Eric Hankins is the Pastor of First Baptist, Oxford, Mississippi

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the fourth of a four-part series by Eric Hankins entitled “Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: Toward a Baptist Soteriology.” This series attempts to frame Baptist soteriology in a different structure than the traditional “TULIP” comparisons with the doctrines of Calvinism or Arminianism.

• In Part 1, Hankins contrasts “individual election” (a key Biblical Presupposition in Calvinism and Arminianism) with “corporate election” in a Baptist soteriology.
• In Part 2, he contrasts the Philosophical Presuppositions of “The ‘Problem’ of Determinism and Free-Will” in Calvinism with “The Freedom of God and the Free-Will of People” in a Baptist soteriology.
• In Part 3, he contrasts the Theological Presuppositions of “Federal Theology” in Calvinist soteriology with “Covenant in Christ” in a Baptist soteriology.

Total Depravity

The Scriptures clearly affirm that all people are sinners. Because of sin, humans are in a disastrous state, unable to alter the trajectory of their rebellion against God, unable to clear their debt of sin against Him, unable to work their way back to Him through their best efforts. This situation is one of their own creating and for which they are ultimately responsible.[1]

About these realities, there is little debate in evangelical theology. What is at issue is what being a sinner means when it comes to responding to God’s offer of covenant relationship through the power of the gospel.

Both Calvinism and Arminianism affirm that the Fall resulted in “total depravity,” the complete incapacitation of humanity’s free response to God’s gracious offer of covenant relationship.[2] In Calvinism, the only remedies for this state-of-affairs are the “doctrines of grace” in which the free response of individuals is not decisive. For Arminianism, total depravity, which is purely speculative, is corrected by prevenient grace, which is even more speculative, and makes total depravity ultimately meaningless because God never allows it to have any effect on any person.

Nothing in Scripture indicates that humans have been rendered “totally depraved” through Adam’s sin. Genesis 3 gives an extensive account of the consequences of Adam’s sin, but nowhere is there the idea that Adam or his progeny lost the ability to respond to God in faith, a condition which then required some sort of restoration by regeneration or prevenient grace. In fact, just the opposite appears to be the case. The story of God’s relationship with humankind is fraught with frustration, sadness, and wrath on God’s part, not because humans are incapable of a faith response, but because they are capable of it, yet reject God’s offer of covenant relationship anyway. To be sure, they are not capable of responding in faith without God’s special revelation of Himself through Christ and His Spirit’s drawing. Any morally responsible person, however, who encounters the gospel in the power of the Spirit (even though he has a will so damaged by sin that he is incapable of having a relationship with God without the gospel) is able to respond to that “well-meant offer.”

Therefore, the time has come once again for Baptists to reject another dichotomy mediated by the Calvinist/Arminian debate: monergism and synergism. Monergism insists that salvation is all of God. Monergists conclude that faith emerging from a decision within the will of the believer is a “work” that makes salvation meritorious, but this idea demands a theologically objectionable determinism. As a technical theological concept, synergism[3] still operates off of a framework that views sovereignty and free-will as problematic, often forcing too fine a distinction between “what God does” and “what man does.” Synergism tends to put “faith” in the category of performance, rather than an attitude of surrender. This has led some Arminian theology into over-speculation concerning the nature of the act of faith, psychologizing and sensationalizing the “moment of decision,” so that one’s experience becomes the basis of his assurance. Synergism also tends to demand further acts in order to receive further blessing and opens the door to the possibility that, if a person fails to act faithfully subsequent to the experience of salvation, God will cease to save.

Baptists must get off of this grid.[4] We have preferred terms like “trust,” “surrender,” and “relationship” to “monergism” or “synergism” when we reflect on God’s offer and our response. These terms secure the affirmation both that individuals can do nothing to save themselves, yet their salvation cannot occur against their wills or without a response of faith that belongs to them alone.

The Sinfulness and Salvability of Everyone

The anthropological presupposition is that no one can save himself, but anyone can be saved. No person ever takes the first step toward God. Humankind’s history is broken; its destiny is death; it’s context darkness; its reality is rebellion. This sinfulness has put us out of fellowship with God and under the verdict of eternal separation. Through the person and work of Christ, which is proclaimed through the gospel, God reaches out His hand of “first love,” providing a ground of salvation to which any one can respond in faith. If people do not hear and respond to this gospel, they will not be saved. So, we preach the gospel broadly, regularly, and passionately. We offer an invitation every time we preach because we believe every unbeliever, no matter how sinful and broken, can respond, and no matter how moral and self-righteous, must respond.

Baptist anthropology affirms that, because of personal sinfulness, no one is capable of coming to faith in Christ without the proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Spirit. While there are certainly unique instances of individuals receiving the gospel through dreams and non-human proclamation, this is not God’s normal manner of working and those instances of salvation still require both a proclamation of Jesus as Lord and a response of faith. Baptists believe that the proclamation of the gospel is necessary for a faith response to Christ. Those who do not hear will not be saved. Everyone who does hear has the opportunity to respond to Christ in faith or persist in unbelief. This is the only proper biblical motivation for the urgent proclamation of the gospel. Baptists have excelled in evangelism and missions because we believe it really matters.

Conclusion

So, what would a biblically-sound, Christ-centered, grace-filled soteriology look like without appeals to individual election, determinism, Federal Theology, or total depravity? What would it look like if it were free from the presuppositions of Calvinism and Arminianism? It would look exactly like what most Baptists have believed instinctively all along. Baptists have consistently resisted the impulse to embrace completely either Calvinism or Arminianism. We simply posit that we are “neither.”[5] The basis for this resistance to the two systems is our aversion to theological speculation beyond the clear sense of Scripture and our willingness to go our own way when Scripture and conscience demand. The way forward is basically backward, a massive simplification, a walking out of the convoluted labyrinth that evangelical soteriology has become in the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism. It is a move not dissimilar to the basic impulse of Luther at the birth of the Reformation, which was to reject the Medieval scholasticism that had turned the gloriously simple gospel of grace into its absolute antithesis. For Luther, the solution was to start over with the Scriptures (and Augustine), no matter what the implications. Baptists need to apply the Reformation principles of sola scriptura and semper reformanda to Luther himself. Augustine’s soteriology and the bulwark constructed subsequently to defend it must be removed.

Baptists believe in the clarity and simplicity of the Bible. We search in vain for decrees, a Covenants of Works, the distinction between a “general call” and an “effectual call,” hidden wills, and prevenient grace. We react with consternation to the ideas that God regenerates before He converts, that He hates sinners, that reprobation without respect to a response of faith brings Him the greatest glory, or that the truly converted can lose their salvation. Baptists have felt free to agree with certain emphases within Calvinism and Arminianism, while rejecting those that offend our commitments to the possibility of salvation for all and to the eternal security of that salvation based exclusively on faith in the covenant promises of God. The free offer of an eternal, life-changing covenant with the Father through the Son by the Spirit to all sinners by the free exercise of personal faith alone has been the simple, non-speculative but inviolable core of Baptist soteriological belief and practice. Baptist soteriology (specifically including the doctrines of the sovereign, elective purposes of God, the sinfulness of all humans, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and the security of the believer) is not in jeopardy and does not need to be reinforced by Calvinism or Arminianism. It can be successfully taught, maintained, and defended without resorting to either system.

Baptists’ historic passion for evangelism and missions is underdetermined by Calvinism and Arminianism. For Calvinism, if the decision about who is saved and who is not has already been made by God, then the actual sharing of the gospel with the lost does not matter. The vast majority of Calvinists strenuously object to this charge, employing a variety of tactics to obviate what is, unfortunately, the only logical conclusion of their system. Saying that God elects the “means” of salvation as well as the individuals who are saved demands a determinism that is theologically unacceptable and philosophically unsustainable. Insisting that evangelism is still necessary because it “glorifies God” and demonstrates obedience to the Scriptures is simply a variation of that same determinism. The historical struggles of Calvinism with doctrinal and attitudinal opposition to missions and the “promiscuous preaching of the gospel” is evidence of the weakness of their system. Insisting on a “well-meant offer” while at the same time insisting that not all are able to respond is not the affirmation of a “mystery;” it is stubborn fidelity to a logical contradiction. For Arminianism, if election is based on foreseen faith, then it must be assumed that every person will receive enough of the gospel to trust or reject Christ. We know that billions still have not heard the gospel. This privileges the effort of the faith-capacity of people over the power of the gospel alone to save. If all people have the ability to figure out some form of faith in Christ, why worry overmuch about evangelism? It is this sort of weakness that lends itself to the frequent liberal trend in Arminianism.

Without committing to either Calvinism or Arminianism, Baptists have evangelized millions, planted thousands of churches, and reached literally around the globe with the life-changing, world-changing message of salvation by grace through faith. When either system has come to the forefront in debate or dispute, the outcome has rarely been positive for kingdom work through us. Baptists have been well-served by a simpler, less-speculative, less metaphysical approach to soteriology. As we move into a new millennium, a more constructive, positive statement of our soteriology based on this heritage of simplicity and faith-focus will sharpen us as to what is essential to the message and motivation of the gospel for all who stand in desperate need of it.

Eric Hankins is the Pastor of First Baptist, Oxford, Mississippi

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the third of a four-part series by Eric Hankins entitled “Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: Toward a Baptist Soteriology.” This series attempts to frame Baptist soteriology in a different structure than the traditional “TULIP” comparisons with the doctrines of Calvinism or Arminianism.

• In Part 1, Hankins contrasted “individual election” (a key Biblical Presupposition in Calvinism and Arminianism) with “corporate election” in a Baptist soteriology.
• In Part 2, he contrasts the Philosophical Presuppositions of “The ‘Problem’ of Determinism and Free-Will” in Calvinism with “The Freedom of God and the Free-Will of People” in a Baptist soteriology.
• Now, in Part 3, he contrasts the Theological Presuppositions of “Federal Theology” in Calvinist soteriology with “Covenant in Christ” in a Baptist soteriology.

The Theological Presupposition in a Reformed Soteriology:

Federal Theology

Both Arminians and Calvinists assume a “Covenant of Works” between Adam and God in the Garden of Eden, even though there is no biblical basis for such.[1] The Covenant of Works, they assert, was a deal God made with Adam whereby Adam would be rewarded with eternal life if he could remain morally perfect through a probationary period. Failure would bring about guilt and “spiritual death,” which includes the loss of his capacity for a good will toward God. Adam’s success or failure, in turn, would be credited to his posterity. This “Federal Theology” imputes Adam’s guilt and total depravity to every human.[2] In Calvinism, actual guilt and total depravity are the plight of every person. Free-will with respect to salvation is, by definition, impossible, and with it, the possibility of a free response to God’s offer of covenant through the gospel. The only hope for salvation for any individual is the elective activity of God. In Calvinist soteriology, election is privileged above faith because regeneration must be prior to conversion. In Arminianism, the effects of Federal Theology and the Covenant of Works must be countermanded by further speculative adjustments like “prevenient grace” and election based on “foreseen faith,” a faith which is only possible because prevenient grace overcomes the depravity and guilt of the whole human race due to Adam’s failure. All this strays far beyond the biblical data. Such speculation does not emerge from clear inferences from the Bible, but is actually a priori argumentation designed to buttress Augustine, not Paul.

God’s gracious action in Christ is not “Plan B,” a “Covenant of Grace,” executed in response to Adam’s failure at “Plan A,” the “Covenant of Works.” The pre-existent Son has always been the center-point of creation and covenant. Adam was not created and placed in the Garden for the purpose of demonstrating moral perfection through his own efforts.[3] This original “works righteousness” was read into the Garden by Pelagius and assumed by Augustine. Adam was not being called to moral perfection; he was being called into world-changing covenant relationship. The command not to eat of the tree was simply a negative construal of God’s offer for Adam to know Him and be satisfied in Him and His plan alone. It was a specific instantiation of the covenant offered to Adam and Eve in Gen. 1:26-28: In a blessed relationship with God, they were to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over it.[4] In the Garden, Adam was being asked to do what Noah, Abraham, Moses, Israel, David, and, ultimately, everyone would be asked to do: trust and accept the gracious covenant offer of God in Christ for the purpose of bringing the created order to its intended conclusion. Adam and Eve were to respond to God in faith. The sensual temptation of the fruit itself came after the temptation to question God’s character and His covenant plan. It was in Adam’s rejection of God’s covenant offer that he failed to be moral. In Christ, God re-offers the covenant through successive renewals, culminating in His final offer of the gospel revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of the Incarnate Son. Adam was asked to believe God and bless the whole world, as were Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and ultimately Christ, who succeeded where all others failed. His victory is extended to all those who put their faith in Him, just like Abraham, the father of the faithful did.[5] Covenant in Christ by faith is not “Plan B;” it is the point of the Bible.

Once again, speculation such as a Covenant of Works, Federal Theology, prevenient grace, etc. are little more than theological “fudge factors” designed to make the Augustinian synthesis work. They do not emerge from the biblical text but are a priori arguments pressed into the service of a fifth-century Catholic bishop, not the authors of the Scriptures, and Baptists have never been comfortable with them. These adjustments mitigate the centrality, power, and immediacy of the biblical concept of “covenant” which has, at its heart, God’s desire for a relationship with His people through a real response of faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the nexus of Baptist soteriology.

The Theological Presupposition in a Baptist Soteriology:

Covenant in Christ

In a Baptist soteriology, Christ is the central object of belief. He is believed as the mediator of covenant relationship, the full expression of the kingdom of God, eternal life, God’s ultimate purpose for everyone and for the cosmos (John 3:16). We have no interest in a series of extra-biblical covenants created to bolster a soteriology that does not take seriously the necessity of personal faith as an expression of free-will. In our preaching, we do not burden people with the calculus of covenants of works, grace, and redemption. We do not invite people to believe in Calvinism or Arminianism. We offer Christ alone, the only hope of Adam, Noah, Abraham, the Patriarchs, Moses, David, Israel, and the whole of humankind. His perfect life, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection comprise the object of confession and belief that is sufficient to save (John 14:6, Rom. 10.9-10).

It is safe to say that Federal Theology, Eternal Decrees, Covenants of Works, Grace, and Redemption, and prevenient grace have played essentially no major role in the expansion of the Baptist witness, especially among Southern Baptists, from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. This is not because ordinary Baptists are unintelligent or simplistic in their beliefs; it is because ordinary Baptists have played a significant role in the direction of denominational identity, and they have been serious about what the Bible plainly does and does not say. Baptists have known that these things were unnecessary for the articulation of God’s unstoppable plan to redeem the whole world through the bold proclamation of salvation in Christ alone by faith alone. From the beginning, the work of Christ in creation and redemption for the purpose of covenant relationship with humankind has always been the center of the biblical narrative. There is no need for an alternate metanarrative of secret decrees and hidden covenants to sort out the history of redemption. The plot of God’s purpose for humankind can be found right on the surface of the text from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, all summed up succinctly in John 3:16.[6]

Bill Harrell has served as Pastor of Abilene Baptist Church in Martinez, Georgia, for over 30 years. He also is active in the Augusta Baptist Association, Georgia Baptist Convention, and SBC, including having serving as the Vice-President of the Georgia Baptist Convention and as Chairman of the SBC Executive Committee.

In the short span of time of about five years, those of us who are observers of activities within the Southern Baptist Convention have witnessed not only changes but mega-shifts in our convention. It would take a large volume for someone to treat all the various subjects at hand but I want to address just a few that are very subtle in some ways but very overt in others.

Most of our Southern Baptist people are just tending to the business of the Kingdom in their part of the world unaware of the forces that are in play and what those forces are trying to achieve and indeed are achieving with much success.

Two things have come to our attention in recent days that bear watching. First, our agency for missions within the US, NAMB, has been using some of the Cooperative Program funds to help establish “Acts 29” churches. These churches must, by their own charter, be organized as five-point-Calvinist churches. There are those who have it as their goal to change the SBC into a Reformed convention more akin to a Presbyterian church that a Baptist church. I cannot, in these few words, get into a broad examination of what is going on, but any informed member of the SBC understands that this is happening.

The driving force behind the Acts 29 churches has been Mark Driscoll; and I do not need to elucidate how controversial he is. He has become, to the younger people, somewhat of a folk hero who they are willing to follow no matter what he says or does. Chapter 10 of his recent book, Real Marriage, is nothing but pornography. It encourages people to think that it normal to do sexually what the Bible condemns. Yet, it is Southern Baptist people who suddenly seem willing to accept the things that the people of our convention rejected outright as sinful until recently. In recent days the leadership of Acts 29 has shifted to someone else, at least in the public eye. Driscoll is the founder of this emergent church, Calvinistic organization; and many believe he will still be the “behind the scenes” leader. Being the founder, he is not going to “ride off into the sunset” too easily or too far.

Let me suggest why the younger generation finds it so easy to accept the kind of things Driscoll mentions in his book. This is the generation that was raised on the internet and all that it offers including pornography. I believe that this young generation is willing to accept and actually applaud the activities that are suggested as acceptable sex in chapter 10 of Driscoll’s book. I believe that many, though certainly not all of the younger generation that is currently pushing for such radical changes in the SBC are not alarmed by the content of chapter 10 because they have been exposed all of their lives, through the internet, to the grossest of pornographic videos and images. Many have exposed themselves to this internet trash and it has imprinted their minds. They think it is okay to do such because they have been dealing with it for years. They are part of the video generation who had the ability to go to their rooms at night and spend hours looking at pornography while their parents thought they were asleep. So, no wonder they don’t blink an eye at what Driscoll refers to in chapter 10. In fact, they wonder why we old “fuddy-duddies” are so worked up about it all. Only people who are accustomed to consuming pornography would gravitate toward such filth and endorse it. Some have noted what a good book he has written, especially in the first chapters. One must realize that it was the same mind that wrote those chapters as the one that wrote chapter 10 and encouraged people to do such things even to the point of providing web sites to help people know where to find aids that would heighten the sexual experience. Because human nature is what it is, things will get worse before they get better. How far will such people as Driscoll have to go before we become convicted and turn away in disgust? We are far removed from the purity that was expected of the New Testament Christians.

The people of the SBC in annual meetings have made it clear that they want nothing to do with Driscoll or Acts 29, yet some of our leaders continue to thumb their noses at what they know has been said on the issue at the convention. They don’t care what we think because these leaders of this new wave of thought are convinced that they are in control so they will do as they wish no matter what we think.

NAMB has been helping to start churches in the St. Louis area that are Acts 29 affiliated. The leaders at NAMB were confronted several months ago about this and we were assured that they were not funding Acts 29 churches with SBC monies. This all died down for a few months, and now we find that they have continued to do this. I don’t know about other people in the SBC, but I do not plan to fund such activity. I also believe that if the masses of the SBC people were to find out what is going on they would not fund it either. The real problem is that those good people are not informed about the current direction of the SBC. They trust their leaders and agencies never realizing that such is happening. The very people they trust are relying on them to continue to give because that is what they have always done and, at the same time, they are going in directions the good people of the SBC would never go.

There is a growing emphasis on church planting and missions. Let me offer a suggestion as to why. The young Calvinists, who are being turned out in numbers from Southern and Southeastern in particular, are finding it difficult to get a job in a Southern Baptist church because 90+ % of our churches reject five point Calvinism. The leaders of these seminaries know they cannot tell a young person that “we are going to educate you in Calvinism, but we want you to know that it will be difficult for you to get a job in a Southern Baptist church when you graduate.” Now suppose they told them that. How long do you think they would attract students in number? So, they are pushing church planting and missions to give these people an outlet for ministry opportunities. They can’t afford to warn the young student about the reality of job hunting in the SBC as a five point Calvinist. They just make them a part of their little group, which I describe as an “intellectual, spiritual groupie thing.” They have their gurus who they follow almost unquestionably. The same is true of those attached to the Acts 29 group. As churches get more familiar with the situation, they are starting to ask directly if a candidate is sympathetic to or is a part of the Acts 29 network. When the average Southern Baptist church finds out that they are connected to or sympathetic to Acts 29, they turn from them and seek another candidate. So, this new emphasis on church planting is being largely driven by the fact that five-point-Calvinist students and Acts 29 adherents need a place to go preach and minister because churches do not want their theology (in the case of the Calvinists) or their organization (in the case of the Acts 29 group).

These church starts in the St. Louis area are very revealing and bear watching. Lifeway, which is in the process of being changed into a Reformed agency, has just released a series of Sunday School lessons on the gospel of which all authors are Calvinists except maybe one person. Now, let me ask a question: With 90+% of the SBC people rejecting Calvinism, how did our educational agency happen to product a Sunday School series on the gospel that is authored almost exclusively by Calvinists? I think it was by design. It was intentional and done because, as stated previously, they think they are in control of the convention enough at this point that they can do as they please.

I believe that it has always been a dream of the President of Southern Seminary to use that institution of higher learning as the home base for making the SBC a Reformed convention. Even Christianity Today saw this. When Al Mohler arrived at Southern in 1993, he began firing the liberals who did not hold to inerrancy. We all watched and said, “Praise God, Brother Al is getting rid of those liberals.” We just didn’t notice that as he fired the liberals, he replaced them with inerrantists who happened to be Calvinists. Some were not even Baptist; they were Presbyterian. The Southern Baptist people were so overjoyed at the way Southern was being brought back into the inerrancy camp that we were totally unaware of the direction in which it was being taken. Now we see. Southern and now Southeastern are both turning out numbers of the young, restless Calvinists with Southern having been doing it for years. We have a large number of them seeking to pastor our churches. Many churches that are not Calvinistic in their theology have been ruptured by these young preachers who accept a call to a church but fail to tell them that they are five point Calvinists. The church is usually split and damaged before they find out the truth. One will be loudly condemned for stating this truth but as my Grandmother used to say . . . ”the proof is in the pudding.”

While I believe that there has been a long term plan to take the convention to the Reformed position, I also think that the number of our agency heads and leadership positions held by Calvinists or those sympathetic to that theological model prove the point. Where did Thom Rainer come from? Southern Seminary. Where did Ed Stetzer make his trek to Lifeway from? Southern. Where did Trevin Wax, a new writer and editor for Lifeway get his Masters degree? Southern. Where did Kevil Ezell come from? He was Al Mohler and Danny Akin’s pastor in Louisville. Where did Clark Logan, now at NAMB come from? Did you guess Southern? You are right. Even Danny Akin went to Southeastern from Southern. A “family tree” kind of graph, showing where the current leadership of some of our most influential agencies came from and who has been involved in their hiring, might be very interesting.

All of this points to why Lifeway would be so bold as to issue a Sunday School series on the gospel authored primarily by Calvinists. Dr. Mohler, along with The Founders group and others know that it would take five lifetimes to take the SBC back to a Reformed position church by church but he is also smart enough to know that it could be accomplished in only a couple of decades through the educational system: Lifeway. The good people of the SBC are not theologians. They simply trust their agencies and are unaware of the plan. They could be manipulated into the Reformed tradition through the educational process and never know what hit them. Also, less blood will be shed this way.

In connection with this, let me point out another thing that bears watching. With this gospel Sunday School series, they are subtly trying to change the definition of the word “gospel.” Even now, when those who hold to Reformed doctrine refer to preaching the “gospel,” they are meaning that one is preaching Calvinism. When one of the Calvinists says “preach the gospel brother,” he is really saying “preach that Reformed doctrine brother.” NonCalvinists are saying “preach the whosoever will gospel brother.” There is a vast difference. And, I believe that the goal is to re-educate the people of the SBC to understand that Reformed doctrine is the “gospel” and that the “gospel” is Reformed doctrine. Once that is accepted by the people after a couple of decades, the leaders of the Reformed resurgence can say, “we have done it; the SBC is now a Reformed convention.” And, they will have used the same basic approach to accomplish their goal as they use in the local churches: slow indoctrination that “sneaks up on the blind side.”

Let me pose this question: “Why, in the midst of all the other things that are transpiring that would totally transform the SBC, do we have this effort to change the name of our convention?” Let me offer this assessment. The effort is to “rebrand” the SBC. Call it something else and change the image of the convention in the minds of the people. At the same time the goal is to insert Calvinism as the identifiable theological bent of the convention. It would be easier to do it that way since the name “SBC” would not easily carry the designation as a Reformed convention. Rebrand it; rename it; insert Calvinism; educate the people that this is where the new convention is theologically. It would be much easier to call a newly named convention a Reformed convention than it would be to identify the SBC as a Reformed group. I realize that not all the people on the name change committee are Calvinists and had no concept of this. But, I believe others did. Those who are not Calvinists probably went along with the “nickname” approach because that is far better than totally changing the name, in their view.

Such name changing and rebranding was tried in 1995-96 when a committee studied changing some things so that we “could operate in a smoother way and more effectively reach the world for Jesus.” This committee renamed the Home Mission Board, NAMB. They renamed the Foreign Mission Board, the IMB. They eliminated some minor agencies. They thought that rebranding and renaming some of our key agencies would make things work better. Worked real well didn’t it? The whole process was a waste of time and money and at least one of the people involved with that process is involved in the current one. So, now they have come up with the brilliant idea of a “nickname”, Great Commission Baptists. Those who want to use this new moniker can do so in place of the Southern Baptist Convention name. This is only going to produce confusion in the eyes of those very people we want to reach. Now, some will have to say ”we are a GCB church”. Then comes the question: “I thought you were Southern Baptist.” “Well we are, but we are choosing to use Great Commission Baptists as our identifying name.” Now one would say, “so, there are two conventions?” “Well no, there is one but it now has two accepted names.” Is it just me or do others think that this is creating confusion? Let me tell you what I think will happen. I think that the GCB will become the “Calvinistic arm” of the SBC. The perception of the young, restless Calvinists is that their heroes are the ones behind this renaming approach, and they will run to be a part of whatever Brother So-and-so helped form and endorses. Soon it will be obvious that this “division” of the SBC is the Calvinistic “arm” of the SBC. Money will flow there in order to support whatever their leaders “suggest” is a good thing to support. So we will wind up with the CBF on one side, the SBC in the middle and the GCB (Calvinistic arm) on the other side. They will do the same as the CBF has done and stay in our convention and churches. More fracturing and confusion will be the result.

When people look at the different facets of the current happenings in the SBC, they can begin to get an idea of what is actually taking place and where it is all headed. Of course, this assumes that they have enough background. If current trends continue we will not recognize the SBC in a very few years. Which begs the question: “Is there NOTHING right about the SBC?” Is everything wrong and in need of radical surgery? I think not! These people are doing with the convention what many of them have done in churches: radically change the makeup of the church while making those who might oppose them out to be one who really doesn’t desire to be obedient to God or fulfill the great commission.

Things are changing in our Southern Baptist Zion and they are not for the good. If things continue on the present course, I predict that in only a few years we will not have thirty-five state and pioneer conventions but about twenty-five. Some will cease to operate. Some will combine with a more stable convention in order to survive. Additionally, I predict that the Executive Committee will cease to be the entity that has guided us so well in the past because fewer conventions will reduce the number of committee members. As it grows smaller someone will ask: “why have an Executive Committee? It is now much smaller and we don’t need to waste that mission money on having a meeting since we have the internet with the ability for each person to stay home and participate in a video conference.” There will be a movement to let the officers of the committee meet about twice a year, set up a video meeting and hold an Executive Committee meeting in such a manner. Next will come the bright idea . . . “Since we don’t have all those people meeting twice a year and since so much has changed, why don’t we sell the Baptist Building? We could take that money and start some more churches and send some more missionaries.” I mean, who in the world could be against such good things?

One might say I am being an alarmist, but I believe that the fragmentation of the SBC is already taking place and it will proceed in that direction until we are no longer the monolithic spiritual body that has influence in the nation and world. We will be like any other denominational body. We will not be the leader among denominations as we have been, but we will be classed with those that the world doesn’t care if they exist or not because they are no threat to the sinful directions of society.

I know that what I have said will be decried as harsh, but we are dealing with harsh realities in the SBC. If things follow a normal course, it will be the young theologues who have little or no experience who will be the harshest in their criticism of my thoughts. They are still “wet behind the ears” and don’t have the experience or background to say very much at all. In general they have no respect for those who have had a ministry of forty or more years. I really don’t care who says what. My observations are built on the foundation of sixteen years on the Executive Committee and thirty eight years of pastoring Southern Baptist churches.

The things I have mentioned are some of the things that bear watching. Time will prove if I am right or not. I think I am.

Eric Hankins is the Pastor of First Baptist, Oxford, Mississippi

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the second of a four-part series by Eric Hankins attempting to frame Baptist soteriology in a different structure than comparing it to Calvinism and Arminianism. In the first article, Hankins contrasted individual election as a key Biblical Presupposition in Calvinism and Arminianism with corporate election in a Baptist soteriology. In this article he contrasts the Philosophical Presuppositions of Calvinism (The “Problem” of Determinism and Free-Will) and that of a Baptist soteriology (“The Freedom of God and the Free-Will of People”).

The Philosophical Presupposition of Calvinism:
The “Problem” of Determinism and Free-Will

Like Calvinism and Arminianism, the 2,500-year-old debate concerning the “problem” of determinism and free-will has also reached an impasse. This is because absolute causal determinism is untenable.[1] Put simply, the “problem” is not a problem because the paradigm for causation in the Western philosophical tradition is wrong. The whole of reality cannot be explained in terms of uni-directional causation from a single first-principle. The universe does not work that way. Causation is complex, hierarchical, and interdependent. God sits sovereignly and non-contingently atop a hierarchy that owes its existence to the functioning of the levels below it, levels that include the fully operational free-will of humans.[2] Opposing God’s sovereign guidance of the universe and the operation of free-will within that universe is a false dichotomy based on reductionistic metaphysical assumptions. God has made a free and sovereign decision to have a universe in which human free-will plays a decisive role. Human agency is one force among many that God has created to accomplish His cosmic purposes.

Free-will plays a unique role within God’s purposes for the universe because it is the unique power of human beings freely to enter into covenant relationships, especially a covenant relationship with God. This makes human willing fundamentally moral. Under certain circumstances, God, in His freedom, contravenes free-will, just as He is free to contravene any other force in nature, but this is not His normal modus operandi. Because God is God, He knows all of the free acts of humans from eternity, but this knowledge does not cause these acts nor does it make Him responsible for them. Moreover, the existence of these acts in no way impinges upon either His freedom or His ability to bring about His ultimate purposes. The ability of humans “to do otherwise” does not call God’s sovereignty into question; it actually establishes and ratifies His sovereignty over the particular universe that was His good pleasure to create. Opposing free-will and sovereignty is, from a philosophical perspective, nonsensical.[3]

Calvinism’s desire to protect God’s divine status from the infringement of human free-will by denying it completely or reducing it to some form of “soft-determinism”[4] is unnecessary. God’s corporate elective purposes are accomplished by individual free acts of faith. Arminianism’s need to inject ideas such as God’s election of individuals based on their future free acts is also a move designed to maintain both a strong view of God’s sovereignty and the free choice of individuals. Unfortunately, this move is made at the expense of any regular understanding of biblical election, which is unilateral. God does not choose Israel because He knows she will choose Him in return. He chooses her even though He knows that her history will be one of rebellion and failure. Moreover, Arminianism’s desire to protect the inviolability of free-will to the degree that God cannot keep His promise to seal a believer’s free response fails to take seriously the totality of the biblical concept of faith.

Many Baptists have tended to opt for what they think is a “compatibilist” understanding of determinism and free-will in salvation: God chooses individuals unconditionally, and individuals choose God by faith.[5] Unfortunately, compatibilism demands a deterministic view of both God and free-will with which those same Baptists would be very uncomfortable. What these Baptists really want to say is that a “determinist” view of God is compatible with a “libertarian” view of free-will, but this is philosophically impermissible. Another typical strategy of Baptists, at this point, is to appeal to “mystery” or “paradox:” We don’t know how God chooses individuals, and, at the same time, individuals choose God. But, like other complex doctrines such as the Trinity or the hypostatic union, it is still true. To say, however, that God chooses individuals unconditionally and that He does not choose individuals unconditionally is not to affirm a mystery; it is to assert a logical contradiction. Baptists need to abandon the language of compatibilism and “mystery,” which do not adequately reflect what they believe about God and salvation, and embrace the concept that a robust (soft-) libertarian free-will is the actualization of God’s sovereign direction of His universe.

The Philosophical Presupposition in a Baptist Soteriology:
The Freedom of God and the Free-Will of People

The manner in which biblical faith functions in creation is this: God sovereignly and freely made a universe in which the free-will of humans plays a decisive role in His ultimate purposes for that universe (Rom. 10:9-10). Without free-will, there is no mechanism for the defeat of sin and evil, no mechanism for covenant relationship, no mechanism for a world-changing, world-completing partnership between God and His people. For Baptists, faith has never been something that occurs without our willing. We deny that people’s eternal destinies have been fixed without respect to a free-response of repentance and faith. We preach that the decision of each individual is both possible and necessary for salvation.

It has been typical of Baptists to believe that anyone who reaches the point of moral responsibility has the capacity to respond to the gospel. While all persons are radically sinful and totally unable to save themselves, their ability to “choose otherwise” defines human existence, including the ability to respond to the gospel in faith or reject it in rebellion. God initiates the process; He imbues it with His Spirit’s enabling. When people respond in faith, God acts according to His promises to seal that relationship for eternity, welding the will of the believer to His own, setting the believer free by His sovereign embrace. Our assurance of salvation comes not from a “sense” that we are elect or from our persistence in holy living. Assurance comes from the simple, surrendered faith that God keeps every one of His promises in Christ Jesus.

Eric Hankins is the Pastor of First Baptist, Oxford, Mississippi

This is part one of a four part series. These posts are adapted from Eric Hankins’s article “Beyond Calvinism and Arminianims: Toward a Baptist Soteriology,” published in the online Journal for Bapist Theology and Ministry, Spring 2011, Vol. 8, No. 1, and may be accessed here. The material published here is used by permission of the author.

Introduction

For over a century, Southern Baptists, by-and-large, have not felt the need to identify themselves as either Calvinists or Arminians. We were glad to affirm different aspects of each system, politely reject the points that were at variance with the clear teaching of Scripture, gladly accept those in our tribe who did affirm one or the other, and go on about the business of reaching the world around us for Christ. We did so without formulating a distinctive soteriology of our own. This has served us well, but, unfortunately, such détente appears to be coming to an end. For the last several years, voices calling for a recommitment to Reformed theology in Baptist life have become louder and louder. The Reformed-minded want to make the case that Baptists have always been made up of two groups, Calvinists and Arminians, and that they are representing and calling for a revival of just one stream in our soteriological tradition. They believe that this would be a return to the “normal” state of affairs and would balance what they perceive as an Arminian tilt in Southern Baptist life over the past couple generations. So, the way to get us back to where we are supposed to be is to force us to choose one system or the other. And that’s the problem. Most Southern Baptists don’t want to be one or the other. It is becoming clear, however, that simply stating that we are “neither” is not going to work.

The time has come for Southern Baptist to spell out exactly what we believe about the nature of salvation without appealing to either Calvinism or Arminianism. We must break with the notion that these are the only two options. We must break with the notion that these two options can be successfully integrated. We must break with the notion that we can “all just get along” without having a serious debate. We must break with the notion that the “Neither” position has a future. These blog posts are written in hopes that a new direction can be forged.

The Claim

After four hundred years, Calvinism and Arminianism remain at an impasse. The strengths and weaknesses of both systems are well-documented, and their proponents vociferously aver each system’s mutual exclusivity. These two theological programs have had sufficient time to demonstrate their superiority over the other and have failed to do so. The time has come, therefore, to look beyond them for a paradigm that gives a better account of the biblical and theological data. Indeed, the stalemate itself is related not so much to the unique features of each system but to a set of erroneous presuppositions upon which both are constructed. As the fault lines in these foundational concepts are exposed, it will become clear that the Baptist vision for soteriology, which has always resisted absolute fidelity to either system, has been the correct instinct all along. Baptist theology must be willing to articulate this vision in a compelling and comprehensive manner.

This post and the following three will outline four presuppositions shared by Calvinism and Arminianism that demonstrate the degree to which a new approach to soteriology is needed. One presupposition is primarily biblical, one is primarily philosophical, one is primarily theological, and one is primarily anthropological, although each is intertwined with the others.

#1 The Biblical Presupposition:

A. Individual Election (Calvinism and Arminianism)

The idea that God, in eternity past, elected certain individuals to salvation is a fundamental tenet of Calvinism and Arminianism. The interpretation of this biblical concept needs to be revised. Quite simply, when the Bible speaks of election in the context of God’s saving action, it is always referring to corporate election, God’s decision to have a people for Himself. When the election of individuals is raised in Scripture, it is always election to a purpose or calling within God’s plans for His people as a whole. In the OT, the writers understood election to be God’s choice of Israel, yet they also clearly taught that the benefits of corporate election could only be experienced by the individual Israelite (or the particular generation of Israelites) who responded faithfully to the covenant that had been offered to the whole nation.[1] This trajectory within the OT is unassailable. It is reinforced in the intertestamental literature and is the basis for the way election is treated in the NT.[2] The Bible, therefore, does not speak of God’s choice of certain individuals and not others for salvation.[3] When the Bible does speak of the salvation of individuals, its central concept is “faith,” never “election.”

Take away individual election, and the key components of Calvinism and Arminianism disappear.[4] God does not elect individuals to salvation on the basis of His hidden councils, nor does He elect them on the basis of His foreknowledge of their future faith. Simply put, God does not “elect” individuals to salvation. He has elected an eschatological people whom He has determined to have for Himself. This group will be populated by individuals who have responded in faith to the gracious, free offer of the gospel. The group, “the Elect,” is comprised of individuals who are “saved by faith,” not “saved by election.” This being the case, there is no longer any need for the theological maneuvering required to explain how God elects individuals without respect to their response (which evacuates the biblical concept of “faith” of all its meaning) or how He elects individuals based on foreseen faith (which evacuates the biblical concept of “election” of all its meaning).

Asserting that “individual election” should be abandoned is striking, to say the least. It is the foundation on which evangelical soteriology is often constructed.[5] It is painful to consider the enormous investment of time and energy that has been spent trying to reconcile how God chooses individuals and, at the same time, how individuals choose God, only to discover that the whole endeavor has been based on a misreading of Scripture. Nevertheless, most Baptists have never felt fully comfortable with either Calvinist or Arminian understandings of election because neither comport well with the whole counsel of God. The reason is clear. The Scriptures lead to the conclusion that Augustine, Calvin, and Arminius were simply wrong in their construction of individual election. Baptists have never been theologically or confessionally committed to these august theologians, and the time has come to move beyond them.

B. Individual Faith (Baptist)

The central biblical presupposition for a Baptist soteriology is, therefore, “faith” (Eph. 2.8-9). “Election” is a term that belongs properly in the Doctrine of God. Faith captures the fundamentally relational nature of NT soteriology. “Justification by faith,” which lies at the center of Protestant soteriological identity, speaks of the initiating and sustaining activity of God in bringing an individual into right relationship with Himself and the necessity of the individual’s response for God’s justifying work to be actualized in his life. While the totality of justification has numerous aspects (past, present, future, spiritual, physical, individual, moral, social, ecclesiological, cosmic, etc.), it does not happen without personal faith. Faith has a variety of nuances as well, but, ultimately, it is an act of the will that belongs to the believer. It is not a “gift” God gives to some and not others. When Baptists call people to salvation, we emphasize the biblical concept of faith, not election.

By Ron F. Hale.
He has served as Pastor, Church Planter, Strategist (NAMB), Director of Missions, Associate Executive Director of Evangelism and Church Planting for a State Convention, and now in the 4^th quarter of ministry as Minister of Missions.

While living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I loved looking down at the cityscape from the perch of Mt. Washington. You could ride the incline car up the steep hillside and see the confluence of the Ohio River as the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers came to an end at “The Point” in downtown Pittsburgh; Three Rivers Stadium is nearby. Depending on the weather in southwestern Pennsylvania, some days you could see muddy waters from one river flowing into the headstream of the Ohio River, while the other river brought much clearer water. These two rivers (one cloudy and one clear) seemed to flow side-by-side while slowly mixing and mingling together in the formation of the mighty Ohio.

Two rivers of theological thought have historically flowed through the mainstream of the Southern Baptist Convention. The waters have been muddied a bit by the Great Awakenings in America, the Sandy Creek revivalist tradition of Separate Baptists in the South, the Charleston tradition influenced more by Particular confessions of faith and their pastors trained in Presbyterian seminaries like Princeton, and the adoption of new Baptist confessions and statements of faith forged in the New World.

Dr. Steve W. Lemke’s précis of the two streams of soteriology (doctrine of salvation) meandering through our Southern Baptist history is enlightening:

To oversimplify a bit, Southern Baptists have two theological tributaries flowing into our mainstream – the Arminian-leaning General Baptists and the Calvinist-leaning Particular Baptists. Unto themselves, these tributaries were essentially free-standing streams, independent of each other. The General Baptists were first chronologically, with leaders such as John Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and Thomas Grantham. The name General Baptist came from their belief in a general atonement – that is, that Christ died for all the people who would respond in faith to Him. These Baptists may not have had access to most or all of Arminius’ works, but they were in agreement with many points of his theology. This theological stream was expressed in doctrinal confessions such as Smyth’s Short Confession of 1610, Helwys’s Declaration of Faith in 1611, the Faith and Practices of 30 Congregations of 1651, and the Standard Confession of 1660. The Free Will Baptists and General Baptists are the purest contemporary denominational expressions of this stream of thought.

In contrast, the name of the Particular Baptists was derived from the fact that they believed in a particular (or limited) atonement – that is, Christ died only for particular people, i.e., the elect. Their best known doctrinal confessions were the 1644 London Baptist Confession (expanded in 1646), the Second London Confession of 1689, and the Philadelphia Confession (of the Philadelphia Association) in 1742. The Second London Confession follows the language of the Reformed Westminster Confession verbatim (except at points that even Calvinistic Baptists differ from Presbyterians), and the Philadelphia Confession likewise copies the Second London Confession almost entirely word for word.[1]

From the Headwaters of the Arminian Stream

James Arminius (1560-1609) refused to accept the teachings of Theodore Beza (1519-1605) on election and reprobation. Beza followed John Calvin at the academy of Geneva and was the architect of the view of predestination known as supralapsarianism. This view argued that before God ordained the fall of Adam, He chose certain persons to eternal life and predestined others to eternal damnation.[2]

After studying under Beza in Geneva, Arminius rejected the teachings of his professor and taught another view. After his death, the followers of Arminius became known as the Remonstrants and they published a theological document that contended for the following five things:

1. God conditionally elects individuals according to their foreseen faith.
2. Christ died for the sins of the whole world.
3. No one has the power within himself to turn to God without the assistance of God’s grace.
4. God’s grace can be resisted.
5. It is possible for a Christian to lose his salvation.[3]

From the Headwaters of the Calvinist Stream

The followers of Arminius (the Arminians) and the followers of John Calvin (Calvinists) were embroiled in a theological debate until the Synod of Dort (1618-1619), at which time all five Arminian assertions were rejected.

The five points of Calvinism sought to respond to the five assertions of the Remonstrants (Arminians):

1. Total Depravity – as a result of Adam’s fall, the entire human race is affected; all humanity is dead in trespasses and sin. Man is unable to save himself.
2. Unconditional Election – Because man is dead in sin, he is unable to initiate response to God; therefore, in eternity past, God elected certain people to salvation. Election and predestination are unconditional; they are not based on man’s response.
3. Limited Atonement – Because God determined that certain ones should be saved as a result of God’s unconditional election, He determined that Christ should die for the elect. All who God has elected and Christ died for will be saved.
4. Irresistible Grace – Those whom God elected and Christ died for, God draws to Himself through irresistible grace. God makes man willing to come to Him. When God calls, man responds.
5. Perseverance of the Saints — The precise ones God has elected and drawn to Himself through the Holy Spirit will persevere in faith. None whom God has elected will be lost; they are eternally secure.[4]

By the time I was pulled from the pagan pool in 1975, Southern Baptists had moved away from Calvinism for almost a century, and there was very little debate between the proponents of Arminianism and Calvinism. The two streams of theological thought had mixed and mingled and the waters had settled down. However, after surrendering my life to God’s call to preach the gospel in 1977, I found the calm waters of Baptist life taking me down some rapids through the years of the Conservative Resurgence. I came out of the rapids holding firmly to the Word of God and convinced that Southern Baptists were making a difference in North America and the world. I found great joy in helping plant new congregations and evangelize in states like Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

Later I discovered the currents and rapids getting faster again with the Reformed Resurgence or the rise of Calvinism in SBC life. It seems that some rode the rapids of the Conservative Resurgence with the hopes of returning Southern Baptists to what they saw as our “historic roots” in Calvinism. Since I was happy over on Sandy Creek, this seemed new, different, and challenging. I was unfamiliar with many of the names and nuances of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace and the system of Reformed theology.

Recently I was intrigued by the writings of pastor and theologian Dr. Eric Hankins. In a journal article entitled “Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: Toward A Baptist Soteriology,” he says,

After four hundred years, Calvinism and Arminianism remain at an impasse. The strengths and weaknesses of both systems are well-documented, and their proponents vociferously aver each system’s mutual exclusivity. This paper is based on the observation that these two theological programs have had sufficient time to demonstrate their superiority over the other and have failed to do so. The time has come, therefore, to look beyond them for a paradigm that gives a better account of the biblical and theological data. Indeed, the stalemate itself is related not so much to the unique features of each system but to a set of erroneous presuppositions upon which both are constructed. As the fault lines in these foundational concepts are exposed, it will become clear that the Baptist vision for soteriology, which has always resisted absolute fidelity to either system, has been the correct instinct all along. Baptist theology must be willing to articulate this vision in a compelling and comprehensive manner.[5]

Dr. Hankins is correct that we must move beyond the things that have always divided us. The balkanization of the Southern Baptist Convention will escalate with the quibbles and quarrels growing more intense if we do not move beyond the hair-splitting and nit-picking that has plagued this unending doctrinal debate for almost half a millennium.

Three key understandings help me stay afloat in the white water rapids of change:

1. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). My faith goes back 2000 years to Jerusalem, not four hundred years to Geneva! Jesus is to be first and foremost in my life.
2. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). Books of theology can never satisfy my soul, but the precious Word of God first pointed me to the Savior and feeds my soul until this very day!
3. “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). The gospel (not the finer points of theology) is the power of God unto salvation! It was the preaching of the death, burial, and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave with the power to forgive me all my sins that caused my heart to trust Jesus many years ago. And, for over thirty-five years, I’ve seen the gospel break the hearts of sinners as they called on Jesus to save them.

I close with a sentence from the Baptist Faith and Message (Section 1: The Scriptures), “All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.” The two rivers of Baptist theology have been mixing and mingling, and serving effectively in the SBC for the past century and a half. Without the living, vital relationship with Jesus Christ (anchored in Scriptures), our two historic rivers of theology turn into the marshy waters of a moat surrounding defensive walls. It doesn’t have to be this way. We have set up a defense when we are supposed to be on the offense. New Testament charges the Church to march forward filled with the Spirit and preach the Word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword!

By James Leo Garrett, Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Historical and Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. This is the first in a series of three articles by Dr. Garrett on “The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at Its Past,” which was presented at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at an event. Part 1 reflected on the past in Baptist theology; Parts 2 and 3 anticipate its future.

Part 3: Looking to the Future of Baptists

From my studies of the four-century history of Baptist theology I have come to the conclusion that the principal differentiating issues among Baptists during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries were the Calvinistic-Arminian difference, or to be more specific, the issues that differentiate the Reformed Synod of Dort (1618-1619) and the followers of Jacob Arminius who framed the five Remonstrant Articles (1610). I looked at this issue in the first part of this series. In part 2, I began looking at what issues would likely surface in the future. In this final part, I will continue my look at future issues, focusing on issues important to church and the Southern Baptist Convention

My proposals, of course, do not constitute a complete list even as we acknowledge the difficulty of speaking about the future. I would ask seven questions. The first four questions dealt with hermeneutics, evangelism, and eschatology. I will now continue with three questions that surround church and denominational issues.

5. Are many Baptist churches to adopt ruling elders? Will Baptist megachurches retain a residue of congregational polity?

Although the Philadelphia Association for a time in the eighteenth century had the practice of ruling elders, such has been almost totally absent from Baptist churches in the United States until recent years. Perhaps as a consequence of the neo-Calvinism among Southern Baptists and or the influence of Dallas Theological Seminary, not a few Southern Baptist churches have established ruling elders, sometimes so as to produce major division in the congregation. Some have argued that elders are almost identical with “church staff,” but the crucial issue is whether the elders alone make decisions that according to congregational polity are normally to be made by the congregation. Some insist that all elders be ministers of the church, but to be decided is the question as to whether all elders are equal in authority or one elder, the pastor, has unique leadership. New Christians in Baptist churches or members who have come from other denominations often are quite amenable to ruling elders, whereas traditional or lifetime Baptists tend to be opposed to such. Few seem to realize that this is one of the marks that historically differentiated Baptists from Presbyterians.

For Baptist megachurches the question may not be ruling elders but rather pastor, church staff, and a leadership team. Some have argued that as churches increase in membership and ultimately become megachurches, it is inevitable from the standpoint of practicality that they abandon congregational polity. Such megachurches cannot seat their members for a congregational meeting, for they have multiple locations and/or multiple services. Most all decisions are made by the leadership and reported to the membership. Will the megachurch pattern spread to other churches? Can the great number of Baptist laypeople who are engaged in short-term mission trips overseas and at home be permanently denied participation in the decision-making of their church?

6. Are Baptists to surrender or retain believer’s baptism by immersion and its implications?

From John Bunyan’s day some Baptists have advocated and practiced open communion in observing the Lord’s Supper, i.e., open to all who profess to be Christians. Such has been defended on the basis of Christian unity, Christian love, and/or the absence of factiousness. In England John Collett Ryland, his son John Ryland, and Robert Hall, Jr. defended open communion, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon practiced it. Contemporary with open communion were the advocacy and practice of strict communion, i.e., making believer’s baptism by immersion prerequisite to participation in the Lord’s Supper in a Baptist church. William Kiffin, Abraham Booth, and Joseph Kinghorn strongly defended such, arguing that if believer’s baptism by immersion is required for membership, it should be for the Lord’s Supper and that open communion is a denigration of believer’s immersion. Among Baptists the warning has been sounded that open communion will lead to open membership; and, in fact, it has.

On the contrary, open membership is a relatively modern development among Baptists, especially in Great Britain. This is the practice whereby a Baptist church does not require that all its members be baptized on confession of faith by immersion. Hence in the membership may be persons having been baptized as infants or by sprinkling or pouring or even having had no baptism at all. The priority of baptism to the Lord’s Supper is not recognized. During the twentieth century conciliar ecumenism has influenced some Baptists to embrace open membership. At issue is the importance of believer’s immersion. Oddly enough, whereas numerous English Baptist churches have adopted open membership, in the United States the Baptist witness has been strong enough to help several new Christian denominations, especially between 1830 and 1930, to adopt believer’s immersion. Among Southern Baptists open membership has had few practitioners, but now two leading articles in Baptists Today (December 2009) have advocated open membership. The Alabama Baptist (29 April 2010, among other papers) published my article that advocated that Baptist churches should not adopt open membership. With open membership, immersion becomes dispensable, and there seems to be little rationale for a continuing Baptist denomination.

Coupled with the open membership trend in Britain has been a movement toward baptismal sacramentalism. Beginning with World War II a number of English Baptist authors have advocated the use of the term “sacraments” and disfavored the use of “ordinances.” Moreover, baptism is said to be “more than a symbol” in the sense that divine agency and divine grace are said to be involved uniquely in Christian baptism, not merely the confession of faith of the candidate, and conversion is reckoned as incomplete without baptism. George R. Beasley-Murray and R.E.O. White led the way in these views of baptism. Neville Clark, Anthony Cross, and others followed. English Baptists as a whole are divided on this issue, while Baptists in the United States who know their history are prone to find likeness to the views of Alexander Campbell and Archibald McLean, the “Scotch Baptist,” which were rejected by early nineteenth-century Baptists.

7. Can Baptists mend their fractured unity?

We know that Baptists began as two separate bodies, the General and the Particular Baptists. We also acknowledge that Baptists, perhaps more than other Christians, have had a tendency to divide or separate. It has been said that our congregational polity has made us more prone to schism. The SBC was constituted in an act of separation in 1845. Northern Baptists sustained major defections in the 1930s and 1940s as a consequence of theological controversy, and now more recently the American Baptist Churches (USA) have lost their Pacific Southwest churches over homosexuality and other issues. There are now four Afro-American Baptist conventions. Southern Baptists have had the Frank Norris movement, the Lee Roberson movement, the Alliance of Baptists, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. A quarter of century ago Brazilian Baptists divided over charismaticism and now the same has happened to Argentine Baptists.

Even so, Baptists must know the Pauline teaching about Christian unity (Eph. 2:14-22; 4:3-6, 11-13; Phil. 4:2-3) and how our Lord Jesus, according to John 17 prayed for the unity of his disciples, even as he and the Father are one, so that the unbelieving world may believe that God has sent Jesus. Sometimes those Baptists who have consistently rejected the structured union of conciliar ecumenism have provided meager examples of any form of unity among the people called Baptists. More recently (2004) the unity of the Baptist World Alliance has been fractured by the withdrawal of the Southern Baptist Convention. Once again Baptists have the great challenge of repairing or mending their broken unity without forsaking the gospel or losing essential Christian truth. Cooperation has been an unchanged article of faith in the SBC Baptist Faith and Message Statement in 1925, 1963 and 2000.[1]

Conclusion

In conclusion, we acknowledge that there may be in the near future other pressing issues for Baptists not mentioned here. Likewise, Baptists will continue to need to know how other Christians are doing theology, for such developments have a way of affecting Baptists. But it is of paramount importance that Baptists in the twenty-first century think theologically as Baptists and in reference to the Baptist heritage. I invite and challenge you to engage in Baptist theology and to make your contribution to it. May our Lord abundantly enable, bless, and use you in doing so.

[1] Two issues that have not been identified but are widely discussed among Baptists are (1) the music wars in Baptist and other churches and (2) the role or roles of women in Baptist churches. As to the first, it seems that the conflicts are for the most part not theological but cultural and generational. As to the second, the decision as to male pastors only has seemingly been made among SBC churches but not among the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, American Baptist Churches (USA), and certain Baptist unions in Europe. Furthermore, the role of women, if any, on the staffs of larger Baptist churches is being disputed, and the ecclesiological significance of the church staff itself remains undefined. Similarly, Baptist churches are not agreed as to whether women should serve as deacons. Concurrently the widespread and crucial service rendered by women in Baptist churches is realistically and gratefully acknowledged. These questions will likely continue to be dealt with as Baptists argue from and over the Scriptures in a changing culture that has granted women heretofore unavailable roles.

This series of articles was previously published as “The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at its Future” in the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 7.2 (Fall 2010) and has been republished by permission.

By James Leo Garrett, Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Historical and Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. This is the first in a series of three articles by Dr. Garrett on “The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at Its Past,” which was presented at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at an event. Part 1 reflected on the past in Baptist theology; Parts 2 and 3 anticipate its future.

Part 2: Looking to the Future of Baptist Issues

From my studies of the four-century history of Baptist theology I have come to the conclusion that the principal differentiating issues among Baptists during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries were the Calvinistic-Arminian difference, or to be more specific, the issues that differentiate the Reformed Synod of Dort (1618-1619) and the followers of Jacob Arminius who framed the five Remonstrant Articles (1610). In the part 1 of this three part series, I took a look at the Calvinistic-Arminian debate. In this part let’s look at issues that will likely surface in the future.

Will the Chief Differentiating and Characterizing Issues of the Past
Have a Significant Bearing on the Future?

First, because Baptists closely connect salvation with church membership, it is likely that soteriological concerns about the relationship between humanity and the divine will continue to resurface in Baptist life.

Second, likewise the issues surrounding revelation and the Bible, Christology, human origins, and eschatology are likely to resurface among Baptists.

Third, although some of the Baptist distinctives will continue to be strictly less distinctive of Baptists as other Christian denominations and nondenominational indigenous movements embrace some of them, Baptists may continue to be less than effective in teaching and fleshing out these historic distinctives amid their own people.

Fourth, Baptists may continue to rediscover their debt to the patristic consensus and to recognize their debt to the Magisterial Reformation as well as the Radical Reformation.

Fifth, perhaps the question of interdenominational Christian unity will be answered in rather different ways in the twenty-first century than in the twentieth.

Sixth, it is very probable that the interactions of missiology and theology among Baptists will markedly increase.

What Other Theological Issues are Likely
to be Faced by Baptists in the Near Future?

My proposals, of course, do not constitute a complete list even as we acknowledge the difficulty of speaking about the future. I would ask seven questions. The first four deal with a variety of issues. In part three of this series, I will concentrate on church and denominational issues.

1. Can Baptists in various conventions and unions find a common biblical hermeneutic, especially in reference to contemporary social and moral issues?

This question takes us into ethics. To raise such a question is not to assume that Baptists have always had such a common hermeneutic in the past. The history of American Baptist attitudes toward slavery and racial segregation is a well-known exception. But issues such as homosexual practice, cohabitation outside of marriage, and abortion have tested Baptists as to anything like a common stance in today’s worlds. Moreover, present-day happenings in the Episcopal Church in the United States and in the Anglican communion worldwide make it clear that differences on these burning issues, together with their underpinnings of biblical hermeneutics and biblical authority, can produce major schisms and a divided witness. If Baptists can still agree on the supreme authority of the Holy Scriptures, then hopefully they can responsibly address these exegetical, hermeneutical, and socio-ethical issues.

2. Is the Baptist embrace of the doctrine of the Trinity sufficient for an effective witness to Muslims?

Baptist theological history for four centuries is replete with evidence that Baptists have consistently affirmed that God is one God yet in three “persons” or “subsistences” – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In such affirmations Baptists have used language hammered out by ecumenical councils of the patristic era. Baptists have also recognized that denial of the Trinity and of the deity of Christ puts one outside the ranks of truth and into the ranks of heresy, as in the case of the majority of the earliest English General Baptists who by the early eighteenth century had become Unitarians in belief, and in the case of modernists in the Northern Baptist Convention in the early twentieth century. But for many Southern Baptists from the latter part of the twentieth century to the present, the Trinity has been a doctrine, the denial of which could evoke charges of heresy while the affirmation of which—through preaching, teaching, worship, hymnody and praise songs, and piety—has been woefully deficient. Now as a major missionary sending body, the Southern Baptist Convention faces the great challenge of witnessing to the Islamic world, in both predominantly Muslim nations, as well as in the United States and Europe. A major roadblock is the Muslim perception that we Christians believe in three Gods, that Jesus is not the Son of God, and that Jesus did not die on the cross. Can Baptists be expected to lead Muslims to saving faith in Jesus Christ if their doctrine of the Trinity is stored in mothballs?

3. Can Baptists agree on the destiny of the unevangelized?

Before the end of the twentieth century, especially among evangelicals, there surfaced as a major theological issue the destiny of unevangelized peoples. The question, of course, was not new, but it had a new intensity, as contacts with the adherents of non-Christian religions increased. Three major positions soon came to be differentiated. First, there is pluralism, or the view that humans can be made right with God or eschatologically saved in and through non-Christian religions. Second, there is inclusivism, or the view that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ but can occur without particular knowledge of Jesus, without a confession of faith in Jesus, and without Christian baptism but through the agency of the transcendent Christ or Logos. Third, there is exclusivism, or the view that salvation can with certainty come only through Jesus Christ and only through an identifiable acknowledgement of Jesus as Savior and Lord with at least a minimal awareness of the Christian gospel. Few Baptists, if any, have embraced pluralism, as expounded by John Hick. Rather to the extent that they have addressed this issue Baptists have espoused either inclusivism or exclusivism. As to monographs on this subject, more Baptist authors have espoused inclusivism (Russell Aldwinckle, Clark Pinnock, Molly Marshall) than have espoused exclusivism (Ronald H. Nash). Some would join this issue with the question of the destiny of infants and young children who die at an early age. Others would join it with post-mortem evangelization, which the older theologians call “probation after death,” and which has been popularly dubbed “a second chance.” Clear evangelistic and missionary strategy would seem to call for a relatively clear answer to such questions. The 2000 SBC Baptist Faith and Message statement is clearly exclusivistic, but the monographs for exclusivism are few. Moreover, to affirm exclusivism on the basis of John 3:16; John 14:6; Acts 4:12 et al. is not to usurp the omniscience of God but to state what the church today ought to declare with any certainty, leaving final salvation, where it belongs, in the hands of God.

4. What are Baptists to do with Dispensationalism?

This theological system, so widely embraced today among Southern Baptists, did not enter Southern Baptist theological history until James Robinson Graves embraced it late in the nineteenth century. I have proposed that we should reckon Dispensationalism, both a distinctive hermeneutic and a distinctive eschatology, as an “incursion” into Baptist theology. By incursion I do not mean “heresy,” as one of my reviewers seems to think, but rather as a novelty without precedent during the earlier two and a half centuries of Baptist life. Although one cannot with certainty posit any cause-effect relationship, it is noteworthy that the era of Dispensationalism’s greatest influence on Southern Baptists, i.e., the turn of the twenty-first century, was concurrently the time of the greatest restriction of missionary methods in the history of the IMB SBC – the curtailment of theological education, primary and secondary schools, publishing, medical missions, and agricultural missions in favor of direct evangelism and church planting alone. To be sure, American Dispensationalism has undergone at least two transformations since C. I. Scofield published his Scofield Reference Bible a century ago, but its abiding hiatus between the church (the Christians) and Israel (the Jews) is difficult to harmonize with Paul’s teaching about Jew-Gentile reconciliation through the cross and the creation of the “one new man” (Eph. 2:15b-16). Furthermore, Dispensationalism’s two eschatological comings of Christ, “the rapture” and the “revelation,” are hard to reconcile with the synonymous use of parousia, epiphaneia, apokalupsis in the Greek New Testament, all used in reference to the second coming, as scholars of historical premillennialism have readily acknowledged.

In the third and final article of this series, I will address three questions that pertain to Baptist churches and to the Southern Baptist Convention.

This series of articles was previously published as “The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at its Future” in the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 7.2 (Fall 2010) and has been republished by permission.

By James Leo Garrett, Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Historical and Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. This is the first in a series of three articles by Dr. Garrett on “The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at Its Past,” which was presented at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at an event. Part 1 reflects on the past in Baptist theology; Parts 2 and 3 anticipate its future.

Part 1: Looking Back on Four Centuries of Baptist Theology

The Chief Differentiating Theological Issues among Baptists

From my studies of the four-century history of Baptist theology I have come to the conclusion that the principal differentiating issues among Baptists during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries were the Calvinistic-Arminian differences, or to be more specific, the issues that differentiate the Reformed Synod of Dort (1618-1619) and the followers of Jacob Arminius, who framed the five Remonstrant Articles (1610). I have also concluded that the chief differentiating doctrinal issues for Baptists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were the liberal-evangelical issues. Now, let’s first take a look at the Calvinistic-Arminian debate.

These differences were initially manifested in the separate and distinct origins of the General and the Particular Baptists in England. They are essentially soteriological, dealing with the relationship of the divine and the human in our salvation. I have challenged the accuracy of the commonly used acronym to specify the Dortian doctrines, the TULIP, for it was not so much total depravity that separated these two theological systems from the Arminian viewpoint as it was the nature of repentance and faith— whether they are the gifts of God or the responses of human beings. Each of these Dutch-derived theological stances was capable of spawning extremes, notably Hyper-Calvinism from Dort and neo-Pelagianism from the Arminians. I have offered, possibly for the first time, five distinguishing marks of Hyper-Calvinism: the supralapsarian order of divine decrees; the pre-temporal covenant of redemption made by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Sprit; eternal justification somewhat separated for the exercise of faith in time; rejection of offers of grace to the non-elect; and antinomianism. Hyper-Calvinism plagued the Particular Baptists during the eighteenth century, and Pelagian positions can be detected among the liberal and modernist theologians in the Northern Baptist Convention in the early twentieth century.

The liberal-evangelical issues were not essentially soteriological. Rather they centered on Christology, revelation and the Bible, human origins, and to some extent eschatology. Liberal theology for Baptists and other Protestants developed in response to the new nineteenth century theological climate—especially biblical criticism, Darwinian evolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Whereas liberals embraced the new climate, evangelicals or conservatives did not. Indeed Northern Baptists had mediating theologians such as Ezekiel G. Robinson and Augustus H. Strong. But once again extremists were spawned—modernists on the one hand and fundamentalists on the other. I concur with Kenneth Cauthen’s verdict that liberals and modernists are to be differentiated. For liberals there was still a need for Jesus, however truncated, but for modernists Jesus was dispensable; modern thought instead would suffice. The question has not been settled as to how many fundamentals were defended by the fundamentalists, but George M. Marsden has aptly identified fundamentalism as “militantly antimodernist Protestant evangelicalism” between the 1870s and the 1920s, but especially during the 1920s. Marsden’s definition allows us to conceive of evangelicalism as preceding and succeeding fundamentalism.

Now in the last quarter century among Southern Baptists, there arose a neo-Calvinist movement, a neo-fundamentalist movement, and a moderate movement.

Parallel Baptist Theological Trends

Parallel to, and sometimes contemporaneous with, the Calvinist-Arminian and the liberal-evangelical differences have been other theological tendencies. I cite four of these.

First, Baptists have engaged in polemic in defense of their own distinctive beliefs. This has taken two forms: the earlier and the later. The earlier form was the literature on believer’s baptism by immersion, written against Paedobaptists and focused on the candidate or the mode or on both. This type of writing extended from John Spilsbury to the First London Confession (1644) to Benjamin Keach to John Gill to Dan Taylor to Alexander Carson to John Jay Butler to John L. Dagg to James Robinson Graves. Baptism was seen as the crucial issue between Baptists and other Christians. The later form was a genre of literature, written from ca. 1850 to ca. 1950, on the cluster of beliefs and practices called “Baptist distinctives.” Since the genre was contemporaneous with the greatest influence of Landmarkism on Southern Baptists, it might be easy to posit a theory of cause and effect. But the fact that Northern and English Baptists were at the same time contributing significantly to this genre would undermine any such theory. As R. Stanton Norman has noted, this literature tended either to magnify the authority of the Scriptures or that of Christian experience (notably E.Y. Mullins). One may indeed ask whether the demise of this literature during the last sixty years has been a major factor in the failure of Baptist churches in the United States to teach their members about the Baptist heritage.

Second, Baptists have continued to affirm those basic Christian doctrines that they share with other professing Christian and with all Protestants. Baptists have adhered to the patristic consensus regarding the Trinity and the person of Christ, or made the march from Nicaea I to Chalcedon, even when they did not formally acknowledge such. Note John Gill on the Trinity. Hence Baptists were able to identify heresy, such as the earliest English General Baptists becoming Unitarian in belief by the early eighteenth century. The Second London Confession (1677) of Particular Baptists and the Orthodox Creed (1678) of General Baptists stressed both in structure and in content kinship with the Presbyterian Westminster Confession. Baptists have shared with the heirs of the magisterial Reformation such beliefs as the authority of Scripture, justification by grace through faith, the priesthood of all believers, predestination, church discipline, and either Zwinglian or Calvinist understandings of the Lord’s Supper.

Third, Baptists in the twentieth century made different responses to the Ecumenical Movement with its emphasis on structured transdenominational church union. British Baptists, Northern Baptists, most African-America conventions in the United States, and a scattering of other unions and conventions joined the World Council of Churches. Southern Baptists, Latin American Baptists, and a larger number of unions and conventions did not, being unwilling to go beyond spiritual unity and limited cooperation and expressing fears of a “one world church.” Ernest A. Payne and Edward Roberts-Thompson championed the ecumenical cause, and H.E. Dana and William R. Estep, Jr. represented the other side. The World’s Council’s involvement in social and political issues, such as financial aid to revolutionary movements in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s, and away from evangelization and church planting, decelerated any flow of Baptist bodies into the WCC and led to the withdrawal of a few.

Fourth, more recently among Baptists has been the interaction or interpenetration of theology and missiology. We must go back to William Carey’s An Enquiry to the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792). This treatise was not theological , but rather missiological; however, it may have helped to turn missiology into a theological discipline. William Owen Carver, the first Baptist to hold an academic chair of missions at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1899, at first leaning to the society method, treated missions as the duty of individual Christians in relation to the kingdom of God. Through the twentieth century more attention was given to the missionary role of the churches, especially with the advent of short-term church-sent volunteer missionaries to supplement the career missionaries. Missiology, as may be seen in the volume entitled Missiology (1998), edited by Mark Terry, Justice Anderson, and Ebbie Smith, had its essential theological component. Moreover, at the end of the twentieth century with the systematic theologies written by James W. McClendon and by myself, Baptist systematic theologies include chapters on missions. Concurrent with this greater interaction of missiology and theology has been the contextualization of Baptist theology outside of Europe and North America. Perhaps the most notable has been the work of Latin American Baptist theologians, Orlando Costas, René Padilla, and Samuel Escobar. They have joined the supreme authority of Scripture and the need for evangelization and missions with a strong emphasis on social justice and a keen awareness of the Latin American, i.e., Roman Catholic, context. In Nigeria confrontation with African Traditional Religion has been pursued, and in South Korea missiological concerns have loomed large.

In part 2 and 3, I will look into the future ask seven questions about Baptist church and denominational issues.

This series of articles was previously published as “The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at its Future” in the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 7.2 (Fall 2010) and has been republished by permission.

By Bob Hadley, Pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Chancellor of Atlantic Coast Bible College and Seminary.


This article is the fifth in a series that offers an alternative to the classical Reformed T.U.L.I.P. The entire series by Hadley is available at
http://www.transformedtheology.com
The previous articles are:
Total Lostness
Unconditional Love
Limiting Atonement
Irrefutable Gospel

The fifth plank of Conversionism is the Perseverance of the Savior as opposed to the Calvinist plank of the Perseverance of the Saints. The author of Hebrews says, “Let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess, because we can trust God to keep His promise” (Heb. 10:23). Man’s hope is not in his own perseverance, but in Christ’s perseverance that is rooted in the promises and the character of God. Man’s hope will be found only in what God does in His Son, Jesus. Salvation is based on the person and work of the Lord Jesus and not based on man’s works. The believer’s security is for eternity. Salvation is kept by the grace and the power of God and not by the self-sufficiency of the believer.

According to the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics website,

Perseverance of the Saints is a doctrine which states that the saints (those whom God has saved) will remain in God’s hand until they are glorified and brought to abide with Him in heaven. Romans 8:28-39 makes it clear that when a person truly has been regenerated by God, he will remain in God’s stead. The work of sanctification which God has brought about in His elect will continue until it reaches its fulfillment in eternal life (Phil. 1:6). Christ assures the elect that He will not lose them and that they will be glorified at the “last day” (John 6:39). The Calvinist stands upon the Word of God and trusts in Christ’s promise that He will perfectly fulfill the will of the Father in saving all the elect.[1].

One of the Baptist distinctives can be seen in the phrase, “the Eternal Security of the Believer.” There is a marked difference between the Perseverance of the Saints and the Eternal Security of the Believer – they are not at all synonymous. For the Southern Baptist, the concept of the Eternal Security of the Believer assures the individual who has placed his faith in the promises of God and his trust in the claims of Christ that He (Christ) will hold onto him (the believer) forever. This is the basis for the fifth plank of Conversionism, the Perseverance of the Savior. This is what Paul says in Rom. 8:38-39: “³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jesus says of those to whom He gives eternal life, “^28b and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29). When an individual comes to Christ and is adopted into God’s forever family, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in his heart and becomes God’s guarantee of that individual’s hope in eternity (see also 2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:14).

The problem with the Calvinist position is that this assurance is not as well defined. Where Eternal Security and the Perseverance of the Saints rests on the promises of God and Christ Himself, the Perseverance of the Saints really rests on the “persevering or performance” of the elect. The key to understanding this position is found in the persevering and not in the promise. For the Calvinist, if an individual does not persevere, then he was not saved in the first place. Since a Calvinist cannot discern the will of God without the efficacious work of the Holy Spirit in his or her heart, there is always a question, “Is my life the work of the Holy Spirit or my own hopes and works of righteousness? Has God really saved me? Am I really among God’s elect?” In the Reformed mindset, no one really knows what it means to be “regenerated” and because of that it can be argued that the only way to ultimately know for sure that one is even truly saved, is to actually persevere to the end and be welcomed into Glory by the Lord Himself. It can be argued that this doctrine does not provide any real security to the believer at all.

There is always this “possibility” that an individual may not persevere to the end, indicating that he was never truly saved in the first place. Understand, according to the Calvinist platform, the elect will persevere, but no one really knows who is and who is not the elect until this life is over and judgment is rendered. A Calvinist Christian may live an exemplary Christian life and then divorce his wife at 65 years old and move in with his next door neighbor. At this point, the exemplary Christian, in the eyes of the church, is now living in sin. If he stays in that place and does not repent, the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints will declare this man a reprobate. It will be determined that he was not saved in the beginning and is in need of repentance and conversion. This is in effect what the Perseverance of the Saints really says.

It can be argued that the same thing is true for those holding onto the Eternal Security of the Believer. Ultimately, the true test of faith for both will be determined when the believer closes his eyes in this life and opens them in the life to come. However from a doctrinal standpoint, the fundamental difference in these two perspectives clearly rests on where one’s faith is actually placed. For the Eternal Security position, faith rests in the promises of God whereas with the Calvinist position one’s security rests in the persevering itself and the individual’s holding on to the end.

The real difference in the two positions can be seen in the living out of the lives of those who make professions of faith, confess Jesus as Savior and Lord, be baptized, join a church, and then turn away from that decision at a later date. Jesus warns his followers that there will be those who will call Him Lord but will not do what He has commanded them to do (Luke 6:46):

²¹ Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ ²³ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt. 7:21-23, see also Luke 13:26-27).

The test of love all throughout the Bible is seen in the “keeping of God’s commandments.” This is true in the Old Testament (see Ex. 19:5, 20:6; Deut. 5:10; and Prov. 3:1, 4:4) as well as the New Testament.

Ironically, Calvinists have been criticized for being no different than Arminians in this aspect of persevering. While Arminians know they are saved, they have no assurance that they will keep their salvation. Calvinists know they cannot lose their salvation; they just have no real assurance that they are actually saved in the first place.[2] It can be argued that both positions are really based on works, following a James 2 mandate; and that test is actually more important than Irresistible Grace and the efficacious calling in Unconditional Election. The true test of God’s sovereignty is not demonstrated in the call but in the perseverance. It might even be argued that perseverance is more important than regeneration in the salvific process, since it is the persevering and not regeneration that actually determines one’s final salvation. Granted, for the Calvinist, regeneration is the foundation for perseverance, but perseverance ultimately is the test for glorification.

In looking at the Perseverance of the Savior, Jesus says that His priority was to do what His Father had sent Him to do:

³⁹ This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. ⁴⁰ And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:39-40).

Eternity is God’s goal for humanity. Men are born to live forever. Sin has upset that goal. God has provided a lamb that has come to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

In John 10, Jesus makes a very interesting statement. He tells the Jewish leaders questioning His coming, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep.” Jesus continues, “as I said to you My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” The question is who are His sheep? Jesus explains who His sheep are. “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep . . . If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” Jesus’ sheep are those who enter the sheepfold through Him by the way of the cross, which is what He is about to speak of in verse 11. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” Jesus then goes on to talk about the hireling who is not willing to risk his life for the sheep; Jesus cares more for the safety of the sheep than He does His own life.

Jesus’ sheep are those who hear Him and follow Him. He knows who they are. Jesus knows who His Sheep are because they are those who hear Him and heed Him (John 10:25-27). This is a consistent message for Jesus. “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). “⁹ As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. ¹⁰ If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:9-10).

Jesus describes Himself by saying, “I am the door” and He makes it clear that those who enter by Him, do so by hearing Him and then believing His promises. These are those who shall be “saved.” These are the ones who shall have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:7-10). These are the sheep those who hear Jesus’ voice, and Jesus promises them eternal life:

²⁸ And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and My Father are one (John 10:28-30).

John continues in 1 John with the following declaration:

⁴ For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. ⁵ Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-5).

Those who overcome the world are those who believe in the “Overcomer” who is Jesus and He will raise them up in the end.

Peter reinforces this hope that the believer has in Christ Jesus. Peter clearly indicates that the believer’s hope is “^3b a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, ⁵ who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:3b-5, emphasis added). At issue here is not the perseverance of the saint; the One who perseveres is the Savior. Jesus is the constant and not the individual. The differential component in this comparison is vitally important. While the Calvinist plank certainly finds its source of validity in the sufficiency of Christ, it is still predicated on the individual’s “persevering.”

In the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints, the individual’s life becomes the ultimate test of his conversion experience. In fact, this tenet actually demands that there is no way for a person to know for sure if he is even saved until the end because his perseverance itself is the actual test of his conversion experience. The Perseverance of the Savior corrects that deficiency by placing one’s eternal hope in the sufficiency of the Lord Himself, and not in the individual’s process of sanctification, which is the gradual transforming of one’s sinful, selfish mind to the mind of Christ. This is just as much the will of God as one’s conversion is and to some degree even more so. For it can certainly be argued that spiritual maturity is the goal of conversion, otherwise God would see men converted and He would simply bring them on home at that point (1 Cor. 2:16).

²⁰ For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. ²¹ Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, ²² who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee (2 Cor. 1:20-22).

¹⁶ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together (Rom. 8:16-17).

¹ For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ² For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, ³ if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. ⁴ For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. ⁵ Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
⁶ So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. ⁷ For we walk by faith, not by sight. ⁸ We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:1-8).

This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men (Titus 3:8).

¹¹ In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, ¹² that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
¹³ In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, ¹⁴ who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory (Eph. 1:11-14).

This idea that the new born child of God is protected in and by the sufficiency of Christ is not an opportunity to do what he or she wants to do. “Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12). Paul makes it abundantly clear that the Christian is no longer to live in the flesh for “^10b the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:10b-11).

Shall the Christian just live in sin knowing that his or her eternity is secure in Christ Jesus?

² Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? ³ Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:2-4).

Obviously, Paul is emphasizing the importance of living out one’s faith. However, it is important to understand the living out of that faith is not what guarantees one’s salvation. Salvation is in Christ alone and His Grace alone and not of works lest any man should boast. The Calvinists drive this home in conversion but turn away from it in perseverance.

In the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Savior, an individual’s salvation is affected by faith in Christ and his hope is guaranteed by faith in that same Savior. When an individual comes to Christ and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in his heart, he is adopted into God’s forever family and he becomes an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus and that settles the question of a believer’s eternal security whether he understands or accepts it or not.