Is Election Unconditional?

When I first came to the Christian faith as a young boy, my understanding of the Gospel was quite simple: I knew I wasn’t really a good boy; I snuck cookies when I thought I could get away with it.  I told lies to avoid punishment.  I was mean to my little sister.  In short, I was bad – sometimes very bad.  I understood that bad people go to this place where they are tortured forever, like burning to death without dying.  I was scared of where I would go if I died.  I liked to read the Bible, though.  It was filled with all sorts of exciting stories and adventures.  One of those stories was about a man who somehow was really God.  This man did all kinds of miracles – even raising people from the dead.  This Man died for my sins, and if I would just believe and trust in Him with my life, He would take me to heaven, even if I did bad things.  This man loved children like me and didn’t want to see me go to Hell.  His name was Jesus.

I prayed fervently for this Jesus to come into my heart and rescue me from Hell, where I knew I was going.  I also prayed He would help me to be a better boy, so my parents wouldn’t be mad at me so much.  My understanding of the faith as a 1^st-grade youth was pretty simple, but I am convinced it was enough – and that when I understood about Jesus and prayed that prayer, my eternal destiny was changed forever.

A few years later, I came to, ahem, “understand” that the faith was more complex than I had understood as a boy.  Some people taught that, even though we are saved from our sins by faith in Jesus, we could lose our salvation if we sinned enough or decided to stop believing in Him.  These people were called Armenians.  I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with a little country that I had only heard of in association with gypsy culture, but I figured, maybe Armenianism had started as some kind of regional movement.  On the other hand, these other guys, called Calvinists, believed that you couldn’t lose your salvation by sinning, because that would be like saying we had to earn our salvation through works.  I decided I must be a Calvinist.

It was only much later that I came to understand who Calvin and Arminius were, and that the argument between Calvinists and Arminians went much deeper than the issue of whether one could lose his or her salvation, and that I did not have to be either an Arminian or a Calvinist in order to be a Christian.

At the heart of the argument between Calvinists and Arminians (and others who would not categorize themselves as either) is their respective understanding of the terms Predestination and Election.

In short the Reformed doctrine of election (or rather predestination, which encompasses both election and non-election) is the belief that:

“From all of eternity God decided to save some members of the human race and to let the rest of the human race perish.  God made a choice – he chose some individuals to be saved unto everlasting blessedness in heaven, and he chose others to pass over, allowing them to suffer the consequences of their sins, eternal punishment in hell.” (Sproul, What is Reformed Theology, P 141)

So the Reformed position on salvation is that human will and free choice play no role whatsoever in the salvation of their soul.  While we might feel as if we freely chose to believe in Christ or to reject the Gospel, free will is really an illusion and the elect are elect simply and only because God chose to regenerate them unto belief while passing over their unbelieving friends and family (more on this in the future installment on Irresistible Grace).  Sproul takes great pains to explain that this choice is in no way related to God’s foreknowledge of those who would receive the Gospel and believe in Christ, despite the fact that the most oft-cited verse in Scripture dealing with predestination clearly refers to such foreknowledge:

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” (Romans 8:29-30, NKJV)

Sproul goes on to explain that the doctrine of election is borne out by the fact that in this passage the word predestined precedes the word called, yet somehow, according to Sproul’s convoluted logic, that fact that foreknew precedes predestined in Romans 8 is not semantically important. 

The crux of Sproul’s argument hinges on the assertion that, though the word all does not appear in this passage, the passage should be read as if it does, so that all He called, He also justified.  Once we do this, of course, we are forced to infer (invent) a mystical internal call that some receive while others do not, as it is readily apparent that there are some who hear the external call of Gospel preaching while continuing to reject Christ. The problem with this idea is that the Bible does not speak of such a call.  In fact, in this very same letter to the Romans, Paul asserts that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word” (Romans 10), and uses this argument to underscore the importance of going out and preaching the Gospel to all men.  Even in the miraculous accounts of Scripture, we see that God calls His prophets and heroes, not through some mystical, internal feeling, but by appealing to their senses of sight, hearing and touch – by spoken word, in visions, by appearing as a burning bush, or a cloud of fire, by striking men blind, and so on.

We should reject Sproul’s argument for election / predestination for at least three reasons:

First, it is dangerous to assert hidden language in Scripture.  The essence of this argument is to suggest that somehow God’s words were imperfectly transmitted to and recorded by His chosen authors – an approach that sounds eerily similar to the tactics the serpent used to deceive Eve in the Garden of Eden ( Genesis 3:1: “Did God really say…?”).

Second, it is unfathomable to me how anyone who is not God could dismiss out of hand the role God’s omniscience and omnipresence might have played in His decision to create the universe as He did, and might play into His dealings with mankind and with individual men and women.  When we consider that God is not bound by time (John 8:58, and that there is not a single thought that goes through our heads or a single word we speak that God didn’t know about before we were born (Psalm 139), it seems rather foolish to try and describe His sovereignty apart from these attributes.

Lastly (for now), the Reformed line of reasoning on this issue fails to take into account the clear expression in Scripture of God’s desire that, not some, but all men be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9).  The doctrine forces upon its adherents a God who is double-minded and says one thing while doing another – an attribute I would be very hesitant to ascribe to the Almighty.

The point that Sproul and others seem to miss in their exegesis of Romans 8:29-30 is that these verses appear, not in the midst of a dissertation on God’s sovereignty, but in the context of a message of hope to believers who were suffering cruelly at the hands of their pagan rulers.  The point of the passage is not that God arbitrarily saves some while passing over others, but that God is a God who makes good on His promises, and that the suffering we endure, whether at the hands of our cruel neighbors or as a result of our own sinful behavior, pales when compared to the glory we will witness and the reward we will receive when our Lord welcomes us into the eternal Kingdom.

In their argument against any possibility that human free choice plays any part in their salvation, Reformed apologists often present yet another false dichotomy in defense of their flawed theology:  If you do not believe in the Calvinist position on election, you must be a Pelagian or a Semi-Pelagian.  Pelagius was a 4^th century philosopher who argued against the doctrine that original sin has tainted the human race and asserted that it was possible, however difficult, to lead a sin-free life – an idea clearly refuted in Scripture (See Romans 5).  Semi-Pelagians are defined as those who believe that, though all are tainted by sin, it is possible to initiate one’s own salvation by seeking God - even before God seeks us – again an idea refuted by Scripture (see Romans 3:11).  So, according to the Reformed argument, one must either believe that man has no choice whatsoever as to whether to believe in Christ; or one must believe that man initiates his own faith in Christ, rather than responding to Christ initiating a call to us.  There is no room for the possibility that God seeks us out while giving us the freedom to receive or to reject His gracious offer of salvation.

To illustrate the ridiculousness of this false dichotomy, and of the Reformed position on election in general, allow me to paint a scene for you:

You are a poor working class person in a small town.  You have a vague notion that other - perhaps even wonderful - places exist outside your small world, but the concerns of day-to-day living have eliminated the possibility of ever visiting any of these places from your consciousness.

One day, a close friend confides in you that he or she has been saving money away and now has enough to go and see Europe! Not only that, but your friend has enough to take two people and would like for you to come along!

Suddenly, the possibility of seeing new things opens up before your eyes. After a few moments’ consideration, you wonder why you are even hesitating and you joyfully accept your friend’s gracious offer.

Now, according to Reformed theologians, this scene (as applied to soteriology) could not possibly play out this way.  Either you are a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian, in which case the only ways the scene could have played out is with your either saving your own money to go to Europe (actually never making it), or with you finding out your friend is going to Europe and begging him or her to take you there.  On the other hand, if you are rightly Reformed in your thinking, the scene would have played out with your friend kidnapping you and dragging you to Europe, whether you wished to go or not (or perhaps would express the fond wish that you could go, but then purposely schedule the trip at a time when you could not possibly make it).

Acceptance of the Calvinist doctrine of election leads us to another scary possibility – one that has been acknowledged by well–respected Reformed scholars, such as Sproul and J.I. Packer.  Since we cannot know for certain we are elect, we must acknowledge the possibility that we may think we have saving faith in Christ, when in reality, we do not, and are under a deluding influence that will hold us blind to our predicament until we face the throne of judgment and it is too late.  The only way to have at least some assurance in this life, according to Reformed theology, is to manifest the visible signs of conversion – typically described in terms of service to Christ and obedience to the moral Law of God.  Since none of us do this perfectly, none can have perfect assurance of their salvation (more on this in the future installment on Perseverance of the Saints – the “P” in the TULIP).

My friends, you do not have to go through life worrying about whether you are one of the elect or whether you are just a fake believer.  The Bible offers simple assurance to those who wish to spend eternity in the presence of the Lord:

When the Philippian jailer became aware that his sinful actions had incurred God’s wrath, he fell on his face and asked the question of Paul and Silas “Sirs; what must I do to be saved?”  They replied “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.” (Acts 16).  Peter offered the same simple formula to the Jews who had realized that they had crucified their own Messiah.  The letter to the Hebrews defines faith very simply as “assurance of things not seen.”

If you are here reading this today, chances are that you already recognize that you are an imperfect sinner.  This is a part of repentance, but not the whole thing.  We can resolve to do better in the future – to avoid sin and live better.  This is a form of repentance, but it is not the repentance of which Peter spoke in Acts 2.  True repentance involves recognizing that we are really sinful inside and out, and that we cannot be good enough to earn a place in heaven.  True repentance involves changing our mind about our own goodness and recognizing that we need a savior.  True repentance involves changing our mind about who Christ is and recognizing that He is Lord and Savior – and placing our trust completely in Him and our eternal destiny in His hands alone.  If we have done this, Christ Himself says that we already have eternal life (John 3:16, 5:24).

Depravity, or Inability?

(This post is the second in a series dealing with the difficult subject of Reformed theology.)

In our last installment on the subject of Calvinism, we discussed the issue of God’s sovereignty (or rather, Reformed theology’s definition of God’s sovereignty).  As we noted previously, the sovereignty of God is not in question, but the Reformed view of sovereignty – that God foreordains and is therefore the cause of every decision ever made by man – is in question, as it necessarily makes God the cause of sin.  Scripture tells us that the Lord is holy and commands His children also to be holy (Leviticus 11:44), that He is without sin (1 John 3:5), that in Him there is no deceit (Isaiah 53:9) or unrighteousness (Psalm 92:15), and that He does not even tempt anyone to sin (James 1:13), much less cause a person to sin.  Calvinism’s view of God’s sovereignty stretches well beyond the common understanding of the term and well beyond the plain teaching of the Scriptures on the subject.  Reformed theology’s peculiar view of sovereignty is made necessary, however, by its equally singular view of man's condition, expressed in Calvinist doctrine as Total Depravity, the “T” in the Calvinist TULIP.  Or, taken in reverse, Reformed theology’s view on man’s depravity is made necessary by Calvinism’s view of God’s sovereignty.

Now, most Bible-believing Christians would have little or no problem with the idea that man is totally depraved – in the sense that we are born wicked, and that sin touches every aspect of our lives. However, just as the Calvinist definition of sovereignty stretches beyond the common understanding of “having autonomy, supreme power or authority,” the Reformed definition of Total Depravity stretches beyond the common understanding of the idea as total “moral corruption.” 

As R.C. Sproul notes in his book What is Reformed Theology?:

“The Westminster Confession of Faith declares: ‘Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so, as a natural, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.’

            If ever the Reformed doctrine of total depravity has been crystallized into one brief statement, it is here.” (R.C. Sproul: What is Reformed Theology, BakerBooks, 1997, P. 128).

On the surface, there does not appear to be much to quibble with in this Reformed definition of depravity.  Few students of Scripture would argue that man, left to his own devices, would seek out a relationship with the Lord (Romans 3:10-12), or that he could effect his salvation through any amount of works (Ephesians 2:8-9, Galatians 2:16).  But the definition of depravity offered by Reformed theology goes beyond the idea that all that we do is tainted by moral corruption and extends to the idea that, not only do we not seek God of our own volition, but that we cannot even respond to God of our own volition:

“Our wills are such that we cannot freely choose what we have no desire to choose.” (R.C. Sproul: What is Reformed Theology, BakerBooks, 1997, P. 135).

In other words, though God has given us the Law in order to convict us of our sin, and of our need for a savior (Galatians 3:24, Romans 3:20), and though He has written it on the hearts of all men – as well as an awareness of eternity, that we might be drawn to Him (Ecclesiastes 3:11, Romans 2:15), and though we are admonished that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17), we are to believe that man is nevertheless unable to hear, comprehend, and believe the Gospel unless he is first regenerated by God. So in the Reformed view, a person is first regenerated, and then believes the Gospel (never mind that the logical progression found in Scripture invariably describes the opposite).  This view of man’s depravity necessitates a sovereign act of God apart from man’s will in order to accomplish salvation.

Now, we might reasonably ask; “even if man is wicked and would not seek after God of his own volition, could not the knowledge of sin and its consequences motivate the lost sinner to receive the Gospel, even if initially out of a desire to escape judgment?"  Therein lies the issue. Sproul’s argument (and that of Reformed theology in general) hinges on the assertion that, if man trusts in the Lord out of any other motivation than that of pure love for God, his conversion is not genuine:

“We draw the inference that, because people are seeking what God alone can supply, they must be seeking God Himself.  This is our error.  In our fallen condition, we desire the benefits that only God can give us, but we do not want Him…” (R.C. Sproul: What is Reformed Theology, BakerBooks, 1997, P. 125).

The clear implication of the text and the surrounding context is that, if one seeks or is drawn to God by something only God can provide (such as eternal life), rather than out of unselfish love for Him, that person remains lost.  As we will see in a future installment, it is this dogmatic assertion that makes the “I” in the TULIP – Irresistible Grace – necessary to the salvation of the individual (It also renders the Gospel essentially powerless in the eyes of Reformed theologians, though they will vehemently deny this).

While I do not take issue with Sproul’s assertion that unregenerate men are only drawn to God out of selfish motivations (self-preservation for one), the question I have for Sproul, MacArthur, Piper, Calvin, and the authors of the Westminster Catechism is this:

Where in the Scriptures are we taught that responding to God’s call out of selfish motives invalidates our conversion?

Indeed, if anything, Scripture seems to indicate the opposite.  When Christ is abandoned by the multitudes who cannot abide His teaching, He asks if His disciples will also leave Him.  Peter responds:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68).

Similarly, Sproul’s reasoning would invalidate the conversion of the Philippian jailor who, in fear, asked “what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:29), or the righteousness imputed to Lot, who was “oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked” while dwelling in Sodom, and yet remained unmotivated to leave that rich city until warned of its impending destruction by the Lord’s angels (2 Peter 2:7, Genesis 19)

In fact, the Scriptures are replete with accounts of men and women who responded to the Lord out of seemingly selfish motives and yet are named righteous because they believed God. A quick survey of the Scriptures for passages dealing with selfish or carnal motives turns up none relating to salvation, though we do find passages indicating that God may deny wealth, power, or spiritual gifts to believers because their requests are selfishly motivated (James 4:3), or that God will judge the worth of works based on the motivation behind them (1 Corinthians 3:9-15).  Reformed teachers take professors of the emergent social gospel to task for omitting teaching about hell, but the question I have for Reformed teachers is: "Why teach about hell, if the motive of escaping the wrath of God doesn't lead to saving faith?"  In fact, Jesus and His apostles repeatedly warned sinners that they were storing up wrath for themselves.  Why would they do this, if such warnings are to no avail?

Beyond the issue of motivation, though, do the Scriptures teach that man is not only incapable of  doing good, but also incapable even of receiving good?  Consider the following passages:


For He is our God,


           And we are the people of His pasture,

 
And the sheep of His hand.

 
          Today, if you will hear His voice:
 

 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,


           As in the day of trial in the wilderness,

(Psalm 95:7-8, New King James Version)

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:

“ Today, if you will hear His voice,

       Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

 In the day of trial in the wilderness,

       Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me,

And saw My works forty years.

(Hebrews 3:7-9, New King James Version)

Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:

 


      “ Today, if you will hear His voice,


      Do not harden your hearts.”



For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day.

(Hebrews 4:6-8, New King James Version)

Now I ask: if man's depravity extends to total inability to respond to God's call, what need is there to warn us in Scripture not to harden our hearts?  According to Sproul and others, our hearts are already as hard as hard can be, and nothing short of a miraculous reprogramming of our nature can soften them.

Perhaps part of the problem lies in the common Calvinist misconception that faith is something that one “does,” rather than something that one has.  Calvinist apologists almost invariably define saving faith as something more than “knowing and trusting without seeing,” as it is described in Hebrews 11:1 (Calvinists are not alone in this.  Many Arminian and holiness teachers hold to this same position).  Saving faith, contends the Calvinist, is “obeying faith,” or “sin-fighting faith.”  Thus, most Calvinists define faith as commitment, or some combination of belief and commitment.  Understanding this, it is easy to see how the Calvinist would maintain that faith (e.g. commitment) must be preceded by regeneration, but this (Perseverance of the Saints, the "P" in the TULIP) is a weighty subject for another day.  For now, I'll leave you with the words of the Apostle Paul to help you decide whether reasoning with unbelievers and warning them of the coming judgment is of any value:

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:

      “ How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace,
      Who bring glad tidings of good things!”

 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “LORD, who has believed our report?” So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
(Romans 10:14-17, New King James Version)