THE HOBGOBLINS--Now Available for Preorder!

I am delighted to announce the release of my latest book, THE HOBGOBLINS, a novel on John Bunyan. I managed to write the first draft in a whirlwind of only seven weeks--right in the early weeks of the pandemic hysteria. 

I thought I loved John Bunyan before writing The Hobgoblins, but now I love him to an incalculable degree. His entire life is an enactment of God's way in the gospel: God chooses the foolish to confound the wise (I Cor 1), the younger brother over the elder, the things that are of no account and are mocked and scorned by the world--these are precious in the sight of our God and Savior.

That was Bunyan, a poor, peasant tinker, with little formal education, surrounded by the Puritan age, an age of great piety, of great learning and erudition, and of great literary accomplishment. And along comes humble Bunyan, his life transformed by the power of the gospel, and, undaunted, he preaches, and suffers, and writes, including penning the best-selling book of all time (next to the English Bible), never out of print since 1678, The Pilgrim's Progress (ignore JK Rowling claims to have exceeded Bunyan; it took her seven books to his one; that's not how it works).

Some of my readers may wonder where on earth I got a title like The Hobgoblins; some may even be offended by the title. Like everything else in my newest historical fiction book set in 17th century Elstow and Bedford, I plundered Bunyan's own writings and vocabulary. In his classic Pilgrim Hymn, sung by Valiant-for-Truth in the second book of Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan includes the lines:

“Hobgoblin nor foul fiend

Can daunt his spirit;

He knows he at the end

Shall life inherit!”

So, if you don't like the word Hobgoblins, I invite you to take it up with Bunyan himself! 

Having taught Pilgrim's Progress and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners for many years, I have long wanted to write a book about Bunyan, but other projects always seemed to get in the way. Until God ordained a pandemic and the residual lock down and and suspension of ordinary life (little did I know then just how much suspension of ordinary life it would be for me). My travel schedule halted abruptly, and so I decided that now was the time to write on Bunyan. There was something else going on in my mind too. Because Bunyan is so important to the Church, I wanted this book to be my very best work, so I kept deferring it, pushing it forward, hoping to be the best writer I could be before taking it on, stalling, procrastinating--whatever it was. Until now. 

Musing on my best way to write the book, I finally hit on the idea of starting with Elstow Abbey today and a real person, my good friend Licensed Lay Minister, John Hinson who agreed to have something of a bit more than a cameo appearance in the opening chapters of the book. That is, until he takes a significant tumble down the narrow circular stairway up the 13th century bell tower next to the Abbey, and in his steepling plunge unearths a tin box containing a manuscript. Readers of Hostage Lands and The Betrayal are thinking, he's done this before. Yes, but not since 2009, and as those are two of my best-selling books, I decided it was time again. The story unfolds from the pen of Harry Wylie, a fellow rogue in blasphemy with Bunyan in their youth, and a man Bunyan actually mentions once in Grace Abounding, every writer of historical fiction's dream character. Harry goes on to be the benevolent jailer later in the story, but, convinced that people don't change, he was always bewildered by his friend, especially Bunyan's intrepid stand against bishops, episcopal church government, magistrates, and King Charles II. With increased secular pressures against Christians and the Church today, there are enormous implication from Bunyan's stand before kings and magistrates, suffering in prison for conscience sake in the 17th century, and our call to honor the king and to obey God rather than man in our own day.

If you would like to listen to me reading a sample chapter (4) from the book click here. While you're there, please subscribe and share the site with your friends and family. 

Today is the day! Pre-release day of The Hobgoblins! Every preorder will receive a free copy of my RISE & WORSHIP New Reformation Hymns album. AND! The first ten book orders today will receive a 2-for-1, 2 signed copies of THE HOBGOBLINS, the second copy for you to give to a family adversely impacted by the pandemic and the lock down. 

 

What to Do When Truth and Unity Collide

I hate disunity. There is nothing more soul killing than being at odds with the very people with whom I ought to have the most profound unity. I hate it. That’s probably why Ephesians 2 is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible.[1][AM1]  Christ himself has made peace through the blood of the cross. He is himself our peace “and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (2:14). He has created the church to be one—not dozens or hundreds—his one body reconciled through his blood shed for his church on the cross (2:15–16).

As much as we long for unity, however, Satan is hell-bent on destroying that unity. He does this by disturbing the gospel, by insinuating corruptions into the message. This is the entire history of the church in a nutshell: one [AM2] challenge to the gospel after another.

By Heresies Oppressed

In 1866, one stalwart Anglican vicar, Samuel Stone, ministering in the baddest part of town in London, planted his flag for the church’s unity on the authority of the Bible. John Colenso, an Anglican bishop in Africa, had begun teaching that the Bible contained truth but was not the infallible, inerrant, God-breathed revelation of the redemptive purpose of God in Christ. This was too much for gospel-loving Stone.[2]

Though he was an unimportant, nobody vicar, serving in an unprestigious part of London, he did what he could. He wrote a hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation.” Stone knew his Bible and he knew when and where to plant his flag. He knew that when men tamper with the meaning of the Bible, they will soon enough be tampering with its central figure, Jesus Christ. Stone knew that without Jesus there could be no salvation for sinners in his flock—and he cared deeply about his flock.

The story is told that Stone came upon several young toughs trying to hurt a little girl in his congregation.[AM3]  Stone, who had been a championship athlete in his university days, rolled up the sleeves of his clerical robe and punched the stuffing out of the boys. In another fashion, Stone rolled up his poetic sleeves and wrote a hymn to inflict blows on the Enemy of the gospel and his minions. But the hymn is not finally controversy centered; it is a glorious celebration of the unity of the invisible church: “Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth.” By the enemies of the gospel the beleaguered church he so much loved was “sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” Not only did Stone know there was a serious problem, he knew the solution, “Yet saints their watch are keeping.”[3]

Pastors equipping their flocks to keep watch, to be vigilant in the pew, to search the Scripture as they listen is the only solution. Knowledge of the Bible’s message as codified in confessions of faith is the great bulwark protecting the unity of what the church believes and preaches.

The Justifiable Slap

There truly is a war on, and the church must never lay down its arms when the gospel is under attack. The Enemy does not want us to realize that it’s a counterfeit of unity that gives the Enemy a place at the table. This side of the church’s heavenly rest, enemies of the gospel will [AM4] insist on a place at the table, all in the name of unity, but it’s a cheap charade of unity. Where there is a discrepancy between the visible unity of the church and the truth of the gospel, the church must always find its unity, not around the name of a denomination or an individual minister, but around the pure doctrine of the gospel.

Though there are sad examples of churches splitting over paint colors, many of the church’s divisions down through the centuries have been the result of faithful pastors and theologians holding the gospel line against the encroaching error of the enemies of the gospel. It is in the heat of these controversies that the church’s greatest creeds and confessions have been forged. Without men standing for the unity of the truth, rolling up their sleeves and entering the fray of controversy, there would be no pure gospel message left.

One particular gospel-destroying challenge to the church’s unity was confronted by the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century. This disturber of unity wasn’t [AM5] the color of the carpet. Ministers were denying the deity of Christ.

According to tradition (or legend), St. Nicholas got worked up listening to Arius blaspheme Jesus, saying that Christ is not the Son of God, the only Savior of sinners. Fed up with the blasphemy, St. Nicholas rose to his feet and slapped Arius across the mouth.[4]

Indiscreet as that may have been, out of the heat and blows of that conflict came the glorious credo, the Nicene Creed: “I believe . . . in one Lord Jesus Christ . . . God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” Where would the church be without this confession? Where would the unity of the gospel be without this glorious truth?

Why does this matter? For Reformer Ulrich Zwingli it mattered because there is no salvation outside the atoning sacrifice and imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. “Who seeks or points out another door errs,” wrote Zwingli, “yes, he is a murderer of souls and a thief.”[5] Put it like that, and a slap on the mouth doesn’t sound so out of place after all.

Unity of Truth

Historically, men who champion the drift away from the confession are often the same ones who are quick to declare all who disagree with them as schismatics disturbing the unity of the church. But doesn’t it seem more logical that the divisive ones are those who want their individual interpretations, their pages of criticisms of the confession, to become the new articles of faith?

Loyalty to an individual (1 Cor. 1:12–13), to a celebrity preacher or a particularly learned one, may prove to be more of a setup for unity faking than for real oneness. Like artificial additives in your favorite meal, artificial unity is never good for the genuine unity of the body. Loyalty to an individual, sooner or later, erodes the church’s larger unity around the pure doctrine of the gospel summarized in a confession of faith.

Some will always become [AM6] enamored with new ideas, with new discoveries that lead to new ways of reading books of the Bible, with reconciling the Bible with science or modern psychology, and then they will set to work recasting the confession of faith in the image of the latest discoveries. The [AM7] Enemy wants this to flourish, so he will help to shape the argument in ways conducive to his object of corrupting and disturbing gospel unity. With careful handling from behind the scenes, the argument will proceed with the enticing wording [AM8] of preferring a biblical theology to a systematic theology.[AM9] 

A convincing-sounding assertion. Who doesn’t want to come down on the side of biblical theology? Though it seems to be an effective construction for taking the high ground in the discussion, there’s a nagging problem. Men who use this argument are more than hinting that they no longer think biblical and confessional theology agree. Bear-baiting the confession and the Bible may be evidence that a minister no longer really believes the system of theology he once vowed he believed.

Here’s how this may sound. In one minister’s preaching, the doctrine of imputed righteousness was so increasingly absent that an elder finally asked him if he still believed the doctrine. “Well, imputation is not a biblical term,” he replied. “I want a biblical theology, not a systematic one.”[AM10]  Presumably many ministers who might make this kind of argument will, nevertheless, still believe in and use the word Trinity, which is also not a biblical term but one used in systematic theology. Wouldn’t it make sense to go all the way and stop using the word Trinity? The selective application of this argument may reveal that, at the end of the day, what is at issue is not simply a preference for biblical language over confessional. Rhetoric can work well as a smokescreen. [AM11] [DB12] 

The gospel has been handed down to us in words, words that have been carefully defined and codified in our confessions of faith. When the plain meaning of those words gets toyed with, there’s probably a reason. Saints keeping watch will sit up and listen when they hear this kind of doublespeak. Judging from the Enemy’s schemes, the gospel is likely in the crosshairs. Hence, it is only “by being vigilant in our confession, [that] we can protect the church’s unity.”[6]

A Stream with No Banks

One ruinous counterfeit being substituted for the pure doctrine of the gospel and eroding unity may sound particularly appealing to families with kids. “Covenant faithfulness is the way to salvation, for the ‘doers of the law will be justified’ at the final judgment.”[AM13]  As with all error, there is a miniscule kernel of truth here (a stopped clock is right twice a day). However appealing it may sound, point to our covenant faithfulness rather than to the steadfast faithfulness of the Savior, and all that remains is a counterfeit of the gospel. An attempt to swallow this kernel will [AM14] demand a theological Heimlich maneuver to prevent death by choking.

Ministers who say these things to their congregations hasten to tack on that this faithfulness is all done in union with Christ. Then they hasten back to what seems to have become the main thing. I’m inclined to think that when we hear confusing messages like this, we’ve just heard the fine print. However vigorous the large-print affirmations of orthodoxy are, as with politicians and journalists, [AM15] it’s the fine print that reveals what someone really believes.

Although a message of salvation by covenant faithfulness erodes grace[AM16] , advocates of this latest version of law-creep insist that their teaching is in the broad stream of the reformational confession of faith to which they still claim to ascribe. But to say that the way to salvation is by any degree of law-keeping faithfulness is nothing short of a reinvention of justification in the bland image of works righteousness—Rome without the bells and smells. If the banks of the confessional stream were this wide, we’d be looking at another worldwide flood, a confession with no boundaries at all.

Though I may be accused of being too meat-headed to grasp the intricate theological nuances, there’s one nuance I do understand: what a message like this produces in the flock. It will nudge hearers back into the default mode of looking to their “covenant faithfulness,” to their performance, to their obedience for their acceptance before God. Any teaching that does this will inevitably diminish in our minds and hearts the glories of the finished work of Christ in our place and will proportionately lessen our love and gratitude to Jesus for all that he has fully accomplished for us.

Favorite Sound Bites

Men who teach that “covenant faithfulness is the way to salvation” may also be ones who scour the literature of church history to unearth sound bites that appear to support their shifting ideas. Lifted out of context, these will then be used in an effort to normalize their aberrant views. For example, they may prefer to cite, and attribute to Augustine, the oft-quoted line, “Pray like everything depends on God. Work like everything depends on you.”[7] These kinds of historical sound bites pair nicely with isolated Bible sound bites such as “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). And the hands are dusted and the discussion is over, as if the Bible and Augustine need no context and have nothing more to say on the topic.

Meanwhile, others attribute to Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and mastermind of a movement designed to stamp out Reformation Christianity, the curiously similar admonition, “Use human means as though divine ones didn’t exist, and divine means as though there were no human ones.”[8] Good luck trying to find the original source on either of these, but in your search you will discover, as I did, that these variously attributed lines are also favorites among some Mormons, even some Muslims—strange theological bedfellows, indeed.

I’m bewildered and saddened by ministers whose favorite quotations—whether from the Bible or church history—seem calculated to invite confusion about justification as a one-time act of God. The flock is in grave danger when its ministers discover a man-centered sounding nugget and then use it as authority to normalize their theological shift and to convince their flocks that their adjustments ought to be accepted as new articles of faith—grave danger, indeed.

How much worse when men misuse Scriptural proof texts to cast doubt on the freeness of gospel grace. Shakespeare must have observed this strategy among some of the clergy in his day:[AM17] 

In religion,

What damned error but some sober brow

Will bless it and approve it with a text[?][9]

What’s more, the Bard knew that even

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul producing holy witness

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O what a goodly outside falsehood hath.[10]

Making large-print affirmations of doctrinal orthodoxy will always sound goodly on the outside; that’s what they’re meant to do. But what a preacher believes is always in the fine print, and we can be sure the fine print will always be backed up with a proof text.

Blessing confessional errors with proof texts never promotes the doctrinal unity of the church. Rather, these deviations and methods create a “perpetual guerrilla warfare within the church,”[11] waged to lend credibility to the latest confessional departure.

Unity about Forgiveness

An example of a corruption of the gospel insinuating itself into conservative Christianity that I referenced earlier is such a torpedo to the gospel that it requires further consideration here. “Justification—whatever else it is—is the forgiveness of sins. It is perfectly obvious that there is such a thing as temporary forgiveness because the Bible says there is. . . . Temporary forgiveness is a biblical datum.” [AM18] It takes little imagination to hear ministers in post-Reformation Amsterdam or Geneva saying similar things about justification.

However confidently asserted, this twenty-first-century minister’s statement that the Bible teaches temporary forgiveness is not shared by a single reformational confession of faith. I doubt Luther would have thought a doctrine of temporary forgiveness was anything like entering the gates of paradise, as he referred to his conversion. Imagine Luther’s glee at the discovery: “At last, I get it. Whatever else justification is, it is forgiveness, but only temporary forgiveness. O the joy! My burden is lifted—sort of, at least for the moment.” Temporary forgiveness would be more like having your head smashed in the gates of paradise as they clanged shut.

Or imagine a hymn of praise to God about temporary forgiveness. The cry of the five bleeding wounds of the Savior in Charles Wesley’s hymn would [AM19] sound more like this: “‘Sort of forgive,’ they cry, ‘sort of forgive,’ they cry; ‘Maybe not let that sort of ransomed sinner die.’” I can’t imagine a doctrine of temporary forgiveness warming anyone’s heart to praise.

Not only does it make for ridiculously bad hymn poetry, such a declaration is devastating to the central doctrine of justification by faith alone; if justification is about forgiveness of sins and the Bible teaches that you can be justified and have forgiveness of sins—and then lose or forfeit it—the entire structure of reformational theology crumbles.

It is precisely here that the confessional standards help Christians in every generation to continue to believe what the Bible teaches and what the wisdom of our theological forebears taught and believed about the gospel. In the Westminster Confession of Faith there is zero room for temporary forgiveness, a justification that can be had and then forfeited. “God did, from all eternity, decree to justify the elect, and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins and rise again for their justification. . . . God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified”[AM20]  (WCF 11.4–5, emphasis mine).

All the persuasive rhetoric to the contrary, what is a confessional datum on the irrevocability of forgiveness is so because it is a biblical datum: [AM21] “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The entire gospel depends on the faithfulness of God to do what he promised. It is the character of God himself that is at stake. God is unchangeable and so are his gifts. If forgiveness is changeable, then God himself is changeable. The central doctrine of justification is about something the immutable God has ordained and already accomplished, as Puritan Stephen Charnock so richly elucidates:

What comfort would it be to pray to a God that, like the chameleon, changed colors every day, every moment? The immutability of God is a strong ground of consolation, and encourages hope and confidence. While we have Him for our God, we have His immutability, as well as any other perfection of His nature. Let us also desire those things which are nearest to Him in this perfection: the righteousness of Christ that shall never wear out; and the grace of the Spirit, that shall never burn out.[12]

The ground of all comfort and confidence for sinners is that the immutable God justifies sinners based on the righteousness of his Son. He forgives my sins based on zero fitness in me, and he continues to forgive them based on zero fitness in me. He freely justifies sinners, as the Westminster divines put it, “for Christ’s sake alone. . . . Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification” (WCF 11.1–2). The apostle Paul declares without equivocation that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). Whatever else that means, it clearly has to mean that the justifying gift of forgiveness of sins is irrevocable too. In fact, “God does continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified.”[13]

I, for one, am counting precisely on this fact: the permanence and irrevocability of the forgiveness of my sins in the good news of Jesus Christ. Tamper with forgiveness and all that remains is abysmally bad news.

Confessing Our Unity

Whether from the various faces of law-creep or from the enervating error of temporary forgiveness, “by being vigilant in our confession of faith we can protect the unity that the Spirit has given us.”[14]

Everyone has their theological boundaries; some are in the right place and protect the gospel from errors, while others remove the ancient boundary stones and broaden the stream so as to enfold the latest new ideas and errors. “To talk theology at all is to talk boundaries and always has been.”[15] The great danger in the church, however, is when we ignore the boundaries, when we arrogate our opinions over the enduring bulwarks of the gospel, and when we stop openly and honestly acknowledging and submitting to confessional boundaries.

The church will enjoy unity, walls of hostility broken down, peace and harmony, only insofar as it stands “firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27). A confession of faith is the “open statement of the truth” (2 Cor. 4:2), so critical to maintaining the unity of the body.

The church of Jesus Christ, the city of God, is a glorious body, made so by its Head and Savior, Jesus Christ. Though the church is beset by corruptions of the gospel in every generation, the church’s unshakeable foundation truly is Jesus Christ her Lord. We can take comfort that

Soon the night of weeping

Shall be the morn of song.[16]

Alas, when undershepherds set themselves above confessional unity, we should not be surprised when the flock soon has plenty of reasons for weeping, the sheep left defenseless, exposed to the ravages of encircling wolves.

Douglas Bond, author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't), from which this post is an excerpt, has written numerous books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads church history tours in Europe. Watch for his forthcoming book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To). Learn more at bondbooks.net.

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[1] As Ephesians 2:11–22 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, I have written a hymn on its theme of the unity of the body Christ, included in appendix A.

^[2] Erik Routley, Hymns and Human Life (London: John Murray, 1952), 114.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Gene Edward Veith, “Putting St. Nicholas Back in Christmas,” The Lutheran Witness, December 2011, http://witness.lcms.org/pages/wPage.asp?ContentID=1153&IssueID=61.

^[5] Ulrich Zwingli, “The Sixty-Seven Articles of Ulrich Zwingli,” in Selected Works of Huldrich Zwingli, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1901), article 4, http://www.chinstitute.org/index.php/eras/reformation/zwingli/.

^[6] Michael Brown, “Schism and the Local Church,” Tabletalk, May 2011, 25.

[7] Variously attributed to Augustine and by some to Ignatius Loyola, though I was unable to find an original source for the quotation other than in the vast repositories of Christian clichés.

[8] Though usually attributed to Ignatius Loyola, a form of the quotation appears in Spanish Jesuit Balthasar Gracian’s Art of Worldly Wisdom (1637, maxim 251). In 1982, Joseph Jacobs translated the phrase as “Use human means as if there were no divine ones, and divine as if there were no human ones.” See Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, trans. Joseph Jacobs, http://www.intellectualexpansionist.com/art-of-worldly-wisdom.pdf.

[9] William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III.ii.77–79.

[10] Ibid., I.iii.96–100.

^[11] Carl R. Trueman, “How Consumer Culture Fuels Change,” Tabletalk, April 2010, 15.

^[12] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Evansville, IN: Sovereign Grace Book Club, 1958), 143.

^[13] Ibid., 11.5.

^[14] Brown, “Schism,” 25.

^[15] Carl R. Trueman, “Why Do We Draw the Line?” Tabletalk, July 1, 2012, accessed January 20, 2014, http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/why-do-we-draw-the-line/.

^[16] Samuel J. Stone, “The Church’s One Foundation,” Trinity Hymnal (Atlanta: Great Commission, 1990), 347.

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Doctrines of Grace: Particular Redemption and Irresistible Grace (part 4 podcast on Dort)

Doctrines of Grace: Particular Redemption and Irresistible Grace

Ephesians 3:14-21

From my visit to Amsterdam, 2007 

World means world?

“Absolute sovereignty,” wrote Jonathan Edwards, “is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so.”

Let’s be honest. Our first conviction is more accurately to hate absolute sovereignty. And if we hate and cavil at absolute sovereignty in predestination, we really get our back up and gnash our teeth at Jesus dying only for the elect. 

A young man, however, who cares more about what the Bible means than how it at first makes him feel will search and know what it teaches about particular redemption. Called “The Calvin of England,” John Owen offered three options for the Bible’s teaching on the atonement: Christ died for all the sins of all men, or for some of the sins of all men, or for all of the sins of some men. There are no other rational options. So which is it?

Many insist that it is the first: Christ died for all the sins of all men. For them, when the Bible uses the word “all” and “world” it means every man, woman, and child that has existed or that ever will exist. The locus classicus of this position is I John 2:2 where it says that Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”   

Honest Arminians recognize the problems with this conclusion. For example, an Arminian does not think that “propitiate” in I John 2:2 means that Jesus actually satisfied the wrath of God for every man, woman, and child. Scrupulous as they are about “world” meaning “world,” here they insist that “propitiation” doesn’t mean “propitiation”; here it means “potential propitiation.” Obviously, if Jesus’ atonement satisfied the wrath of God for all without exception, there’s no more wrath; he sends no one to hell. Since propitiation is a legal term meaning complete satisfaction, the reader who wants to know precisely what the Bible means, closely examines the various ways the Bible uses the word “world.”  

A. W. Pink points out that in the New Testament “world” or kosmos, “has at least seven clearly defined different meanings.” So when Jesus prays in John 17:9, “I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me,” clearly by “world” he means unbelievers, and by “them” and “those you have given me,” he means believers, his sheep, the elect. Here, even Arminians must agree that “world” does not mean all men throughout all time.

Similarly, when Moses records that “all mankind” perished in the flood (Genesis 7:21), no Arminian insists that “all” means “all” and “mankind” means “mankind.” Clearly not every man, woman, and child that ever lived or would live died in the flood. “All mankind” didn’t include any of us, nor did it include the eight humans who survived the flood--including Noah.

But what about “For God so loved the world” in John 3:16? Did Jesus mean that his Father sent him to actually ransom, redeem, pardon, atone for, and propitiate—to actually pay the sin debt of every man, woman, and child in the universe? Return to the context. Jesus was speaking to a Jewish scholar who believed the Messiah was coming just for Jews. Here Jesus was declaring to Jewish Nicodemus that the Messiah has come not just to save ethnic Jews, but the elect from all nations—the world.

Given the varying use of “world” in Scripture, careful readers will interpret passages that, on the surface, sound universal in light of passages that speak more specifically. Comparing John 3:16 and related passages with Revelation 5:9 helps bring clarity: “You are worthy… because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nations.” Notice how particular and specific the language is. Jesus actually “purchased men for God,” and he did so without ethnic or racial distinction, pitching his love on men from the whole world.

Sheep means sheep                                                          

John Owen’s second option, that Christ died for all the sins of all men, except the sin of unbelief, is favored by other non-Calvinists. This interpretation relieves God of being charged with unfairness, and the only condition of salvation that man contributes is belief. Believe and you have set yourself apart from the rest. But there are serious problems with this view. For starters, the Bible in many places says plainly that the wrath of God is coming for a laundry list of sins, not just for unbelief.

Calvinists believe that Christ actually atoned for all the sins of some men—the elect--that he actually did as he claimed in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The language Jesus uses has no hint that he meant he was only potentiality or conditionally laying down his life. The words indicate an actual, definite act, accomplished for and applied to specific individuals—the sheep. Sparkling clarity follows when Jesus says to unbelievers a few verses later, “you do not believe because you are not my sheep” (10:26). The sheep believe because they were ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48), and because Jesus actually—not just potentially--laid down his life for their sins.

In a variety of ways, the Bible answers the question, “What must I do to be saved?” It clearly states: “Believe, seek, come, call.” But it answers a second critical question about salvation, “Why did I believe?” It answers with equal clarity--we just don’t like the answer.

Jealous to protect God’s fairness, many nonsensically answer the second question with a variant of the answer to the first. “Why did I believe? Because I just believed.” And then they plug their ears. Real men don’t read their Bibles this way. The Bible relentlessly answers the question why a sinner believes, so we must hear it: Sinners believe because God chose them, Christ redeemed them, and the Spirit called them.

There’s not a lack of clarity here. We proud sinners simply don’t like the debasement required by the answer. We don’t like hearing that we’re dead in trespasses and sins, that God predestined some to life and others to damnation; that the elect are redeemed by Christ, their debt paid in full, their guilt and punishment borne on the cross by their good shepherd. Nor do we much like hearing that what makes us differ from a lost sinner is the Holy Spirit effectually calling us out of darkness into the splendid light of the new birth. Believing all that is high-demand. It costs us our pride.

           

Dead made alive

“Born, as all of us are, an Arminian,” wrote C. H. Spurgeon, “when I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this.”               

Arminianism, like the flat-earth theory, draws ultimate conclusions based on immediately observable evidence only. Thus, someone who believes in a flat earth does so because what he sees from his observable vantage point looks flat. As Spurgeon suggests, many mistakenly conclude that when a sinner hears the gospel and chooses to believe, his choice is the cause of forgiveness and salvation.

But what makes one man hear, repent and believe in Christ, while another hears the same sermon but snorts in derision and persists in unbelief? After one such sermon, Luke records that, “All who were appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). All heard the same sermon, but not everyone believed. This text and many others explain why: God mercifully predestined some to eternal life. That alone is why they believed.

Jesus used the metaphor of the wind blowing where it wishes to explain the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation, and he used the metaphor of new birth. Just as no one has anything to do with his first birth, so the sinner is born again by the mysterious working of the Spirit, not by anything the dead sinner can will or do. Correspondingly, Paul tells us that we are “dead in trespasses and sins,” but that it is God who makes us alive in Christ by his Spirit.

“Dead men tell no tales,” so say pirates, nor can dead men will or do anything pertaining to their salvation. We must be born again, made alive, given the gift of faith by “the Spirit penetrate[ing] into our hearts,” as Calvin termed it. Anything short of this gives man credit for the divine work of regeneration in our hearts.

We call or he calls?

Though C. S. Lewis was an extraordinary Christian apologist, there were some holes, shall we say, in his theology. One of these reoccurs in the form of philosophical arguments favoring freedom of the will over against divine sovereignty. Put simply, Lewis was probably more of an Arminian than he was a Calvinist.

Nevertheless, writers are sometimes at their best when writing poetry or imaginative fiction, so in the Narnia books Lewis wonderfully illustrates the sovereignty of grace and the effectual calling of God’s Spirit. In The Silver Chair when Aslan tells Jill that he called her out of her world, Jill disagrees. “Nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call… And we did, and then we found the door open.” Jill, like most, mistakenly thought her calling was what opened the door. Lewis’s Lion wisely replied, “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you.”

Similarly, in The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis has Aslan utter “a long single note; not very loud, but full of power. Polly’s heart jumped in her body when she heard it. She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it and (what’s more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between.”

As it did Jill, the power of this call ought to fill us with the deepest wonder at the grace of our God, who alone elects, redeems, calls, and keeps all his sheep so that not one of them is lost.

Flat earth

Arians in the early church had trouble figuring out how God could be three and one at the same time, so they rejected the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, and, thus, the deity of Jesus Christ. When we frail mortals have trouble grasping high and grand doctrines concerning God, our inclination is to reduce things down to the puny level of human understanding. Error always follows. 

From our flat-earth vantage point, predestination makes God not behave as nicely toward all sinners as we think fairness requires of him. Call these systems what you will, adherents insist that it wouldn’t be fair of God to do anything more for those who will believe than he has done for those who won’t. Thus, they insist that Calvinism can’t be right because it violates God’s fairness by making him act with favoritism toward some. Consequently, modern evangelism has created several extra-biblical jingles that have become inviolable.

Love and voting

The first well-intentioned jingle goes like this: “God loves the sinner, but hates the sin.” I wonder. After all, it’s not the sin that gets thrown in hell. It’s the sinner. Nobody wants to be “loved” like that. If God loves in the same way and to the same degree both the man who is saved and the man who will be damned, then “love” and “hate” have no meaning, and we’ve made a mingle-mangle again.

The Bible, however, uses these terms in precise ways. “Jacob have I loved. Esau have I hated.” So in Psalm 5:6, God declares that he “hates all those who do wrong.” Though “all” means “all” to Arminians, “hate” here just can’t mean “hate.” They insist that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are obligated to love all sinners exactly alike and leave the rest up to the sinner. Though heaps of biblical evidence suggest otherwise, the measure of God’s love, for them, is its extent not its effect; it must extend to everyone who ever lives or it’s not real love because love is fair.

But is this an accurate understanding of love? No wife would measure the worth of her husband’s love by how widely it extends to all women; does her confidence in his love for her come from her knowledge that he loves all women without exception? Of course not! On the contrary, she measures his love by how exclusive, individual, and particular it is, by how he lavishes it on her alone. So Christ’s love for his bride is particular, individual, and definite, and is savingly lavished on his bride, the church. Nevertheless, Arminians insist that Christ’s love isn’t real unless it is the same for all—even the already damned.

The other jingle often used in modern evangelism goes like this, “God cast a vote; Satan cast a vote, and the sinner casts the final vote.” Anyone with his Bible open ought to see through this like a ladder. Aside from the obvious problem of placing God and Satan on equal terms in their hand-wringing passivity, nowhere does the Bible give man such ultimate self-determination. In all the evangelism recorded in the New Testament, I recall no such nonsense. Though zealous, well-meaning Christians say things like this, we do well to stick with the evangelism of Jesus and the apostles.

Cavils at Calvin

A frequent cavil at Calvinism insists that men who believe it will not care about evangelism and missions. But what of Paul, the quintessential world missionary, who taught these doctrines systematically throughout his epistles? Oft-maligned Calvin had a ministry marked by deep concern for the lost, wherein he established an academy precisely for training preachers and missionaries. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were all established by Calvinists as theological training grounds for Christian preachers and missionaries. What’s more, nineteenth-century missions were largely pioneered by a long list of Calvinists. 

Another favorite cavil goes like this. If predestination is true, then why pray for the lost? Perhaps no one has more succinctly turned this cavil back on the detractors who raise it than J. I. Packer when he asks how you pray for the lost:

Do you limit yourself to asking that God will bring them to a point where they can save themselves? I think that what you do is to pray in categorical terms that God will, quite simply and decisively, save them. You would not dream of making it a point in your prayer that you are not asking God actually to bring them to faith. You entreat him to do that very thing. Thus, you acknowledge and confess the sovereignty of God’s grace. And so do all Christian people everywhere.

            Something about the kneeling posture helps us proud sinners get things right.  Perhaps there’d be less mingle-mangle about predestination and sovereign grace if we spent more time on those knees, humbly appealing to God on behalf of dead sinners whom he alone can save.

Does it matter?

Then comes the final cavil at Calvinism: Calvinism is merely theological wrangling that has no relevance to a Christian’s life and calling. But if we truly believe that all Scripture is God-breathed and so profitable for doctrinal belief and for training in righteousness, then the Bible’s teaching on the sovereignty of God must be important for us to understand.

So how ought believing the doctrines of grace, in the sovereignty of God, in total depravity, predestination, definite and particular atonement, and the effectual calling of the Spirit, how ought all this to affect a young man’s faith, devotion, and worship of Christ?

John Bunyan, perhaps said it best when he at last saw his sin as a “most barbarous and a filthy crime,” and that in his depravity he “had horribly abused the holy Son of God.” Seeing the depth of your sin and the corresponding depth of electing love and of Christ’s substitutionary atonement applied to your miserable life by God’s Spirit, ought to prompt in you a burning love for the Lord Jesus. Bunyan put it this way, “Had I a thousand gallons of blood within my veins, I could freely have spilled it all at the command and feet of this my Lord and Savior.”

Stand fast on these high truths, and feel the force of them. Hold fast to truth, and walk humbly with your God, working out your salvation with fear and trembling. And so make your calling and election sure by gratefully pursuing holiness, without which no young man will see the Lord.   

Douglas Bond, author, speaker, tour leader, hymn writer, publicist. Listen to Bond's podcast at bondbooks.net/the-scriptorium-podcast

Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity and Unconditional Election (part 3 from The Scriptorium podcast on Dort)

Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity and Unconditional Election

Ephesians 1:1-14

From my visit to Amsterdam, 2007

Mingle-mangle

            It has been said of the Reformers in England, “Cambridge grew them; Oxford slew them.” Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worchester, Cambridge scholar and preacher, royal chaplain to Henry VIII and Edward VI, was one of those who died at the hands of haters of the Word of God and the Gospel. Latimer was a preacher of Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone, but concerned that some in England misread their Bibles, he urged preachers and laymen alike not to “make a mingle-mangle” of the sacred text.

            The Reformation was essentially a return to the sole authority of the Bible and an embrace of what it teaches about how a man is saved and becomes a part of the church. Rome had her teachings on these things, but Latimer and the Reformers found in the actual words of the Bible that salvation was by grace alone. Sinners contribute nothing--but their sins.

            A young man who is serious about being a Christian will diligently search and know what the Bible teaches about salvation and the grace of God. He must be absolutely clear about the extent of his sins, about the roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in salvation, and about sanctification and the life of holiness God has called him to. In short, a real man must not make a mingle-mangle of the Bible’s doctrine of salvation.

Ability

            In Luther’s great debate over free will with humanist scholar Erasmus, Luther thanked his opponent for going down to the root of the debate: the nature of man. In Bondage of the Will, Luther argues that the fundamental difference between the Roman Catholic view of sin and the Bible’s view is that man is in bondage to his sinful nature; this bondage includes his will. His depravity is so total it makes him not only unwilling but unable to come to God.

Most post-conservative American Christians agree that man is depraved, but not so totally that he is unable to come to God, to respond to the universal call of the gospel as an act of his free will. Wittingly or unwittingly, they agree with Jacobus Arminius, sixteenth-century divinity professor at the University of Leyden.

Well-meaning Christians who insist man is free and able to choose salvation, base it on passages like Revelation 22:17, “Whoever is thirsty let him come, and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” Or on Paul’s call to the Philippian jailer to “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” The argument proceeds as follows: If the Bible invites whoever wishes to come, and if Paul tells the jailer to believe and be saved, then men must be able to come and believe as acts of their free will.

Notice carefully, however, that these conclusions are deduced by implication but not from an explicit statement in the text. In neither text, for example, does the author explicitly tell us that men have the ability to come, to thirst, or to believe. It is implicit, Arminians insist, but clearly it is not explicitly taught in these texts. If you genuinely want to know what the Bible is saying, take the explicit over the implicit; otherwise you will make a mingle-mangle of its teaching on total depravity.

Inability

Compare Scripture with itself on man’s depravity and you will find many explicit texts that clear up any confusion. There is nothing left to inference, for example, when Jesus tells his hearers why they refuse to understand him: “Because you are unable to hear… the reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God” (John 8:43-47). Clearly, Jesus was teaching that these men’s unbelief was based not on a lack of will but on a lack of ability. Turn back a page and Jesus’ consistent message is clearer still: “No one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him” (6:65).

Paul repeatedly makes the same point about the bondage of man’s will and his inability to believe as an act of his will: He says sinners “cannot know” (I Corinthians 2:14), that “none seeks” (Romans 3:10-12), they “cannot see” (II Corinthians 4:4), that “the sinful mind does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so,” and that man “cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8).

The words “can” and “cannot” are words that indicate ability or inability; they have nothing to do with wanting or wishing. So when Jesus explicitly declares, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44), he is plainly telling his hearers that no one can come as an act of will; they’re unable to do so. Men come when God draws them.

If you genuinely want to know what the Bible teaches about total depravity, find it in the explicit passages. Don’t build a theology of free will and ability on implicit texts, especially when the deduced conclusions require you to defy explicit biblical statements.

Cavil at Calvin

            We sinners, not surprisingly, chafe when the Bible exposes the depth of our total depravity. Still more, we particularly get our back up when it says that God unconditionally predestined some men to salvation and some to damnation. This goes too far.

When Paul lists predestination, “according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,” as chief among the blessings we have in Christ in the heavenly realms, we modern American Christians are sure that the text just can’t mean what it says.

Thus, we raise two standard objections to predestination: “It makes God unfair,” and, “How could God blame me for my sins?” After all, if predestination is true, then everything happens “according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,” just as Paul wrote. Paul’s statement sounds too undemocratic, and it, frankly, offends us.

It offends us because, deep down, we agree with poet William Ernest Henley who declared, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” More than two thousand years before Henley, Greek dramatist Sophocles observed that, “Man desires to be more than man, to rule his world for himself.” It’s in our fallen nature to entertain exaggerated notions about having god-like power over our own lives. Predestination requires a “steepling plunge,” and we desperately squirm and writhe when confronted with it.

John Calvin wrote, “The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny, but it is greatly caviled at.” To cavil is to make frivolous objections to something, objections without foundation.

The most common cavil goes like this. “If predestination is true then why witness or send missionaries to heathen lands?” Notice, again, how this objection sets aside the clear words of Scripture in favor of a line of human reason.

So long as men cavil, the debate rages on, but it’s not because the Bible is unclear about predestination. Read Paul in Ephesians and wherever the Bible speaks about God’s sovereignty and grace you will find explicit teaching consistent with what has come to be called Calvinism. The debate rages precisely because the Bible is so clear, and because what it says is so contrary to what we naturally think about ourselves.

Calvin is correct: biblically informed Arminians cannot deny predestination by name; the word and its parallels appear throughout the Bible. They do, however, redefine the clear meaning of the word and shift the bases of election to God’s foreknowledge. They insist that God merely foresaw that some would choose him, so on the basis of men’s choice, he chose them. Believe this and you’re forced to redefine the clear meaning of words, and you’re left scratching your head at why, if predestination wasn’t true, the Bible would bother giving specific answers to man’s cavils at it.

Love and hate 

Perhaps there is no more unadorned statement of predestination than Paul quoting Malachi in Romans 9:13, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” The careful reader is forced to reject the theory that by predestination Paul meant that God passively foresaw that men would choose him and then he chose them. He is forced to reject this theory because of Paul’s own words in the Bible. Paul knew his teaching on predestination would raise this question: “What then shall we say? Is God unjust” (9:14)? Paul anticipates the standard human objection: Predestination makes God unjust; things just wouldn’t be fair if election were true.

If Arminianism were true, however, Paul would immediately say something like this: “Hold everything! You’ve misunderstood my entire meaning. When I speak of predestination, I don’t really mean predestination. I mean God just sees that you will have faith and “chooses” you based on you having already chosen him.” Paul says nothing of the kind. In fact he raises the bar: “It does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy… Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (9:18).

Read your Bible with integrity and there’s no mingle-mangle here. It’s abundantly plain. Nevertheless, men continue to cavil at predestination, and Paul anticipates their next objection: “One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will’” (9:19)? Paul is saying in effect, “I know what you’re thinking: You think that if what I’m teaching about predestination is true then God can’t blame you, or hold you responsible for your sins. You’re thinking that if he sovereignly hardens one and chooses another, then it’s not fair for him to judge you for your sins.”

Again, if Arminianism were correct, Paul would immediately protest, “Hold the phone! That’s not what I mean at all!” But he doesn’t say this. He is working through a carefully crafted inspired argument based on his certain knowledge that predestination is vein-bulgingly objectionable to proud human beings like you and me.

Here is the ultimate test of whether you’ve got the Bible’s understanding about predestination: Paul’s teaching provokes men to object and say that it makes God unjust. Therefore, any theology of salvation that does not prompt that objection is not Paul’s teaching and is, therefore, a mingle-mangle of the Bible’s teaching about predestination.

Why do men have so much trouble here? It goes back to total depravity. We don’t like predestination because we don’t think we need it. We’re not such terrible sinners that we can’t make our own choices about our life. Besides, we’re Americans and we believe in self government, you know, in ruling our world for ourselves. No, this predestination stuff might work in ancient Israel, or in Geneva, or in Scotland, but it’s not for us modern Americans.

It’s not just Henley or Arminius. Nobody likes predestination. No fallen sinner likes facing the harsh reality of how utterly lost he is and how impossible it is for any of us to be saved by anything we can will, or believe, or do. Jonah got it right: “Salvation is of the Lord,” but we, like Jonah, resent the fact.

Other troubles with election

            Though it is less likely today, some may have another kind of difficulty with predestination. The devil may raise doubts in a sinner’s mind by suggesting to you that there’s no use in seeking the Lord, no use in calling out to the Lord to have mercy, because you’re probably not elect anyway. So what’s the use of attempting to come to God if he has, from all eternity, barred you from his salvation and forgiveness?

            The tempter tried this one on John Bunyan, and for a time it worked. But only for a time. Bunyan longed to bask in the sunny side of the mountain that seemed to bar his way from peace with God. Others in Bedford seemed to have found the warm, refreshing pastures of grace and salvation, while he sank in the miry bog of his unworthiness. And when hints of light shone through the narrow passageway to the warm side of the mountain, he was “assaulted with fresh doubts.” These doubts came in the form of a question: “Was I elect?” The Scripture seemed clear about these things, but it trampled on all his desire when he read, “It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy” (Romans 9:16).

            Satan fanned the flames of his doubt with relish. “How can you tell if you are elected?” the tempter whispered in Bunyan’s ear. “And what if you are not?” Bunyan had no answer but his groans of despair. “Why then,” Satan persisted, “you might as well stop now and strive no further.”

            Holy Mr. Gifford, pastor of St. John’s parish church in Bedford, had taught the poor tinker the whole counsel of God. Bunyan knew his biblical theology. “That the elect only obtained eternal life, I without scruple did heartily agree; but that I myself was one of them, there lay my question.”

            Then Bunyan heard, as it were, the Lord speak, “Begin at the beginning of Genesis, and read to the end of Revelation, and see if you can find that there was ever any that trusted in the Lord and was confounded.” With those words his confusion and perplexity began to vanish:

Take heart in divine sovereignty and predestination. If you are to be saved it will be God’s doing, first to last. But no man who has ever seen his sins and felt his need, who has longed to have peace with God, has ever been turned away. After all, the knowledge of your sins and the desire to be rid of them is also a gift from God. Bunyan took encouragement from this knowledge, and so ought you.

Delightful doctrine

            We might be tempted to think that a man like Jonathan Edwards—the last New England Puritan--was a copper-bottomed Calvinist from birth. But not so. He confesses early doubts and objections to God’s sovereignty and predestination in his Personal Narrative. 

My mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me.

Eventually, Edwards became “convinced, and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure.” He credits the “extraordinary influence of God’s Spirit,” for the change. “My mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objections.”

The next stage of Edwards’ understanding he described as “a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation; [sovereignty] is what my mind seems to rest assured of.”  His early conviction deepened into “quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so.”

A man who claims to love God and his word, is not at liberty to begrudgingly concede to any biblical doctrine. The young man who wants to be set free by truth, will strive for that maturity that lays aside flawed notions about God and his ways and seeks to find all of God’s self-disclosure “pleasant, bright, and sweet,” though truth may not look so at first blush. 

If you find yourself still kicking and squalling at the sovereignty of God, do as young Edwards did: seek and know the Lord as he is revealed in the Bible. “The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, I Timothy 1:17 ‘Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen.’”

Finally, if what you conclude about predestination gives glory to God alone, then you have embraced what the Bible teaches on this grand subject. Soli Deo Gloria!

Douglas Bond, author, speaker, tour leader, hymn writer, publicist. Listen to Bond's podcast at bondbooks.net/the-scriptorium-podcast