“Hamartiology in the right hands can do the most good, Cato. Take that image bearer, for example,” says Sextus, “with deep wounds who foams at the mouth and sees crimson when someone challenges him. The imposter is strong in that one. Not because he doesn’t acknowledge his faults and failures but because he hides behind them, so all accountability is lost. Listen to him speak now.”
“I have a question,” states the dour student sitting in the front row. “You say, ‘Only God is good’, but then endorse freewill.”
Silence sticks to the cold brick walls of the stuffy seminary classroom.
“And your question is?” responds the professor.
“How can you believe that?”
“I’m still not following you. What exactly is it that you find fault with?”
“Believing goodness lies in God alone while also believing we can choose to do good by following God.”
“As a monergist, I believe the Spirit of God starts and finishes the salvation of the elect. Thus, He alone regenerates. But that doesn’t negate that people can do some good.”
Sextus leans toward Cato and says, “Now watch him go on the attack.”
“It’s God who predestines! Man doesn’t choose! At least not to do anything good anyway, especially when it comes to salvation.” He pauses to punctuate his point. “It’s absolute nonsense to espouse freedom of the will to sinful humanity! We brought Sin and the Sword. Nothing else!”
The professor gently closes his notes. With his eyes open he prays for wisdom to know how to answer the frenetic, self-proclaimed hamartiologist sitting in the front row.
He quotes scripture: “Jesus once said to those whom he foreknew would crucify him. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’”[1]
The irascible man sharpens his teeth. “If you’re so wise and above reproach, why is your daughter addicted to heroin?”
The class gasps, not over the shock of learning about their professor’s dysfunctional family, but at the lack of propriety of his pupil.
“That was extremely rude,” he meekly replies, holding back from speaking his mind. “Your ad hominem is nothing more than a distraction from conceding my point.”
“As you are distracted from conceding mine, Professor,” he adds with a condescending tone.
“This conversation is moving us in the wrong direction. Besides, we still need to discuss the topics that’ll be on the midterm.”
Sextus nudges his pupil. “He needs our help. Go whisper in his ear.”
Cato does as he’s told.
The seminary student raises an eyebrow. “Does your daughter have power to choose sobriety?”
Agitated at his relentless insensitivity, he asks, “Where is this coming from?”
“Just answer the question.”
He looks past him, surveying the frightened faces of his students. “My daughter has an addictive personality. Our church has prayed over her. And her mother and I pray the ‘blood of Jesus’ over her, every day.”
Sextus and Cato cover their ears at the sound of the redeeming blood of the Lamb of God.
“But does she have freewill?”
“Yes. She does,” he answers. “At every crossroad, she can choose life or death.”
“Then why is she still addicted?”
“Satan’s minions always polish the apple before they show it. So, she takes her eyes off Christ, forgetting who He is, which causes her to forget who she is.”
The student continues to spin his yarn, “Even if she were sober, on her best day, she wouldn’t be able to do any good.”
“What is your obsession with my daughter?” He sighs. “Are you referring to her specifically or just using her as a representation of humanity to make a point?”
“The latter,” he answers.
“You assume that even the good we do as believers has some evil or selfish motive. Would you say that’s correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“And you have a theory about that. Am I right?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’ve just exposed your festering wound. The fruit of your labor has been cut in half to show its worm-infested core.”
The student clenches his jaw and flares his nostrils diverting his eyes to the corner of the room where Sextus and Cato are scheming. Although he doesn’t see them, for they are as invisible as quantum particles but just as real, he feels drawn to that dark corner.
Absorbing inspiration, he speaks, “The classrooms of academia are filled with pride.”
“My sentiment exactly!” concurs the professor. “It’s pride that prevents us from understanding and accepting the truth. And the truth is—you cannot be both obsessed with sin and corruption at the expense of a biblical view of redemption and sanctification, and also believe your own theology imperviously stands outside the diseased domain of sin as you judge from a privileged position everyone else’s motives except your own. Therefore, your own theory of sin is self-refuting and cannot be trusted.”
The bell rings.
Sextus uses what’s been said as a pedagogical moment. “Do not waste your time, Cato, tempting seminary students to think the good they do is necessarily laced with evil, for that notion can easily be discredited. But take the truth and twist it, almost to its breaking point, not to have them question whether man is capable of good but to question, over and over again, why a good God would allow so much sin and corruption. Ultimately, it’s not whether ‘God is dead.’ But whether a good God is dead.”
[1] Matthew 23:37, NKJV (emphases added).
This flash fiction is my contribution to the literature surrounding spiritual warfare, similar to C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.