The Prophet Ezekiel: A TULIP before they were called such

Peter Kirk says that talking about TULIPism on a site dedicated to ancient Hebrew poetry is completely off topic. Doug Chaplin, who is finding it hard to keep quiet about predestination, claims I define TULIPism in a way no one but myself would agree with.

I beg to differ with both my friends. The prophet Ezekiel, I show in this post, outdid Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon[1] many times over, and correlatively - and yes, they are correlative - TULIPed his way to grand and powerful expressions of sola gratia.

As for Doug’s comment, I don’t know, he’s probably right. But I think there are a few others who think as I do.

Perhaps it will help if I explain how I came to my views. As a teenager, I had a series of experiences I interpreted as God coming into my life. Trouble was, I hadn’t asked God to come into my life. He came unasked. I didn’t knock on any door. He didn’t knock on my door either. He came crashing through the window, and was none too polite about it. That is how I perceived it; it was, perhaps, a figment of my imagination. That, of course, is a separate question.

The fact is, I couldn’t make sense of my experiences on the basis of the categories I was brought up with. Somehow I came across a book, I think at the Public Library, entitled The Freedom of God, by James Daane. This was my first introduction to Calvinism. I had found a God in a book that corresponded to the God I seemed to be experiencing.

Trouble was, I was also a flaming charismatic by this time. It was hard for people to see how charismania and Calvinism could go together. Most sensible people, furthermore, are afraid of both.

But that’s me, and I’m not sure I should apologize for it.

Is Daane’s Calvinism typical or atypical? He claims, if I remember, to rescue Calvin from the Calvinists, or something to that effect. I just googled his book, and discovered it’s available used on Amazon. The google also informs me that Wayne Grudem asserts that James Daane, who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary, was an opponent, not a defender, of classical Reformed theology. Grudem’s probably right, and if so, it’s classical Reformed theology that needs reforming, not James Daane. Daane was moving in the right direction. It’s about time Reformed theologians realize it. That includes Grudem.

But what about Ezekiel, a TULIP before they were called such? Let’s here him thunder:

 
אוֹי עִיר הַדָּמִים

גַּם־אֲנִי אַגְדִּיל הַמְּדוּרָה

 

הַרְבֵּה הָעֵצִים

הַדְלֵק הָאֵשׁ

הָתֵם הַבָּשָׂר

 

וְהָרֵק הַמָּרָק*

וְהָעֲצָמוֹת יֵחָרוּ

 

אֲנִי יהוה דִּבַּרְתִּי

בָּאָה וְעָשִׂיתִי

 

לֹא־אֶפְרַע

וְלֹא־אָחוּס

וְלֹא אֶנָּחֵם

 

כִּדְרָכַיִךְ וְכַעֲלִילוֹתַיִךְ שְׁפָטוּךְ

נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי יהוה׃

Woe to the city of blood!

I in turn will make a great blaze.

Pile on the logs,

            kindle the fire,

                     cook the meat through;

empty out the broth,

            and let the bones char.

 

I the Lord have spoken;

it’s about to happen, I will act.

I will not refrain,

I will not spare,

I will not relent.

According to your ways,

according to your doings:

they have judged you.[2]

 
Oracle of the Lord God.

 
Ezekiel 24:9-10, 14

*MT emended; cf. other mss.; OG.

 That’s Ezekiel telling friends and family what God was about to do to their home town and those who live there: ‘kindle the fire, cook the meat through, pour out the broth, and let the bones char.’

Image, it is said, is everything. Ezekiel understood that.

For more TULIPy sermons by Ezekiel, check out chapters 9 and 16.

Now that you are thoroughly grossed out (the prophet’s intention), you are ready, but only now ready, to hear the gospel according to Ezekiel:

כֹּה אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יהוה

 

לֹא לְמַעַנְכֶם אֲנִי עֹשֶׂה

בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל

 

כִּי אִם־לְשֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי

אֲשֶׁר חִלַּלְתֶּם בַּגּוֹיִם

אֲשֶׁר־בָּאתֶם שָׁם

 

וְנָתַתִּי לָכֶם לֵב חָדָשׁ

וְרוּחַ חֲדָשָׁה אֶתֵּן בְּקִרְבְּכֶם

 

וַהֲסִרֹתִי אֶת־לֵב הָאֶבֶן מִבְּשַׂרְכֶם

וְנָתַתִּי לָכֶם לֵב בָּשָׂר

 

וְאֶת־רוּחִי אֶתֵּן בְּקִרְבְּכֶם

וְעָשִׂיתִי אֵת אֲשֶׁר־בְּחֻקַּי תֵּלֵכוּ

וּמִשְׁפָּטַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם

Thus said the Lord God:

 

Not for your sake do I act,

house of Israel,

 

but for my holy name

which you have profaned among the nations

to which you have come.

 

And I will give you a new heart,

a new spirit I will put within you.

 

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh,

and I will give you a heart of flesh.

 

My spirit I will put within you,

and I will cause you to walk in my statutes,

and you will be careful to keep my judgments.

Ezek 36:22, 26-27

 I trust it is now obvious why it is fair to refer to Ezekiel as a TULIP. But it also fair to say that for Ezekiel, God’s sovereignty is in the service of God’s grace.

If ever a TULIP fails to remember that fundamental truth, she or he preaches a gospel other than the gospel according to Ezekiel.

UPDATE: James Bradford Pate has been posting on Ezekiel. He thinks Ezekiel was a quasi-Arminian. His arguments are worth pondering.

---

[1] Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. For a fine appreciation of Jonathan Edwards and American Puritanism, written by – and I don’t find it surprising – an American Jew, see Charles Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

[2] The standard translations do not hew to the syntax of the Hebrew in this instance. They rewrite it syntactically and in terms of tenses, but there is no excuse for doing so.

Comments

[James Pate]

Thanks for the post. Interestingly, I am in Ezekiel 24 right now for my daily quiet time.

I think that there are some TULIP-y things in Ezekiel, but I also see a stress on free will in other passages. I have a small series on this on my own blog. What I have come up with is a quasi-Arminian reading of Ezekiel.

[Peter Kirk]

Oh no, not another non-spoof The Day I Became a Calvinist!

Well, I would be interested to know what Daane was actually teaching (but not interested enough to order a book from the USA). Perhaps he is no more Calvinist than Jeremy is.

As for Ezekiel, let's look also at Jonah 3:4. A prophecy of judgment similar to Ezekiel's but shorter, which can also be used as evidence of God's predestined judgment. Trouble is, Jonah's prophecy didn't come true. Why not? The people chose to repent. If Ezekiel's prophecy did come true, that is because the people chose not to repent when they heard it. No support for unconditional election here! Am I on the same page as James Pate here? It's too late at night to read more than a little of his blog.

[JohnFH]

Peter, you are filling in the gaps of the text of Ezekiel with some pretty stringent logic (something TULIPS are often accused of). Maybe you've got it right, maybe not.

I'm more impressed by what Ezekiel actually says than by the qualifiers, however necessary, that we place on what he says.

[James Pate]

I haven't made that particular point, Peter, but I appreciate you making it. I wrestle more with God's sincere desire for the Israelites to repent and the fact that there are righteous Israelites before God gives them a new heart. I try to reconcile what may be different traditions in Ezekiel, but that's probably my conservative theological bias.

[voxstefani]

The late Dr. James Daane was a faithful son of the Christian Reformed Church until his death in 1983. He was one of a number of CRC intellectuals that shook the theological and ecclesiastical establishment of that denomination in the '50s, '60s and '70s by writing and teaching outside the denominational structures. As a chaplain in WWII, he was one of the older generation of challengers: the ones who returned home with a vision of evangelical futures that was much larger than the CRC's tight ethnic (i.e., Dutch) enclaves and their feuds, and yet was deeply rooted in the controversies that they inherited as children of their Moeder Kerk. Like his colleague and coreligionist Lewis Smedes, Daane taught at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The type of Reformed thought that Daane articulated in books like A Theology of Grace and The Freedom of God was not at all particular, but like that of many of his contemporaries, it consciously followed the line of Karl Barth and Gerrit Berkouwer. To those who had been born and bred in the limited cultural milieu of West Michigan or Central Iowa, the discovery of this type of Reformed thought was nothing short of a life-changing epiphany, and it was usually connected to a time of study or ministry overseas. This epiphany they set out to share with their church communities and the larger Evangelical world through their books, by teaching at institutions like Fuller, and by found journals such as The Reformed Journal, in whose founding editorial Board Daane sat (along with Henry Stob, who remained teaching at Calvin, and Bernard Zylstra, who went to teach at Toronto's renegade, and glorious, Institute for Christian Studies).

But this type of Reformed thought didn't only take hold in the CRC, but its influenced was also felt, and in many ways became dominant, in the Reformed Church in America. A delightful little book that follows this Barthian/Berkouwerian line is I. John Hesselink's On Being Reformed: Distinctive Characteristics and Common Misunderstandings. Hesselink, a student of Barth's and a former missionary in Japan, eventually became president of the RCA's Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI.

So don't feel alone, John. In reading Daane's book you tapped, unknowingly, into a great stream of intellectual work that took place in mid-20th century within the Dutch Reformed community. To become more deeply acquainted with it would surely be to your advantage, but you are already all the richer for having been exposed to it so very early on.

Esteban

[JohnFH]

Esteban,

how do you know all this stuff? When I grow up, I want to be like you.

Come to think of it, in the mid-1970s, I read a lot of the Reformed Journal. There was a spirited debate in its pages between open-minded Calvinists and open-minded Anabaptists that caught my attention.

I'll have you know that I had many friends among the Do-wierdians (deliberate misspelling, besides, who remembers how it's supposed to be spelled?) while a student in Toronto. Sooner or later I may relate an anecdote or two.

Thanks for bringing back pleasant memories.

[Iyov]

Now the question is which is the worse sin: taking the Lord's name in vain (unless, of course, you are the High Priest, in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, on Yom Kippur, when you are permitted to utter it) or anachronistic readings of Scripture.

Even if you were not acting as a provocateur (and I'm with Peter Kirk on this one -- I believe your tongue is not far from your cheek) you are making some pretty massive leaps of logic here. Who is required to keep the mitzvos? Israel. (The Noachides only have the seven laws, which are mostly easy to keep, although you may have violated one of them with your recent post on the names of God.) And what does Ezekiel claim? That God empowers Israel to keep the mitzvos? And how is God's spirit in Israel? That was from Gen 1:27 or 2:7.

Now, this is clearly a Messianic passage. But what is promised here is not a propitiation but that God empowers Israel to keep the mitzvos. What "saves" the individual? Not propitiation for sin, but keeping the mitzvos.

What Ezekiel is claiming is quite different from the TULIP-ian interpretation of Paul that almost all of the law is null and void (or that Israel is no more obligated than Noachides). What Ezekiel is claiming is quite different from the TUIP-ian belief in "preservation of the saints" which says that once saved, always saved. If one fails to keep the mitzvos (of which one famous Jew said "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished") one is lost.

Now, if you say there is a TULIP-ian way to read Ezekiel, I would agree with you. However, it is quite a stretch to argue that the prophet argued a TULIP philosophy.

By the way, why do some Christians seem to imply that their religion can divided into two groups: Calvinists and Arminians? Isn't that like dividing humankind between Porsche owners and Ferrari owners?

[JohnFH]

Iyov,

there is anachronism involved in referring to Ezekiel as a theological TULIP. To that extent, my remarks are tongue in cheek.

But your suggestion that Ezekiel's theology corresponds to what passes for the standard rabbinical line of a millennium later (and you know as well as I do that theological diversity was and is characteristic of rabbinic Judaism, and that it is usually not hard to find analogues in Judaism to all manner of theological positions current in this or that strand of Christianity or Islam)is no less anachronistic.

The Talmud is also aware that Ezekiel doesn't always fit neatly into later rabbinic tropes. The apparent contradictions were thought resolvable, but the amount of midnight oil and rabbi-hours needed to get the job done was deemed enormous.

That said, of course you are right that Ezekiel and that oddball Pharisee Paul are hardly on the same page, but then, why should they be? They faced very different problems. Furthermore, at a high enough level of abstraction, their differences, which are no greater than those between some of the voices within the Tanakh, can be resolved.

I especially like your remark about Porsche and Ferrari owners. The same applies to many intramural theological feuds, does it not? We take ourselves too seriously.

My overriding point in discussing TULIPism is not far from yours. It is helpful to think rightly about God, I don't deny this. But in the end, that oddball Pharisee Paul got it right: three things only, faith, hope, and love, endure, and the greatest of these is love. In some sense, I think what Paul says is universally valid, not just for those of Paul's sect, to which I happen to belong.

What Paul says is not quite the same thing as saying that what matters is keeping the 613 commandments. Of course, if what Paul says is true in some universal sense, there is hope for Jews as well, most of whom, in my experience, are not completely Torah-observant, often far from it, but excel in faith, hope, and love in various ways, and certainly no less than the Christians under my care.

[Iyov]

I do not agree that my interpretation of Ezekiel is anachronistic. The idea of keeping commandments is Mosaic. This is amply illustrated throughout the Prophets. And I think it is the plain reading of the passages you quote.

In particular, I made no reference to the Oral Law in my remarks about Ezekiel.

(I also do not agree that Paul was Pharisaic -- although he certainly himself such. On the other hand, I would argue that the Jesus of the synoptic gospels was Pharisaic -- many of his remarks show an excellent control of the nuances of what would later be canonized as Mishnaic law -- but that is a subject for another post.)

[voxstefani]

Well, to be like me you only need two things: 1) to be intellectually lazy in the extreme, and 2) to be a terrible proofreader of your own writing. All the best to you, grasshopper! ;-)

I have in my archives (currently exiled in a storage facility in Grand Rapids, MI) 20 years worth of The Reformed Journal--1968-1988, I believe. I seem to recall the lively debate you describe; I will try to look for it next time I am in the Moederland. And if I recall the exchange correctly, that whole debate was typical of the mid-century Dutch "Neo-Calvinists": a serious engagement of Anabaptism (then brought to the fore of theological discourse by John Howard Yoder's 1972 book The Politics of Jesus) on its own terms, but deeply rooted in the burning controversies of their theological heritage--namely, the twin questions of common grace and the cultural mandate.

How wonderful to hear that you had ICS connections in those early days! (The school had been founded in 1967, and had moved to its College St. location only in 1972.) I certainly do hope you get around to those anecdotes some time. The Reformational philosophy that ICS scholarship mediated to me was the basis of my own Copernican revolution, of my personal awakening from dogmatic slumber. Thus, I've always considered ICS something like my intellectual home. And of course, I'll have you know that those of us who taught ourselves Dutch in order to be able to read Dooyeweerd in the original know exactly how his last name is spelled. ;-)

This all brings wonderful memories for me too, so thank you for mentioning Daane. I hardly have a chance to think about these things, anymore!

[JohnFH]

Iyov,

I think it can be shown, indeed it has been shown, that Paul thinks like a rabbi no less than Jesus.

Back to Ezekiel. The point at stake is not whether or not keeping the mitzvot is central to Ezekiel's understanding of the task of an Israelite. Of course it is central. He does have some pretty strange ideas about what the core mitzvot are, but as I said before (check the addition I made to my previous comment), the Talmud is also aware that Ezekiel is not easily assimilable to standard paradigms.

From the point of view of biblical prophetism, points of no return are sometimes reached in history in which no amount of Torah-observance or lack thereof matters any more. Isa 6 and other passages testify to this understanding. Isa 63:17 complains about the fact. A close reading of Ezekiel demonstrates that he, too, believed a point of no return had been reached at a certain juncture.

It is true that repentance sometimes brings about a change of heart in God, as Peter reminds us. But that cannot be made into an iron-clad rule without doing violence to many passages of scripture. In the final analysis, God's sovereignty trumps Torah-observance and acts of repentance, and, crucially, lack thereof.

The promises of Ezek 36, which Ezekiel thought would be fulfilled in conjunction with the return and the rebuilding of the temple, and yes, the coming of a David, all of which did in fact come about, though not exactly as Ezekiel hoped it might, place all the emphasis on God's initiative. The gifts of a new heart and new spirit that will cause Israel to faithfully observe Torah, something which had never yet happened, are precisely new, not the same thing as the breath of life in Gen 2 or Ps 104.

The language of Ezek 36:27 is deterministic, comparable to that used by that other great believer in determinism found in the Tanakh, Qohelet (note especially 3:14), as Moshe Greenberg points out in his Anchor Bible commentary ad loc.

The language of Ezek 36:22, 32 hammers home the utter lack of merit in Ezek's audience, as Greenberg also points out. As Greenberg also stresses, there is absolutely nothing Israel can do, according to Ezekiel, to annul the link between God and his people. God will cause them to persevere, whether they like it or not.

Obviously Ezekiel's theocentrism leads to paradoxical statements. As Greenberg puts it, Israel in the future according to Ezekiel will "be denied the ability ever again to disobey God's laws." Truth be told, Jeremiah thought along similar lines, with his prophecy of a new covenant in place of the one that was broken, and a law written in the heart (Jer 31:31-34).

Greenberg is careful to note the ways in which Ezekiel's thought is not reducible to that of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. "The restoration [Ezekiel envisages] would not be a gracious divine response to human yearning for reconciliation (as in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah). It would be an imposition on wayward Israel of a constraint necessary for saving God's reputation." (page 737, op. cit.)

This comment became longer than I anticipated, but at least it will be clearer now in what sense I hold Ezekiel to be a proto-TULIP.

[Doug Chaplin]

I confess to being no botanist, but I was rather under the impression that there are many different types of flowers in existence. I didn't realise they were nearly all tulips, or proto-tulips. Of course, one could just about describe a single-celled organism as a proto-human, or indeed a proto-tulip, but I'm not sure it would get us very far.
I must register my disagreement with Iyov's view that Paul is not a Pharisee. There seems to me something methodologically strange in constructing a view of Pharisaism sans Paul and then saying this proves Paul is not a Pharisee, when he is (however oddball) the only first-century Pharisee whose first-hand writings we have. (As I said here.) I don't pretend such re-constructions are easy, or that Paul is a straightforward witness, but I do think some patient work here would repay dividends.
I also don't think Paul is a tulip, unless all flowers be called tulips.

[JohnFH]

Doug,

that's a good point about there being more than tulips in the garden.

Furthermore, these botanical forays are by definition anachronistic as Iyov notes.

Still, it might not be misleading to suggest that Paul on several counts pioneers themes that Augustine (not Pelagius) and Calvin (not Arminius) develop in their own way.

Both Ezekiel and Paul stand out as floral species sui generis in the textual gardens of which they are now a part (the Hebrew Bible and the NT). If Ezekiel is a tulip, Second Isaiah is a lily of the valley. Besides Paul, there are Matthew, John, James, Hebrews, etc.

Or, as Iyov put it, most people don't drive a Porsche (= a TULIP, obviously) or a Ferrari.

[Peter Kirk]

It is true that repentance sometimes brings about a change of heart in God, as Peter reminds us.

Thanks for agreeing with this point. But surely this much is enough to destroy the TULIP, at least by stripping off its U and I petals, for it allows that people can choose between repenting or resisting God's grace, and his election is conditional on this choice.

Do tulips grow as well in the new Michigan Moederland as in the original Netherlands?

[JohnFH]

That God sometimes changes course in response to repentance, and sometimes does not, is interpretable in terms of the category of divine sovereignty without difficulty.

But that is not Ezekiel's point. If from the human side God encounters only viciousness, God goes right ahead and saves people anyway, for the sake of his name.

[James Pate]

Hi John,

I think that Ezekiel 20:33-38 is important to this discussion. There, God brings the Israelites into the wilderness and kills the rebels. The rest go into the Promised Land. In the passages on the new heart, Israel receives it after entering the land.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: In Ezekiel, it is not so much a matter of God taking a bunch of rebels and giving them a new heart. Why do I say this? Because God kills the rebels in the wilderness. The ones who receive the new heart are survivors, or non-rebels. They may have been sinful in the past (since they loathe themselves for something), but they are at least willing to cooperate with God, unlike the destroyed people.

And, while Ezekiel may not phrase exilic repentance the same way as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Deuteronomy, he still has it. Ezekiel 6:9 presents the Israelites as loathing themselves even in exile. And that is before they have even received the new heart, which occurs after the exile.

Please let me know if any of this is unclear, and I'll clarify.

[Iyov]

As Greenberg puts it, Israel in the future according to Ezekiel will "be denied the ability ever again to disobey God's laws."

I do not read this passage as you and Greenberg do. But for the sake of argument, suppose that I did. I would still not see how this expresses a Calvinist point of view. While it is true that both points of view involve determinism, not all determinist philosophies are Calvinist. In particular, as I understand it, mainstream Calvinists do not assert that they never sin after their embrace of religion.

Turning now to the comments about Pharisaic status of Paul -- I should perhaps clarify. (First, I tossed in the remark about Paul as an offhand comment, and it really requires a fuller discussion that I have given in these comments. In that spirit, I only give a brief outline of my views below -- perhaps in the future I will elaborate on them.)

It is true Paul of the Christian Scriptures claimed to be Pharisaic, much as, say, Lyndon LaRouche claims to be a Democrat. A few of Paul's remarks bear a surface resemblance to those of the Tannaim and their predecessors. However, a closer examination reveals considerable differences: as is often noted, Paul is not known for his logic, and his citation to biblical and rabbinic authority does not follow rabbinic fashion. Paul was a unique religious genius -- and he does not reason after the manner of the rabbis.

Moreover many of Paul's central views, and certainly the emphasis of his thought was outside mainstream Pharisaism. In any case, it is telling that the intellectual descendants of the Pharisees firmly reject Paul while for the intellectual descendants of Paul "Pharisee" and "legalism" are insults.

[JohnFH]

I doubt that Ezekiel envisaged a future in which Israelites would sin no longer. He did envision that a radical, qualitative change would come about in the piety and practice of Israel through a unilateral divine act.

Speaking from the point of view of the history of religion, to a significant extent Ezekiel's prophecy came true. The piety and practice of rabbinic Judaism (to be interpreted broadly enough to include Jesus, Paul and Josephus, not just Hillel and Shammai) is an example of that prophecy receiving a historical realization.

That's how I see it anyway.

[JohnFH]

James,

your reference to Ezek 20 is appropriate. But I don't think Ezekiel construes God's actions there either as a response to repentance from Israel's side. The self-loathing and repentance Israel is to engage in, the very fact that they will pass under the shepherd's staff and be brought into the bond of the covenant, is presented as something God brings about obtorto collo (that's colorful Latin phrase which means "against [their] will").

[James Pate]

Yes, God does say there that he will be king over them, no ifs, ands, or buts. But that is over the nation as a whole. Individuals can disqualify themselves through rebellion.

To Iyov, I don't think that Ezekiel's prophecy was fulfilled in the first century. Jesus did not treat the Pharisees as people with new hearts. He called them a brood of vipers. Plus, Jerusalem got destroyed.

As far as whether or not Ezekiel says the Israelites will not be able to sin, I am divided on this issue. I think that one reason God gives the Israelites a new heart is so they will obey his commandments and dwell in the land forever. At the same time, Jeremiah 31 is a strange chapter. There, God says he will write his laws on the Israelites' hearts, yet he also says that, in that time, people will be punished for their own sin, implying that there will be sin.

[JohnFH]

It's true that Jesus, with the gusto typical of intramural religious disputes, sticks it to the Pharisees. But some of them were attracted to his teaching, and that is no coincidence.

I do think Ezekiel's prophecy found and continues to find a fulfillment in rabbinic Judaism and that strange Jewish sect we call Christianity. The fulfillment, of course, is partial.

More problematic are Ezekiel's Temple plans (40-48), which seem purely utopian.

[Iyov]

John, correct me if I am wrong, but you've done a 180 degree turn. You began by saying that Israel is full of individuals who fail to uphold the Torah, and then you said you agreed with Greenberg that Israel will "be denied the ability ever again to disobey God's laws," and now you say Ezekiel's vision has come true. I do not see how all these things can be true.

I do bristle a bit at defining overarching categories such as your extended super-Rabbinic category. It seems to me that your motive is to enhance respect among different religions with deep common links -- and that is certainly good -- but it is also language used by some who would marginalize Judaism and have Christianity absorb Judaism. In any case, it is non-standard terminology, and thus has the significant potential of confusing the discussion.

Which brings me to a question: to what extent do you feel your definition of TULIP matches with those of normative contemporary Calvinism? Do you find yourself agreeing in the main with the theological outlook of the highly public faces of contemporary Calvinism: for example Mohler, Piper, and Sproul? Or are you redefining TULIP to have a special non-standard meaning?

[JohnFH]

I agreed with Greenberg that according to Ezekiel, Israel would be denied the ability to disobey God's laws.

That has not come true to the letter, but I think it is undeniable that keeping mitzvot, or at least core mitzvot, increased greatly in history thanks to rabbinic Judaism, and, in ways that Zeke would have found puzzling, in Christianity.

If you think biblical prophecy must be fulfilled to the letter to be said to be fulfilled at all, then you have mostly unfulfilled prophecy in the Bible. That creates other problems, it seems to me.

Your comments on terminology are well-taken. There have been plenty of people, and still are, who think that God's project was to absorb Judaism into Christianity, or, conversely for Edom/Esau (Christianity) to be supplanted by Jacob (Judaism). It has not, apparently, pleased the Lord to see to either in two millennia of not very peaceful coexistence.

What the future holds, no one knows. Furthermore, according to the rabbi I follow, it is not for us to know the times and seasons.

As to what kind of Calvinism I subscribe to, I prefer that of Calvin himself, and that of people like James Daane (see Esteban's comments in this thread), and even then only insofar as it clearly accords with the emphases of scripture.