Dental Depravity; or, Jansenist Teeth

There is no easy way to say this. A little over a week ago, I had a dream in which some of my teeth were sent to hell. In my waking life, I've been working on a dissertation chapter in which I was researching Jansenists--basically, they were Calvinist Catholics who emphasized the complete necessity of grace for any good work and that God predestines before the foundation of the world who the elect will be, who will be "saved." Some of you may remember that I recently got a filling, and an offhand remark by the dentist about "saving the tooth" somehow was categorized by my brain as "salvation: entry 2; Jansenist beliefs about teeth," and during the night I dreamed that some of my teeth were not "saved" but in fact damned to hell.

Pondering this dream--or should I say "vision?"--I realized that it must have happened for a reason. Given that Jansenist theology has a firm commitment to the omnipotence of God and the purposes of providence, a dream about Jansenism must also be an expression of providential purpose. And then it hit me. People have deduced the existence of the trinity from something as simple as an egg; surely, woven within the very fabric of twenty-first century creation was an allegory for predestination, found within the dental profession. Scripture reveals that God has numbered the very hairs on our head (Mt. 10:30), so surely he has numbered our teeth as well. It is frightening to realize that, despite our great ignorance of what hell will be like (Dante notwithstanding), the chief New Testament categorization is that it is a place of intense suffering--for sinful teeth! ("there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth," Mt. 8:12)

Since Jansenists might be described as "Calvinist Catholics," I figured it might be helpful to sketch out how each of the five points of Calvinism may be illustrated by teeth.

1.Total depravity (that every facet of toothiness is corrupt and needs God's grace to vanquish cavities). Even when teeth look happy and nubile, they are rotting at their very core. Because of our innate arrogance, we are ever tempted toward the Pelagian heresy, of reducing Christ to a mere dental mentor who came to earth to teach us how to brush, that now we can do it all on our own with just a little help from the toothpaste (i.e. the Bible). We forget that Christ is example and savior, man and God, patient and dentist. ("Patient," of course, comes from the Latin word meaning "to suffer"--we often speak of Christ's "passion," which comes from the same Latin word. Coincidental ... or providential?) The "wisdom" tooth the dentists have rejected has become the cap tooth, earning Him an imperishable crown (see Mt. 21:42; for Jesus as wisdom, see I Cor. 1:24). We have a dentist who is both dentist and the perfect tooth that was pulled for no fault of its own, but because we had no room for him in our mouths and did not receive him (see Lk. 2:6, Jn. 1:11).

2.Unconditional Election (the salvation of a tooth is based not on an anticipation of the tooth's meritorious actions but on God's grace). Some people never eat sweets, brush ten minutes a day, and never get a cavity; some people eat sweets, rarely brush or floss, and yet remain cavity free. This is proof that it is not the excellence of the brushing habits but in the grace granted to the teeth.

3.Limited atonement (Christ has died only for elect teeth, not the reprobate). Christ would not place a filling in a tooth which he was going to pull out anyway; why then do foolhardy men insist that His life can be else but efficacious for those he desires to save through his death?

4.Irresistible grace (teeth cannot successfully resist Christ's desire to save them from their decay and rebellion). This is true in two senses, 1st, in that the tooth cannot prevent the drill from burrowing its way within and crushing our sinful cavity nature; 2nd, that although the dentist never "forces" us to get a filling, yet he indefatigably and winsomely persuades us into accepting his filling by showing us pictures of people with rotting teeth.

5.Perseverance of the tooth (all elect teeth will stay in your mouth, because Christ will not let them fall out). Even if a tooth may appear, from a human perspective, that it cannot be saved--that it struggles with decay, needs fillings, has perhaps even pained and shamed the rest of the tooth community by requiring repeated visits to the dentist--yet it shall stand firm to the end. It shall grind, but it shall never be ground up.

-Leopoldtulip