“The Legacy of the Reformation in Contemporary Evangelicalism”

(Address at Symposium “The Living Reformation: 500 Years of Martin Luther” at Brigham Young University, September 15, 2017)

Roger E. Olson

Someone, somewhere, at some time, decided that the Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517 when German monk Martin Luther nailed “95 Theses”—propositions for public debate—to a church door in Wittenberg, Saxony. Throughout Christendom Protestant Christians celebrate the Sunday closest to October 31 as “Reformation Day” and sing Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and talk about distinctively Protestant doctrines such as “justification by grace through faith alone.”

This year, 2017, is being celebrated by many Protestants around the world as the 500^th anniversary of the birth of Protestantism with symposia being held in many places focusing on the Reformation. Most of them will focus primarily on two Protestant reformers—Martin Luther and John Calvin—because of their inestimable contributions to especially European and North American Protestant Christianity.

I am personally somewhat ambivalent about this celebration and focus. I will explain why in a moment. First, let me say publicly that I proudly call myself a Protestant Christian but without in any way excluding from Christianity faithful Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers. At the same time, however, I do not feel the same enthusiasm some Protestants do for the Reformation as they remember and celebrate it.

One reason for my ambivalence is simply historical but with theological reasons wrapped up in the historical ones. Everyone who has studied the Reformation of the sixteenth century knows, but many conveniently forget, that, for the most part, especially with regard to the doctrines he espoused that brought about his excommunication from the church of Rome, Luther’s ideas were not new with him. What made Luther different from John Hus of Prague who was also a Protestant, who also founded a schism from the Catholic Church, and who a century before Luther preached the same then controversial religious doctrines? Only that Hus was burned at the stake, largely ending his ministry and movement, and Luther was not. But Luther was recognized as and labeled “The Saxon Hus” because of the similarity, if not identity, of his doctrines with those Hus preached earlier and not far away.

We could go back further to identify the real beginnings of Protestant Christianity. Peter Waldo of Italy founded a Protestant movement that survives as a distinct ecclesiastical body to this day and he preached many of the same doctrines as Hus and Luther—two hundred and three hundred years before Hus and Luther. The Waldensian Church of Italy—now existing in other countries such as Paraguay—may have historical claim to being the first continuing Protestant denomination. It is a full member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Then there’s John Wycliffe of England who influenced Hus and through Hus Luther and whose followers, known as the Lollards, prepared the way for the later English Reformation. His doctrines were basically the same as Hus’s, Luther’s and Calvin’s.

So, my point is that there is something arbitrary and misleading about pinning the “birth of Protestantism” or the “beginning of the Reformation” to October 31, 1517 and identifying Luther as the first Protestant and real founder of the Reformation.

But I earlier mentioned that some of my ambivalence about the historical memory and celebration has to do with theology. Now I will explain that.

The three great Protestant reformers most talked about and celebrated were Luther, his contemporary Swiss counterpart Ulrich Zwingli, and the younger French reformer and theologian John Calvin in Geneva. These three, together with other contemporary reformers and theologians, are often referred to as the “magisterial reformers” to distinguish them from the so-called “radical reformers.” The radical reformers were a diverse group of preachers and theologians who believed Luther, Zwingli and Calvin did not go far enough in reforming the European churches. Once the break with Rome happened, the radical reformers all wanted to abolish medieval Christendom with its links between church and state. They decried and denounced the so-called magisterial reformers for permitting the princes and the city councils to determine the course and pace of the reformation. The radical reformers were restorationists; in spite of their manifest differences, they all agreed that the task of the Reformation was to recreate the New Testament church and they saw themselves as living in a cultural situation in the Holy Roman Empire much like that of the earliest Christians. And many of them were martyred, by both Catholics and magisterial Protestants, just like the primitive Christians of the Roman Empire.

As a Free Church Protestant I will celebrate the real beginning of the Reformation in 2025—the 500^th anniversary of the birth of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. Not all of the radical reformers were Anabaptists, but that movement was the first major and enduring one, among Protestants, to declare openly that the church of Jesus Christ should not be controlled by the state or the empire. And they argued that true, authentic Christianity is a voluntary relationship with God and with the church that must involve a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ marked by believer baptism as an act of mature commitment to Christ and his church.

Also, pushing further with my critique, while the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century recovered important biblical doctrines such as justification by grace through faith alone without merit, Scripture as the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice, even over centuries of ecclesiastical tradition, and the right and ability of every true believer in Jesus Christ to approach God without an earthly human mediator, there were later Protestant movements that corrected and further reformed Protestantism in Europe and America.

Almost all, if not all, of the sixteenth century magisterial reformers were divine determinists who preached and taught that God alone, unilaterally, decides who is saved and who is damned. They denied free will participation in salvation, labeling that covert Catholicism by means of a return to human merit in salvation. In the first decades of the seventeenth century Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius and his followers, known as the Remonstrants, another word for “Protestant,” broke away from that deterministic theology of divine predestination and taught that although salvation is all of grace and by faith without good works the individual sinner must freely consent to the saving work of God in order to be saved. Like the Anabaptists before them, they were persecuted by both church and state but survived. The Remonstrant Brotherhood of the Netherlands, curiously enough, is also a charter member denomination of the World Communion of Reformed Churches—something that challenges any simplistic identification of “Reformed” with “Calvinism.”

Another later Protestant movement that added to the Reformation of the sixteenth century and corrected it was the Pietist movement launched primarily by three German Lutheran theologians: Philip Spener, August Francke, and Nicholas Zinzendorf. They added into Protestantism the idea of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” that is transformative even toward perfection of character. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was profoundly influenced by the Pietists.

I grew up in the “thick” of American evangelical Christianity; my father was an evangelical pastor and many of my close relatives were evangelical ministers, evangelists, missionaries and denominational executives. As a child I had a vague sense of Protestantism and knew a little about the Reformation from looking at books in my father’s library. One was about Protestant martyrs and contained graphic depictions of their deaths at the hands of French Catholics. We were most definitely Free Church Protestants, Arminians and Pietists, so our feelings and thoughts about Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, insofar as we talked about them at all, were at best ambivalent. But, as I recall, we did always sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on Reformation Sunday.

I attended a Pentecostal Bible college and there endured my first church history classes. I say “endured” because, now as I look back on them, I don’t think they were very accurate or did justice to the richness of church history. It may be a caricature to say that they tended to focus on which church fathers, Reformers and post-Reformation Protestants might have spoken in tongues, but there was that constant issue being taught and discussed. Our study of church history actually began with Luther, almost completely ignoring everything before him since the New Testament. Only later, in seminary and doctoral studies did I really learn about church history and theology between the apostles and Luther.

In an evangelical Baptist seminary and then in my doctoral studies in theology at a major research university I was taught and I read the history of evangelical Christianity in its many facets including the historical and theological. Not until recently was “evangelical” a political identity; in my opinion the media has created that identity. “My evangelicalism,” the evangelicalism I grew up in and studied and still consider my religious identity, was not “the Republican Party at prayer” as the American media now portray it. In fact, my more mature studies of American and British evangelicalism taught me that throughout much of the nineteenth century evangelicals were in the forefront of progressive social and political change working hard as abolitionists of slavery, liberators of women from chattel status, and even for redistribution of wealth to help abolition poverty.

Eventually I came to consider true, authentic evangelical Christianity not so much a movement as a spiritual-theological ethos. Various movements, coalitions and alliances among evangelical Christians have emerged over the centuries, but what binds them together, if anything does, is not politics or even fundamentalist theology but four or five spiritual-theological commitments identified and now generally agreed on—as the hallmarks of evangelical Christianity—by David Bebbington, a leading Scottish evangelical historian. Mark Noll, perhaps the leading American historian of evangelicalism agrees.

Evangelical Christianity is marked by biblicism which Bebbington and Noll describe as belief in and love of the Bible as God’s uniquely inspired Word written. Contrary to most fundamentalist evangelicals, however, it does not necessarily include inerrancy or literalism of interpretation. Evangelical biblicism, however, in distinction from much liberal Protestantism, does believe the Bible is different in kind and not only in degree from other religious books; it is supernaturally inspired and uniquely authoritative for Christian faith and practice.

Evangelical Christianity is also marked by conversionism which Bebbington and Noll describe as belief that true, full, authentic Christian life, life in fellowship with God, always and necessarily includes a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord which is more than “turning over a new leaf;” it is a work of the Holy Spirit and not merely a decision to join a church or live a better life.

Evangelical Christianity is also marked, according to Bebbington and Noll, by crucicentrism which is a strong devotion to the cross of Jesus Christ as the event that reconciles God to people and people to God. Christ’s atoning death on the cross, his atoning sacrifice for sins, is crucial to evangelical faith, life, worship and piety.

Finally, according to Bebbington and Noll, evangelical Christianity is marked by activism in evangelism and social transformation. How that activism is worked out, manifested, differs much among evangelicals, but the point is that evangelical Christianity is not quietist in the sense of a mystical withdrawal from the world. At its best, when it is true to its roots and essence, it includes a robust desire and effort for changing the world.

I have personally suggested a fifth hallmark of evangelical Christianity. It is historically and theologically committed to basic Christian doctrinal orthodoxy including belief that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, and that salvation cannot be earned but is a gift of God’s grace.

So that is a quick and unsophisticated portrait of evangelical Christianity as a spiritual-theological ethos. Its roots are in the Protestant Reformation but it is deeply influenced by Pietism and the revivalism of the first and second Great Awakenings.

The most recent evangelical movement was the post-World War 2 one led especially by evangelist Billy Graham. It was born out of dissatisfaction with the strong influence of liberal Protestantism in American society as well as with the anti-intellectualism and cultural indifference of American fundamentalism during the first half of the century. It was founded by evangelical pastor-theologian Harold John Ockenga who, together with some other non-fundamentalist conservative Protestants with an evangelical ethos, founded the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. During the 1950s Billy Graham became its figurehead and he remained the “glue” that held it together for almost fifty years. With his retirement from the scene that evangelical movement has dissolved; it no longer exists. However, the evangelical ethos lives on in numerous manifestations. Unfortunately for those of us who grew up in and still identify with non-fundamentalist evangelicalism, contemporary American evangelicalism is increasingly being dominated publicly by fundamentalists and religious nationalists.

So where is, where can one still find, historical evangelicalism as an ethos not identified with separatistic, narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, anti-cultural, pro-nationalistic fundamentalism? Certainly not on television or in the print media. The media have turned popular opinion toward identifying evangelical Christianity with fundamentalism and nationalistic political conservatism. As an evangelical historian and theologian I find historical evangelical Christianity still alive and well in mostly Protestant denominations such as the Evangelical Covenant Church of America—one of the least known but one of the fastest-growing denominations in the United States. And I find it everywhere I travel and read and look; it’s just that most people whose thoughts are controlled by the media don’t identify those people and places, publishers and magazines, churches and parachurch organizations, as “evangelical” because they are not fundamentalist or politically conservative in any overt or activist way.

Now I want to turn to the historical-theological relationship between the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and contemporary evangelicalism—as I have described and portrayed it here.

First, the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the evangelical ethos. The evangelical Christian ethos, as I have described it here, pre-dates the Protestant Reformation but was given great impetus by it. Unlike most medieval Catholics, Luther freely talked about being “born again” in his so-called “Tower Experience” at the University of Wittenberg as he read and studied Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Evangelicals like to think that this was Luther’s real initiation into authentic Christian life and experience. Of course, Luther placed high value on the Bible as God’s Word and translated it into the common language of the German people so that everyone could read it. This at a time when reading the Bible was restricted largely to priests, monks and noblemen. Luther also placed great emphasis on Christ’s death as the only means of salvation understood as justification—forgiveness and reconciliation with God. His own doctrine of the atonement focused on Christ’s triumph over Satan and the “powers and principalities” under Satan’s leadership. And yet one can find other images and metaphors including sacrifice in Luther’s treatments of the atonement. There can be no question about Luther’s strong emphasis on the cross which is not in any way to deny the medieval Catholic Church’s equal emphasis on the cross. But they were different. Like modern and contemporary evangelicals Luther regarded the cross as sufficient alone to effect salvation without any need of atoning suffering or punishment on the part of the repentant sinner who has faith in the cross. Finally, Luther was an activist in seeking to bring about change in the world. True, he did believe Christ would return during his own lifetime and no doubt died disappointed that it had not happened, but his belief in the imminent return of Christ did not stop him from seeking to influence worldly society for the better. His vehement opposition to the revolting peasants continues to dismay and disappoint church historians, but Luther did put pressure on the Protestant princes to treat their peasants more humanely.

And, finally, contrary to what so many people believe, Luther was not anti-tradition; he highly valued the church fathers and especially Augustine. In many ways he and Calvin, especially, considered their reforming works in theology a recovery of true Augustinian Christianity. But more to the point here, comparing Luther with the evangelical ethos as I have described it, the Saxon reformer held firmly to ancient Christian orthodoxy and considered the major councils and creeds of Christendom authoritative. He strongly opposed the radical, anti-Trinitarian reformers such as Faustus Socinus and Servetus.

The evangelical ethos can be found before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, but Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Cranmer, Calvin and other magisterial reformers embodied it and promoted it more strongly than medieval Catholicism even if incompletely and imperfectly. One evangelical hallmark where many of us believe they fell short is conversionism. All the magisterial reformers, including the ones I have named just now, believed in infant baptism as a means of special grace and not only as a special means of grace. Many evangelicals baptize infants. The Evangelical Covenant Church of America which I mentioned earlier baptizes infants or mature believers after conversion. The difference is that the magisterial reformers did not emphasize conversion, making a personal decision for Christ, as strongly as evangelicals do.

I think it is fair to say, and most historians of evangelicalism agree, that what I am calling the evangelical ethos really was born, or at least given strong impetus, within the Pietist movement. The founders of Pietism were faithful Lutherans but believed Luther and the other magisterial reformers neglected the importance of individual faith in conversion and the Holy Spirit inspired and empowered life of holiness. This is what my friend evangelical theologian Stanley J. Grenz called “convertive piety” and it is not to be found in the magisterial reformers as strongly as in their Pietist heirs.

Now what about the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century—especially the Anabaptists? Without any doubt they also embodied much of the evangelical ethos and perhaps more strongly than the magisterial reformers. The one weakness in that regard was their tendency to retreat from world transformation—activism—into communal collectives separated from the world. But unlike the magisterial reformers they did emphasize the necessity of individual, personal conversion followed by baptism as a non-sacramental commitment to Christ and his church.

If I had to identify the first true evangelical Christians in the full modern sense of the word I would name the Anabaptists of the 1525 Swiss Brethren movement in Zurich. But I would criticize them for lacking a vision for world transformation and for their understandable but undesirable withdrawal into quietist communities apart from the world.

Now I want to turn to the modern and contemporary evangelical movement referred to earlier, the British and American one that had Billy Graham as its figurehead. This is what most American scholars mean when they refer to the modern/contemporary “evangelical movement.” Of course, it has much deeper roots and those I’ve already talked about. The catalyst for its formation as a coalition of relatively conservative Protestants sharing an evangelical spiritual-theological ethos was strong dissatisfaction, even bitter disillusionment, with American fundamentalism which coalesced as a movement in the early twentieth century with roots in the revivals of D. L. Moody in the late nineteenth century. Like evangelicalism, fundamentalism is both an ethos and a movement and the two can be distinguished. The ethos pre-dated the movement and will no doubt outlive it.

The fundamentalist ethos goes back at least to the rigid, narrow, dogmatic separatism of post-Reformation Protestant scholasticism that brought about many schisms among Protestants over relatively minor points of doctrine. One leading Protestant scholastic, Swiss theologian Francis Turretin, argued that, in order to protect the authority of the Bible, we must believe that God inspired the vowel points of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. In the fight against free thinking Christianity in the nineteenth century Princeton Seminary theologian Charles Hodge, a leading grandfather of the fundamentalist movement, argued for the inerrancy of the entire Bible and scorned belief in evolution as incompatible with Christian belief in the inspiration of the Bible. The fundamentalist ethos appears in any tendency to elevate secondary doctrines of Protestant Christianity to the status of essentials of the Christian faith itself.

During the first decades of the twentieth century several pastor-theologians began to organize American fundamentalists to fight against the rise of what they called “modernism” in the Protestant churches. Two early leaders, both Baptist ministers, who joined hands across the Mason-Dixon Line stand out as examples. William Bell Riley pastored First Baptist Church of Minneapolis while J. Frank Norris pastored First Baptist Church of Fort Worth. Together they formed the Christian Fundamentals Association and preached that premillennialism is a “fundamental doctrine” of Christian faith. Some Reformed and Presbyterian fundamentalists disagreed but elevated double predestination to the status of a fundamental of Christian faith. Throughout the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties American fundamentalism degenerated as a movement into a cranky, fissiparous, separatistic and fragmented movement noted for being against “godless evolution,” “godless communism,” “godless racial integration” and a host of other things they perceived as “godless.”

In 1942 New England Congregationalist pastor Ockenga formed the NAE, the National Association of Evangelicals, to give collective voice to a diverse group of relatively conservative American Protestant Christians with an evangelical ethos who were not fundamentalists. Although he invited fundamentalist leader Carl McIntire to bring into the NAE his American Council of Christian Churches he knew that was not likely to happen and, indeed, much to Ockenga’s relief, it did not. McIntire and fundamentalist leaders such as Bob Jones and John R. Rice shunned the new evangelicals as “neo-evangelicals” and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The new evangelical movement probably would not have grown and had much influence if it were not for Billy Graham, the young Youth for Christ evangelist who departed from fundamentalism and became the figurehead of the new evangelical movement. Of course, from a liberal Protestant and probably from a Catholic perspective, there isn’t much difference between fundamentalism and the new evangelicalism, but a close examination, especially an insider’s one—of either movement—reveals tremendous differences. Yet, to be honest, there has always also been some overlap and movement back and forth.

Now to the influence of the Protestant Reformation on the new evangelicalism by which I mean the post-fundamentalist evangelical movement symbolized by Billy Graham, educated to a very large extent at Fuller Theological Seminary (or by its professors through their writings), and given voice since 1956 by the magazine Christianity Today.

The leading historians of the movement were, throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, George Marsden and Mark Noll. However, many of us who grew up in the movement first studied its theological foundations by reading evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm’s extremely influential 1973 book The Evangelical Heritage (Word). Like Marsden and Noll and many other evangelical historians and theologians Ramm’s story of the “evangelical heritage” began with the Protestant Reformers, moved through the post-Reformation scholastics including the Old Princeton School theologians, and then jumped to the rise of liberal theology and then neo-orthodoxy. That story of evangelicalism strongly emphasizes the roles of Luther and Calvin and their heirs to the neglect of Pietism, Wesleyanism, revivalism and, of course, Pentecostalism.

Evangelical historian and theologian Donald W. Dayton, a Free Methodist, rebelled against this evangelical self-narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, publicly criticizing it in the pages of Christian Scholar’s Review, an evangelical scholarly journal jointly published by about fifty Christian liberal arts colleges and universities. Dayton labeled the Marsden-Noll-Ramm majority evangelical narration of evangelical history the “Puritan Paradigm” and argued for an alternative narration he labeled the “Pentecostal Paradigm.” This was at a time when the largest denomination in the NAE was the Assemblies of God and the second largest was the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Dayton argued quite cogently that evangelical history and theology was being unfairly dominated by Reformed historians and theologians and Calvinism was central to that one-sided narrative of evangelical history and theology. He also argued cogently that evangelical history, theology and spirituality have been just as much influenced by Pietism, revivalism and Pentecostalism and that the Wesleyan contribution to evangelicalism was being ignored or at least neglected by the likes of Marsden, Noll and Ramm.

I think Dayton was right, but I have preferred to label the two paradigms of evangelical self-description the “Puritan-Presbyterian Paradigm” and the “Pietist-Pentecostal Paradigm.” The former places at the center of the story of evangelical Christianity people like John Knox and Jonathan Edwards whereas the latter places at the center people like Philip Spener and John Wesley. Both paradigms admit that evangelicalism is an attempt to take the basic impulses of the Protestant Reformation along the reformers’ trajectory to its right and ultimate conclusion. But the paradigms diverge when it comes to saying which post-Reformation leaders best represent that trajectory.

I believe that one of the weaknesses of the new evangelical movement launched by Ockenga in 1942 was its being a combustible compound. Patched together with their basic differences papered over were these two very different versions of evangelical history, spirituality and theology. On the one hand were the Reformed represented, for example, by Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. On the other hand were the Wesleyan-Holiness represented, for example, by Asbury Theological Seminary and the Free Methodists. What do these two parties have in common? Well, in 1942 they shared in common an antipathy to liberal Protestantism and disillusionment with separatistic fundamentalism. They shared in common admiration for the recovery of the gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone in the Protestant Reformation. They shared in common a strong belief in the Bible as God’s inspired and authoritative, if not inerrant, written Word. They shared a common confessional belief in the deity of Christ and the Trinity. However, their differences symbolized by Edwards and Wesley, for example, could not forever be papered over.

In a way, Edwards and Wesley represent the two grandfathers of the evangelical movement. Both were born in 1703 and both became leaders of the first Great Awakening in Great Britain and North America. Both indirectly influenced the second Great Awakening in the relatively young United States—Edwards more in New England and Wesley more in the Middle States and along the frontier. Edwards was a five point Calvinist who believed that God sovereignly and unconditionally chooses whom to save and gives them the gift of irresistible grace. His admirer Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary carried on his legacy among evangelicals. Today evangelical pastor-author-theologian John Piper channels Edwards. Wesley was an Arminian who believed that Calvinism besmirched the character of God and taught grace-enabled free will and human cooperation with grace in salvation. Edwardian evangelicals tend to emphasize biblical inerrancy and view the Bible as a not-yet-systematized systematic theology. For many of them the three volume system of Hodge remains the unsurpassed summary of biblical truth. Wesley-inspired evangelicals tend not to believe in biblical inerrancy and view the Bible as the inspired story of God’s love for all people and emphasize evangelism, conversion and sanctification over theology.

And then there are the Anabaptist evangelicals who form a third paradigm of evangelicalism which time forbids exploring here. I will just say that, in my estimation, that paradigm of evangelicalism will emerge in the future as equally important and influential. Unfortunately for Anabaptists their paradigm has no single champion like Edwards or Wesley and, unlike both of them, descends from the Radical Reformation with strong emphasis on pacifism, separation of church and state, soul liberty, congregational autonomy and a strong aversion to Christendom as a unification of church and culture. However, especially among evangelical “millennials,” Anabaptism is gaining ground and emerging as a live spiritual and theological option. These younger evangelicals have little use for Luther or Calvin, Edwards or Wesley and, because “evangelicalism” as a religious identity has been so tied to those men and their legacies, these younger Anabaptist evangelicals are comfortably shedding the evangelical label and identity even if they share the evangelical ethos.

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“Arminianism Is Grace-centered Christian Theology”

Roger E. Olson

The Martin McCullough Lecture

First Baptist Church of Murfreesboro, Tennessee

September 10, 2017

The first Baptists, led by English Independent, Separatist, Congregationalist pastors John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, beginning around 1610, were later known as “General Baptists.” This was to contrast them with a different tribe of early Baptists known as “Particular Baptists” who arose in England around 1640. Eventually these two British tribes of Baptists wrote two different statements of faith. The General Baptists wrote the “Orthodox Creed” in 1679 partly, at least, as an alternative to the Particular Baptists’ “London Confession of Faith” written in 1646. Then, in 1689 the Particular Baptists responded to the Orthodox Creed with a “Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.” Throughout the seventeenth century and, really ever since, Baptists have been divided into two camps or tribes—General and Particular. Of course there are other issues of biblical interpretation, theology, and practice that divide Baptists. In the United States alone there are, among Baptists, as with Heinz ketchup, approximately “57 varieties.”

Historically, however, there have been two major fault lines, “continental divides,” separating Baptists from each other even when, in some Baptist denominations and churches, they have found themselves able to coexist peacefully. Usually that peaceful coexistence is made possible by a kind of “gentlemen’s agreement” to avoid the subjects that divide, in order to avoid physical division, and/or by an embrace of sheer contradiction under the guise of “paradox.” I will return to that later and attempt to show why it is really not a viable option.

What are these two major fault lines or “continental divides” that have historically separated Baptists from each other? The first one I alluded to at the beginning of this talk. General Baptists, including founders Smyth and Helwys, believe that Christ died for all people, not securing their salvation, which would mean universalism, but making salvation truly available to all people. The General Baptists then and ever since, also known as “Free Will Baptists,” have also emphasized that God, through the gospel, gives hearers of the Word the ability freely to respond to God’s invitation to salvation through repentance and faith. So the “General” in “General Baptist” meant and means that God’s offer of salvation through Christ is for all people without exception. The key verse for General Baptists is 2 Peter 3:9 which says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (This message is found also in 1 Timothy 2:4.)

On the other side of this first fault line or continental divide between Baptists, from near the beginning, stands the Particular Baptists, under whatever label, who believe that God sovereignly chooses to save some sinners, the “elect,” for whom alone Christ died, and calls and draws them irresistibly into repentance and faith. The “particular” in Particular Baptist refers to the belief that Christ died only for particular people, the elect, chosen by God, and not for everyone. Over time the adjective “particular” has dropped away almost entirely and these Baptists have adopted the labels “Reformed” and “Calvinist.” Similarly, over time, General Baptists have mostly dropped the label “General” and adopted the labels “Free Will” and “Arminian.” The vast majority of Baptists in the United States have chosen to avoid these labels but this has done little to stop the disagreement from “popping up” among Baptists from time to time. We live in a time when this disagreement has once again become a cause of division, not only among Baptists but perhaps especially among Baptists.

You might be wondering what the second major fault line or continental divide among Baptists might be. Others name and describe something different, but I will say the second one is “liberal” versus “conservative” or “progressive” versus “evangelical.” There are degrees and varieties among these two tribes or types of Baptists, but, in my opinion, based on years of studying Baptist theology, the line of division here has to do with attitudes towards the relative authorities of the Bible and contemporary culture. Liberal, progressive Baptists began in the late nineteenth century and continued throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century to adopt the attitude that secular culture, “modernity,” is an authority for Christian belief alongside of, if not equal with, the Bible. Conservative, evangelical Baptists, have always held that the Bible is our ultimate, final authority for all matters of Christian faith and practice—even when that means taking a skeptical approach to modernity and even separating from secular culture and liberal, progressive Christians. Picture this divide not as two monolithic groups; picture it instead as a spectrum. At one end are the extreme liberal or progressive Baptists who are hardly distinguishable from Unitarians. You will find those mostly among the American Baptist Churches, U.S.A., the old Northern Baptist Convention, but also, increasingly, among Baptists in the South who run as far and as fast as possible away from fundamentalism.

At the other end of the spectrum are the true fundamentalists, those Baptists (and others) who over reacted to the rise of modernity and liberal thought among Protestants in America and pronounced the “inerrancy of the Bible” the true litmus test of orthodox Christianity. For the most part these fundamentalist Baptists elevated secondary beliefs such as “young earth creationism” and “rapture eschatology” to the status of dogmas, essentials of authentic Christianity.

So this fault line, continental divide, among Baptists is a spectrum with many degrees. Many of us have come to describe our stance and approach to this controversy as “moderate.” Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, however, even “moderate” is becoming an essentially contested identity and label with both progressives and conservatives using it. I, however, do not go by labels; I look to Baptists’ attitudes towards Christ and Scripture, salvation and the supernatural. Liberal-leaning, progressive Baptists tend to redefine these concepts to make them fit with modern and post-modern culture; they tend to regard Christianity as endlessly flexible in terms of doctrine and reduce the essence of Christianity to ethics, especially peace and justice. Conservative-leaning, truly moderate Baptists hold fast to traditional Christian beliefs about Christ, as God incarnate, Scripture as supernaturally inspired and authoritative, salvation as a work of the Holy Spirit that cannot be reduced to “turning over a new leaf,” and the supernatural as God’s invasion of history and people’s lives in ways science cannot explain.

Now, some of my listeners who are knowledgeable about many other fault lines that separate Baptists will have to be patient with me as I argue that these are the two major ones. All others are secondary. Worship styles divide Baptists, yes and to be sure, but they are not as important overall as the two I have talked about so far. And we could talk about others such as whether Baptist churches should have elders, whether Baptists should use modern translations of the Bible, etc., etc., etc. But I truly think these are secondary to the two I mentioned earlier.

In other words, when I look for a Baptist church to join, I care much less about what translation of the Bible it uses and what style of worship it prefers than about whether it generally believes that God’s saving grace is for all people and whether it holds the Bible to be the supernaturally inspired and authoritative Word of God above and not alongside of secular culture.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.

Now I will move on by going back to that first fault line, that first continental divide among Baptists and say that it has always existed among Protestants, not only among Baptists. Return with me to the first century of Baptist life when, in England especially, Baptists found themselves so strongly in disagreement about God’s sovereignty and humanity’s free will that they had to write two radically different doctrinal statements and break off fellowship with each other.

The Particular Baptists evolved out of Separatist Puritanism; they were radical Puritans who believed the Church of England was hopelessly corrupt in keeping too many features of Roman Catholicism. These radical Puritans rejected the Anglican church and also the Presbyterian alternative and embraced Congregationalism—the idea that church and state should be separate and that each Christian congregation should govern its own affairs. Particular Baptists were those Congregationalist Puritans who then went the “next step” and rejected infant baptism and began “re-baptizing” converted sinners and refusing to practice or recognize infant baptism entirely. But their background was in Puritan Calvinism and as they became Baptists they kept that aspect of Puritanism—belief that God has sovereignly chosen some sinners to save and others to leave to their deserved damnation without any real opportunity to be saved. Some of them even went so far as to reject missions entirely, viewing it as usurping God’s sovereign prerogative to save whomever he will. These Particular Baptists’ key biblical passage was Romans 9:18 which says that God will have mercy on whom he wills and he will harden whom he wills.

The General Baptists, on the other hand, were more influenced by Mennonites in the Netherlands than by English Puritanism. Mennonites were already well established in the Netherlands, then known as the United Provinces with Holland as the largest and most influential one among the Dutch, when Smyth and Helwys took their congregations there in 1609 and 1610. Also, a controversy was raging in the Netherlands around a Dutch Reformed minister and theologian named Jacob Arminius and his followers, known as the “Remonstrants.” Both the Mennonites and the Remonstrants rejected Calvinism; they believed that Christ died for all people, not just some “elect” group chosen by God without regard to their freely chosen faith. They also believed that God genuinely wants all people to be saved and that if someone is not saved it is because they have freely resisted God’s will and if someone is saved it is because they have freely repented and trusted in Christ alone for salvation.

Smyth and Helwys and the General Baptists in general agreed with the Mennonites and Remonstrants; they adopted Arminian theology and rejected Calvinism. When they and their congregations returned to England from the Netherlands they came into contact with the Particular, Calvinist Baptists and the Great Divide between these two tribes of Baptists began. Over the centuries of Baptist history—and this could be said of other Protestant groups as well—the great divide between Calvinism and Arminianism has waxed and waned in importance—even where these labels are not used or even known. Many, perhaps most, Baptists who care about these matters call themselves “Calminians” in order to deflect debate and avoid division. The idea of “Calminianism” is to combine Calvinism and Arminianism.

In fact, I would say this unstable compound of Calvinism and Arminianism, a paradoxical and even illogical combination of the two doctrinal positions regarding God’s sovereignty and salvation, became the settled position of the majority of Baptists for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Especially as the second fault line or continental divide consumed attention among Baptists from the late nineteenth century until now the first one, between Calvinism and Arminianism, between Particular Baptists and General Baptists, faded into the background. Until recently, that is.

Beginning in the 1980s and gaining steam throughout the 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century Calvinism made a major “comeback” among Baptists and other conservative Protestants. And, in some cases, this “comeback” has been aggressive. I first began to hear about it when I was teaching theology at a Baptist college and seminary in Minnesota. Many of my students were attending a Baptist church in downtown Minneapolis pastored by a passionate Calvinist biblical scholar and theologian who also happened to be an extremely articulate speaker. Then a new evangelical magazine took the place of the defunct Eternity—a generically evangelical monthly on which I “cut my teeth” as a young theologian. Eternity, which was published out of Tenth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, founded by that church’s pastor Donald Gray Barnhouse, an extremely influential evangelical biblical scholar, author and radio preacher, was replaced by Modern Reformation. Its first issue was a full frontal attack on Arminianism. Then came the Southern Baptist “Founders Ministries” attempting to influence the whole Southern Baptist Convention toward Calvinism. Then came the “Passion Conferences” attended by thousands of mostly Baptist young people who heard Calvinist Baptist preacher John Piper speak for Calvinism and against Arminianism.

All that is to say that Calvinism has enjoyed a great resurgence around the world in the past several years. So much so that Time magazine included “The New Calvinism” as one of “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now” in the cover story of its Annual Special Issue published March 23, 2009. Along with this resurgence of Calvinism, including of Particular Baptist theology among Baptists, has come a trouncing of Arminianism as near heresy if not outright heresy. A popular video on Youtube features conservative Calvinist theologians and biblical scholars drawing a straight line from Arminius and Arminianism to contemporary debauched hedonism including two female pop stars kissing on stage at a rock concert and shouting against “right and wrong.”

The most common serious theological charge against Arminianism and Arminian theology, the theology of the earliest Baptists, among others, is that it amounts to the heresy of “semi-Pelagianism.” Some uninformed or dishonest Calvinist critics of Arminianism go so far as to accuse it of outright Pelagianism, but most know better and settle for “semi-Pelagianism.” Many of them call Arminian theology “man-centered theology” and “salvation by works.” Many Calvinists, going back more than a century to English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon, call Calvinism “the doctrines of grace” and allege that Arminianism, which was the theology also embraced by John and Charles Wesley, founders of the Methodist movement, is a betrayal of salvation by grace alone.

Today, as of 2017, the whole Southern Baptist Convention, like smaller Protestant denominations, is being rocked by this controversy. Although the leading proponents of both theologies do their best to play nice in public, they are working hard “behind the scenes” to advance their own views among Southern Baptists. But this is not only a controversy among Baptists; even the once solidly Arminian Assemblies of God is experiencing a surge of interest in Calvinism especially among its youth. All across the United States and even in Brazil, this debate over God’s sovereignty and human free will in salvation is being played out in churches, denominations, colleges, universities, seminaries and parachurch organizations.

Now please bear with me as I back up and talk about some background issues and some definitions of terms. I’ll be as concise as possible, but please consider reading my book Against Calvinism and its companion volume For Calvinism by my Reformed friend Michael Horton who teaches theology at mostly Calvinist Westminster Theological Seminary. Only then will you really understand this long-standing and resurgent fault line, continental divide, in any depth. Both books are published by Zondervan, a Grand Rapids-based Christian publishing house. Both are easy to read and digest—even if you have no theological training or knowledge.

“Calvinism” is simply a word we use for a belief system that pre-dates Protestant reformer John Calvin of Geneva by at least a millennium. A thousand years before Calvin North African bishop and church father Augustine published his book On the Predestination of the Saints in which he argued that God has decided from eternity which sinners will be saved and that this selection was made unconditionally, not based on God’s foreknowledge of their faith, and that saving grace is given to them irresistibly by God. Calvin simply took over Augustine’s theology and gave it a Protestant face; emphasizing that salvation is by grace “through faith alone” and without works. Augustine, as a good Catholic, believed good works, “works of love,” are necessary for full and final salvation. After Calvin some of his followers picked up where he left off and developed a highly rational and speculative theology of salvation that has come to be labeled “Calvinism” even though Calvin himself did not teach all of it.

Calvinism is usually described using the acronym “TULIP” which is amusing because the Netherlands became its fertile breeding ground and that country is known, of course, for its tulips. The “T” stands for “total depravity”—the idea that all people are born so sinfully corrupt that they are incapable of repenting and trusting in God apart from God’s sovereign and irresistible grace. The “U” stands for “unconditional election”—the idea that God has chosen some sinners, nobody knows exactly how many, to save without any regard to anything God sees in them. The “L” stands for “limited atonement”—the idea that Christ died only for the elect and not for the “reprobate”—those God chooses to “pass over” and not save. The “I” stands for “irresistible grace”—the idea that God draws the elect irresistibly to himself by giving them the gift of faith even before they repent and believe. In other words, according to Calvinists, the elect are “born again” before they know it; otherwise they would never repent and believe because they are “totally depraved.” The “P” stands for “perseverance of the saints”—the idea that the elect will never fall entirely away and lose their salvation even if they “backslide” for a time. Historically speaking, many Baptists who are not full-blown Calvinists have held onto the “P,” calling it “the security of the saints” or “eternal security,” even as they reject especially the “U,” the “L,” and the “I.” Some Baptists call themselves “Four Point Calvinists” which means they accept all of TULIP except the “L.” That is, they believe Christ died even for the non-elect.

So where in the Bible do Calvinists find support for their belief in “double predestination,” which is implied even when some Calvinists prefer to all it “single predestination?” The standard locus classicus or classical passage appealed to is Romans 9. A cursory reading of Romans 9, taken out of its wider context which includes chapters 10 and 11, can give that impression. However, it’s interesting that no Christian before Augustine in the early fifth century interpreted Romans 9 as teaching what we today call “Calvinism.”

Aggressive Calvinists argue that Calvinism is the only belief system about God’s sovereignty and salvation that secures the gospel; it is, they say, “a transcript of the gospel.” Any departure from it opens the door to salvation by works instead of salvation by grace alone. One argument we often hear from Calvinists is that Arminianism is barely disguised salvation by works, Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism, because it believes, so they say, that the sinner’s free response of faith to the gospel is “the decisive factor” in his or her salvation.

Now I will turn to true Arminianism which is not the caricature of Arminianism one finds in almost all the sermons and podcasts and Youtube videos and books of the Calvinists.

“Arminianism” is simply the word theologians use for any Protestant belief that God gives sinners who hear the gospel the ability freely to choose whether to repent and believe, have faith, or not. Calvinists have promoted many myths about Arminianism and I have corrected them in my book Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities published by InterVarsity Press. There I quote much from Jacob Arminius himself and from his faithful followers, the evangelical Remonstrants, General Baptists, Methodists and many other Protestants who do not embrace Calvinism’s TULIP system.

Like “Calvinism,” however, “Arminianism” as a belief system predates Jacob Arminius by many years. In fact, evangelical Methodist theologian Thomas Oden argued in his fine book The Transforming Power of Grace (Abingdon) that essential Arminianism was the theology of the earliest church fathers before Augustine. The essential ideas of Arminian theology about God’s self-limiting sovereignty, universal atonement, grace-enabled free will, are found in the so-called Radical Reformers, especially the Swiss Brethren and Mennonites or Anabaptists. Admittedly, however, Martin Luther and John Calvin, together with most of the so-called “magisterial Protestant reformers,” embraced Augustine’s theology of salvation called “monergism”—the idea that God alone acts in salvation and that sinners being saved are passive recipients of grace whose faith is a gift they cannot refuse. The Anabaptists, Mennonites and others who are the true ancestors of Baptists, embraced “synergism”—the idea that salvation is initiated by God, made possible by God, given as a gift by God, but that sinners who hear the gospel are free either to accept or reject saving grace.

What is the biblical support for this Arminian view of salvation? Arminians point to passages such as John 3:16 and the earlier mentioned verses in 1 Timothy and 2 Peter to support their belief that God really wants all people to be saved and has made salvation available to all through the death of his Son Jesus Christ. But some Arminians, such as Jacob Arminius himself, also argue that Calvinism violates the loving and good character of God by making him arbitrary and narcissistic—caring more about his own glory demonstrated in saving some and rejecting others than about keeping sinners out of hell. In fact, many, if not most, Calvinists, like Puritan preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards, have admitted that they believe hell is necessary for the full revelation of God’s attribute of justice. According to Arminians, anyway, Calvinism has always placed God’s love “on the back burner,” so to speak. As one famous and influential Calvinist named J. I. Packer admitted, according to Calvinism God loves all people in some ways but only some people—the elect—in all ways. Arminians find it difficult to see how God loves those who he has decided to “pass over” as he elects some to salvation unconditionally and saves them irresistibly. The question arises naturally: Why does this God not elect all people and save all people if election is unconditional and salvation irresistible? The only answer is that this would undermine his purpose which is to glorify himself by manifesting all his attributes including his justice.

The Netherlands, or United Provinces as it was then known, became the scene of the most vicious and violent outbreak of this fault line, this continental divide, this controversy over God’s sovereignty and salvation. In the first decade of the seventeenth century Reformed minister and theologian Jacob Arminius dared to challenged TULIP Calvinism which was fast becoming the standard orthodoxy of the Dutch Reformed churches. He accepted total depravity but argued that God heals sinners’ inability to freely respond to the gospel. He called this “prevenient grace”—the grace that “goes before” saving grace. It is, he preached and taught, a work of the Holy Spirit alluded to in John’s gospel where Jesus said that if he be lifted up he will draw all people to himself. Prevenient grace, Arminius argued, is necessary because, left to themselves, without the Holy Spirit’s convicting, calling, illuminating and enabling power, sinners would never repent or believe in Christ. That is conversion would be impossible for them. So he accepted the “T” of TULIP but added prevenient grace to avoid Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism both of which are ancient heresies that deny total depravity.

Arminius absolutely rejected unconditional election and preached and taught that God elects unto salvation all he foreknows will repent and believe. He also rejected limited atonement and preached and taught that Christ provided atonement for all people—even those he foreknew would reject him. And he rejected irresistible grace and preached and taught that grace is resistible because God is sovereign over his own sovereignty and allows sinners to reject the gospel and God’s offer of salvation. Finally, he never decided about perseverance; he said the Bible seems to offer grounds for both views—that the saved can never become “unsaved” and that salvation can be lost by unbelief.

“Arminianism,” then, is simply a term we use in theology for the view, held by some people before Arminius and many after him, that sinners who hear the gospel have the free will to accept or reject God’s offer of saving grace and that nobody is excluded by God from the possibility of salvation except those who freely exclude themselves. But true, historical, classical Arminianism includes the belief that this free will is itself a gift of God through prevenient grace; it is not a natural ability every person has of himself or herself. All people have free will to do many things, but free will to repent and believe unto salvation is always a gift of God’s grace.

Now let me bore down a bit deeper into this controversy. Calvinists often respond to Arminianism this way: Even with the doctrine of prevenient grace Arminianism still and nevertheless amounts to salvation by human merit rather than by God’s grace alone. Why? Because that free decision, even if made possible by prevenient grace, is, in Arminian theology, “the decisive factor” in the person’s salvation. According to Arminianism’s Calvinist critics, then, Arminianism is not a doctrine of grace but of good works because it makes the sinner’s free decision the basis of his or her salvation—rather than making God’s sovereign will, power and mercy the sole basis of his or her salvation.

The gospel, in a nutshell, is expressed in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and it is not of works lest anyone should boast.” Calvinists argue that if Arminianism is true, the saved sinner can turn around and boast of his or her “contribution” to salvation with his or her free decision to repent and believe. They argue that only if Calvinism is true can nobody ever boast because God does everything in salvation, the sinner contributes nothing, not even a free decision to repent and believe. According to Calvinism, even the free decision is not really free; it is imposed on the sinner, who is elect, by the Holy Spirit without the elect sinner’s consent.

Arminius knew all about this crucial argument; he heard it from his Calvinist colleagues in the Dutch Reformed churches and in their seminaries where he also taught theology. He responded, as all Arminians have after him, by pointing out that a gift received is still a gift even if it is received freely and could have been rejected. Imagine, if you will, Arminius said, a beggar who is given a gift of money that saves him from starvation. He freely receives the money, buys some food with it, and does not starve. Now imagine further than he then goes about boasting that he “contributed” to his being saved from starvation by freely accepting the gift of money. Who would believe him or sympathize with his boast? Who would agree that he “merited” the gift merely by accepting it?

I happen to agree with Arminius and those following him who have, I judge, successfully turned that Calvinist argument aside. I think Ephesians 2:8-9 is completely consistent with Arminian theology especially when it bases the free acceptance of God’s saving grace on prevenient grace and not on a natural ability—as true Arminianism always does.

You might be wondering about “the rest of the story,” so let me offer a sidebar mini-lecture in historical theology. Arminius was accused of heresy by some leaders of the Dutch Reformed churches but died of tuberculosis at the height of the controversy in 1609. His followers within the Dutch Reformed churches were known as the “Remonstrants” which is really just another way of saying “Protestants.” They protested the TULIP Calvinism that was then taking over in the Dutch Reformed churches. In 1618 and 1619 the state church of the Netherlands held a “synod” or convention called the Synod of Dort at which the Remonstrants were condemned as heretics and exiled from the Netherlands. Some were imprisoned and one was even executed. By most accounts it was a kangaroo court governed by the Calvinist prince of the country. When he died the Remonstrants returned to the Netherlands and founded a seminary and a denomination that still exist. Ironically, the Remonstrant Brotherhood, as it is known, is a charter member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Arminian theology spread around the Protestant world through the General Baptists, the Methodists, Anabaptists, Brethren, Churches of Christ and Independent Christians, Holiness and Pentecostals. During the Second Great Awakening of the early part of the nineteenth century and through later revivals many Baptists who earlier leaned toward Calvinism adopted Arminianism without calling it that. In the South, especially, for whatever historical-theological reasons, Southern Baptists came to equate being “Arminian” with believing salvation can be lost. Since most Southern Baptists held onto that one point of TULIP Calvinism, even when they rejected the other points, they shied away from using the label “Arminian” and still do—for the most part. I find it ironic that many Southern Baptists who I consider Arminians because of their rejection of the “U,” the “L,” and the “I” of the TULIP system adamantly refuse to use the label “Arminian” for themselves. But that’s okay; I still consider them Arminian and consider that a compliment even if they don’t.

Throughout this recent great debate of God’s sovereignty and salvation between Calvinists and Arminians (or just non-Calvinists) I have insisted that the real, underlying issue is not “free will” but God’s character. Arminius himself said that he would gladly attribute everything spiritually good to God’s grace alone, but he would not attribute reprobation—the reality that some are not saved—to God’s will. Yes, he would attribute it to God’s permission, but not to God’s perfect will or plan.

If I were a Calvinist I would not be able to consider God perfectly good and loving; I would have to consider God great and powerful and perhaps glorious, but not good and kind and merciful. Of course, I know that my Calvinist friends say that they, too, believe God is good and loving and kind and merciful, but only towards the elect. To me, that’s not enough. “For God so loved the world….” Calvinists say “the world” in John 3:16 refers to “people of all kinds,” not everyone. I cannot agree with that interpretation. But the issue here goes deeper than exegesis of Bible passages; it goes down to the level of belief about God’s character. What kind of God is the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ? He is the kind of God who weeps—as Jesus wept over Jerusalem—when people reject his mercy. He is not the kind of God who foreordains, predestines, some to hell. One Calvinist theologian dared to say what all Calvinists should dare to say: “Those who find themselves suffering in the flames of hell for eternity can at least take comfort in the fact that they are there for the greater glory of God.” That is not a God I could worship; that is a God hardly distinguishable from the devil. And therein lies the real problem with Calvinism.

I admit that both Calvinism and Arminianism can find support in large swaths of Scripture. I do not say that Calvinism is fundamentally unbiblical—as many Calvinists say about Arminianism. I cannot disprove Calvinism from the Bible because every verse I mention they have interpreted through their own Calvinist lens. For example, they say 2 Peter 3:9, quoted earlier, only means that God is not willing that any of the elect perish. Also, Arminians can and do interpret every passage Calvinist use as support for their view differently. Romans 9, for example, does not refer to double predestination of individuals to salvation or damnation but to God’s generous plan to include gentiles together with Jews in his covenant love. And when Calvinists point to Ephesians 1 and its many references to God’s elect people Arminians, rightly I believe, interpret that as referring to groups of people, not predestined individuals. In other words, Israel and the church are the “elect” but God does not decide which individuals will be among them without consideration of their faith.

So if neither Calvinism nor Arminianism can be proven or disproven from Scripture, how can one decide? Why am I an Arminian? Simply put, Arminianism does greater justice to God’s good, loving and holy character than Calvinism. Also, if Calvinism is true, our fellowship with God is a condition imposed on us rather than a freely chosen relationship. It’s like an arranged marriage whereas I believe what God wants is our free and uncoerced love and fellowship. So this is where theology comes into play; it looks at the “big picture” of Scripture and at the “little picture” that makes all the difference. The “big picture” is God’s covenant-seeking love; the “little picture” that makes all the difference is Jesus Christ who is the perfect revelation of God.

So now, bear with me as I finish this lecture by answering a few questions that I am often asked—about this controversy and debate.

First, if God wants all people without exception to be saved, why aren’t they? The Arminian answer is that God restricts his power to give us the deciding power whether to have a loving relationship with him or not. I think we have to make a distinction between two wills of God—God’s “antecedent will” and God’s “consequent will.” Antecedently to our rebellion and disobedience God wants everyone to be saved; consequent to our rebellion and disobedience God wills to permit us to decide whether to repent and turn to him with faith or not. In Arminian theology God is sovereign over his own sovereignty; he restricts his power and condescends to allow us to thwart his perfect, antecedent will because the only alternative would be to have robots instead of loving children and friends.

Second, how can salvation be all of grace through faith alone, not of works, if we decide to be saved? Isn’t that decision itself a “good work” that merits salvation, thus undermining the graciousness of salvation? I already addressed that, but I’ll repeat that Arminianism is a theology of grace because it teaches that no person could or would ever turn to God in repentance and faith apart from God’s empowering and freeing grace. Through the gospel God liberates the will from its bondage to sin, to pride and self-centeredness, and gives the sinner the ability to see himself or herself as God sees him or her and know God as merciful and willing to save. It gives the sinner the freedom to say “yes” to God’s offer of saving grace, to accept the gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness. That is not a “good work” in the sense of merit; it is merely accepting a gift.

Third, isn’t Arminianism “humanistic” and “man-centered?” No, not at all. True, classical Arminian theology is God-centered. God gets all the glory and man gets none. But unlike Calvinism, Arminianism unites God’s glory with God’s love; it shows that God’s love is God’s glory. God is glorious because he is loving. Calvinism equates God’s glory with his power. Naked power is not truly glorious or worshipful. Only power united with love is glorious and worshipful.

Fourth, can’t Calvinism and Arminianism be united? Can’t there be a hybrid, a middle ground, a bridge between them? Can’t a person be both at the same time? No, that’s simply not possible. At certain crucial points they are absolutely opposite and any attempt to unite them requires an absurd leap into logical contradiction. Election of individuals to salvation is either conditional or unconditional; it can’t be both. Christ’s atoning death on the cross is either intended by God to be for all people or it is intended by God to be only for some; it can’t be both. Saving grace is either resistible or irresistible; it can’t be both at the same time. On these points, at least, one must choose between Calvinism and Arminianism or, if one wants to avoid those labels, one must choose between monergism and synergism.

I argue that classical, historical Arminianism is the middle ground people are looking for! It is the middle ground between Calvinism and Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. The latter two views deny sinners’ helplessness and teach that we humans are morally and spiritually able even in our fallen condition to initiate our own salvation. Calvinism teaches that sinners are not only helpless but passive in the event of salvation; that they are mere pawns or robots being acted upon by God without any consent or cooperation on their part. Arminianism is the middle ground that says sinners are helpless but not passive in the event of salvation. The key doctrine that makes all the difference is prevenient grace.

Fifth and finally, people ask whether Calvinists and Arminians can embrace as equally Christian and worship together and cooperate in Christian work and witness without rancor or feelings of superiority. I argue that they can and do, but it is difficult for a single congregation to include both. It can happen and I have seen it happen, but I worry that it only happens because the pastors avoid the subject of God’s sovereignty and our free will in salvation, the subject of God’s electing grace and our freedom to choose, entirely. Insofar as a church cares about theology, which I believe it should, it will tend to be either Calvinistic or Arminian in its theology of God’s sovereignty and salvation.

Of course, if a church adopts the modernist, liberal, progressive approach to modern Christianity, it will tend to avoid the whole subject of Calvinism versus Arminianism by adopting universalism of salvation—which is simply Calvinism without the “double” before predestination. But that’s a whole other subject for which I do not have time here and now.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Can African-Americans Be “Evangelicals?”

Recently I discovered that many pollsters taking surveys of adult Americans and who ask questions about people’s religious identities automatically assume, as a matter of governing policy, that African-Americans cannot be “evangelicals.” Furthermore, this trickles down to them from the movers and shakers of American sociology of religion who, generally speaking, categorize American’s religious identities such that “evangelical” cannot include African-Americans.

(I discovered that in a major survey of American religious identities survey-takers asked people if they consider themselves “evangelical or born again.” But they only asked that of white people, not of African-Americans. My guess is that IF they asked that of most African-Americans they would hear a resounding “yes” to the question.)

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

Now, admittedly, if you ask most African-American Protestant Christians, most of whom are some variation of Baptist, Methodist or Pentecostal, if they are “evangelical” (without the “born again” phrase) they will say they are not. But the same is true of most moderate-to-progressive Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals (to say nothing of other traditions that include many evangelical believers). And I think it would be true of many Southern Baptists whose denomination (the SBC) long denied being “evangelical”—thinking of that label as a “Yankee label.” But when survey takers add the “born again” phrase most Southern Baptists will say yes.

Who is deciding the meaning of “evangelical?” Who should be deciding the meaning of “evangelical?”

Well, clearly there are different definitions of the label. I define it historically-theologically and spiritually (as do two of the top expert-scholars of evangelicalism David Bebbington and Mark Noll). As I have said here and everywhere I can (most recently at the national annual meeting of the American Society of Church Historians), historically the word points to and names a theological-spiritual ethos, not a particular socio-political-class movement. That ethos is stamped, so to speak, by Protestant Pietism and Revivalism as well as by Protestant Orthodoxy. Its prototypes are Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley—both born in 1703—although it had precursors and includes people who would not even know who Edwards and Wesley were let alone consider them their spiritual ancestors.

Throughout the 19^th century especially, African-Americans, by and large, were influenced by the Second Great Awakening which carried forward the Pietist-Revivalist and orthodox ethos of Edwards and Wesley (and their ilk). Numerous African-American denominations arose during that century (and more in the 20^th century) and most of them were very strongly stamped by Pietism-Revivalism and were also doctrinal orthodox (Nicene).

The question this raises is: Is a philosophy, theology or spirituality defined by those who claim its label? The tendency to treat perception as reality and to define philosophies and theologies by the people who happen to claim them, regardless of history, is, in my opinion, evidence of nominalism. Eventually nothing really means anything; everything becomes a matter of opinion. “Name it and claim it” is a pejorative phrase some people use to describe the “Prosperity Gospel,” but it could also describe the popular tendency in America today to define concepts and categories by the dispositions, beliefs and attitudes of those who claim them as their identities. This would not be so wrong were it not that most people know almost nothing about the history of ideas. If their favorite radio talk show host claims to be “conservative,” then they can rightly claim also to be “conservative”—even if their favorite radio talk show host is an out-and-out libertarian or populist. (Yes, I know, these can be overlapping concepts and categories, but, generally speaking, they are distinct ones. Being libertarian does not automatically make one conservative. In fact, it could make one “classically liberal!”)

I would venture to suggest that MOST African-American Christians ARE evangelical in terms of their theological-spiritual ethos. But sociologists of religion arbitrarily decide that they cannot be “evangelical” because “evangelical” means (to the sociologists of religion and survey-takers who work for them or are trained by them) “white, middle class, conservative Protestant who claim to be ‘born again’” including, for example, proponents of the Prosperity Gospel (something the vast majority of real evangelical theologians and leaders reject as heresy!).

At the very least, I suggest, sociologists of religion and survey-takers ought to take into account the possibility that African-American Christians can be evangelical and not simply relegate them from the outset from that category. And if I had my way (which I know I never will) sociologists or religion and survey-takers ought to do more than approach research subjects with preconceived definitions of religious categories that have little or nothing to do with history, theology and spirituality.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Why I Will Still Not Stop Calling Myself “Evangelical”

Ever since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States I have been inundated with questions and suggestions—about the label I still proudly wear: “evangelical Christian.” Many evangelicals who strongly opposed Trump have finally given up that label; for them it was apparently the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Their discomfort with the label began long ago—when the media began calling fundamentalists “evangelicals” and began identifying evangelicalism as a “Religious Right” phenomenon (the Republican Party at prayer)

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

I may someday be the last hold out on this, but I doubt it. For example, many Christians belong to churches and denominations with the label “evangelical” in them. The Evangelical Covenant Church is an example. Another one is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. For some American Christians it will be really difficult to run away from the evangelical identity just because of their affiliations with churches or para-church organizations (e.g., the National Association of Evangelicals).

The words “evangelical” and “evangelicalism” have many different meanings; there is no evangelical pope to define them. For many people, however, Billy Graham symbolized one meaning of being evangelical throughout much of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Then, as he began to retire and fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, who had been critics of Graham and his ministry, began calling themselves “evangelicals” on television programs like The Phil Donahue Show (1970s-1980s), the identification of being evangelical with Billy Graham began to dissipate.

However, I take the “long view” with matters like this and define “evangelical” in theological-historical ways. Modern evangelicalism began with the Pietist movements in Europe in the early 17^th century and the Great Awakenings in Britain and America in the same century (Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley).

Historian David Bebbington rightly identifies the hallmarks of evangelical Christianity as conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism. These are so well known and so much discussed here and elsewhere that I will not define them again. For my earlier essays about them, use a search engine. I think Bebbington and some others who so define “evangelicalism” assume a basic core of Christian orthodoxy as part of being evangelical (e.g., belief in Jesus Christ as God and Savior and belief in a supernatural reality).

“Evangelical” has been my spiritual-theological identity for my entire life—even before I knew it or thought anything about it. We, “my people,” church, denomination, most friends, most extended family, were unapologetically evangelical in our form of Christianity. It is so much ingrained in my, so much a part of my spiritual-theological and professional identity that I cannot imagine shedding it.

What is my response, then, to those who say that, when eighty percent of people calling themselves “evangelical” at the American voting polls voted for Trump, it’s time to drop the label? My response is simply that the majority does not define a long-term, historical, theological movement or its ethos. That doesn’t get much traction, however, until I start giving examples.

My guess is that if the poll takers had asked they would have found that about the same percentage of voters calling themselves “Baptist” exiting election voting locations voted for Trump. Should all anti-Trump Baptists now drop that label and identity just because of that? Of course not, and nobody I know is suggesting it. For me, anyway, “evangelical” is just as important as “Baptist” as a way of labeling my Christian form of life.

Let’s imagine something as a test case for deciding whether a majority’s behavior changes an identity and forces the minority to shed the label attached to it. Suppose that over a period of decades a majority of evangelicals in America became vegetarians. Would that mean non-vegetarian evangelicals should stop using the label “evangelical?” I don’t think so. This would make a long-standing spiritual-theological label too flexible and too subject to the whims of people. Let’s go further and imagine that the media picked up on this and began to talk equate being evangelical with being vegetarian. In my opinion, to cave into that and stop calling myself “evangelical” just because I don’t join the evangelical vegetarian parade, would be to imply that “evangelical” is not a historical-theological identity and label but one defined by a secondary quality of a majority of those who, at a particular moment in history, happen to take it on.

Now, admittedly, underlying my refusal is partly a deep, even visceral distrust and dislike of the popular media in America—including so-called news journalism. I see very little real journalism there—especially on television. I see and hear distortions all over the place there and simply suspend all belief when I am watching and listening to popular news programs and reading popular “news” outlets in print. Recently I happened to open a national news tabloid on my tablet and immediately saw two side-by-side news stories with colorful photographs. One was about Trump and the other was about a male entertainment celebrity that “lost his virginity” to a starlet (sometime in the past). Who can take seriously such “journalism?” That just proves to me that serious journalism is almost dead in America and that the popular, sensational tabloid, entertainment-obsessed publications have merged into some kind of weird hybrid.

I blame the media for the popular identification of “evangelical” with “Religious Right” politics and now Trumpism (whatever that is). The media, including advertising, has a tendency to distort the meanings of words by blatantly misusing them. I see and hear it all the time. To me, caving into that and shedding my lifelong identity as an evangelical, would be to surrender to the popular media’s larger and deeper habit of misusing good, serious, useful words. And it would be to surrender to the oddball and even sinister assortment of cynical rightwing American fundamentalists who have worked hard to take over the label “evangelical” for themselves and their political agendas.

And yet, if someone asks me if I’m an evangelical I automatically ask “What do you mean by ‘evangelical?’” and “How long do you have to listen to what I mean by it?” In today’s climate in American, anyway, I cannot simply say “yes” to such a question unless I already know the interrogator and I share a basically similar definition of “evangelical.”

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

“#Some Lives Matter” and Calvinism: My Response to the T-shirt

Recently several people have sent me photos of a T-shirt that displays on its back the slogan “#Some Lives Matter” and below that the word “Calvinism.” Obviously, it’s someone’s idea of a cutesy critique of Calvinism piggy-backing on the war of slogans I alluded to in my immediately preceding post here. So here are my thoughts about it.

First, I take “Black Lives Matter”—both as a slogan and a movement—so seriously that I would not personally piggy-back on it for any purpose—even to poke fun at Calvinism and Calvinists. Maybe someday, when the current furor dies down, I will be able to grin at such, but the time is not now.

Now don’t get me wrong; I can enjoy a good joke. We need more theological humor—when it is meant in good fun and not to ridicule. A few years ago someone gave me a T-shirt that says “Arminius Is My Homeboy” below a picture of Arminius. Okay, that was fun—because of the T-shirt that already existed and is shown on the cover of Colin Hansen’s fine book Young, Restless, and Reformed. I shows a young man wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Jonathan Edwards with the slogan “Jonathan Edwards Is My Homeboy.” I’ve received other T-shirts with slogans such as “This T-shirt Chose Me” and “Calvinism” below that on the front and “I Chose This T-Shirt” and “Arminianism” on the back. Fun. No problem.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

Now let me explain why “#Some Lives Matter” with “Calvinism” is problematic—besides the reason I gave above.

I strongly suspect that my Calvinist friends would object to that slogan associated with their theology—as based on a serious misunderstanding or even misrepresentation of Calvinism.

I have said here before that what I want is fairness in theological debates. Both sides in the monergism-synergism debate ought to represent the other side fairly. Now I have to imagine a T-shirt with the slogan “#God Doesn’t Matter” followed by “Arminianism.” I would strongly object even though I know that many Calvinists think Arminianism makes God redundant in a Pelagian or at least semi-Pelagian way. This is what they mean when they mistakenly call Arminianism “man-centered.” I have called them out on that because it is a serious misrepresentation of classical Arminianism.

So, if I would call out a Calvinist wearing a T-shirt that misrepresents Arminianism, I have to be careful not to wear or endorse or even enjoy a T-shirt that misrepresents Calvinism.

So why would a Calvinist object to “#Some Lives Matter” associated with the name of their theology? Isn’t it just simply true? Well, not from their perspective. Let me explain.

I have read a library of books and articles by Calvinists about Calvinism. One of my mottos is “Before you say ‘I disagree’ be sure you can say ‘I understand’.” Okay, so before writing Against Calvinism I read the best and brightest Calvinists past and present and did my best as a non-Calvinist to understand all their points and arguments.

I think no informed Calvinist would agree that for Calvinism only some lives matter.

Let me pick out one very influential Calvinist theologian to use as a case study in this. His (yes, “his”) name was Lorraine Boettner (d. 1990). He was a giant among American Calvinist theologians in his heyday (mid-20^th century). His book The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination was widely considered one of the classical statements of Calvinism—as it bears on soteriology—for many years.

Boettner himself, in that book, stated unequivocally that he believed perhaps most human beings who have ever lived or will ever live are among God’s elect and will be in heaven. He was more optimistic about that, perhaps, than many Calvinists. Most would decline to offer such a prediction, but I am not aware of any influential Calvinists (other than hyper-Calvinists) who criticized Boettner for such optimism.

Also, Boettner argued in that book that God saves as many people as his own nature will allow. In other words, to quote a Catholic hymn that’s in many Protestant hymnals, “There is a wideness in God’s mercy.”

So, according to Boettner and other Calvinist theologians, past and present, why does not God save everyone? After all, election is unconditional and grace is irresistible. So, in theory, anyway, God could save everyone. However, Boettner, following a long line of classical Calvinist theologians, argued that even the reprobate, those God “passes over,” leaving them to their hellish destiny, matter to God and should matter to us. (I’m not quoting him; I’m paraphrasing here. I have copious notes on his book but my memory is good about this so I don’t feel the need to dig out my notes and offer direct quotations.)

Why do they matter to God? The simple answer Boettner and other classical Calvinists offer is that they play a needed role in God’s great plan to glorify himself by manifesting all his attributes without prejudice to any. Justice is one of God’s attributes. Hell is necessary for the full and unprejudiced manifestation of God’s attribute of justice. If God saved everyone, God’s justice would not be adequately manifested; it would be subordinated to his love—in terms of God’s “project,” as it were, to glorify himself in and through creation and redemption.

Many have attributed the following saying to Calvin’s successor in Geneva Theodore Beza: “Those who find themselves suffering in the flames of hell for eternity can at least take comfort in the fact that they are there for the greater glory of God.” Few Calvinists say it quite that blatantly, but that is the underlying reason for hell according to most classical Calvinists.

Now, of course…yes…there are many Calvinists who refuse to bite that bullet, so to speak, and who simply appeal to mystery when asked why God declines to save everyone when, obviously, he could (in that he’s powerful enough and election is unconditional and grace is irresistible). I think they need to explain more; I don’t think the appeal to mystery is respectable at that point. But I respect their right to do it.

According to most intellectually-inclined, educated Calvinist theologians and preachers throughout history, however, Boettner’s answer is the right one. God saves all that he can, meaning all that his nature and purpose allow. And even those predestinated to hell (whether in a supralapsarian or infralapsarian way) matter to God. And because they matter to God they should matter to us. They serve God in their own way.

John Piper goes so far as to claim that God loves the reprobate, the non-elect, but with a different quality of love than that he has for the elect. And, he argues, it deeply grieves God that he cannot save everyone created in his own image and likeness and loved by him. But he cannot because his glory is better served, he is made more manifest, with the eternal punishment of the wicked than without it. That God selects some to save out of the mass of damnation that constitutes humanity also glorifies God; it demonstrates, manifests, his love and mercy. But if there were no hell, God’s justice, also an equal aspect of God’s nature, would not be adequately revealed, manifested.

So, “#Some Lives Matter: Calvinism” misrepresents true, historical, classical Calvinism.

My critical response to this aspect of true, historical, classical Calvinism is laid out in detail in Against Calvinism. Read it there. But it is not that only some lives matter to God. (Hint: It is the way in which some lives matter to God and what that Calvinist belief says about God’s character.)

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

*The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end. If your comment violates the rules stated there it will probably not be posted to this blog.*

*First read my first six posts in this series; they precede this blog post. They set forth my fundamental “principles” for living and thinking.

*Now continues a second part of this series; this series is about my reasons for being a Christian and for embracing a particular “brand” of Christianity called (as in the name of this blog) “evangelical Arminianism.” In order to understand this post you need to read the immediately preceding ones about my reasons for being an “evangelical” Christian.

9) My Third Reason for Embracing “Evangelical, Arminian Christianity”: “Arminian”

My immediately preceding post/essay explained why I am an evangelical Christian—both descriptively and prescriptively. Now, here, I turn to explanation of why I identify as an “Arminian evangelical Christian.” I have written about the meaning—to me—of “Arminian” here before, but perhaps I will now say something new that will enhance my explanation. So even if you have read me before on this topic, please consider reading this.

Again, as with “Christian” and “evangelical Christian,” Arminian is a label I (but not only I) use to describe what type of evangelical Christian I am. However, for me, anyway, it stands subordinate to “evangelical Christian.” So far as I know, and there may be exceptions I am not aware of, all true Arminians, all Arminians in the true historical-theological sense of the word, have been and are evangelical Christians in the broad sense I explained it in the two immediately preceding posts. For me, being “evangelical Christian” is much more important than being “Arminian.” However, in recent years especially, “Arminianism” has been so misrepresented and maligned by especially Calvinists—another type of evangelical Christians—that I have found it important to identify myself as such and use whatever influence I have—especially among evangelical Christians—to clarify its meaning. To explain it another way: Some years ago I realized that, at least among North American evangelical Christianity, especially among North American evangelical scholars and theologians, “evangelical Christianity” was being explained in a way that made so-called “Reformed theology,” including Calvinism, normative for authentic evangelical Christianity. Some evangelical theologians and historians were even going so far as to claim that Arminians could not be authentically, fully evangelical. That brought me “out of the closet,” so to speak, to defend my Arminian theology as fully, authentically evangelical and Christian.

A few examples of the phenomenon I am talking about that compelled me to defend my Arminian evangelical Christian heritage and theology may help readers understand my somewhat admittedly Quixotic campaign to defend Arminianism as equally evangelical and Christian (with Reformed/Calvinist theology). During my studies in a Baptist seminary I was informed by a professor that “Arminianism has historically led to liberal theology.” I knew that was not the case. I grew up among Arminian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. As I read and studied the history and theology of evangelical Christianity I found Jonathan Edwards being touted as the prototype—often to the complete exclusion of John Wesley. In 2003 a major news magazine published an article about the anniversary of Edwards’s birth without so much as a mention of Wesley who was born the same year (1703). I wrote a letter to the editor of that magazine mentioning the importance of Wesley to evangelical Christianity; it was published in the next issue. I noticed that the major trans-denominational evangelical organizations, seminaries, publishing houses, magazines, tended to favor Reformed/Calvinist evangelicalism. I definitely felt marginalized within late twentieth century and early twenty-first century North American evangelicalism’s centers of influence because I proudly wore my Arminian heritage “on my sleeve.” I was a contributing editor to Christianity Today, a major “voice” for evangelical Christians, when, in 2009 it celebrated the birth of John Calvin with an article about him in every issue. There was little to no mention of Arminius who died in 1609—in spite of the fact that I strongly suggested that CT publish at least some “nod” to Arminius and his influence that year.

I could go on and I have in earlier posts to this blog. I will finish by saying that my friend, church historian and theologian Donald W. Dayton, also an Arminian, raised this issue of the Reformed/Calvinist normativity in evangelical historiography and theology very perceptively and eloquently in Christian Scholar’s Review—a generically evangelical scholarly journal I edited from 1994 to 1999. Dayton argued for recognition of two paradigms of evangelicalism. He called them (as I now recall) the “Puritan Paradigm” and the “Pentecostal Paradigm,” but I came to call them the “Reformed Paradigm” and the “Arminian Paradigm.” The Reformed (Puritan-Presbyterian) paradigm was gradually pushing aside and ignoring the contributions of Arminian (Pietist-Pentecostal-Holiness) evangelical Christianity to the larger evangelical Christian ethos and movement.

There were several “straws” that broke this “camel’s back” and propelled me into a years-long campaign to rehabilitate Arminianism as a valid and important type of evangelical Christianity. One was when a very influential Reformed/Calvinist evangelical theologian publicly declared that Arminians can be “Christian, just barely.” Another was when an equally influential Reformed/Calvinist evangelical theologian publicly stated that one possible explanation for Arminianism among Christians is “demonic deception.” Both of those evangelical theologians, like many others, tended to equate Arminianism with Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism; they assumed that Arminians deny the priority of grace in salvation and subordinate it to the sinner’s free will. They and many others labeled Arminianism essentially “humanistic” or “man-centered.”

I have said here, in this series of posts and before, that I was born in the “thick” of North American evangelical Christianity. I well remember my father, an evangelical pastor, “marching” together with the whole city “Evangelical Ministerial Alliance” in a city-wide parade. Like all such city evangelical ministerial groups it included both Arminians and Calvinists. Our denomination was a charter member of the National Association of Evangelicals. A major transdenominational evangelical organization called Youth for Christ (Billy Graham was one of its evangelists in the 1940s and early 1950s) was an important part of my spiritual nurture. My family and church were deeply imbedded in it and it included both Arminians and Calvinists.

So, for newcomers to this blog, and for those who need a bit of review about these categories: What is Arminianism? (Here I will only talk about what Reformed church historian-theologian Alan P. F. Sell labeled “Arminianism of the heart.”) In a nutshell, Arminianism is Protestant Christian belief in total depravity (all are sinners and incapable by themselves, apart from God’s supernatural grace, of doing anything to be saved), conditional election (the “elect” are all who, enabled by God’s grace, freely choose God’s offer of salvation), universal atonement (Christ’s atoning death on the cross was for all people), and resistible grace (God’s generous offer of salvation, reconciliation with himself, through Jesus Christ can be resisted even by those God wants to save). In other words, Arminianism is belief in a generous, loving God who genuinely wants to save everyone, and has suffered and died in Jesus Christ for all people, and who, through the gospel, makes it possible for depraved, helpless sinners to say “yes” to his offer of reconciliation with himself. In other words, it is denial of the “U,” the “L,” and the “I” of the famous T.U.L.I.P. scheme of Calvinism. It is not Pelagianism, belief that sinners can save themselves by simply deciding to obey God’s law, and it is not semi-Pelagianism, belief that sinners are capable of initiating their own salvation by means of unaided free will.

For more information and understanding of classical Arminianism consult my book Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (InterVarsity Press). (I do not want to spend time describing in more detail here Arminianism. I have done that on my blog several times before and, if you do not want to read my book, at least use a search engine to find my previous blog posts expounding Arminianism and Arminian theology.)

So why am I an “Arminian evangelical Christian?” Why am I not Reformed-Calvinist?

First let me say that I consider most Reformed-Calvinist Christians as evangelical. There may be exceptions, but I have known many of them throughout my lifetime and find no reason to consider them “less evangelical” or “less Christian” than Arminians (or Lutherans—another subject I do not want to pursue here as I have done before). When I was growing up one wing of my large, extended family belong to the Christian Reformed Church; my cousins belonged to its youth group called “Young Calvinists.” We all got along just fine in spite of our disagreements about some matters of theology. I have had wonderful colleagues who were and are Calvinists; I have never insulted or demeaned their evangelical faith.

I was born into an Arminian form of evangelical Christianity and I have never found reason to “jump ship,” so to speak, into Reformed-Calvinist Christianity. I do not claim Arminianism is superior, even in terms of being “more evangelical” or “more Christian” than Arminianism. I simply think classical Calvinist theology is mistaken, even profoundly mistaken. Within it I find many problems of coherence (inconsistency) and it does not fit with my experience of God or myself. I find it to be a more problematic interpretation of the Bible than Arminianism. But I have explained all these reasons in Against Calvinism (Zondervan).

My most basic, fundamental reason for being Arminian rather than Calvinist (and those are the two main theological options among evangelical Christians—even where they do not call them by those names) is the character of God. I am not a humanist lover of free will; the only reason I believe in free will (or “freed will”—made free by God’s “prevenient grace”) is because I see it everywhere assumed in the Bible and without it God would be monstrous rather than loving (unless he saves everyone).

I often tell my students that both Calvinism and Arminianism have problems; there are mysteries deeply embedded within both views. I tell them that I can live with the problems and mysteries of Arminianism whereas I cannot live with the mysteries and problems of Calvinism. And, so far as I can see, and I have studied the matter in great depth and detail (I have shelves full of books about Reformed theology/Calvinism by noted Reformed/Calvinist theologians), whenever Calvinists attempt to “solve” the problems I see in their theology their Calvinism either becomes Arminianism (without that label) or they deepen the problems—at least for me.

I have no desire to create an Arminian hegemony of evangelical Christianity; I have said here, on my blog, and in my books that I “thank God for Reformed Christianity.” It has contributed much to my spiritual and theological life and work. My only concern has been to clear up misconceptions about Arminianism and point out the problems in Calvinism so that Calvinists or those inclined toward it can examine it carefully and critically.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me (or the guest writer). If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective, feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among especially evangelical Christians.

*The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end. If your comment violates the rules stated there it will probably not be posted here.*

*First read my first six posts in this series; they precede this blog post. They set forth my fundamental “principles” for living and thinking.

*Now continues a second part of this series; this series is about my reasons for being a Christian and for embracing a particular “brand” of Christianity called (as in the name of this blog) “evangelical Arminianism.” In order to understand this post you need to read the immediately preceding one about my reasons for being Christian.

8) My Second Reason for Embracing “Evangelical, Arminian Christianity”: “Evangelical”

My immediately preceding post/essay explained why I am a Christian—both descriptively and prescriptively. Now, here, I turn to explanation of why I identify as an “evangelical Christian.” I have written about the meaning—to me—of “evangelical” here before, but perhaps I will now say something new that will enhance my explanation. So even if you have read me before on this topic, please consider reading this.

Of course, especially in America today, “evangelical” is a much contested category and label. I care little for that controversy; it is created primarily by the popular media and even serious journalists have challenged the popular media’s misrepresentation of “evangelical” as a political category. Even if ninety-nine percent of people who call themselves evangelical should happen to also be vegetarians that would not make evangelicalism vegetarian. Evangelical is a spiritual-theological “type” of Christianity with a history and must be defined that way.

Again, descriptively, I was born into the “bosom” of evangelical Christianity. I have lived and worked within it my entire life with one relatively brief exception—my foray into “mainstream, liberal Protestantism” during my doctoral studies. Even then, however, I attended, as often as I could, an evangelical church on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. And I did my best to represent evangelical Christianity within the mainstream, liberal Protestant church and its denomination where I served as a minister.

Not only have I lived and worked within evangelical Christianity almost my entire life; I have also studied and written about it as a student and scholar. I have taught theology in three evangelical Christian institutions of higher education over thirty-five years.

But why do I remain “evangelical” when it is such a contested and widely misunderstood, even despised, category? Simply put—because I can think of no better label for the particular “brand” of Christianity I embrace.

Historically, evangelical Christianity is rooted in the spiritual awakenings among Protestants in Europe, Great Britain and North America in the early eighteenth century. These spiritual awakenings are called by various names but two representatives, prototypes of evangelical Christianity, stand out as especially signal: Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, both born in 1703. Together with others such as Count Zinzendorf in Germany and George Whitefield in England and the American colonies, they launched a worldwide spiritual renewal among especially Protestant Christians that emphasized the Bible as God’s inspired and life-transforming Word, conversion-regeneration by grace through faith as the gateway into a redeemed life, the cross of Jesus Christ as the only source of salvation, and the importance of Christian activism in missions, evangelism and social transformation. I consider any orthodox Christian, broadly defined, who embraces these hallmarks, these characteristics of “awakened Christianity,” to be an evangelical Christian—whether he or she uses that label or not.

So, moving on to prescriptive reasons why I embrace evangelical Christianity and identify myself with that ethos-brand of Christianity. I have had many opportunities to bid goodbye to evangelical Christianity. One of my most influential and persuasive spiritual-theological mentors during my doctoral studies was a convert from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy. He gently invited me to join him on that journey and I half-heartedly considered it. What I mean is that I seriously looked into it without ever really intending to “make the leap.” I learned much from him and from my study of Eastern Orthodoxy that has greatly benefitted me spiritually and theologically. For example, I eventually adopted belief in theosis—“deification”—into my evangelical Christianity. However, I never was convinced that Eastern Orthodoxy is a more authentic type of Christianity than evangelical. (I have met some Eastern Orthodox Christians who I consider evangelical even though they might not appreciate me so labeling them.)

Eastern Orthodoxy is not the only alternative type of Christianity I have studied and closely encountered. As I mentioned earlier, I served for three years as a minister in a mainline, liberal Protestant church and its denomination. I studied theology with a German Lutheran theologian who I would not consider evangelical in the sense I described above. I have participated in Protestant-Catholic dialogues both in Germany and the United States. I have invited Catholic priests and theologians to speak to my classes in every institution where I have taught.

I have never discovered a non-evangelical type of Christianity that I found to be as authentically New Testament as evangelical Christianity. While evangelicalism has numerous faults and failings, especially in the ways individuals and groups express it, I find the historical-spiritual ethos of evangelicalism, broadly defined trans-denominationally, to be the type of Christianity closest to the New Testament gospel. That is not to say it has any corner on truth or spiritual power; it is only to say that no other type of Christianity has for me the “heartbeat” of primitive Christianity that I read about in the New Testament and that matters to me very much.

“Evangelical Christianity” itself comes in many “flavors” but all share the New Testament emphasis on the power of God at work transforming people’s lives by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Some evangelical Christian baptize infants; some only baptize believers. Some believe in the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible; some believe in dynamic inspiration and infallibility of the Bible. Some believe in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit through supernatural “sign gifts” such as speaking in tongues; some believe such ceased with the last of the apostles and the completion of the canon of Scripture. I consider them all fellow evangelicals insofar as they embrace the New Testament gospel in its power and fullness as described above.

I do not believe evangelicals are “better Christians” solely by virtue of being evangelical; nor do I believe evangelicals have a corner on truth. There is truth in all types of Christianity. All contribute something meaningful and helpful to the body of Christ, the world wide community of people committed to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. I do believe there are evangelical Christians in every denomination; no denomination has a “corner” on evangelical Christianity.

Still, and nevertheless, I find the “evangelical ethos” especially true to the New Testament and especially powerful in carrying forth the gospel of Jesus Christ. I apologize for my fellow evangelicals who give evangelical Christianity a bad name by being harsh, judgmental, overly dogmatic, mean-spirited and/or superior-minded. And I loudly decry the tendency of many self-proclaimed evangelicals to identify the gospel with a political ideology whether it be “right wing” or “left wing.” But I do not apologize for identifying with the gospel as preached by Edwards, Wesley, Whitefield, Zinzendorf and other leaders of the evangelical awakening of the early eighteenth century: “You can and must be born again in order to enter into God’s new order, the Kingdom of the heavens, now and in the future.”

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