“ God never had the slightest intention of saving everyone.
”
If you’ve had any conversations about God with someone recently, it’s likely that the concept of “free will” has come up. No Place for Sovereignty by R. K. McGregor Wright provides an excellent analysis of this doctrine throughout Church history.
Erasmus was a contemporary of Martin Luther; it was Erasmus’s view of human nature that spurned Luther to write his magnificent volume The Bondage of the Will in 1525. Erasmus thought that human nature was no so damaged by the Fall that it is unable to make a decision of faith without God’s intervention. He posited that man is always free to choose between antithetical alternatives. He asserted that grace makes the right choice possible by helping man’s natural ability and the will of man determines the ultimate destiny of the individual.
The Articles of Remonstrance were written in 1610 by the followers of Jacobus Arminius (who died in 1609). Thus “Arminianism” was born, but this was simply a furtherance of the views of Erasmus. Over time, Arminians began to work out the implications of the theory of an essentially free will in man. If man’s decisions are not controlled by God’s decree, they cannot be known by God before the actions as a result of the decisions occur in time. Thus God must not only limit his power to as to give man freedom to act, but he must also be ignorant of a great deal of future events, since most of human history is determined by man’s will. As R. K. McGregor points out, “If a future event is known to God, it is either known certainly or not.” To know absolutely that an event will occur means that there is no other possibility. McGGregor sums it up, “God‘s omniscience eliminates a free will in the sense the Arminians understood.”
A Key Question
We need only ask, “What causes the will to choose one way rather than another?”—R.K. McGregor Wright, No Place for Sovereignty
In contrast to Erasmus and Arminians, Martin Luther believed that the will is free only such that it expresses a man’s character and it must be regenerated before it is free to obey God. Thus, God never forces a man to act against his own nature. Rather, he gives the man a new nature.
John Calvin & Charles Spurgeon
John Calvin was a contemporary of Martin Luther, and he drew out the implications of God’s sovereignty in many writings. Those who adopted his views became known as Calvinists. One of the most influential preachers in the past two hundred years, Charles Spurgeon, was and is known for his Calvinism. As only Spurgeon could do, he presented the prayer of an Arminian:
Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not—that is the difference between me and them.”—Charles Spurgeon
Spurgeon puts his finger on a number of important points that highlight the difference between the Calvinist and Arminian views. The Calvinist believes that man has no inherent power to repent and turn to Christ for salvation. The Arminian thinks that man has enough ability to flee to Jesus for rescue from the wrath of God. The Calvinist says that the difference between the sinner and the saint is God’s election, God’s choosing, God’s predestination according to God’s good pleasure. The Arminian insists that the difference between the Christian and the pagan is found in the individuals choice to believe. The Calvinists points out that God choice a people for his own before he created the world, thus his choice is grounded in himself, not man. The Arminian declares that God’s choice is influenced by man’s decision. The Arminian posits that Christ, with his blood, bought the lives of every single man ever born. The Calvinist stands on the truth that if Christ paid the ransom for sin in full for a man, then that man’s debt is completely paid. Jesus did not bear the wrath of God for the sin of Judas Iscariot, only to have Judas pay the penalty for his own sin in hell forever.
What Do You Mean to Say?
What you mean, then is that when you heard the gospel, you managed, contrary to all your past habits, to so revolutionize the bent of your fallen character that while dead in trespasses and sins, at enmity with God, with a darkened understanding, and thinking the gospel foolishness, you managed to reconstruct your whole spiritual awareness around a new center, so as to realize that the gospel is your best bet, and so you embraced Christ as your Savior, whereupon God rewarded you for this wonderful effort of spiritual achievement by giving you everlasting life. Is that what you mean to say?—R.K. McGregor Wright
McGregor Wright provides us with a helpful summary of the Arminian position. He points out that the Apostle Paul describes unbelievers as “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Even Antony Flew, an atheist, understood the implications of the total inability of man in salvation. He said “If the first point of Dort is in (total depravity), autonomy is out.” In other words, if we agree that sin has affected man’s being to such an extent that he is unwilling and unable to respond to God on his own, then man is not autonomous.
McGregor Wright then offers a verse from And Can It Be by Charles Wesley from the Arminian standpoint:
Long my mistaken spirit lay,
Confused by sin and absent light.
Thine eye diffused prevenient grace;
I suddenly realized my plight.
I had freewill, my autonomy!
So I just got up and followed Thee.
The Design Behind the Death of Christ
Because John Owen believed the nature of the atonement is substitutionary, his conclusion that the extent of the atonement is limited to the elect is unavoidable. Because not all are saved, Christ could not have died as a satisfaction for the sins of all existing unbelievers, for that would require God to punish twice for the same sins in the case of those finally lost. A substitutionary atonement must either save everyone without exception or be seen as a limited atonement in the sense that it was designed to save only the elect.—McGregor Wright
The definitive work on the nature of Christ’s work on Calvary and the extent of his payment for sin is John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. J.I. Packer put it this way, “Arminians never seem to get around to reading John Owen. If they did, they would perhaps not be Arminians.” Foundational to Owen’s teaching on Christ’s propitiation for sin is it’s substitutionary component. If Christ died in the place of a man, then that man’s sin has been atoned for. The man’s sin is covered by the blood of Christ, the sacrificial Lamb of God. It is impossible that Jesus bore the punishment for sin for a man who then endures the punishment in eternal hell for the same sin. This is one of the reasons why people reject penal substitutionary atonement. By its very nature, it eliminates the concept of an unlimited atonement (unless one ventures into universalism). This is one of the areas where the Arminian must be inconsistent to avoid heresy. To quote Packer again, “Arminians never seem to get around to reading John Owen. If they did, they would perhaps not be Arminians.”
An Open Challenge
Nobody has a right to dismiss the doctrine of the limitedness of the atonement as a monstrosity of Calvinistic logic until he has refuted Owen’s proof that it is part of the uniform biblical presentation of redemption, clearly taught in plain text after plain text. And nobody has done that yet.—J.I. Packer
All kinds of accusations are leveled against Calvinism for its “demon doctrine”, yet using superlatives doesn’t bolster an argument. I have yet to hear or read anyone refute John Owen on the atonement; I would like to extend Packer’s invitation for anyone, anywhere to take the challenge.
Pleading Ignorance
Since many modern evangelicals have not seriously studied the matter, they would be advised at the outset to withhold judgment and plead ignorance. This is a lot safer than to believe someone who invites us to acquiesce in the notion that the Bible teaches contradictions and yet must be believed nevertheless.—McGregor Wright
When discussing the sovereignty of God, particularly as it relates to the salvation of man, emotions can run high. If we observe someone responding by raising their voice and saying things like “all means all!”, “man has free will!”, or “God loves everyone!”, then we know that individual is probably not responding based on serious study of the issues involved. Sadly, many professing Christians have even adopted the notion that the Bible teaches doctrine that directly contradicts itself. For example, they will say that the Bible states that man is dead in sin and must be made alive by God before he can be saved. They will also say that because God commands man to repent and believe, sinful man must be able to act autonomously to respond in faith. Logical fallacy aside, these two views are antithetical. Both cannot be true. Either fallen man is unwilling and unable to turn to God for salvation without God’s intervention or those who hate God have some ability and desire to seek God on their own. To say that the Bible teaches both is to assert that God speaks incoherently and it is a great way to lose a debate with an atheist, since that is one of atheism’s keystone arguments.