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Part 1

PROLEGOMENA

1

MUSINGS OVER A DARK PROVIDENCE

So what do you say to people (and I hear this all the time) who say, “Everything happens for a reason”?

—Bill Maher

I say, this was not the coffee that I ordered.

—Seth MacFarlane

Have you ever found yourself traveling down the road of life thinking, “This is perfect! Life just couldn’t get any better!”? As you were saying that, were you hit with a tragedy that seems too great to bear? That very thing happened to my wife, Lillian, and me.

In May 1999, Lillian and I discovered that she was pregnant. Most couples want to wait a few weeks, or even months, before letting people know. Not us! Lillian immediately began calling everyone she knew to announce the great news. Near the end of the month we left Philadelphia, where I was working on my PhD in theology, and went back to our original home in Dallas to visit with family and friends. Everyone was so happy for us. Things just couldn’t have been better! In one year I would be finished with my coursework for the program and we would have a newborn baby, and so I looked forward to the summer of 2000 as the time when I would start my career and grow my family.

When we arrived back at our small apartment in Pennsylvania, we did what most people did back in the 1990s—we checked our answering machine. One message would change our lives forever. The doctor’s office asked Lillian to call back to schedule more blood tests, as something didn’t look right. The following day she called the office and was informed that her white blood cell count had reached thirty thousand. For one full month we spent most of our time ruling out possibilities. In July 1999 Lillian was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

I really can’t describe in words the depth of despair both of us sank into at that moment. My mother died of cancer when I was eight years old. I just figured, via some twisted sense of logic, that I had had my share of loss. Surely God would not allow my child to be raised without his mother since, after all, I had endured that already! Why would God bring a brand-new life into this world, only to snuff it out of existence? Why allow a child to grow up without a mother?

The total irrationality of the diagnosis was compounded even further when we learned just how “impossible” it was for a person like Lillian to have CLL. You see, there are three kinds of people who are rarely diagnosed with this form of leukemia: people under thirty, women, and Asians. Lillian was all three!

As you might imagine, I immediately began learning all I could about CLL. I learned that there are several kinds of leukemia. Acute leukemias are far more aggressive and so need immediate treatment. Had Lillian had an acute form of leukemia, she would have required immediate chemotherapy, in which case we would have surely lost our child. With a disease like CLL, one can potentially go years without treatment. So we began the process of month-to-month monitoring of her condition. Our hope was that she could at least give birth to our child before enduring chemotherapy.

Our prayers were answered when, in January of 2000, our beautiful baby boy, Evan, was born. And yet, as happy as I was about this wonderful gift, a certain foreboding sense of an imminent tragedy remained in my mind. Such fears were confirmed when one morning in February I awoke and, to my horror, saw very swollen lymph nodes around Lillian’s neck. Due to Lillian’s condition, I doubled my coursework to ensure that we could leave Pennsylvania in May.

I began applying for pastoral positions in Texas, thinking that we could move there to be with family for support as we sought treatment at M. D. Anderson Hospital. Unfortunately, no church would offer me an interview. To give one example of my bad experiences with various churches, a ruling elder of one congregation actually encouraged me, saying that I had made his short list of candidates—but within one week he reneged on that statement, saying I was unqualified for my lack of experience. So, with a newborn baby, a wife with cancer, and no prospects for a job, I heeded Lillian’s advice that we should move in with her parents in Greenville, Texas.

Our family moved to Greenville in July, and within one month I landed a job as a security guard at Texas A&M University in nearby Commerce. Once again our prayers had been answered, as we now had absolutely no worries about medical costs. In October Lillian and I traveled to Houston to establish a relationship with the doctors at M. D. Anderson. By this time Evan was thriving and had even stopped breastfeeding in September. So, once again, the timing could not have been better, given our situation.

Just before Lillian traveled down to Houston to begin her first round of what was described as mild chemotherapy, her doctor informed her that the CLL had mutated into an aggressive lymphoma. Now there could be no delay; she had to begin treatment, and the chemo would be anything but mild. From November 2000 through April 2001 Lillian, our baby, and her parents lived in Houston while I worked five hours away as a security guard. She went through hell. While going through this horrendous experience, she told me that she never really felt like she had cancer until she was treated for it. And yet, though hellacious, the chemotherapy was worth it; for in April of 2001 we received the wonderful news that Lillian’s cancer was in full remission.

We decided that the best choice we could make to ensure the cancer would not come back was for Lillian to undergo a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, no matches could be found among family members. So we opted for the next best thing, which (at the time) was quite revolutionary. Stem cells were proving to be a viable option, having the potential to accomplish exactly what we needed in a bone marrow transplant. We found a match in late May, and by late June the stem cell transplant had taken place. Lillian spent fifty days in isolation!

After moving back into our Houston apartment, Lillian had difficulty holding down food. She went back into the hospital, undergoing multiple tests to discover the source of the problem. In mid-September, just a few days after 9/11, the doctors talked us into performing a liver biopsy as a precautionary measure. Within a few days blood had seeped from Lillian’s liver into her lungs. By September 17 Lillian had to go on a ventilator, as she had now acquired acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Lillian was a nurse, so when I gave her the news, she didn’t say so, but I could see it on her face. She knew her days were numbered. Within days of going on the vent she was fully sedated, never to communicate again.

On October 4, 1996, I had asked Lillian to marry me. On October 4, 2001, I was informed by the doctors that there was nothing they could do. It was only a matter of time before Lillian passed away.

Our family and friends could not have been more supportive during this time! My father and sister, stepmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with Lillian’s extended family, all descended on Houston; and for one week we prayed for Lillian and comforted one another. I had asked one of the doctors to tell me when we passed from the point of “it’s still possible she can make it” to “it’s literally immoral for you to keep her on the vent,” and on October 9 he informed me we had reached that moment. Lillian’s parents, along with her brothers, were helping me with these decisions; and we decided to wait a few days to give as many people as possible a chance to say their goodbyes. On October 11, our family and friends gathered around Lillian while the doctors reduced her oxygen to around 20 percent. And she died.

I remember very little of the moments immediately following Lillian’s death. I remember weeping over her corpse. I remember going to her parents and apologizing that this had happened, as no parent should ever have to bury a child. I remember a stupid nurse telling me, before even leaving the room, that I had a child to raise, as if to say, “Stop dwelling on this.” I remember a pastor following me to the lobby telling me he loved me. I remember sitting in the lobby weeping, only to have a foolish lady tell me that I shouldn’t cry. “What the hell do you expect me to do!” I yelled in retort. I remember going downstairs to the main lobby to see my friend Drew, who had been looking after Evan during this time, hugging my son, and then handing him off to a family member—as I just couldn’t bear to see him. I remember lying in bed, crying, asking how in the world am I going to live without her and even raise a son by myself. I remember Drew lying next to me, saying, “You have tons of support, Travis. I know it’s hard to hear now, but you’ll find your feet.”

The years 2001 through 2007 were not my best years, to say the least. The months immediately following Lillian’s death can only be described as dark and numb. I had no desire to work or eat, and I simply could not sleep. Even though I would, several years later, finish my dissertation—on God’s providence no less—I constantly entertained doubts about my faith. In many respects, I felt myself becoming a totally different person than I was before watching my wife die. In fact, starting around the fall of 2005 and going through 2007, for the first time in my life I totally opened myself to the thought that there simply was no god of any kind. After Evan would go to sleep, I would spend four to five hours most nights reading atheistic literature, watching debates between theists and atheists, or reading blog posts by those who lost their faith under circumstances similar to my own. If you were to have spoken with me during those years you may have heard me sounding like a Christian whose faith was strong, but inside I was a mess. Of course, I didn’t always sound so Christian. As a teacher of comparative religion, I spend a great deal of time offering arguments from all sides of various religious questions, including the existence of God. I will never forget a student coming up to me with a perplexed look on her face. “I heard you were a Christian,” she said. “I am,” I answered. “Then why do you spend so much time offering arguments against your own religion?”

It wasn’t just Lillian’s death that made me doubt God’s existence. It was, as it were, “the whole enchilada.” Why answer all those prayers and illustrate such an intriguing, meticulous providence if, at the end of the day, she was going to die anyway? Examples of providence and answered prayer included things such as bringing about Evan’s conception, which is the reason why Lillian had the bloodwork that revealed her high white-cell count; allowing her to have a chronic form of leukemia, so that she could carry her pregnancy to term; giving me a job that covered the medical costs; and even curing the cancer. You read that right! I was informed three days before her death that there was absolutely no trace of cancer in her body. The transplant was a success! Our situation was comparable to that Alabama versus Auburn game a few years ago. You know the one. In the final seconds of the game ’Bama not only missed a field goal, but it was caught by an Auburn player, who ran the ball back one hundred yards for a touchdown. We had won. We defeated the cancer. All we had to do was give Lillian’s body time to adjust to the procedure. But the doctor’s decision to do a liver biopsy led to the death of my wife and the mother of my son. I felt like I was the victim of a cosmic joke. It took two counselors to convince me that the biopsy wasn’t my fault, and three law firms to convince me that I had no real case against the doctors who made that decision.

I did not entertain the notion that perhaps there is a God who is not as powerful or sovereign as the Bible portrays him to be. I had written a dissertation on one version of this perspective, and I believed then, as I believe now, that such conceptions render the deity more of an object of pity than worship. No, the old Epicurean argument against God’s existence hit me hard during those moments: If God is all-powerful and all-good, then why is there evil? If he wants to rid the world of evil but cannot, then he is impotent; and if he can but does not, then he is not good.

The things people, even Christians, said to me, compounded my doubts even more. Within six months of her death, I was told that I should just get over it. A few years later I was told that I was not the one who suffered. I was told not to ask why. I was even given James 1:2: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (ESV). Sometimes I got the feeling that those who were offering words of assurance were trying to comfort themselves more than me. In the months following Lillian’s passing I would sometimes walk into a room and feel eyes gaze on me, often wondering whether my presence wasn’t a terrible reminder for them that life really does suck and the things we do to occupy our time are just acts of deception to bury that cold, hard truth. The words that came from these people often felt more like lectures to make me see reality as they saw it; and my silent nods seemed to confirm for them that, despite Travis’s presence, all was ok with the world. I began to experience a strange emotional contradiction. I didn’t want anyone to mention Lillian to me, because I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me; I wanted everyone to stop whatever they were doing and mention Lillian to me, because I wanted everyone to feel sorry for me. So, if something was said, I was angry. If nothing was said, I was angry. I even began to make dumb and even (at times) immoral decisions, compounding my sin with the words “I deserve it.” Knowing how stupid and irrational I was behaving and thinking, I thought it might be best that I not go out so much. So I became more and more nonsocial. When I wasn’t trolling atheistic websites late at night, I was sitting at home, staring at the wall for hours on end.

During those moments when I was able to look beyond my own pain, the idea that there is an all-powerful and all-loving God became even more insane for me. A heightened sense of awareness of the suffering and evils of the world often hit me like a ton of bricks. After all, Lillian’s death happened just one month after 9/11. Since then our nation has involved itself in two wars, has gone through a major economic recession, and has reeled in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. The world as a whole has seen more of the same: tsunamis, radiation leaks caused by earthquakes, multiple deaths from war (often caused by the US), crimes against humanity on an unbelievable scale. My son at least has his father, along with a loving extended family. Millions of children have no parents, and millions who do are abused in ways we find difficult to imagine. As I processed all of this, mixing it together with my own experience, the words of one of my favorite comedians, George Carlin, rang true:

But I want you to know something, and this is sincere. I want you to know, when it comes to believing in God, I really tried. I really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is f#@% up.

Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of s#@^ you’d expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently run universe, this guy would’ve been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say “this guy,” because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man. No woman could or would ever f#@% things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he’s at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn’t give a s#@!. Doesn’t give a s#@!, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.1

But there was something deeper bugging me, which nearly solidified my doubts into sheer antitheism. Up until Lillian’s death I was a strong Calvinist. We both were. We sincerely believed that God was not only all-powerful and all-good, but that he had foreordained everything that comes to pass, even down to the death of my own mother. Not only so, God is the one who picks and chooses who will and who will not be saved from the eternal fires of hell. Remember the modern version of A Christmas Carol, titled Scrooged, starring Bill Murray? At the end of the film a young boy says, “God loves everybody.” I remember watching that film after converting to Calvinism, and when the boy said those words I rolled my eyes, arrogantly thinking, “Wow, what bad theology!” I simply did not believe that God truly loved anyone unless they were elect. Lillian’s death made me wonder about that. I wondered, Is my wife’s death a good thing? Obviously not! But isn’t love nothing less than willing and trying to accomplish a good thing for someone else? Some people told me that God allows people such as Lillian to die to make us love him more. I remember an atheist philosopher responding quite well to that kind of statement, saying that that’s like a father physically abusing his son so that his son will love him more. Isn’t God’s providentially arranging Lillian’s death proof that he doesn’t love me? Or, if he does love me, perhaps he just doesn’t love me as much as he loves others. After all, most of my friends are raising their children with their wives, and all seems well in their households.

Some Calvinists will interject at this point and insist that God loves me, and the proof of that is that I have placed my trust in Jesus Christ. Only the elect can do such a thing, and so my faith is proof that I am loved by God. But things are not so easy. For there are many who place their faith in Christ, only to later reject him. The options a Calvinist has at this point are painful. For example, one could say that anyone who apostatizes was never a believer to begin with. Really? They sure looked, sounded, and acted like believers! If all of them were never believers, then what am I? Here I am, on the edge of losing my faith, learning that I possibly never had faith to begin with! Even worse, if God foreordains everything that comes to pass, then he clearly ordained that I would manifest a less-than-genuine faith in Christ, thereby deceiving myself. I spent years comforting myself with the thought that I belonged to God. Now I thought I was about to learn that such was never the case. True, we are all sinful and so do not deserve God’s mercy. But why would God providentially lead me into thinking I am one of his, only to kill my wife and expose my false faith for what...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Part 1: Prolegomena
• Chapter 1: Musings over a Dark Providence
• Chapter 2: Coming to Terms with Terms
• Part 2: The Wonderful Decree
• A Prologue
• Chapter 3: A Biblical Case for Unconditional Election
• Chapter 4: The Argument from Minimal Theism to Unconditional Election
• Chapter 5: Arminianism, Conditional Election, and the Scientia Media
• Chapter 6: The Ultimate Arminian Remonstrance
• Chapter 7: A Rapprochement between Unconditional Election and Universal Redemptive Love
• An Epilogue
• Appendix 1: Answering Objections to Original Sin
• Appendix 2: Scientia Media in the Light of Scripture, Divine Sovereignty, and the Divine Aseity
• Appendix 3: Isaiah 45:7 and the Origin of Evil
• Appendix 4: On the Very First Fall
• Appendix 5: The Divine Creative Decree
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Scripture References
• Old Testament