http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue93.htm
(Emphasis added
throughout)
Note: Andy
and I are not students of "theology." We try to learn
and follow what God tells us in His Word, and we
appreciate Pastor DeWaay's emphasis on the essentials of
the Christian life.
”For by grace you have
been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no
one should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8, 9)
A key idea in the
contemporary evangelical movement is that revival can be
engineered. The Purpose Driven Web site says, 'Peter Drucker
called him [Warren] "the inventor of perpetual revival" and
Forbes magazine has written, "If Warren’s church was
a business it would be compared with Dell, Google or
Starbucks."1
The Purpose Driven movement can cite this business
management guru approvingly only because they have a
faulty theology of human ability.
For example, Rick Warren
says,
“It is my deep conviction
that anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the
key to his or her heart. . . . It may take some time to
identify it. But the most likely place to start is with
the person’s felt needs.”2
If this were true one could
use modern marketing principles to sell people on their need
for Christian religion and convince them to convert in order
to find satisfaction of their felt needs. But it is not
true.
Furthermore, it might
surprise many people that this idea is not new. Charles
Finney first proposed it one hundred fifty years ago. Finney
wrote,
“A revival is not a
miracle according to another definition of the term
‘miracle’ — something above the powers of nature. There
is nothing in religion beyond the ordinary powers of
nature. It consists entirely in the right exercise of
the powers of nature. It is just that, and nothing
else.”3
Finney wrote more:
“A revival is not a
miracle, nor dependent on a miracle, in any sense.
It is a purely philosophical result of the
right use of the constituted means — as much so as
any other effect produced by the application of means.”4
Finney’s position that there
is some innate power in man that can be motivated by some
discoverable process makes an engineered revival plausible.
So how does one create a revival by the right use of means?
Finney tells us:
“There must be
excitement sufficient to wake up the dormant moral
powers, and roll back the tide of degradation and sin.”5
Finney and Rick Warren claim
that revival can be engineered by human efforts. This belief
is grounded on the idea of human ability. It is plausible to
them only because Finney and Warren believe that there is
some principle, be it a “dormant moral power” or “felt
need,” that can be excited into action to cause people to
become Christians and live godly lives. Neither Finney nor
Warren would deny that the Holy Spirit’s work is necessary.
But in their theology, the Holy Spirit is always everywhere
doing His part. It becomes our business to find the key to
unlock something in sinners to get them to do their part.
This theological perspective
is fully at odds with the doctrines of the Reformation. The
Reformers taught human inability and bondage to sin. They
taught monergism (that salvation is fully an act of
God) not synergism (that salvation is a cooperative
effort between man and God). They taught that only a
sovereign work of grace (grace alone) brought salvation. The
ideas of Finney and Warren suggest that man has some innate
principle or ability that could be stirred up by the
revivalist with the right method, and thus anyone could be
saved....
Synergism
The technical name of this
theology is “synergism.” Those who teach synergism believe
that salvation is a cooperative effort between God and man.
In my
last article I discussed this and cited the Roman
Catholic Council of Trent which teaches synergism. Here is
another citation of Trent from the Canons on Justification:
“If any one shall affirm,
that man’s freewill, moved and excited by God, does not,
by consenting, cooperate with God, the mover and
exciter, so as to prepare and dispose itself for the
attainment of justification; if moreover, anyone shall
say, that the human will cannot refuse complying, if it
pleases, but that it is inactive, and merely passive;
let such an one be accursed.”
6
This canon was a direct
attack on Luther’s doctrine espoused in The Bondage of
the Will.
Most people, based on their own perceptions, assume
synergism to be true. They assume that though God made it
possible for people to be saved, it was something in them,
apart from any special work of grace, that caused
them to “accept Christ” as they say. That’s what it seems
like. I understand this because from our perspective we do
accept Christ. ...
We must gain our theology
from the Bible, not from our interpretations of our own
experience. The Bible does not teach synergism, but that
salvation is an act of God:
“For by grace you have
been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Paul also wrote, “But by His
doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from
God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption”
(1Corinthians 1:30).7 In both of these passages, the
contexts contain warnings against boasting (1Corinthians
1:29, 31; Ephesians 2:9). If being saved were the result of
something we did through some innate ability that all humans
have, then these passages would make no sense....
Synergism and Prevenient Grace
The reason Roman Catholicism,
and other synergistic theologies teach prevenient grace is
to avoid Pelagianism (a system of doctrine that denies that
Adam’s sin nature is passed down to His descendents). The
Bible has so much material on universal human sinfulness,
that teaching human ability would embarrass most people who
claim to believe the Bible (though it did not seem to bother
Finney). To avoid teaching that sinful man is fully able to
come to God without a work of grace, the doctrine of
prevenient grace was introduced.
“Prevenient” comes from the
old English term “prevent” that meant “go before.”8
The idea is that God universally sends prevenient grace to
all humans that undoes the sin nature just enough to make it
possible for them to choose to believe the gospel. After
discussing the fact of spiritual inability as taught in the
Bible, Millard Erickson discusses prevenient grace as a
proposed solution:
"It is here that many
Arminians, recognizing human inability as taught in
Scripture, introduce the concept of prevenient grace,
which is believed to have a universal effect nullifying
the noetic results of sin [how thinking is affected],
thus making belief possible. The problem is that there
is no clear and adequate basis in Scripture for this
concept of universal enablement. The theory, appealing
though it is in many ways, simply is not taught
explicitly in the Bible."9
This does not mean proponents
of the concept do not look for proof texts. The most common
one proposed is: “There was the true light which, coming
into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:9) Those who
teach prevenient grace often prefer the King James
translation: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world.” As some interpret this,
Christ gives light to everyone at their birth.... But in the
context of John 1, it is Christ who is coming into the world
in the Incarnation that is central.10
Likewise, the context of John
is not teaching that Christ enlightens every person at their
birth. John 3:19 says this:
“And this is the
judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men
loved the darkness rather than the light; for their
deeds were evil.”
...Thomas Schreiner also
disagrees with the interpretation of John 1:9 that claims it
teaches prevenient grace:
“The light that
enlightens every person does not entail bestowment of
grace, nor does it refer to the inward illumination of
the heart by the Spirit of God. Rather, the light
exposes and reveals the moral and spiritual state of
one’s heart. . . . John 1:9 is not, therefore,
suggesting that through Christ’s coming each person is
given the ability to choose salvation.”11
...The alternative to
synergism and prevenient grace is monergism and efficacious
grace. God effectively saves, by his power alone, all those
who He has elected for salvation. Rather than believing that
God is trying His best to save every individual but failing
most of the time, the Reformation doctrine is that God’s
purposes do not fail. Since salvation depends on God alone,
through Christ alone, by faith alone, through grace alone,
it ultimately gives all glory to God alone. These beliefs
are found by holding Scripture alone to be God’s
authoritative revelation. These are the solas (Latin
for “alone”) of the Reformation.
Recovering the Doctrines of the Reformation
The solas of the
Reformation are an expression of theology that is fully
God-centered. Monergism gives God all the glory in
salvation. It also humbles humans in that they are faced
with their total inability to please God and their need for
an unmerited act of God’s mercy. The same cannot be said for
most modern theology.
It is undeniable that the
trend in evangelicalism is to be more man-centered.
Robert Schuller issued a call in the 1980’s for a
reformation based on man-centered rather than God-centered
theology.18
The most popular evangelical writer and pastor today,
Rick Warren, presents his version of Christianity as a
journey to discover one’s purpose that reads like a journey
of self-discovery. It stands to reason that if we
believe that salvation is a cooperative effort between God
and man like Rome taught, we end up with a man-centered
theology.
If salvation were in the hands of man, then the church could
dispense and control salvation as Medieval Rome attempted to
do....
But the doctrines of the
Reformation have been abandoned by a large part of
Protestantism including evangelicalism. ...this is not a new
development because one of the most radical rejecters of
Reformation theology was the 19th century evangelist Charles
Finney. ...
James Montgomery Boice
asserts that the solas of the Reformation are
necessary for the church to be what God intended: “Without
these five confessional statements—Scripture alone, Christ
alone, grace alone, faith alone, and glory to God alone—we
do not have a true church, and certainly not one that will
survive for very long.”19
These doctrines are
ultimately about justification. Boice writes, “We may state
the full doctrine as: Justification is the act of God by
which he declares sinners to be righteous because of Christ
alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.”20
The reason for the “alone”
phrases was to preserve the work of God from being added to
by the traditions of the church and the work of man. Rome
would affirm Scripture, faith, grace, Christ, and God’s
glory as true and important. But when the Reformers added
“alone,” they were cursed to hell by the anathemas of Trent.
We need to get back to these doctrines.
1.
Scripture Alone
Recovering Reformation
theology must begin by returning to a full belief in the
Scripture as the only authoritative revelation from God
and a practice that reflects this. Nearly every evangelical
church has a statement that affirms the authority and
inerrancy of Scripture in its official documents. It is the
domain of liberals to reject the authority of Scripture. But
nevertheless the Bible mostly is not given the place it
should in the practice of many churches. We say “sola
Scriptura” and practice the Bible plus the wisdom of man.
The sales success of Rick
Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life is evidence for
this. The biggest selling book by any contemporary
evangelical is an ungodly amalgamation of bad Bible
translations, misused Scripture, human wisdom, and approving
citations of New Agers, and other worldly writers.21
Many churches are changing
their programs and practices in order to become Purpose
Driven. This is incompatible with the doctrine of Scripture
alone. Many will protest what I am saying and point to their
statement of faith. But if we say we believe in Scripture
alone, yet relegate the Scripture to merely one of the
authorities in our public preaching, the message of the
evangelical church becomes indistinguishable from the
message of a liberal church that denies the inerrancy of the
Bible....
I have heard from people
whose churches converted to the seeker approach. One of them
sent me a tape of a sermon from what used to be a Bible
based Baptist church. The entire sermon referenced no
Scripture and consisted of a story about a preacher going on
vacation and being stressed out.... This church, which
abandoned Bible preaching from the pulpit ten years ago, now
has 8,000 people attending every Sunday morning....
Whatever a church has in its
statement of faith, if the Bible is not accurately and fully
proclaimed from the pulpit, the Reformation doctrine of
Scripture alone has been abandoned.... Human wisdom has no
power to save anyone.
2.
Christ Alone
The Reformation doctrine of
solus Christus was asserted to refute the Roman Catholic
doctrine that added works of man to the work of Christ,
claiming to add to the merits of Christ. As with Scripture
alone, nearly every evangelical will agree with Christ
alone. We know well that salvation is provided fully by
Christ and is 'not of works.' But again, there is a great
problem in practice that seriously diminishes the impact of
this great doctrine....
We often hear, “Jesus died
for your sins.” This is true but so much is left unsaid. For
example, most people know that a religious leader named
“Jesus” existed, but they have never heard the doctrine of
Christ proclaimed. They know Jesus was a religious leader
who died, but so was Mohammed and others. They do not know
that Jesus existed from all eternity with God and as God.
They do not know the doctrine of the virgin birth. They do
not know the many attributes of Christ that are unique to
Him (such as He was fully human and fully God; He lived a
sinless life, He was the only one to ever predict His own
resurrection from the dead and actually arise on the third
day as He said).
Furthermore, hardly anyone
knows WHY God sent His Son to die because they have
no clue about the blood atonement. They also do not
know that the wrath of God is directed against their sin
that can only be averted through the blood atonement. So
lacking these facts about the person and work of Christ,
they are told, “Accept Jesus who died for your sins.” This
watered down practice shows a lack of respect for “Christ
alone.”
Again, Boice has an astute
observation:
"The 'gospel' of our day
has a lot to do with self-esteem, good mental attitudes,
and worldly success. There is almost no preaching about
sin, hell, judgment, or the wrath of God, even less
about doctrines that center on the Lord of glory and his
Cross: grace, redemption, atonement, propitiation,
justification, and even faith."23
This lack of preaching and
teaching causes people to hear about Jesus but have no
substantial doctrine of Christ. Furthermore the doctrine of
substitutionary atonement is coming under attack even within
so-called evangelicalism. This can be seen in the teachings
of the Emergent Church. I debated one of their leaders and
could not even get him to affirm that he believed in future,
divine judgment.24
The lack of full-orbed
teaching on Christ and the atonement is also evident in the
previously mentioned Purpose Driven Life. Boice says, “Any
‘gospel’ that talks merely about the Christ-event, meaning
the Incarnation without the Atonement, is a false gospel.”25
... The remedy is the
preaching of the cross which includes the Biblical truths
about the person and work of Christ.
3.
Grace Alone
The Reformation doctrine of
sola gratia is pertinent to our discussion of
synergism and monergism. A salvation that is a cooperative
effort between God and man is not a salvation by grace
alone.... Again Boice’s fabulous book explains this with
utter clarity:
“When the Reformers
spoke about ‘grace alone,’ they were saying that sinners
have no claim upon God, none at all; that God owes them
nothing but punishment for their sins; and that, if he
saves them in spite of their sins, which he does in the
case of those who are being saved, it is only because it
pleases him to do it and for no other reason.”26
He also explains how modern
evangelicals undermine this doctrine:
“Today, large numbers of
evangelicals undermine and effectively destroy this
doctrine by supposing that human beings are basically
good; that God owes everyone a chance to be saved; and
that, if we are saved, in the final analysis it is
because of our own good decision to receive Jesus who is
offered to us.”27
To whatever degree we put
confidence in human ability, we destroy the doctrine of
grace alone. Most evangelicals will at least give lip
service to the other solas. This one, if it is
explained in the sense it was taught by the Reformers, is
outright rejected. The idea of the
bondage of the will as taught by Luther is rejected. The
idea that God owes salvation to no one is rejected.
People assert that God is
morally obligated to do everything He can to save everyone.
They believe that all humans have a claim upon God’s mercy
(i.e. that showing mercy to all, or at least trying to, is
God’s moral obligation). What they do not realize in their
zeal, is that their ideas come from human wisdom and
speculation and are not taught in the Bible.... “For He says
to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I
will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans
9:15).
This is grace alone and is
not really that hard to understand. Many just don’t like it.
God uses means by grace alone to save sinners. Boice
explains,
“Apart from those
three gracious actions—the act of God in electing, the
work of Christ in dying, and the operation of the Holy
Spirit in calling—there would be no salvation for
anyone. But because of those actions—because of God’s
sovereign grace—even the worst of blaspheming rebels may
be turned from his or her folly and may find Christ.”28
The Holy Spirit’s calling
also has means—the preaching of the gospel to all.
God uses the preaching of the gospel to graciously call
forth His own from the world of sin and death.29
God then uses His ordained means to graciously sanctify and
preserve in faith all of those who are saved. All the
“called” (effectively) will be glorified (see Romans
8:29-30).
4.
Faith Alone
The doctrine of sola fide
is near and dear to all evangelicals—historically. There are
those today who doubt the reality of damnation and future
judgment. Such persons have a much different notion of what
salvation means. If salvation means finding a better life in
this world, then “faith alone” does not make much sense. ...
This doctrine is rarely
lacking in published statements of faith. But, as with the
other solas, this one is being compromised.
Non-Catholic synergists assert that “faith alone” is a true
doctrine. But they usually deny that faith is a gift from
God given to the elect. In this denial, again they
depart from the teaching of the Reformation. They usually
claim that everyone has the ability to believe, only some
choose to exercise it and others do not. This gets us back
to human ability again....
Finney’s error has infected
various parts of the evangelical movement for the last 150
years.
The assumption is that if God commands us to repent and
believe, this implies that we are fully able to do so. I
dealt with this faulty thinking in the
last issue of CIC. The universal call expresses
God’s moral will and is issued to all. The internal call
is heard by those who do believe. This is by grace alone and
through faith as Ephesians 2:8 says.
Jesus said, “No one can
come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and
I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). The word
“can” is dunamis in the Greek, and it is the word for
power or ability. No one has the power or ability to come to
Jesus unless God acts to draw (this word means “drag” not
“attract”) him.
Further proof that “draw”
does not mean “woo” as many claim is shown in the result: “I
will raise him up on the last day.” The synergistic doctrine
holds that God has universally “drawn” everyone through
prevenient grace or some universal work of the Holy Spirit.
But if this is what is meant in this passage, it would be
teaching universal salvation because the “drawn” ones
actually come to Christ and are raised on the last day....
Saving faith is not an innate
human ability that is actualized by a free will choice. It
is the gift of God. Faith is also more than mere mental
assent to facts....
Faith as understood by
Reformation doctrine contained three elements: notitia
(knowledge of the truth), assensus (assent to and
belief in the truth), and fiducia (trust and
commitment).31
...
5.
Glory to God Alone
The fifth sola of the
Reformation is soli Deo gloria, which affirms that
everything, including the work of God in salvation, is
for His glory alone. Earlier in this article I discussed
how synergism mitigates against God receiving all the glory.
In his commentary on Isaiah 48:11, Luther discusses what he
calls “the battle between God and the self-righteous
concerning glory.” Luther called those who think that
salvation is found through anything but grace “robbers”
because they robbed God of His rightful glory. Here is what
Luther wrote:
"The self-righteous man
thinks that God will give him rewards for fasting and
labor. He thinks that without these God will give him
nothing. He thinks precisely that God is someone who
will save him through his works, not for the sake of
free grace. To this fiction, 'God will save me through
my works,' he attributes salvation. This is the most
persistent struggle and battle of the world against God.
No one wants to rely on God’s glory alone and repudiate
all his own merits."33
Reformation doctrine indeed
gives all glory to God. The first four solas lead logically
and necessarily to the fifth. When God though Christ alone
and by grace alone saves sinners through faith alone as
taught in Scripture alone, God alone receives the glory.
Conclusion
We began this article
discussing engineered revivals based on stirring up some
innate ability in sinners by man-made means. Boice comments
on this tendency in his chapter on Glory to God alone:
“Spiritual work must be accomplished through God’s Spirit.
So it is not you or I who stir up a revival, build a church,
or convert even a single soul. Rather, it is as we are
blessed in the work by God that God by the power of his Holy
Spirit converts and sanctifies those he chooses to call to
faith.”34
No one who believed what
Boice wrote would accept the designation, “inventor of
perpetual revival.” This gives glory to man, not God.
There likely are complex
reasons that the contemporary evangelical movement has for
the most part left behind Reformation theology. The one that
seems most apparent is the success of certain people in
building huge churches and movements through man-centered
theology and man-made techniques. We can build
institutions and movements through human effort, but the
true church of Jesus Christ is built by God’s work through
Christ. It is built as sinners are saved. ... How much
better it would be for the church and the preaching of the
gospel if we would return to the solas of the Reformation
and give God all of the glory.
Copyright © 2006 Twin City
Fellowship
To read the whole article --
and its references, go to
http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue93.htm
Other articles by Bob DeWaay:
True and False
Unity
Discernment in an Age of Deception
Faulty Premises
of the Church Growth Movement
|
Redefining the Church
The Dangers of "Spiritual
Formation" |
The Emergence of Imaginary
Eschatology
“Church Health
Award” from Rick Warren or Jesus Christ?
|
Theophostics |
Bob DeWaay is
the Pastor of
Twin City Fellowship, a
non-denominational evangelical Church in Minneapolis, MN:
"We are a
body of believers who attempt to live our Christian
faith according to Acts 2:42 by devoting ourselves to
prayer, fellowship, searching the Scriptures, and the
Lord’s Supper. Our mission is to equip the saints for the work of
ministry and to reach the lost with the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. We do this through expository preaching, study
of the Scriptures, publications, our website and
neighborhood outreaches."