Luke 24:16
Luke 22:15-18
And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem. And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. And He said to them, “What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?” And they stood still, looking sad. One of them, named Cleopas, answered and said to Him, “Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?”
Based upon this passage, one Calvinist writes: “Can your theology account for the consistency of all three of these verses from Luke 24—divine veiling, human culpability, and divine revealing? v.16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. v.25 And he said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’ v.31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility on the Road to Emmaus)
The thrust and premise is of a sovereignty/responsibility tension. What that refers to is Determinism, which carries the idea that God can justifiably condemn someone for failing to perform what they are prevented from doing. However, there is a basic and embarrassing flaw. Can you see it?
Luke 24:15: “Their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.”
Luke 24:25: “And He said to them, ‘O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!’”
Luke 24:31: “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight.”
The Calvinist wants to you envision that God can actively prevent people from seeing the truth (divine veiling) and simultaneously hold them responsible for their failure to see what they are prevented from seeing (human culpability), and then unveil the truth when He sees fit (divine revealing), which would presumably be for Calvinism’s elect. However, the following true/false question shows the basic flaw in the Calvinist logic.
True or False: Luke 24 states that the men were kept from seeing “Scriptural truth” and then were scolded for their failure to see “Scriptural truth”?
Answer: False. If that was the case, then you’d have a very definite tension. But what does the text really say that they were kept from seeing? (Through His resurrection body, Jesus hid His identity. He was not keeping from recognizing Scriptural truth, for which they were scolded. They were scolded for their failure to process all that the Scriptures had said about the Messiah, and hence any alleged tension evaporates.)
True or False: The passage of Luke 24 specifically says that “God” veiled their eyes on the road to Emmaus, and that “God” opened their eyes during the prayer?
Answer: False again. It’s not the main issue (the main issue is shown above), but it is worth pointing out that God may not have veiled them at all. Realize that Mary Magdalene also did not readily recognize Jesus (John 20:15) and neither did the disciples (John 21:4), and they all had a much closer relationship than did the two men on the road to Emmaus. One simple explanation is Jesus’ new, never-dying resurrection body. This has a nice benefit for Jesus’ conversation with the men along the road to Emmaus, because this way Jesus could anonymously challenge these men about their failure to process everything that Jesus had said about Himself, and everything that the Scriptures revealed about the Messiah (things they should have known), whereas if they had immediately recognized that it was Jesus, they wouldn’t have processed anything about the Scriptures at all, but simply made His presence their only focus, which of course is what anyone would do in that situation. But Jesus wanted for them to process the things that they should have already processed, and hence His gentile rebuke, and remember, they were the ones who gently mocked Him first. (Luke 24:18) Jesus was merely giving it back to them.
So the bottom line is that Jesus had veiled His identity, but He did not veil Scriptural truth, and hence there is no deterministic sovereignty/responsibility tension. The Calvinist blog author had incorrectly inferred that Jesus had veiled Scriptural truth, and then scolded them for their failure to process what they were veiled from seeing, until the veil was taken away. That simply is an embarrassing error on the Calvinist’s part, because what was being veiled was Jesus’ identity, not Scriptural truth. This is one of those moments where you ask yourself, What was this person thinking? Well, here’s the answer. A Calvinist believes in Determinism so strongly that it can become a type of rose-colored glasses that causes them to see the Bible in a deterministic light, when it is not teaching Determinism at all.
