Subject:  grace and the "decision for Christ"

brief version:

1) I take seriously the Biblical statements that Christ died for all,
and that God does not want anyone to fall.  Thus I believe that God
really offers salvation to everyone, and does not have any secret
lists of people he isn't serious about saving.

2) I believe that salvation starts with God's grace.  All of our
faculties are corrupted, and we cannot do anything as we ought without
God's help.  Some have said that God will do everything, but we must
give him permission first.  Without his grace, I don't believe we are
in a position even to give him permission.  Fortunately he doesn't
require it, although at some point he does expect a response.

3) I believe that those who are saved are in a manner of speaking
saved by "irresistible grace".  God takes the initiative and they are
moved to respond through God's regeneration of their will.  Thus
God does not ask for permission before bestowing grace.

4) Those who are not saved are because there is a limit to how far God
will go.  This limit includes his decision to rely upon Christians to
act as his representatives in converting the world.  This limit is
voluntarily assumed by God.  I don't know exactly why, but it is
presumably in order to maintain the independence of his creatures.
This places some limits on the statement that God wants all to be
saved.  But that's no surprise.  Many statements of intention have
implicit limits.  I want to have plenty of money, but am not willing
to use immoral means to get it.

5) The result is that whether people are saved is determined by a
mixture of their character, experience, and the witness of other
Christians, and the Holy Spirit's work within them.  Classically,
having our salvation depend upon how we react has been criticized
because it suggests that we are saved because of some merit of ours.
I do not mean this.  The fact that our character and experience lead
us to respond to God is not "merit".  First, because anything good we
have is sufficiently corrupted by sin that it can't be considered
meritorious in any case (see below).  Second, because some of the
differences are due not to our character but the influences around us.
And third, because things in our character that would lead us to
accept God are not necessarily good.  It may be that the people who
are saved start out being worse than everyone else and thus are most
desperate.

6) It's hard to deny God's responsibility for how things are set up,
and thus for the fact that not all people are saved.  However he does
not set things up intending to damn specific people.  It's just how
things worked out.  It has sometimes been said that the fact that he
set things up means he is responsible for every action.  That is true
in the sense that he could prevent it and didn't, or could have set up
the universe to make it impossible and did not.  But this doesn't mean
he planned that every specific action would happen.  Given our current
understanding of the importance of statistical processes, it's hard to
claim that the specific parameters he set for the "big bang" directly
entailed that person XXX would be damned.  I do not claim that quantum
uncertainty is the sole explanation for human responsibility.  I use
this simply as one way of showing that some of the standard
mechanistic arguments do not make sense.  I claim only that God has
somehow arranged to limit his direct control, so as to give his
creatures some real independence.

7) While God's grace comes to us before any of our decisions, we are
not fully "in Christ" until we have made a specific decision to accept
Christ, and submit our lives to him.  This decision involves
repentance and faith.  Our ability to make this decision comes from
God's grace, but the decision itself does change our relationship with
God.

8) I believe that we have some level of "natural good".  That is, even
without God's grace, we are capable of doing things that are from an
external point of view good.  However this good does not gain us any
"merit" from God.  Our motives are never pure, and our good is often
not directed towards the best end.  This is what "total depravity"
means: not that the image of God is completely destroyed, but that all
aspects of our being are corrupted.  However it is silly to deny that
some of the influences that determine how we react to God are things
that classify as "natural good".  This does *not* mean that it is
necessarily the best people who receive God.  In fact it may be that
those who accept him are the most desperate.

9) Only through Christ do we come in contact with full goodness.  We
are justified through him, both in that his good is imputed to us and
that through the Holy Spirit it comes to live in us and is present
through us to the world.

10) Justification is by faith, in the following sense: Salvation is
purely from God.  We have no indepedent righteousness.  ("Natural
good" does not count as righteousness because it is always corropted.)
Thus we trust entirely in God for our salvation.  This complete
dependence on God is the faith spoken of in justification by faith.

11) However faith is not real without repentance, and repentance is a
process that leads to Christian action ("good works").  Good works do
not save us in any way: God saves us.  But repentance *will* lead to
them.  Repentance is the process of submitting our lives to God's
judgement, and is the link between faith and action.  Faith without
repentance is bare belief, not the trust and reliance on God that is
needed for justification.  (Note that faith doesn't really save us
either.  It's the way we receive salvation.)

--------

Here's a fuller treatment.  See also the file "works".

Much as I tried to avoid getting into issues such as election and
free will in my recent postings, I find that I can't do justice to
some of the issues without it.  Thus I'd like to set out my
understanding of the relative roles of election and decision.
Although I have said in the past that I am highly influenced by
Calvin, my views in this area are not the same as his, as you'll see.
Over time I've come to appreciate at least some aspects of what we
have been calling the mainstream Protestant position.  (This position
is often referred to as Arminian. It does in fact share many ideas
with Arminius, and historically can be traced to him through Wesley.
However I'm not sure Arminius himself would approve of the final form
his ideas have taken.  He was a Reformed theologian, and thought he
was explaining how predestination worked.)  The term I'm going to use
for my view is supralapsarian Arminianism.

As in other major theological issue, I believe the correct position
involves balancing several concerns.  If any of these concerns is
allowed to dominate, you get extreme positions that do not do justice
to Scripture or Christian experience.  Here is a summary of the some
of the major concerns:

  - we are saved by relying on God, not ourselves (justification by faith)
  - the sole source of righteous is God
  - we are called on to make a definite decision for God, and to commit
  	our lives to him
  - most discussions of judgement in the Bible refer to God looking at 
        what we have done
  - without God's grace, we are unable to choose good

The dominant impression I get from the Gospels is of Jesus calling on
people to accept God's rule, and warning of judgement for those who
do not.  Many of his parables are about choosing the kingdom: God has
called us to his banquet, if we are busy with other things, we will
be excluded.  God has sown his word everywhere.  When it finds people
in which it can take root, they will be saved.  As Rev. puts it,
"behold, I stand at the door and knock".  The problem with extreme
Calvinist positions is that this element of Christ's preaching has to
be explained away.  However there's no question that the other
aspects are there as well.  

There is no question that the process of redemption starts with God's
grace.  Paul describes us as slaves of sin until God intervenes.  I
believe all Christians agree with this.  The question is not whether
salvation starts with God, nor even whether people are expected to
make a decision in response to it, but rather how free this decision
is, and whether God has a secret plan whereby he only provides enough
grace to do the job to certain people he has selected for salvation.

The question of free will turns out to hinge on how you define
freedom.  This was initially made clear to me by reading Jonathan
Edwards' book "Freedom of the Will".  He was arguing with champions
of "free will", who believed that the will was sovereign.  If the
will was formed by outside influences, then it was no longer free.
They believed that in order to have human responsibility, the
decision for God had to be made by a will that was self-contained to
such an extent that one began to think its decisions could only be
based on quantum noise.  Edwards pointed out that the common-language
use of "free" means simply free from external constraint.  We
consider that someone has chosen freely whenever their choice truly
reflects their goals and character.  We do not get into debates on
developmental psychology, to determine whether their character was or
was not formed by their environment.

What I find is that I agree with Edwards' basic analysis, but
disagree with his theology.  That is, I agree that it is absurd to
require that the will must be completely self-contained and sovereign
in order to make a responsible choice.  There is no question that
people's reaction to God is influenced by their upbringing (which is
why we emphasize the importance of Christian nuture), by the witness
of Christians around them (which is why Christian witness and mission
is important), etc.  Where I disagree is that God has manipulated
this process based on his predetermined choice to save certain
people and damn others.

In some ways, this is as much a question of God's intent as anything
else.  I don't think anyone (except Edwards' opponents, who may be
straw men) believes that humans have a completely self-contained
will.  Everyone understands that a decision for God is made on the
basis of external influences such as contact with other Christians,
and on the internal actions of the Holy Spirit.  Arminians accept
Paul's statement "What have you that you did not receive?"  The
debate is over questions like whether God's grace is irresistible,
whether someone once saved can fall away, whether God has a secret
plan to save a specific set of people, and whether one can reject
these concepts and still maintain that all of our good comes from
God.  It is clear to all Christians that God's grace is at least in
some external way offered to everyone, that it must overcome barriers
in us created by our sinfulness, and that it does so in only some
cases.  The question is whether God only really intended to save
those where he succeeded.

As I commented, this is not a question one can easily answer from
observation.  The observable results are the same in both cases:
there's God's grace and human barriers.  Both differ in amount and
type for person to person.  In some cases, the person responds, in
others not.  Is the deciding matter the fact that God specifically
chose certain people for salvation, or did it just work out that way?

The problem is that there are Scripture passages pointing both ways.
The most specific statement that God wants all to be saved is 1 Tim
2:4, which says that specifically.  Paul also says a number of places
(e.g. 2 Cor 5:14-15) that Christ died for all.  Jesus had the
frustrating habit of speaking in parables, which makes it hard to
find crisp theological statements from him.  However parables such as
the sower and the great banquet, as well as his instructions to the
disciples before sending them out, suggest God calling everyone, with
people responding according to their character.  On the other hand,
we have Jesus saying things like "no one knows the Father except the
Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Mat 11:27 and
par.), similar passages in John talking about people being given to
Christ.  And then there is Rom 9, with its implication that God has
decided that certain people are not going to be saved.

As in most cases like this, what typically happens is that one
chooses one set of passages as the primary ones, and finds a way to
understand the others in those terms.  This makes arguments from
Scripture difficult, because each side has its own way of
understanding the passages.  Those who believe God has chosen a
specific set of people typically distinguish between a secret and
external will.  Thus God may talk about calling all people, but he
understands that only those he has elected will hear the call.  Those
who believe that God has not chosen a specific set of people believe
that God has predestined not specific people, but the class of those
who have faith in Christ.  Thus, those to whom Christ chooses to
reveal himself are those who follow him.  Rom 9 can be taken this way
as well (as Arminius did), although the interpretation of that
passage is complicated by the way it fits into the entire argument of
the book.  In my view, Rom 9 is not talking about God choosing to
reject people permanently, but simply delaying their enlightenment to
allow opportunity for others.  At any rate, we have a situation where
it is possible to read Scripture either way.  I think for most
people, the decision is based not on individual passages, but on
one's overall impression from reading Scripture as a whole, as well
as from the philosophical and theological consequences of each
position.

I am convinced that the proper reading is that God does seriously call
everyone, and that he does not have secret lists of people he is and
is not interested in saving.  The other view seems to me to require
Jesus to be speaking most of the time with his fingers crossed behind
his back.  The whole concept of invitations to everyone that are not
meant seriously seems unworthy of God.  In anyone else this would be
called hypocrisy.  This does not mean that I claim to know all of
God's purposes.  He has apparently set things up so that not everyone
ends up being saved.  Since he obviously could arrange it for everyone
to be saved (by brute force if necessary), this means that he stops
short of what is necessary for some people.  I do not know why he does
this (although I speculate below that it may have to do with
maintaining the independence of his creatures).  However I don't
believe it is because he simply wants certain people to be damned.

The primary purpose of this paper is to try to convince people that
one can hold this view and still do justice to justification by faith,
and to the understanding that all righteousness comes from God.

First, a general comment.  Over the last few years I have become
increasingly convinced by the argument that God intentionally uses
his power in such a way as to create a certain amount of independence
for the world, and specifically for people.  It is obvious that God
could save everyone by use of brute force or its equivalent.  However
he chose to do it by coming into human life and accepting the
vulnerability of mortal life.  He has chosen to delegate much of the
responsibility for reaching the world to the Church.  If we are
serious about thinking that Christ reveals God, then I think we have
to see this as a model of God's overall approach of dealing with us.
What we see of God through Christ is consistent with a God who has
limited his own power.

Note that this does not necessarily resolve all of the moral
complaints against God that we have heard from time to time.  I
believe that God is responsible for the overall setup.  He is at
least indirectly responsible for the fact that sin exists.  I don't
say that he is the source of sin, but he made people in such a way
that sin would result.  (This is what I meant by saying that I am a
supralapsarian Arminian.)  I'm not going to engage in the usual
arguments as to why this might be a good or bad thing, as I have no
idea of what constraints, if any, God was working under in his design
of the universe.  Is sin a necessary result of allowing people to
have a genuine existence separate from God?  That's a tempting
conclusion, but I'm simply not in a position to look at things at
that level.

There's a certain argument that God is ultimately responsible for
choosing which people are saved simply as a result of foreknowledge.
He set up the rules.  He can forsee the results.  Therefore he is
responsible for them.  At least in some forms, this argument assumes
a sort of mechanical model of the world and specifically of people
that is no longer tenable.  I've always been reluctant to derive too
much theology from physics.  But the statistical basis of much modern
physics at least undermines the idea that God's initial act of
creation directly entailed all of later history.

I have no question that there are situations where God does know that
what he is doing (or refraining from doing) will result in someone
not being saved.  I don't know how he decides exactly "how much"
grace he will use in dealing with each individual.  But I believe he
holds back, not from a specific desire to damn certain people, but
from an unwillingness to go so far that people are simply his
puppets.  Note that this effectively inserts a qualification in
certain statements about God.  While I believe that he wants to see
each person saved, this desire is qualified by an unwillingness to go
beyond a certain point in convincing them.

Now let's look at some classical theological questions.

The first question is: Do we have any righteousness independent of
God?  I think this question is more complex than it looks.  First let
me say that I do believe in something like total depravity.  I
believe that all of our faculties are corrupted by sin.  Even the
best of human acts are performed with mixed motivations, and even
good means are often directed towards inappropriate ends.

However I also think there are things in every person, Christian or
not, to which the term good can be used in some way.  Luther talked
about it as "civil righteousness".  Calvin attributed its existence
to a general providence which is separate from the specific
providence that applies only to people that God chooses to save. But
the fact is that everyone, saved or otherwise, does some good acts,
often out of love for someone else.  

There is reason to distinguish between this generic human goodness
and some of what is imparted by grace.  Christians trace their
goodness to Christ, believing that what they do is in some sense
Christ acting through them.  For this goodness, we are really a
conduit.  In the end, the goal of a Christian is to become
transparent to Christ.  However in the process we are also expected
to develop our own characters, and I think it's simply wrong not to
see any connection between the good that remains in all people as a
result of being created in God's image, and the way Christian
character develops.  The thing that is distinctly Christian, and is
not present in others, is the love of Christ for which we are the
conduit.

One of my basic problems with theology in this area is its tendency
to oversimplify.  So I am not going to provide a simple model of how
someone is brought to accept Christ.  I think the importance of
different influences varies for different people.  While we are all
sinners, and have erected barriers between ourselves and God, the
nature and height of that barrier differs for different people.  So
does the way in which grace appears.  It depends upon the quality of
witness by Christians around them, their upbringing, and the way the
Holy Spirit works within them.  But in all of this, I think it silly
to deny that some part is played by portions of the character that we
would identify as good, in the human sense.  However I think it is
important to keep in mind is that Christians have a new kind of
goodness available, which does not originate in them, for which they
are only channels.

Note that I've talked about goodness, and not about righteousness or
justification.  These are technical terms, which tend to be used by
Christians the way Paul did.  Righteousness implies fulfulling God's
requirements.  Thus while I believe that there is a remnant of
goodness in all human beings, because of its corruption, there's no
way it could be considered righteousness.  I believe the only real
righteousness comes from Christ.  

Similarly, justification implies repentenance, forgiveness, and
restoration of a proper relationship with God.  This is a consequence
of faith in Christ.  I am not saying much about the Christian life
here, because I have made several postings in the past week or two
talking about the relationship between faith, repentance, and
Christian action.  I will simply say that the acceptance of Christ
involves repentance: realizing the insufficiency of our life without
Christ, and commitment to change.  Repentance is not just feeling
sorry, but an ongoing process of allowing Christ to transform our
lives.

Implicit in all of this is a certain order in which things happen,
with a division according to when a person accepts Christ as their
Lord and Savior.  Before this there can be human goodness, but not
righteousness or justification.  God's grace works both directly
through the person of the Holy Spirit, and through other people
(particularly Christians, one hopes).  As a result of this,
eventually the person is brought to repentenance and acceptance of
Christ.  Or not.

First, those who do accept Christ: While it seems to me that the Holy
Spirit is involved in calling people before they have accepted
Christ, the majority of talk about God's presence seems restricted to
Christians.  John talks about Christ sending the Spirit as Comforter
to be with his disciples.  Paul talks about people being "in Christ".
Both of these things seem to be ways of talking about a relationship
with God that applies only to those who have faith in him, i.e. who
have made a commitment to him.  

As someone from the Reformed tradition, I am often uncomfortable with
talk about the "decision for Christ".  I think this is because it is
often described in a way that suggests a person making an isolated
decision, not taking into account that the ability to make that
decision is already a result of Christ working within them.  Yet both
Jesus and Paul do seem to suggest that Christians have passed from
death to life (John 5:24, Rom 6:13).  So I conclude that while we may
need to critique the way the "decision for Christ" is sometimes
described, the concept of someone accepting Christ as Lord and
Savior, and having this change them, is an essential one to
Christianity.  

One place that the concept may need some adjustment is in dealing
with people who are brought up as Christians.  I think it is possible
to grow up in a Christian home and grow slowly into a full
relationship with Christ.  It is certainly desirable to ask youth to
think carefully about their beliefs and make an adult commitment.
But for many this will be a reaffirmation, and not a new decision.
There are times when people are pushed into having a "conversion
experience" that may not be entirely honest.

Now for those who do not believe.  One of the big issues in this area
is whether grace is "irresistible".  I believe it should be clear
from my discussion so far that I do not believe it is.  Again, in
some sense this is primarily a discussion about God's motivations,
rather than about his actions.  Both sides of the argument agree that
God calls everyone, but that in some cases he does so in such a way
that they respond, and in other cases not.  For those who respond,
grace has proven irresistible.  In many ways there seems to be little
difference between an Calvinist, Lutheran, and Arminian views on what
happens with people who are saved.  For them, grace is irresistible.
The real question is how we view those who are not saved.  Do we
believe that there was real grace given to them as well, and they
resisted it, or do we believe that God wasn't serious in calling
them, because his secret will for them was that they should not be
saved?  My view is that there was real grace given to them as well,
but that they did not respond to it.  I think this is roughly what
Arminius had in mind (though this doesn't meant that I agree with him
in everything).  It's also possible that it's what Luther had in mind
with his single predestination, though I could never be quite sure
what he meant.

There are several issues about salvation and judgement that I haven't
dealt with, but this message seems already overly long, so I'm not
going to.  I will say that I do not think we're given the details of
how judgement is going to be done, and thus I think several views are
possible.  I regard the most plausible one as annihilation of those
who are not saved.  However as those who have read my past postings
know, I do not necessarily limit those who are saved to Christians.
I believe it is possible to accept Christ without knowing that he is
the one you have accepted.  I am happy to leave judgement to God.

I'd also like to point out that whether we lived Christian lives may
not be irrelevant in judgement.  Jesus talks about knowing people
through their fruits, and in I Cor 3:13 Paul seems to be describing
some sort of judgement of what we have done.  As I've tried to say in
the past, saving faith is not simply belief: it is commitment to
Jesus as Lord.  Salvation without repentance is an illusion, and
repentance is the ongoing process of changing our lives to bring them
into conformance with Christ.  Works in themselves do not save, but
neither does belief in itself.  Saying "Lord, Lord" is not enough.